House Call With Dr. Hyman

As you probably know too well, real life can interfere with creating time for oneself or even the inclination to meditate, and for me, eventually, it fell by the wayside.

Just thinking about the zillion tasks I juggle every day makes my head spin: Managing a Functional Medicine clinic at a major hospital, seeing patients at my own practice, writing books, and attending to tons of other work obligations. I balance these duties with regular exercise, eating healthy and oh yeah, sleeping 8 to 10 hours every night.

So OK, no jury in the world would convict me when I say I don’t have time to meditate, right?

At the same time, I’ve been “prescribing” meditation to patients and readers for decades, so I always felt slightly uncomfortable recommending it when I didn’t practice meditation myself.

Among its many benefits, meditation reduces stress. Think of your brain as a computer, simultaneously keeping many windows and programs going.

Meditation helps you close out the unnecessary windows so you can focus on what’s essential. When you do less with more, you enjoy life more and perform at a higher level.

“Dr. Hyman, can you tell me more about probiotics? Can supplementing with them really help reduce belly bloat and IBS symptoms? How do you know which ones are good and which ones are a waste of money?”

Well – to be frank, our poop and all the bugs that live in there are the great new frontier in medicine. Who knew!? The health of the 100 trillion bugs in your gut (which outnumber you 10 to 1) is one of the biggest things that impacts your health. Is it as simple as just taking a few probiotics or eating some yogurt? Not really – we have to learn how to tend the gut flora of our inner gardens by being selective of what we eat and how we live; feeding the good bugs and avoiding gut-busting drugs and habits– like eating too much sugar and starch, or consuming too much alcohol, or not managing our stress (yes, your gut bacteria are eavesdropping on your thoughts).

But What About Probiotics?

This is a huge area of research, and really, we are at the infancy of understanding how to create and use probiotics. Probiotics are popping up everywhere! They’re in yