How Ultra-Processed Foods Is Slowly KILLING US - Stop Eating This To LIVE LONGER! | Dr. Mark Hyman

thought I'd start with something you wrote in your new book if I were to prescribe one intervention to extend life to prevent and reverse chronic disease it would be to drastically reduce or eliminate sugar and refined starch from your diet yeah why is that so important the idea that sugar and starch are driving the dysfunctions that we see as normal aging but a really abnormal aging is is not really new we know that underlying all the chronic diseases of Aging heart disease cancer diabetes obviously dementia these are all related to disturbances and our ability to regulate our blood sugar to what we call insulin resistance where our body becomes resistant to the effects of insulin and this creates this whole Downstream Cascade that is like a wildfire on the aging process it causes you to gain belly fat it drives up inflammation it lowers your hormones it increases cortisol increases your stress hormones it actually also causes abnormal cholesterol fatty liver all sorts of problems it shrinks your hippocampus and your brain fuels cancer cells I mean it is the nightmare if you want to be someone who's healthy and healthy for a long time I mean the idea basically is to have your lifespan which is how long you're alive be equal to your health span which is how many years of your life you're healthy and for most people they're about 20 years short on the health Span in their lifespan yeah it is incredible you have been talking about this for Years yet the consumption of these Foods the consumption of ultra processed foods all over the globe appear to be on the rise so can you talk to us a little bit about Ultra processed foods what are they exactly and why are they so problematic for our health well historically you know we've evolved eating Foods in their original states and the complex Matrix of fiber vitamins minerals protein fat and carbohydrates and they're in a rich array of phytochemicals and other matrices that make our bodies build them manage and handle these things Ultra processed foods are essentially who likes substances that are made from highly processed ingredients from some commodity crops soy wheat and corn mostly that are then turned into all size shapes colors of chemically extruded substances they know bear no resemblance to the original form and cause all sorts of havoc in our biology aside from all the preservatives you know additives thickeners artificial sweeteners things that are also problematic for health but just just the processing of the food itself in a way that pulverizes it into some thing that isn't resembling food at all and then reassembles it in a way that actually is harmful to my biology It's Quickly absorbed it sends signals to our biology that we're not getting any real food in fact people who eat Ultra processed food if given you know compared to uh and this is a controlled trial where the gay people are the Ultras processed food or they give them whole food and the same amount of food they could sort of eat as much as they wanted the people who had the ultra processed food ate 500 calories more a day that's a base basically the equivalent to gaining a pound a week or 52 pounds a year so it's no wonder we're such an obese Society increasingly in the UK I think the United States has you beat a little bit but not by much I think the the reality is that this Ultra processed food is driving so much of of the challenges we see in our society for every 10 of your diet that's Ultra processed food your risk of death goes up by 14 and in America 60 of our diet is ultra processed food and kids it's almost 70 percent of their diet this is just a deadly combination that not only causes long-term problems of you know shorter lifespan and we're seeing our life expectancy go down but also immediate problems of of all sorts of conditions that we now know are related to the Starship sugar whether it's fatty liver and kids that need liver transplants or kids who are you know having heart attacks and 20 years old because of this I mean it's it's really pretty frightening you said that for every 10 increase in Ultra processed foods your risk of death goes up by 14 14 yeah that's from the global burden of disease study huge study of 995 countries uh in 11 million people die every year from eating the wrong food that's more than smoking or Wars or anything else it is the number one killer in the world today smoke despite all this knowledge why is consumption still going up what's going on is it an individual problem yeah is it the food industry right yeah yeah yeah well this is this is my last book which was uh food picks where I mapped out the problems with our food policies and our food industry and how everything that we're doing is fostering the the production the growing the production the marketing and the sale of these Ultra processed foods in ways we've never seen in human history and and that's really what's what's driving it and I'm working hard on my non-profit the food fix campaign to change those food policies to address you know food marketing to kids for example Boris Johnson thankfully he he got uh wise once he got covered that food was related to his poor health and that he understood that the reason he ended up in the ICU from covid was because he was in poor metabolic health and that was because of the starch and sugar and processed foods and he then started to restrict marketing and other kinds of initiatives that actually were trying to lower the consumption sugar and Ultra processed food which I think is great but that needs to happen you know globally in America you can you know the effect of this is not just on on Aging but is on everything if you look at America it's four percent the world's population but it was 16 of the coveted cases in deaths which means we have a 400 increase compared to what we should have in terms of our population why is that because covet hit a population that was pre-inflamed that was metabolic and healthy and that was at high risk for having complications in Death from from covet and that's why we're we're not because we have a crappy Health Care System we spend more than any other country by double and yet we we did the worst yeah in your experience Mark and you have been you know you've seen tens of thousands of patients over maybe what three decades now a long long time I'm scared to say that I started Medical School 40 years ago this is fine well one of the reasons I I actually love talking to you mark is because you have been a practicing clinician for so long you know you have real world experience with patients and as much as we both enjoy talking to researchers yeah it can be very you know very interesting to learn about new research but I think there is something special certainly for me about talking to clinicians because the research hasn't always apply to that person in front of you but what a some of the common traps that people fall into would you say when they're trying to choose their their food for example you know what are some foods that maybe people think are healthy from the way that the that their Market said but actually are causing them them short-term and the long-term problems that's a great question you know I think you know just it's more directly answer your question uh which I indirectly answered about whose responsibility is it is it a personal responsibility that we need to just all eat less and exercise more there's something else going on and there's something else going on which is that we are highly addicted to these Foods they're designed to hijack our brain chemistry our hormones our metabolism and they do very good job at that and so we have to realize that there's there is some level of responsibility but there's also the food environment and the food that's available and the the compounds that are in the food that hijack our biology so that that I think is important I understand to not blame the person who's overweight that is one of the most um I think damaging things that we do as a medical profession as a nutritionists in our health policy it's certainly the Mantra of food companies which is there's no good and bad calories it's all about moderation and if you want to sort of have Coca-Cola or Pepsi and and it's part of your caloric intake that that's okay and that's just that's just a bunch of nonsense uh as far as far as the foods that we think are okay that aren't okay well I think maybe we sort of don't understand when we see things like whole grains that actually a lot of the whole grain foods out there are highly processed whole grains that are you know put in Cheerios or Frosted Flakes so we have you know like new Frosted Flakes with extra extra you know whole grains in them it just is insane I think we need to be very careful of food marketing and food labeling if you want to have food try to have in its original form whole grains are actually that whole grains and you can cook them yourself at home uh and and that's really important to not fall for these sort of marketing claims I think also low fat is a terrible thing that we should be avoiding and a lot of low-fat foods are high sugar and that was really the damaging message of the 90s with the food pyramid in America where we were told to eat six to eleven servings of bread rice cereal and pasta day and cut our fat consumption and we did that and and subsequently became the you know increasingly obese around the globe because of that advice that was really shared globally so there's some really simple things like avoid low-fat foods eat good fats and don't don't fall for for false marketing labels where it says it's healthy for you if it's a processed food yeah I definitely agree breakfast cereals are a huge culprit so I think you know the majority of breakfast cereals not all of them but the majority probably not helping people they're certainly not helping them start the day they're probably putting them on a blood sugar roller coaster right from the start of the day yeah but can I just clarify what you said on uh low fat there because there's obviously foods that are natural you know whole foods that are naturally low fat and there's yeah um low-fat products that the food industry have made are used broccoli is low fat I mean that's fine asparagus are low fat that's okay but it's it's all the low-fat processed food I'm talking about yeah as a marketing claim or if it says high fiber or if it has whole grain on it these are these are ways in which are the the food industry uh uses sort of marketing on the front of package labeling to confuse people and for example Cheerios is a great example that everything's cheers of the health food it's oat bran it's old fiber it's healthy lower your cholesterol it sounds good but in fact the glycemic index of Cheerios is worse than table sugar so that is a problem you know the glycemic index 74 out of 100 table sugar 65. so I think we have to be very careful when we kind of eat these foods and how they impact our blood sugar and it's really important for us to understand that you know how how food affects our blood sugar as we discussed at the outside of the podcast is the most determined important determinant of our long-term health and well-being including things like depression fertility acne uh all sorts of problems that aren't just about heart attack Strokes cancer dementia and diabetes yeah well thank you for that um sort of thorough overview in summary these are of course things that you've um discussed and written about many times particularly in your last but food fits which was you know a fantastic Deep dive into that area the new book young forever now I really like it because there's a real practicality throughout it I just want to ask you though why this topic right you know why why the topic of aging and and perhaps you could also share where you are in your life you know if you're happy to share your age you know why why why is this so important for you well you know I was young everybody's favorite radio station is wifm what's in it for me and I'm I'm 63. so I'm interested in what's in it for me because I don't want to age poorly I want to be vibrant and do all the things I love to do whether it's go skiing or Gallop down the beach on a horse or go for a long bike ride or do whatever I want to do I don't want to be limited and I want to be able to enjoy life fully and travel and do all the things that that really give me joy and make life meaningful then be able to show up and do the work I want to do in the world and to be engaged and focused and healthy to be able to actually show up for the people that matter and my relationships to to be in contribution and so in order to do that I have to be healthy and so I'm very interested in the topic of how you stay healthy as we get older but I also find and by the way biologically according to new metrics that we can use to measure our biological age I'm only 43 so I still I'm still pretty young and the truth is uh I I wanted to focus on this topic of longevity longevity science because unlike other disciplines in medicine this is a relatively new field of research and because in the past we thought there was nothing we can do about aging that we actually just need to to actually stop worrying about it and deal with the disease of Aging instead of actually having the the things that we know we can actually do something about and from a functional medicine perspective I found the the longevity signs kind of being almost a representation of the truth that we've known a long time in functional medicine that their body is a system that their underlying root causes of disease that if we want to really deal with all these diseases that we see the 155 000 diseases that are in our International classification system that we need to sort of go back to understand root causes and in longevity science there are 10 Hallmarks of Aging that have been discussed that are underlying all the disease of Aging so heart disease cancer diabetes dementia the aging process self Frailty all those things we Now understand are not normal processes they're abnormal processes that are resulting from disturbances in these fundamental systems or functions and and when they go wrong we call these the Hallmarks of Aging but we can intervene with these things and they're very much in the functional medicine kind of framework of the body as a system of dealing with your causes and so I thought by focusing on longevity science I could help to elucidate what I thought were the flaws in it which is that it didn't go far enough to look at the causes of the Hallmark so the Hallmarks of Aging are the causes of all the diseases in aging what causes the Hallmarks in the first place and that's where functional medicine comes in to be able to be a detective and find out where the imbalances are and how we can correct them so we can possibly influence these Hallmarks of Aging yeah Mark since we last spoke there's there's a lot of new listeners to this podcast and some people may not be familiar with the functional medicine approach so you sort of outline some key tenets there which are really interesting but I wonder if you could just give an overview for people who think medicine is medicine yeah maybe for someone who's never heard about the difference before how do you sort of Briefly summarize the the key differences between conventional Western allopathic medicine and the functional medicine approach well you know functional medicine is really what will be medicine it's our whole view of biology that's shifting from a reductionist disease-based model to a systems model of understanding the body as an interconnected network of biological systems that we have to treat as a whole and functional medicine from from the perspective of the patient is about not treating all the individual symptoms and diseases separately but really treating your whole system I'll just give you an example that illustrates the clear difference this is a patient that I talked about the book Young Forever she was around a 50 year old woman business executive coach who had all sorts of problems psoriatic arthritis which was a terrible condition of the skin and Joints it's quite uh kind of debilitating and she was on a drug that cost fifty thousand dollars a year for that's an immune suppressant she also had terrible irritable bowel syndrome and bloating she had been on lots of antibiotics and steroids she also had reflux she had depression she had insomnia she had migraines she also had pre-diabetes was overweight and so rather than you know treating her all her diseases separately which were being done right she saw the psychiatrist for her depression the endocrinologist for pre-diabetes the neurologist for her migraines the gastrologist for her GI symptoms the rheumatologist for psoriatic arthritis and she was given the best possible treatment by all these Physicians they were excellent positions doing exactly what we were taught in medical school and what is exactly the current state of treatment for each of these diseases however she was not better she was marginally improved and her symptoms were most mostly are partly managed but she wasn't better and so rather than saying well I'm just going to kind of up your dose of these drugs or that drugs I'm going to get to the root cause and all the diseases that she had were all inflammatory diseases her diabetes her pre-diabetes her weight issues her migraines her depression her certain arthritis obviously her gut issues these are all inflammatory so from a function of this perspective we go what's causing the inflammation and I joke and I say I'm an inflamologist is actually what we need to be if we're studying longevity because the whole process of Aging is called inflammaging and so rather than treat all these things separately I said well her gut is where 70 of her immune system lives she's having terrible gut symptoms I guarantee you she's got a leaky gut she's got probably bacterial overgrowth yeast overgrowth and a leaky gut and lots of food sensitivities and reactions so what I did was simply put her on an Elimination Diet I got rid of all the sugar processed food gluten dairy obviously alcohol and get her on a Whole Foods diet with good proteins lots of good fats lots of fruits and vegetables and I said to her you know take a fish oil a vitamin D probiotic super simple Regiment of supplements that I thought she needed based on her history I I said don't stop your medication but just continue to do this and we'll check back in and go over everything in about six weeks so she came back six weeks later she'd stopped all her medication including that 50 000 drug for her psoriac arthritis and I didn't tell her to do it but she stopped everything her symptoms were completely gone from everything her skin was cleared up her joints are cleared up her migrants were gone and depression was gone and somebody was gone or she lost 20 pounds her irritable bowel her reflux was gone I also gave her stuff to reset her gut and it not not absorbed antibiotic and any fungal that got rid of all the bad guys in her God they were causing all this inflammation so this is a case that I really focused on the root cause which was her gut to treat all these other problems and got her gut healthy everything else went away so when you create Health when you create a healthy system take out the bad stuff put in the good stuff the body has a chance to repair and renew and that's what's really the exciting part uh running about the longevity research is that now we understand that the body has this extraordinary ability to to renew repair rejuvenate and reverse our biological age just as our skin has the ability to heal when we cut it our body has that innate healing system we've just done everything possible to interfere with it to impede it and the book and forever is really a road map and how do you how do you actually activate these ancient embedded healing systems in our body that can reverse our biological age and make us younger as we get older yeah that was that was brilliant it's a really great summary and and it really showcases how the systems approach that you have been you know talking about for many many years now beautifully fits alongside the new science of longevity and I think that was one of the for me one of the really rewarding things about reading Young Forever was that yes this system's biology approach Works beautifully for aging it's the same approach in many ways that you've been talking about and I've tried to for many years now but actually when you apply it through the lens of longevity you can actually see it in a in a completely different light that's very very empowering for people you mentioned Mark biological age and chronological age yes please explain to people who don't know the difference sure so you know I'm 63 I can't change that I was born in 1959 and that's going to progress inevitably toward you know however many years I'm alive however my biological age is my age on the inside it's not my chronological clock it's my biological clock and we now know that we can measure our biological clock and our rate of Aging through a specific test called DNA methylations something relatively new and it it tests what's called our epigenome our genes are fixed we have 20 000 genes we can change that or 25 whatever but we have on top of those genes a regulating system Epi means above and the epigenome basically is like the piano player that plays all the different Keys which are our genes we've got 88 keys but they can play thousands of tunes you kind of rock Ragtime jazz blues whatever classical all in the same 88 keys same thing with the RPG genome and it can control your biology in real time in ways that either accelerate or reverse the aging process and now we know that a lot of the interventions that we discussed whether it's diet and exactly what to eat how to eat and so forth exercise the types of exercise stress reduction sleep environmental toxins nutritional level our microbiome all these things influence our epigenome and can change it either into something that's causing us to age fast or slow or reverse our biologically so if you're eating Ultra processed food you're not exercising under tons of stress or not sleeping your nutrition will need efficient you're exposed to toxins guess what why your epigenome is going to be bad you will be older than your chronological age as opposed to younger so we know through interventions even shorter interventions of for example eight weeks we can of aggressive lifestyle and dietary change with functional medicine you can reverse your biological age by three years so in eight weeks you turn back the biological clock by three years that's profound in eight weeks in eight weeks yeah and so I mean I'm 43 I'm trying to get to 25. let's see how it goes but you know I think that's a key Point here Mark when a lot of people think about longevity right I think there is a slight mismatch in their brain where it's like well why should I be bothered about what happens in 20 30 years I want to live my life now right so there's there's always in this like disconnect whereas what I love about the things that you recommended Young Forever is that yes it's going to slow down the aging process if that's your goal but it's also going to help you feel great like straight away right so it's it's not something that we can kick down as the future it's going to have immediate it's gonna have an immediate impact on the quality of your life immediate yeah absolutely adding more life to your ears not just years to your life right so how do you actually feel good to do what you want in life that's what it's all about how do we be a more engaged Society how do we become more connected to each other and supportive how do we actually change this sort of this inexorable sickness both biologically and psychologically that we see in our society and a lot of it has to do with our biological Health we know that our mental health is connected to our physical health and a lot of the sort of raging depression and anxiety and mental health issues that are exploding across the globe are really related to you know our overall stress of society but also to the food we're eating that literally the the dietary things that we do Drive our poor mental health and that particularly starts with sugar and processed food and that can be changed and that'll give us a sense of purpose and meaning and ability to do whatever we want posted a photo on I think it was on Instagram a few months ago of you in your 40s and you now yeah in your 60s right and there was uh it was quite a noticeable difference but it was yeah um I think if people didn't know they may not be sure which one was which I think you could tell which ones which I'm looking at your face a little more gray hair a little more gray hair but why did you post that what was so important for you to show people well I think I think two things one you know when I was in my 40s I was athletic I was running I was biking 100 miles I was very active um and I was eating what I thought was healthy uh which was which was Whole Foods but I tend to eat a lot more carbohydrates a lot less fat and less protein and I didn't do resistance training I thought I'd bring yoga I'm you know that's good enough or I'm doing you know biking or running and I didn't and so when I was 60 I just started to start doing resistance bands and strength training and I also have changed my diet over the years to be much more low glycemic to be higher in uh protein and fat and and low in starch and sugar with lots of of phytochemically rich fruits and vegetables and I noticed my body composition changed I went from like you know 12 body fat to six percent body fat I had you know increasing health and and strength as they got older which I think most people don't see they see you know as you get older you lose muscle you become more flabby you know and that is truly usually what happens and that is the death now if you want to age fast then don't exercise and uh keep your diet high in stretching sugar alone protein and fat and that that's the recipe for disaster it's really the recipe that most of us are following but the body has the ability to uh as I as I as I showed in that picture to change radically at any age so I've seen people you know even at 80 90 start to do things and and you see their their their strength and their function come back yeah well we'll definitely if you if you're willing to send me that face it will definitely pop it up on the videos I think it's very inspiring for people and I think that's a wider point there mark which is again if you go down the street and you picked 10 people at random and asked them would you like to live longer I suspect that many of them will say no because they perceive old age with Frailty and morbidity and I think your books really challenged that but can you speak to that a little bit I think you've you've written in the book that actually what we see around us is actually what you call abnormal aging yeah or you've come to expect the typical person who's older as representative of what's supposed to happen right we become hunched over or weaker more frail let's say able to do things we want to do we become fraught with diseases you know in over uh probably 80 percent of people over 65 have one or more chronic illnesses and and and we so we come to expect this is just how life goes and we can't do anything about it but what we're actually witnessing is an accelerated process of Aging that has to do with these underlying Hallmarks of Aging that go awry and things like damage your mitochondria inflammation change under microbiome change the nutritional sense apparatus that regulates our food and Metabolism our our DNA damage that happens epigenetic changes shortening telomere zombie cells that developed so all these things happen as a result of damage to our proteins happen as a result of this abnormal process that now we can intervene in and a lot of longevity scientists are looking for drugs or interventions to interrupt these Hallmarks of Aging which may be helpful like rapamycin for example or or metformin but the reality is that that we have a greater far greater influence through dealing with the root cause of those Hallmarks what I call dying of too much or dying of too little which is none of the good stuff and none of too much the bad stuff that we're exposed to that all these Hallmarks and then we don't we don't actually um have to actually treat them individually we can optimize our health and our mitochondria will be better our blood sugar regulation will be better our inflammation would be less and everything tends to work better when we deal with those those root causes of the Hallmarks so we we don't have to accept this decline in decrepitude or Frailty as normal we can reverse that we can reverse that biological process and actually get younger as we get older I know it's part of the research for this book you went on your travel so I really enjoyed watching you sharing a lot of these stories on your social media this is probably I don't know six nine months ago I can't remember yeah when exactly um I know two countries you visited or two places you visited was Sardinia and icaria I think and I wonder could you paint us a picture of maybe some of the older residents who you met who really challenge that modern assumption that as we get older we're going to be frail we're going to be sick we're going to be sat down all day we're not we're not going to be doing much because you know you shared yourself in your early 60s how much vibrancy you have okay that's fantastic but paint us a picture from your travels as to you know a couple of people who you met who also showcased to us what may be possible as we age yeah I think that's very very important point that uh you know we need to sort of look at cultures where they live a long time and what are their habits and behaviors and how are they different and I think you know they they age very well and live a long time and now the blue zones are these places around the planet where people are the longest lived humans the thing is when they move to the Western societies that that we come from they age at the same rate as we get old and sick and die sooner and so really by default their habits are those that promote longevity they're not you know doing saunas and cold plunges and taking a lot of supplements and doing IV NAD and doing exosomes and plasmapheresis and all these kind of cool things that are emerging around longevity their whole default culture is is actually automatically providing them with the inputs that enhance health and promote longevity for example their diet is is incredibly rich in phytochemicals in in Whole Foods and things that are are wild and and really simple foods that they've eaten for thousands of years we'll be back to the conversation in just a moment now many of us struggle to find time to eat all of these incredible Whole Foods that's why I'm a big fan of good quality Whole Food supplements like this one that's been in my own life for over three years now it contains over 75 Whole Food Source ingredients vitamins minerals pre and probiotics and can help us support our energy focused digestion and our immune system athletic greens are giving my audience a fantastic offer one year's free supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs with your first order you can see all the details at athleticgreens.com forward slash live more or simply click on the link below now back to the conversation they exercised as a normal part of their life whether it's gardening or whether it's you know shepherding and climbing up and down the mountains all the day long and it's the social connections and the tight-knit family groups and the social Fabric and the idea that we should just be there to help and support each other this is really quite important and and so when you have these defaults longevity happens as a natural consequence uh they actually were quite incredible I met this guy Pietro who was 95 years old they just retired quote retired from being a Shepherd where he was shepherding his sheep five miles up and down the Rocky Mountains every single day for probably when he was like 12. and it was straight up as an arrow booming voice Clear Eyes you know just looked like the average sort of probably a 67 year old in America and I'm like wow this guy's 95 years old it was a a Leica who was a almost 90 years old this woman cooked us a meal from her garden she took care of this entire I wouldn't call it a garden like a farm she had on a hillside all these Orchards and fruit trees many many garden beds and animals she took care of him she's all by herself her husband was in like a hundred so he was he was sort of chilling I mean he she just was was so fit and I was literally chasing after her going up this hill huffing and puffing and she just was like a little mountain goat I was like holy cow this is impressive and she cooks all her own food they graze all their own food she cans all her food she preserves all her food and she's like 90 something years old I'm like this is not what we see in America 90 years old we see people in nursing homes are sitting in a wheelchair a rocking chair and not doing a whole lot yeah it's so interesting to hear that Mark and I'm just wonder for you you're someone who's known the science that's come out of the blue zones you've spoken about it before you you've you've known about this for many many years was it different you can know it with your rational mind but then you show up and you spend time with these people these families these elderly individuals who are maybe more active than you are potentially and you know going up the mountains right you know what did that do to how did that influence your writing of this book because I I always think about this as you know you like me as someone we try to communicate these ideas in a simple way to the public yeah and we can know stuff with our rational brain but I think there's something quite powerful about stories and actually seeing people who embody what we actually want right totally I mean it just was so inspiring about what really matters in life it's not being on your cell phone or being on social media or achieving something or having some great goals it's about just the process of living and they did that so well they really lived close to the Earth they live close to each other they celebrated together it was just it was just quite amazing you didn't see any nursing homes or somebody's spouse died they would move in with their kids or their you know niece and nephew it was just it was about them when Julia she was 100 years old and three months she said I'm 103 months I'm like okay like I'm five and three quarters knowing little kids and she's like I'm 100 in three months and uh you know she she didn't have kids around she wasn't ever married uh all the men she was dating when she was younger all died off and she lived with her niece and and nephew and and they were taking care of her there was no sense that they would be putting someone in a nursing home and she was still working at 100 years old she was sewing all these doilies and embroideries for weddings and different celebrations and so she was very active she'd go and walks over every day and you know she really didn't have any health issues I think she retired us a little slow so she she maybe took some tired medication but she was quite amazing and clear-eyed and sharp and funny as heck would you say since coming back from your travels seeing people like that has it inspired you to change anything have you are you more active than you were before you've always been very conscious about your health so yeah I'm just so fascinated by what that experience did to you on a personal level well it was it was just profoundly moving and uh inspiring and it made me realize that you know a lot of the things that we value in our Western culture are not the things that really matter and uh you know the the the what matters is our friendships our community our connections is is taking care of each other is taking care of the earth is actually living in a way that's not harmful to ourselves or everybody else and that's how they lived and they lived that way for thousands of years and they they sort of naturally developed these environments and habits that fostered Health and Longevity and so as much as I can I try to learn from them and incorporate some of the habits they have and it you know it's beautiful for me I've read every page of the new book Mark and as I say I really I really really like it I think it's going to help a lot of people and we're going to talk about a bit more on food and exercise and protein and stress to see we're gonna get to all of that but I wanted this will surprise you I think for me through the lens at which I look at life now I think the most powerful sentence in the book is this one oh in places like the blue zones people seem to understand their place and purpose in the community in which they live now what I when I read that I paused because it really speaks to so much of what I've tried to write about in my book unhappiness how I think about the world now you know you've touched on this a little bit in a couple of ways Mark you said that these guys aren't doing cold plunges they're not like thinking about their diet they're not trying to practice anti-aging their environment just kind of supports them so that they they live well right and and I remember I haven't been to these so-called blue zones right but last summer I was in ethaki small island in Greece with my family and we were there for about five days it was this peaceful small island and there's so many things I remember there was one Family Restaurant which we would go to most days very small it was all Local Foods yeah the the families helped out it was three or four generations all around the entire time and I remember once Mark I remember I think my kids were getting a bit tired of the same vegetables every night so they say Daddy they've got broccoli so I said hey and I think I shared this once on the podcast before I asked the lady who was serving us um do you have any other vegetables for example like broccoli and she looked to me she was super nice she said she was he almost with a look of confusion she said well that's not in season like it was and it really it was such a powerful lesson I thought actually what they're feeding us is literally what is in season and being grown on that small island so that was a very powerful lesson but but the overwhelming sense I got was that these guys aren't searching for status they're not trying to necessarily compete or certainly from what I could see in a way that I think we are in the west they're not striving and as as I say why that phrase in the book it's so powerful people seem to understand their place and purpose in the community in which they live yeah I think that's a big problem for many of us in the west and I think that is getting in the way any any thoughts on that Mark oh my God yeah I mean think about you know when you look at some of the data it's a little startling if you if you were to erase heart disease and cancer from the face of the planet we would maybe extend life globally by five to seven years which is these are the number one and two killers if you have meaning and purpose your life extension is seven years so having meaning and purpose in your life meaning that you you know who you are why you're here what you're doing what your place is in the community in connection to others that actually is is a benefit as great as eliminating heart disease and cancer from the face of the earth I mean think about that for a minute yeah and I guess these would be seen as the sort of soft things right real health is about food protein movement right but you know a bit of meaning and purpose on the side but that that kind of deity just shed shows that actually it's not the soft sub on the side it's at least equally as important if if not potentially more importance totally actually I think people think of it as soft but it's not really soft it's actually hard science we know the ways in which stress and being isolated being disconnected not having meaning and purpose being lonely these are extreme risk factors as great as smoking for example and if you if you understand the way in which this process of of stress affects our biology you will understand that it works through these Hallmarks of Aging it works through for example our epigenome through our environment through our thoughts our feelings our relationships all the things we just talked about that influences the epigenome to age faster to cause more heart disease more cancer more diabetes more dementia because it's affecting so many of these processes stress causes inflammation stress causes your nutritional regulation to be affected and you'd be more likely to be pre-diabetic it affects your mitochondria it affects your microbiome your microbiome is literally listening to your thoughts and if you don't say nice thoughts your bacteria don't like it literally so we now understand that this is not some abstract idea that stresses in some nebulous thing that it actually is a real phenomena that's translated into biological signals that either can create Health if you are connected and have purpose and meaning and learn how to regulate your stress response which is a big part of of longevity as as important as anything else that we do I read in the book that um over the past couple of years since covert here and there'd been there were restrictions in place you shared that you actually reached out to your close male friends to have regular Zoom meetings yeah um I was it was quite powerful reading that because you've obviously known this science for many years yeah yeah but that was you really on a practical way going wow I need my male buddies I need to stay connected to them you know what's that done for you would you say oh it's been profound you know I think uh you know in Okinawa when people are born they put in a moai which is like a little group of friends and you basically go through your whole life with this small group of friends that are there that your childhood through your adolescence and your early adulthood all the way through to very old age and and they know you they love you they they're there for you they're not there because you're this one or that one or if this success or that success but they're your you're you're basically Soul family in a sense and and for me I I think uh I realize that this is such an important piece of my happiness and my well-being is being connected to those I care about and I love and so I reached out to friends I've had for 40 plus years uh in some 25 some 35 but long-term friendships who know me well and I said to them you know hey it's covid um I'm going through a bit of a rough time uh left it sort of maybe get together every maybe other week for me maybe an hour are you guys up for it and they're like no no we want to do an ah two hours every week and we've been doing that for over two years now and it's been the profound change in my life where you have an opportunity with people who know and love you to be seen to celebrate the things you want to celebrate to hear the challenges in your life to be there for each other to call each other out to support each other you know really hold each other accountable and it's such a it's such a beautiful magical thing and I wish it on everybody and if you don't have that you know it takes time and it takes effort but it's worth building because it really forms the foundation of a good life even if it's just one or two other people yeah I appreciate you sharing that and I really did enjoy that chat from the book where you spoke about the importance of purpose and meaning and I think you were sharing the optimistic people live longer even if they're wrong I'm pretty sure I read that this morning is that right right that's right that's right that's right yeah uh yes arguments lived longer and if they're wrong so it's really your mindset uh that I talked about in the book and how important your mindset is and your beliefs you know Ella Langer did incredible study years ago where she put people who were you know older in a in a house for a week or maybe I forget exactly how long it was not that long and and everything in the house was was sort of uh basically historical it was it was taking them back to a time when they were young adults so let's say in the 50s so they had magazines from the 50s and the TV was from the 50s and all the furniture was from the 50s and their whole environment like was basically as it was when they were younger and when they then measured objective metrics of longevity aging their grip strength and their Fitness level and all these weird things they they found that they actually got younger just by believing they were younger by acting as if they were younger so you know I I think it's important to realize that we we actually have an important role to play in our in our health and our longevity through the power of our minds and our beliefs and our mindset and so there's a bunch of suggestions and ideas in the book about how do we how do we get our mind right how do we reset our our mindset to a positive mindset that can help us to to achieve Health and Longevity I I think that speaks to this um why the point which we'd be making which is if if we think that getting older means more Frailty and more morbidity yeah well it's sort of gonna be our reality because that's what we're expecting to happen we know there's a lot of research on that your mindset your thoughts as you're saying and and I think that's why your book and this this movement is important it's very very important because it challenges those kind of preconceptions which is you you're sharing from your journey need not necessarily be the case right so no I think that's a really really key point I want to talk about protein Mark protein is something you've written a lot about and I know it's a divisive topic right so I wonder if you could help walk us through it and you know you shared before in this conversation that one of the things you've changed as you have got older is you brought in resistance training into your life which made a big difference so maybe just talk to us about this sort of area and why it's so important for aging well I think I think you know the protein conversation is super important I think it's polarized and it's ideological unfortunately but it should be scientific you know people think being a vegan is the way to go for longevity others think that you should be eating more protein and I think there's a lot of confusion out there and part of it has to do with um beliefs and ideology and I'm not going to get into all that I do think that you can be a healthy vegan but it is a lot of work and you need to know what you're doing and you need to supplement with certain things that can protect you from the challenges of being a vegan which is getting adequate levels of certain amino acids for protein synthesis and muscle buildings or nutrients that are deficient it's not easy but it's true or false I'm not saying I'm opposed to it I'm just saying it's it's a it's a harder road to hoe in terms of longevity and well-being so when you look at protein the the feeling is that in the longevity community that we should potentially be vegan because we don't want to over stimulate a particular pathway uh one of the Hallmarks of Aging which we call mtor now this is one of the four nutrient sensing Pathways in our body that samples the environment and the food we're eating and regulates all sorts of biological processes and this is really the meta homework this is the one that's I think the most important which is how food interacts with our biology to create healthy disease or longevity or early death and so mtor is stimulated by protein and particularly by animal protein because it has higher levels of an amino acid called leucine leucine is so important for tripping the switch that builds muscle so I'm just going to stop for them for a minute because I want to emphasize how important muscle is to longevity without muscle your metabolism goes down your stress hormones go up your become more insulin resistant and pre-diabetic you become more inflamed and this whole Cascade of phenomena that occur because your muscle gets replaced with fat so the key is to build and keep and increase muscle if you can as you get older enhance longevity and that you do you have to do that by tripping the switch of mtor to build muscle the problem is if you do that all the time if the mtor is always stimulated you actually don't give your body a chance to engage in one of the most important processes that are important for longevity which is what we call autophagy autophagy means self-cleaning or self-cannibalism or self-eating literally like Pac-Man and and this is a good thing because our body has the ability to go and recycle parts to get rid of all proteins and old cells and clean them up and actually you know build new stuff which is great it's like recycling plastic bottles and making clothes out of it right so we we have that internal system in our bodies that we have to turn on on a regular basis in order to clean up and and prevent rapid aging so that's a good thing and the way you activate autophagy is by inhibiting mtor which means don't give it food or protein which is a good thing so what do you do do you not eat protein to turn on autophagy or do you eat lots of protein to build muscle well the key is both you need like any system you need sometimes it on and sometimes off you need to sleep and you need to be awake I mean it's basically how the body works so we need overnight to stimulate autophagy by giving ourselves a break from eating meaning getting no food from dinner until breakfast so no late night snacking and you should give at least 12 hours so if you eat dinner at six you can eat six in the morning if you want to extend to 14 teen that's eating at eight in the morning that's doable for most people 16 hours is a little bit longer that can also have benefits and that gives your body a chance to sort of pretend that it's starving because you're not really starving but your body thinks it's kind of means maybe starving so it starts to turn all these protective mechanisms that that is related to the stress of not eating called hermesis and so basically we can talk about that more but basically the idea is when you when you activate autophagy at night it's a good thing and it's against life however you need to give a good protein load in the morning on a fasted State probably 30 or 40 grams of high quality protein when I say high quality I mean it has to have at least two and a half grams of leucine which is almost impossible to get from plant protein unless you eat a huge amount or which people can't do like having you know six cups of brown rice or two three cups of beans it's hard for people to eat that much of that stuff and and then you can add the leucine to a plant protein but you you actually have to get the loose scene to turn on this so you can have plant protein powders that are supplemented with amino acids or you can just have a whey protein shake or you know some animal protein eggs or chicken or fish or whatever you want to eat and that will turn on mtor and build muscle and then you if you if you fast and then load up with protein in the morning and do the resistance training maybe before you you do your protein load that's the best strategy and that's how I build muscle which I basically would would be in this fastest State I would work out and do my half hour band routine and then I would have a good protein shake with 40 grams of protein and a bunch of other goodies in it to help me build muscle and it really works and it works even despite the fact that as you get older you get something called anabolic resistance meaning your body is more resistant to building muscle so you have to work harder and take more protein so as we get older we need more protein and we need more high quality protein and I think that's really the the clear evidence from the scientific literature about what we need to do but people get into hydrological battles about you know whether you should or shouldn't meet I think I think it's really beside the point the point is how does our biology work how do we work with it how do we activate these Pathways in the right way and how do we give them a rest when we need to give them a rest yeah really really useful I think one of the key things that I've learned over the past um few years is regarding the sites on leucine right that's probably something I didn't know five ten years ago how important getting that minimum threshold of leucine is and you've written about that in the book you've detailed it really nicely and you know you've you shared last time you came on this podcast that you have been vegetarian and I think vegan in the past yeah yeah I was so and I was pretty much more vegetarian when you when I took the 40 year old picture so I was kind of vegan vegetarian I was a skinny kind of guy and and my body totally changed which I I couldn't do 10 push-ups when I was 50. now I can do you know 80 push-ups without wait without a rest so wow anybody can do that yeah that's that's incredible right you're getting stronger as you age so a few things I Mark I just wanted to clarify so for someone and I guess anyone who listens to my show regularly will be familiar with this idea of time restricted eating or intermittent fasting um in your experience right is the minimum we should be all aiming for 12 hours and every 24 hour period where we are not eating is that what you say minimum well that's what's called breakfast the fast right no I get it these days these days we call that fasting but that and maybe 40 50 years ago that was probably the no the norm for most humans on this planet in fact when you're on your travels Mark could you share what you observed with respect to meal timings uh because those guys I'm guessing haven't heard the latest podcasts on time restricted it's been a fasting right what what were they doing naturally would you say it was interesting they would they would uh they would be basically uh you know have a relatively like breakfast and they would they would eat a big lunch they would kind of take a nap and then they would wake up and they would work till late and they'd have a sort of light dinner and then they'd be up late like one or two in the morning it was a very different lifestyle than I used to but they managed to do it so there's no one way to do it if you're living a European lifestyle they tend to have these sort of more uh relaxing connected and two-hour lunch you go you go to certain places in Italy and everything is shut down like the post office the you know the grocery store like literally everything shuts down for hours in the afternoon which you never see in the west I mean in the least United States so I think uh it did they kind of built their culture around these times of rest and connection and Meal Time and pleasure and I think that plays a huge role in it yeah I think there I think that's a really important point mark when we try and study um these different areas around the world it's very hard to take one thing in isolation and go oh you know Implement that right it's the totality of everything they're doing all the inputs they're putting in and so I agree with you I think for most people in the west aiming for a minimum 12 hours and every 24 hours is it's a really good starting point that most people can do and as you say you can increase that up a little bit um and for some people they're going to get all kinds of benefits um and the other key to that uh is to not eat for three hours before you go to sleep so give three hours between when you finish your meal and when you go to sleep that's really important because you need to metabolize and digest your food otherwise you store it and it accelerates aging and your body's in a in a Fed State on a facility when you go to bed and that's not a good thing there's a lot of interest in society about trying to find what is the perfect diet you know what is the diet that humans are meant to eat and I know you know you've written about diet countless size how many points are you written now it's nearly 20. um and and they're still absolutely fantastic you know and really really helpful um I guess the point I'm trying to get to is something I've been thinking about for a while Mark is that all we can ever do is find the right diet that works for us at that point in our life right absolutely and what you're speaking to and you detail the pro-stage study in the book what it showed um which is very very powerful but we're almost making a case I think that as we get older potentially we need to increase our protein intake is that something you would agree with absolutely even the study that most vegans quote that show that protein is bad for you show that as you get older it's actually important that you increase your protein intake so you know what people don't understand is that the the recommended amounts of protein are the minimum amount to not get a deficiency disease so how do you not get protein deficiency which is a very serious disease you have to eat 0.8 grams per kilo but that's like how much vitamin D do you need to not get rickets probably 30 units how much vitamin D you need to optimize your immune system in to prevent cancer and heart disease and all these other benefits probably two to four thousand maybe you know 10 to 100 times the minimum amount so I'm not saying you should have 100 times the recommended dietary allowance of protein but you need more than the minimum amount and for people getting older it shouldn't be probably 0.8 it should be more like 1.6 and if you're doing a lot of vigorous activity and strength pinning you can even have more so I think both because there's resistance to the effects of eating protein meaning you need to more protein to get the muscle building effect and the fact that you know as we get older we need to to make sure our proteins are met we do need more protein as we get older for someone who's listening Mark and goes okay I understand that okay I'm going to increase my protein a little bit um but I'm not sure about strength training you know I like going for walks um you know I hear you but I'm not interested in that I'm not worried about me that was me yeah what what why is it so important that people don't neglect resistance training particularly as they get older yeah that was really uh that was me uh I I hated the gym it was smelly I didn't want to go in with all the you know big guys who are intimidating and lifting all these heavy weights and I was a skinny guy so I just I just kind of didn't go and I and I knew I recommended it because I the science was clear but I just myself I was kind of resistant to resistance training and I decided I was going to do it and I hit 60 it was like in my 59th year I was like okay I'm gonna it's 59 I probably should get on it now and I started to do it and it was really life-changing and I think that that most people don't realize the impact of strength training on your balance on your Mobility on your function on your metabolism on your overall being on your hormones sex hormones decline as we age so strength training boosts those so it has so many benefits that that if if you want to live a long healthy life aside from cutting out sugar and starch probably the other most important thing is resistance training if you just get two things from this podcast is to understand that you need to dramatically reduce or eliminate starch and sugar from your diet and to start resistance training in some form it could be body weight it could be bands which I do it could be weights but make sure make sure you work with someone to do proper form and so forth so you don't hurt yourself when you're starting out but it's so important to do and there's all these apps there's YouTube videos there's no lack of instruction out there but it is something you should consider essential part of Health as you get older and it doesn't have to be a lot it can be 30 minutes three times a week I like to do more but the reality is I probably only do three or four times a week because I just don't have the time at this moment but I when I do I try to do it more and more often yeah but but I think it the minimum is very is very adequate an hour and a half a week if you don't have an hour and a half a week to invest in your health and what's going on with your life in fact I often use this cartoon in my talks where it shows a doctor telling this patient do you have time to exercise an hour a day or be dead 24 hours a day you know so I think that's a funny cartoon yeah yeah thank you for the clarity there I mean a couple of things that on Saturday I tend to go to my local park run um sometimes with my son's son is with my family and at the end of park run this Saturday I bumped into a friend of mine who said actually well I'm gonna hurt your conversation with Gabrielle line I know Gabrielle's been on your podcast and she said I heard it and for the first time in my life I've actually went and started strength training she's been doing that for about two months and she said yeah she's in her mid-40s right yeah yeah and she says she feels absolutely fantastic she was already really active she would run yeah right she would so so that's in her 40s but a wider Point here Marcus and why I'd be thinking a lot about strength over the past two or three months and again we can knows the science we can write about it we can try and practice things but then sometimes things happen in our lives where the same information lands in a slightly different way so I've had some real challenges in my personal life over the past two or three months to do with the health of my mother and Mum is now I think sort of 82 83 and she's been Mega unwell since uh Christmas she was admitted to hospital she's come out she's definitely not the same as she was now and what's really striking is that you know my brother and I try our best to look after her and care for her but because of her muscle strength or I should say her lack yeah and muscle strength yeah basic things now like you know getting out of a chair being able to get out of bed yourself when you can't do them yeah the quality of your life can rapidly rapidly Decline and I know this I've seen it with patients before but when I'm now witnessing it on a daily basis with my own mother I'm like wrong and you need to keep moving you need to work on your muscle mass and I think there's a wider point mark which I I hope you can speak to which is this idea that as we get older a muscle mass is declining right so if we don't do anything about it we're on that road to what I just described so could you maybe sort of speak to that inspire people about why they need to get going with this totally I mean it starts you know when you're when you're younger you can kind of manage but when you get into your 30s 40s we're not talking 60s 70s here we're talking 30s 40s you start to decline muscle mass and unless you are fighting that entropy by the time you're 60 or 70 you're going to be twice as fat as you were even though you're the same weight you will become what we call skinny fat and your muscle will be replaced by fat so think of a wagyu rib eye versus a filet mignon you want the filet mignon because it's much more functional muscle and what happens is is we lose that muscle and we get a disease called sarcopenia which is something most doctors don't know how to diagnose don't test for and don't treat but it is among the most important and most uh deadly things that happen to us as we age what is a big cause of death in the elderly Falls false falling and then breaking your hip and if you're you're you break your hip it's worse than getting a diagnosed with terminal cancer in terms of your mortality rate so it's it's a really big deal and I think that that can be almost entirely prevented by resistance training and giving people the strength to be able to hold themselves up to ball properly if they end up falling to have stronger bone density and all the things we need to to do as we get older so the reason people end up in nursing homes and long-term care for studies is not because they're sick with a chronic disease it's because they can't get out of bed or get out of a chair or tie their shoes or cut their toenails and so that's the reason and that is totally fixable by building muscle as we age and staying strong and Fit I mean I see I see you know 100 year old guys riding horses in these blue zones it's really impressive people most people wouldn't even go out without a walker at 100 years old if they can get up at all or if they live that long so we're seeing you know the ability to do functional things as the most important thing Peter attia is a friend he talks about the the the centenarian decathlon what are the like 10 things you have to do like get up off the floor I mean I I went skiing with my dad when he was in his 70s and he found the ski so he couldn't get up he could not get his body off the ground and and then I you know I I helped him by getting him strength training and I paid for a trainer for him and he was able to actually start to regain strength even at in his 80s uh and even even up to almost 90 years old it was very impressive to see yeah a couple of key messages uh let's not wait until we're in our 70s and 80s to to face those difficulties right the decline is starting already for many of us so let's do something about it that was one key message there the other one was what you said about your father that even in your 80s it's not too late you can make a difference right and so no I think those those are those are really key points which again you make very clear in the book well talk to me about Hall Mesa what is it and how can we utilize it I guess to help us age better well you know um I mean we we are involved in a much more stressful environment you know we didn't have perfectly controlled temperatures and humidity and air conditioning and heating and we just sort of lived out there in nature and we had periods where we had access to food we didn't have grocery stores or periods where we didn't have access to food and and we had to move our bodies a lot just to function and all these are stresses so hormesis is essentially a stress that doesn't kill you and it activates these ancient healing Pathways these ancient longevity switches in your body in ways that we now are fully understanding and I'll just go through some of them what's the stress well not eating is a stress so starvation would be considered stress so not eating from six o'clock at night to eight in the morning your body's like Oh I'm a little short on food here that's a stress let me kick into gear all these healing systems like autophagy which we mentioned before exercise is another kind of stress you know when you lift weights you're tearing your muscles when you sprint you're stressing your mitochondria and that causes them to rebound round and become stronger those are two examples of hormesis but there's a lot of other cool ones that are now being used hot and cold therapy saunas for example show reduction in depth by like 40 something percent in in Finland in these large studies uh and and and and does so by for example activating your immune system by fixing your proteins that are damaged as we age with this these products that they're produced in a song called heat shock proteins or cold therapy uh cold plunges doesn't have to be a sauna can be a hot bath it can be a cold shower most people have a bath and a shower you know so I take a cold shower in the morning for two minutes it's a it's a really inexpensive way to activate hormesis if you want to cold plunge and splurge on that great and those are powerful but I just you know fill my bathtub full of cold water and if you live in a warm climate you can throw a couple bags of ice in you know and then sit in there for three four minutes that activates these healing things in your body and there there are also other forms of hormesis that are phytohormesis plant foods that have little stress molecules that they make to defend themselves when we consume those in small amounts they kind of trigger these healing responses and many of them through these Hallmarks of Aging for example Phi Seton which is from strawberries helps you kill zombie cells and quercetin also helps to reverse your biological age working on your epigenetics and it reduces inflammation so there's all these compounds that we can consume from plants that do this and then there's some other kind of more advanced therapies like hyperbaric oxygen therapy or or hypoxia therapy where you reduce oxygen levels these are stresses on the body and it can actually help to reactivate longevity Pathways like in Israel they did a study in hyperbaric oxygen and they found that it increased telomeres and killed zombie cells more than any other treatment and these are things that we see as two of the Hallmarks of Aging that get worse and it made them better simply by lying in 100 oxygen at a higher pressure than atmospheric pressure for 60 minutes for you know 60 sessions over a period of time so we have we have real insights into how these stresses can activate these ancient longevity Pathways well you mentioned a couple of terms that some people may not recognize zombie cells and telomeres right so yeah you mentioned that some of these therapies can help with those two things two hormones of Aging but perhaps you could just expand a little bit on what telomeres are and what zombie cells are yeah so so we mentioned 10 Hallmarks of aging and then these things that kind of happen as we get older one of them is you know we replicate our DNA I don't know some quadrillion times in In Our Lifetime and so our DNA has to kind of open up it has to be red and it has to close back up and and that's regulated by these things at the end of your chromosomes called telomeres as as they keep replicating there's a little bit that gets cut off each time and they get shorter they like the little caps on the end of your shoelaces that prevent it from unraveling and when they get too short you end up having you know problems and that shortens your life uh so telomeres are important metric to look at as as about how we're doing with longevity the other is zombie cells zombie cells are also known as senescent cells and normally you know when cells have gone through the normal process of doing what they do they they die off and we have a process to do that in our body called apoptosis which just means you kind of explode the cell and you die and you eat all the parts and it's sort of a recycling system but sometimes those cells don't die and they become zombie cells and those zombie cells produce all these inflammatory chemicals that that go all over your body and then they kind of make other cell zombie cells and it creates this whole zombie apocalypse inside and end up with a state of accelerated inflammation and that's why we call it aging inflammaging so senescent cells are things that can be changed or got rid of through some things like hyperbaric oxygen or certain scenolytic therapies that can be from plant compounds that we can use so maybe even drugs will be synolytic drugs where we're learning more about this as we go on but these zombie cells are not good for you and and hyperbaric oxygen can help to get rid of them which is great yeah you also as you've just explained and I really did enjoy reading this section where all these kind of plants compounds can also help us get rid of zombie cells and you mention it here than there in that section Mark you you wrote quite a provocative sentence um what's new again what's new but it was it really got me thinking it's quite a beautiful statement actually you believe we co-evolved with plants to borrow their medicines to keep us healthy talk to me about that yeah well you know like guinea pigs make uh don't make vitamin C humans don't make vitamin C uh many other species of animals do we don't make it because we're lazy our biology we want to don't want to do anything that we don't have to do with their biology to conserve energy so we've co-evolved with plants to use their compounds as medicines to help regulate our biology and animals do this you know if you see a wild animal or a cow that's pasture raised they will graze on a few major food crops but then they'll sample maybe a hundred other crops uh plants to actually activate medicinal properties in those plants for themselves or not they don't know that but they they kind of intuitively figure this out and keep themselves healthy which is quite interesting and so the same thing with humans we've co-evolved with these plants and over 800 species of plants as hunter-gatherers that contain these rich phytochemical compounds that we now are understanding that maybe we thought they were 25 000 there may be a million of these things in plants and we're starting to catalog them and understand their mechanisms of action how they were work when we say food is medicine that's what we mean we mean inside the food we're eating there are medicinal compounds that our body uses to activate various Pathways for example one of the key findings for example around longevity was the activation of sirtuins sirtuins is one of the four longevity switches that are in the Hallmark of Aging called deregulated nutrient sensing meaning how do we sense our nutrition environment and how do we regulate different processes based on whether we're eating the wrong stuff for the right stuff and so Resveratrol which comes from grapes actually works on sirtuins to activate sirtuins which kicks in this whole system of DNA repair and improving insulin sensitivity and mitochondrial function and helping to reduce inflammation and some really amazing thing that happens when you properly regulate sirtuins well Resveratrol is a plant compound that is acting on that pathway for example doesn't mean you should be drinking red wine I want to be careful with that because we now know the alcohol in is actually even in lower amounts than we thought can be harmful increased risk of cancer and it's definitely not a health promoting activity it's fine to do once in a while as a recreational fun thing to do but it's not something you want to do every day and I think the uh the but the compounds in the red grapes actually do act on this pathway so that's one example yeah but then also I think we have to acknowledge that I'm guessing in these blue zones where you went to that people are drinking as well right yeah they are yeah they are they're having dust of wine here and there but you know we have to understand that that there is a phenomena in science called healthy the healthy user effect and and this means that we can get kind of confused in studies where we say oh it seems like people drinking alcohol live longer or they do this for that and maybe the other things they're doing right if we're told that you know having a glass of wine is good for you then maybe the people who are drinking the wine are engaging other healthy behaviors right they're exercising they're eating more fruits and vegetables they're not smoking so we we have to be careful these biases that are inherent in studying people where we thought for example that hormones were protected for women against heart disease and cancer and stroke and dementia because of a population of study where they found you know women who seem to take hormones had less of these problems well it was because these women were healthier as a group because they went to the doctor more they paid more attention their health they exercise more they didn't smoke they ate more fruits and vegetables that's why they had less heart disease cancer stroke and dementia and when they did a randomized controlled trial called The Women's Health Initiative was a billion dollar study 160 000 women they literally had to stop the trial part way through because so many women were dying who were taking the hormones it's because of of the bias in the first study that was called the healthy user effect and that's what's going on when you look at some of the data well yes the people in the blue zones drink a little wine but what else did they do they weren't exposed to environmental toxins they had really no chronic stress is they had deep sense of meeting purpose in community they ate foods that were original like almost heirloom Foods a lot of wild Foods they eat nakaria they had animal foods but they had animals they were eating all these wild plants and had phytochemicals in them you know they they had natural exercise that they did as part of their life so what was it was it the alcohol or was it all this other stuff yeah thanks for explaining that I was just bringing that up to stimulate conversation because um I think one of the problems when we look at these blue zones is that we as I've already mentioned we take these things in isolation and yeah it's the totality of their experience that leads to it and we're trying to learn principles and also the truth is like in the west most people certainly if I speak about my the patient population I have seen most people are consuming alcohol to de-stress right so it's a way of admits are getting chronic levels of high stress so yeah I I imagine in the blue zones it's a very different relationship with that alcohol it's not to de-stress maybe it's a small amount to connect right maybe it's also true and maybe it's also different like in a career they made wine according to their ancient methods they they kind of smushed it with their feet The Grapes were grown in tough soils so they were much higher in phytochemicals they they didn't have any sulfides they kind of yeah kind of fermented them in these clay pots underneath the soil and and you know sometimes it didn't work out and they were all organic there were no pesticides so who knows quite different I actually I actually drank the wine and Curry and I was like normally one makes me feel like crap I just get brain fog and feel kind of off and and I I drank this wine I felt great I was like wow this is really different but it's not wine that you can actually even take home with you because you know they can't ship it they can't really bottle it it's really serve fresh it's very it's very different yeah yeah and just to be clear none of us are as medical doctors are promoting alcohol because actually we're just having a conversation about how these things may influence Health and Longevity um if you want if you want to climb five miles on a Rocky Mountain every day if you want to sleep eight nine hours if you want to have no chronic stress be exposed to no toxins have a deep sense of community meeting a purpose and eat like only heirloom traditional foods that are completely unprocessed you probably could have a glass of wine it's not going to hurt you so yeah just think of all the other things yeah Mark coming back to nutrition it's it's a very confusing topic for many people right and I'm always conscious that I never want to leave people at the end of these podcasts more confused and I think sometimes that does happen because you speak to someone who may have a certain food philosophy and you speak to someone else with another food philosophy and they sound very knowledgeable and they quote research to support their point of view and so in the interests of moving this forward for people right let's just go go through what everyone can agree on we started off this conversation talking about reducing Ultra processed foods I don't think there's many people in this space who would disagree with that right I know I think that's a universally acceptable University yeah and then that sugar and starch in general are are really not great for you I think most people also agree about that excess sugar uh for sure you know I think most people can agree with you know we're eating way more than we used to and reducing it stroke eliminating I think is pretty hard for most people yeah environment reduce your type 2 diabetic and you're really overweight you know and your metabolism is so screwed up you know those people I think you probably need to be on an extremely restricted carbohydrate diet but once you're metabolically healthy you can eat more and be more resilient and that's the goal so then with the third thing I think we we discussed protein now yes it's controversial um and it is you know as you even admit in your book it is confusing for people there's a line where you actually say that so you understand the confusion but the protease study which was very thorough does seem to support um increased protein intake to help us prevent sarcopenia particularly as we get older and I think you've very eloquently explained your your view is that actually it's easy with animal protein but if you want to do it with plant protein you can do it you're going to need to supplement you may need to make sure you're hitting that 2.5 grams of leucine so I think again broad agreement there I I would say would you agree with that I agree and I agree in terms of plant proteins you have to make sure that you add extra amino acids or that they're added already to the plant protein and you have to probably take a plant protein powder which is pea protein or other forms of protein that may be you know pumpkin seed there's there's good protein powders out there but they're not going to be sufficient on their own unless they're they have a added amino acids to bring leucine content up to two and a half grams per serving which is you know about 30 30 plus grams okay great and then let's move on to a term that you have said on numerous occasions in this conversation previous podcast conversations which is phytochemicals or phytonutrients right and these are compounds that are found within plants now I think it's there's broad consensus that phytonutrients are probably helpful for us right there are a couple of people I follow online or carnivore Community thinks those are toxins in Plants but I don't quite agree they they technically they kind of are right the phytochemicals and plants are the plant's defense systems but as I said you know a little bit of stress a little bit of phytochemical hermesis actually helps our own biology work better yeah so and I think another um somewhere that I think people get confused with phytochemicals is that they don't understand the way in which it works in the body they sort of break it down into the constituents like they'll look at the foods and go well how many how much fiber how much protein how much fat how many carbs phyton you you know if you go to the supermarket you don't see the phytonutrients uh numbers on the back right but it's it's it should well yeah but maybe that's the way we'll move at some point in the future but I I wonder if you could just really expand on that you know why are phytonutrients so important in your view and it's it we need to move Beyond this kind of fat protein carb model to really understand that because it's to do with signaling our genes isn't it totally I mean I think I think the thing that we've missed is that you know nutrition we we look at a reductionist view uh what is needed amino acids fatty acids carbohydrates some vitamins and minerals and it turns out that you know you can give people nutrition through an intravenous tube which contains all these elements but what is missing is a lot of the stuff that actually really is necessary for health which are these these things that were not considered essential nutrients but that I consider essential they're not necessarily going to give you a deficiency disease if you don't eat them but if you don't eat them over a long period of time chronic disease will accelerate and you won't protect yourself against all these ravages of aging and I think this is such an important concept for people to understand that these are medicines in food and I and I have a whole chart in the book about how different compounds in food whether it's certain classes of foods like onions and garlic which have quercetin or other foods like the broccoli family that has glucafernin which is important for longevity or whether whether it's certain you know phytochemicals in green tea like catechins that activate different Pathways or the mushrooms that have polysaccharides that regulate immunity I go through all the different foods that we can choose from the grocery store what I call the pharmacy f-a-r-m-e-c-y and we can use those Foods as part of our daily consumption to activate some of these longevity Pathways and switches so it's not it's not hard to do but it's important that we consider that these these compounds are really essential for us if we want to have vibrant health you mentioned the carnival Community which is is growing and I think it's something that you know doctors like ourselves should be talking about because a lot of people are saying I've tried everything and since I went carnivore so for people who are not familiar basically pretty much an all meat diet yeah is it's the way I think many people practice it and they are reporting all kinds of improvements you know joint pain skin uh weight loss you know Vitality vibrancy right so I I wanna with sensitivity and compassion sort of tease us out a little bit because on one hand and I and this is my view with any patient you cannot blame anyone for doing something where they've made a change and they feel better especially when what they tried before did not make them feel good I agreed 100 so what do you think is going on uh for people in that Community obviously you don't know every single patient there and where does the phytochemical story come in for those people would you say yeah so you know the truth is that that you know there are therapeutic diets that can be applied in different patients that need different things so do I think everybody should be on a keto diet no do I think it's therapeutic now I think being very effective for some people absolutely do I think carnivore diet is the diet we shall be on no do I think it could be effective for certain people yes and part of it is not the meat that they're eating it's what they're not eating right they're not eating sugar they're not eating processed food they're not having gluten they're typically not having Dairy they're not having any of the typical processed inflammatory foods that are causing so many of the symptoms so for example if you get off Greens and Beans you're removing a lot of things that potentially are bothering people's gut and not that grains and beans are bad but but for certain people they are right so if you have an autoimmune disease if you have leaky gut if you have um you know very inflammatory problems it may be a real Factor so I often will put people on a more restricted diet in order to reset their biology and see what's working and what's not and we call that an in functional medicine and Elimination Diet so a carnivore diet in a sense is a very Extreme Elimination Diet with one basic food group now the truth is that you know you can get phytochemicals from animal Foods if you eat regenerally raised animals or wild animals in in ikari and Sardinia they were taking their goats and sheep and they were taking them to eat all these different wild plants at different times of the year because they knew not because they had phytochemical they knew it would taste better if it had this plant or that plant at this time of the year that the milk and the meat would taste better the cheese would taste better favor always follows phytochemical richness in our food so where our flavor comes from other than the additives is from the colorful compounds in the food like a ripe tomato or you know a nice juicy Peach in the summer or something that is from uh you know asparagus just pick from the garden tastes way different than asparagus you buy in the store these are because of the phytochemicals in them but when you are eating a carnivore diet you're eliminating um most of the things but you are maybe getting some phytochemicals in the food you're also getting you know fatty acids and if you're eating the right kinds of meat you're getting some Omega-3s you're getting lots of nutrients Inc you have to probably eat organ Meats to get all the vitamins that you need so there's some tricks to it but I I think that that it is a pretty interesting way of thinking about treating lots of different conditions that are inflammatory and I'm not opposed to it but I but I don't think it's a long-term strategy and and you know when you look at our biological needs we we need small amounts of essential fatty acids you know in the gram level there there is no biological requirement for carbohydrate but there is a large requirement for the macronutrient protein it's the only one for which there's a large requirement as part of our diet so I think people can do fine on that I worry long term but it's about looking at the numbers what does your numbers look like how does I mean I just saw a patient the other day who was on it and their cholesterol went crazy so there may be individual responses that are quite different even to the same diet and I think that's what people need to understand there's no one-size-fits all there's not you know vegan diet is great for everybody our carnivore diet's great for everybody it's really about what's great for you what works for you and that's as a physician but my interest is is not in you know research studies with thousands of people it's like what is happening to that person in front of me and let's do a what we call nm1 experiment let's try whatever you want to try or let's try what I think might be best based on the research and let's measure again how you do yeah if you get better grade if you get worse let's change our strategy yeah I think that was a peaceful breakdown and and sort of very similar to my view on it which is it's a it's it's a phenomenal Elimination Diet you know the case study of psoriatic arthritis which you mentioned earlier on in this conversation again the principle was you put that patient on a very strict Elimination Diet to help them because they were sick and you know maybe a year down the line six months down the line as they rebuild their body they rebuild that gut lining potentially they can start to reintroduce things right you know we see that all the time and I guess you know phytochemicals aren't just in your broccoli and your asparagus green tea black tea right the herbs that you might put on the cooking right they they all contain these you know turmeric curcumin all this sort of stuff do you know what I mean there's there's other ways people can get that even if they are on quite a restrictive diets absolutely absolutely yeah yeah no totally yeah um Martha said there's a point there as you mentioned the elimination diets and I'd really welcome your thoughts on this foreign these days for most people is it more important to focus on what to bring into your diet or is it more important to focus on what to take out of it that's a great question I think you know um I think it's both I mean you you have to add in all the good stuff and you have to take out the bad stuff I mean if you're if you're eating you know three cups of broccoli a day but having three coca-colas um I don't think it's going to do the same thing as if you get rid of the Coca-Cola's any you know more Whole Foods so I think I think we do need to get rid of stuff and we also need to add stuff so they're both really important uh I think I think the key is is trying to include more and more the things that are good for you and slowly eliminate things that are bad for you and I think people can get there now what I often recommend because if you do the incremental approach you might not see the benefits as as fast um is is a short-term 10-day reset and uh I call the 10-day detox diet I've written a book about it it's it's sort of highlighted in a little bit in the book about how to do that but the key is when you when you kind of remove all the bad stuff potentially bad stuff because it may not be bad right gluten may not be bad for everybody but but if you remove all the stuff that potentially is bad for 10 days your body will get the chance to reset and what I've seen by doing that that there's a 70 reduction in all symptoms from all diseases in 10 days that's migraines irritable bowel depression arthritis whatever it is gets better in 10 days now if it doesn't get better or maybe something else is going on maybe you have Lyme disease or mercury poisoning or something else causing it but most of the time a lot of the ailments that we're suffering from are because of what we're eating and a short-term reset can be extremely powerful so you can do an incremental approach if you want but I encourage people to do a reset because then you go shoot you know I didn't realize how much food was affecting how I feel and how much better I could feel in so few days it's not like months or years of doing this to see a result it's literally days yeah and that's one of the things I really like in in the new book Young Forever Mark is that there are some complex things in there if you have the resources and you're able to access them but the majority majority are simple things that we can all do you explain the science you know the science can be complex it's really interesting to read about it but actually the Practical takeaways are actually not that difficult and no you know one thing that people will often say and will probably get comments on on this video on YouTube that yes but it's hard for us to find a doctor like you Mark or dots like me who looks at these root cause solutions for people and I the one thing I try to emphasize is that eighty percent of what I'd end up doing anyway is the stuff that we're talking about right so yeah get stuck in and do this basic stuff first your diet your movement your sleep your stress do you know what I mean and that and then absolutely if that doesn't work then we can go in deeper yeah and in the book I go through okay well there's quizzes so you can identify where your imbalances are what's going on with you you can be someone who can self-diagnose what's happening and then there's guidelines about you know what are the specific extra dietary changes or extra supplements that might help or other things that could be necessary or even further testing or medical care so there's a road map for you to be the CEO of your own health to dive deep into the things that are out of balance and to correct those things not just live longer but to actually feel better now couple of things I wanted to cover before we ended mark one was you just mentioned the 10-day detoxification diet that you sometimes you know you've written a book about it you've spoken about before now the term detoxification is something that seems to um people get triggered by that term let's put it like that right so oh it means you like to go to rehab right yeah but but if we think about it um people understand the term hangover they understand right if they uh toxify themselves with too much alcohol they're going to get symptoms and they also understand that oh if I have a hangover and I drink more water or instead of having fatty uh fried foods and let's say but have more Whole Foods and fruits and vegetables for example that I'm going to feel better more quickly right so I think that's a really simple way for them to understand yes detox organs exist but you can enhance the way that they work by what you're putting in so for people who are pushing back when they hear you say detoxification I wonder if you could explain what you mean by it and why it's so important well if people don't believe in detoxification then you should basically not pee not poop not sweat and not breathe because those are all the ways that our bodies are naturally designed to eliminate but Mark on that people will say they will say Mark yes but um they're all working for me so why do I need to focus on detoxification my body will do that naturally so what what did you say to that it is true your body does have these natural systems but we do everything to impede them right we are overloading our our metabolisms with bad food we're not even a fiber in our guts are often messed up we're often not drinking enough water and eliminating our liver Pathways aren't optimized to detoxify all the chemicals that we're consuming from from our foods and our environment and so we need to help boost them a little bit and I think most most of the science around detoxification is very clear we we have these detoxification systems they're often not working well and we need to increase their function or to be healthy uh and the the other kind of connotation of detox means get rid of the bad stuff right so yes it does mean detox from sugar and processed food and so forth so there's both the sort of uh you know the the sort of hard science of our detoxification organs and systems and how to optimize those but there's also the the reality that we're eating a lot of crap and we need to get rid of it and that's another sort of way of thinking about it yeah thank you the final thing I wanted to talk about before we we end off Mark is you mentioned in the book these 10 Hallmarks of aging and we touch on a few of them and I think people are going to really enjoy reading about them all and think about how it applies to them um you mentioned sugar and starch and too much of it a few times in this conversation and I'm drawn to that fourth Hallmark of Aging damaged proteins where you talk about glycation so what if you could just explain uh sort of what is that and how our diet plays into damaging our proteins like this for sure so you know we we have a lot of ways in which diet influences these Hallmarks the main way is through what we call deregulated nutrient sensing it affects these four longevity switches which has to do with insulin signaling M tour which we talked about and protein and two others for Tunes we mentioned about how it works to repair DNA and also when we didn't talk about about called ampk that is involved in regulating blood sugar and so forth and those are really important impacts and if we eat too much sugar and starch it screws all those longevity switches up but it also does something else it actually forms these Globs with protein so sugar and proteins interact and form these damaged proteins so think about creme brulee or think about crispy chicken skin or crushed under bread that's the proteins and the sugars in that kind of forming this crust and that is not bad if you're eating animal you don't eat too much of those because they do affect you but it's what happens on the inside so we become literally crusted on the inside and we get what we call Advanced glycation end products they're called ages literally it's they're called ages and they bind to these receptors called rages or receptors for advanced glycation and products so you're aging and raging literally if you eat too much sugar and starch and they form these clobs and one of the ways we regulate people with diabetes is measuring this glob of protein and sugar called hemoglobin A1c meaning your hemoglobin your oxygen carrying system is damaged by the sugar and it forms these funky proteins that are kind of sticky and drive inflammation so that's really a bad thing it's not just a measure of your blood sugar but this is happening everywhere in your body we just measure it in terms of blood sugar but it's happening everywhere in the brain it causes dementia so we we need to be very clear that that damaged proteins are a big part of aging now we can fix those damaged proteins we can learn how to recycle them clean them up we can use saunas and there's lots of ways to fix these damaged proteins but the key is to make sure you don't create them in the first place to eating too much starch and sugar yeah thank you much to finish off given how you feel now at 63. yeah you know what's what's the goal here is the goal to not age at all it's the goal to be like those centenarian GMAT and the blue zones you know because that kind of feels like a natural way that we could age because a lot of people of course are talking about 150 180 you know yeah and I wonder is thinking about aging like that fundamentally problematic to The Human Experience right the way yeah the way we live is special because we're going to die at some point you know or certainly that could be one perspective right so you know maybe if you could just speak to this to end off this conversation that'd be really great look I mean there's two things here one is do we want to live forever that's a very big philosophical question and I think in my perspective this is a personal view I don't want to live forever but what if I could live another 50 or 60 or 80 years of vibrant life what could I contribute what could I do what could I add in terms of value to the world and I think people in their minds think of an aging population as being a drain on society as being a cost as as being a huge risk for our population because we're going to end up with all these old people who need care and so forth but when you look at sort of some of the data from David Sinclair and others have looked at the macroeconomic analysis of what happens if you create healthy older people not sick older people because we all agree six older people is bad for everybody and bad for this economy and bad for society but if they're healthy or older people if you extend Life by a year Healthy Life by a year you add 37 trillion dollars to the economy if you do a 10-year life extension that's 367 trillion dollars that is an enormous amount of money I mean the the the GDP of the United States is like you know I think it's uh like 20 uh 20 trillion so I mean that's that's that's an enormous amount of money and so we we actually have to look at it from a social perspective and say okay well if we did this right it would add a lot of healthy older people and what does that do well that adds more wisdom more insight and more learning and in 63 you know I I think I could easily get to 100 Years of healthy life functional life I think maybe by the time I get there we'll learn enough so we can I can probably get to 120. uh do I want to be 150 depends I mean if I'm functional if I can ski and I can make love and I can ride my bike and I can hang on my friends and I can do all the things I want to do well why not and the truth about my life and this I think is probably true for most people as we get older we get a little smarter we understand how life Works a little better we understand that that we can be in contribution to the world so imagine people who actually can add value and be in contribution just as as in the old Society there were Elders who were revered and respected and held the wisdom we've lost that and so I think there's an opportunity for us to actually kind of regain some of the the wisdom of being older instead of people who are on the decline so I I I'm 63. I feel like I'm just starting my life now I finally feel like I'm figuring this stuff out of how to live well and be well and be happy and to be a value and to add back into the world and now I don't want to stop I want to keep going yeah one inspiring answer mark this podcast is called feel better live more when we feel better in ourselves we get more out of our Lives you just beautifully spoken to that with your last answer right at the end of every conversation I love to leave my audience with some you know some take homes there's plenty throughout this conversation but yes for that person who feels inspired by what you said in and thinking yeah all right Dr Hyman I'm with you I'm gonna do it I'm going to turn this ship around I'm going to change the rates at which I age what are some of your final words of wisdom for them well I think that the thing that people just absolutely need to understand is that you have this Exquisite thing called a body that you are inhabiting for a short period of time and that embedded in that body is an incredible healing system that we are able to activate if we just learn how and young forever is a road map to activating these ancient healing longevity rejuvenating repairing renewing systems that will provide us not just longer life but a healthier better life so we can feel better and live more as you say Mark it's a great book Young Forever the secrets to living your longest healthiest life that's coming on the podcast thanks drunken this is great if you enjoyed that conversation I think you are really going to enjoy this one all about the common food myths that may be harming you the massive billion dollar food companies that have been setting the agenda about research have managed to avoid any decent studies comparing junk Foods against normal foods and they've continued to fund all this work about low calorie products low-fat products

Channel: Dr Rangan Chatterjee

Views: 382,362

Keywords: the4pillarplan, thestresssolution, feelbetterin5, wellness, drchatterjee, feelbetterlivemore, ranganchatterjee, 4pillars, drchatterjee podcast, health tips, nutrition tips, health hacks, live longer, age in reverse, self help, self improvement, self development, personal development, motivation, inspiration, health interview

Id: Fxd454cNu4w

Length: 104min 6sec (6246 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 22 2023

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Show Notes

My guest today is someone who has been leading a global health revolution around using food as medicine to support longevity, energy, mental clarity and happiness. Dr Mark Hyman has been a practicing medical doctor for several decades, he is the Head of Strategy and Innovation at the Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine and the author of an incredible 18 books. His latest one, Young Forever: The Secrets To Living Your Longest, Healthiest Life, challenges us to reimagine our biology and the entire process of ageing. 

In our conversation, Mark walks us through the 10 hallmarks of ageing, and explains what we can all practically do to influence them. He talks about the difference between our chronological age and our biological age and wants to reframe the idea that growing older means becoming frail, weak and less independent. In fact, Mark believes that as a society we have normalised what he calls ‘abnormal ageing’.

We talk in detail about food and how our daily choices influence the speed at which we will age. Mark explains how all the chronic diseases of modern life – heart disease, cancer, type 2 diabetes and dementia – are in some way related to disturbances in how we regulate blood sugar. And he details the ‘wildfire of downstream effects’ this can lead to – things like inflammation, increased belly fat and an increase in stress hormones.

Mark also shares powerful research showing that we can reverse our biological age by up to three years in just eight weeks. We also cover the controversial topic of protein, the crucial need for resistance training as we get older, and what exactly Mark learned from visiting the Blue Zones – places around the world where the population naturally thrives into old age. Their default culture, he says, is a diet rich in whole foods and phyto-chemicals, a naturally active lifestyle, being socially connected and a strong sense of meaning.

People who live well into old age, it seems, live close to the earth and each other. How’s that for a health goal worth aspiring to?

This is conversation jam-packed with practical advice. I hope you enjoy listening.

Disclaimer: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to constitute or be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.\*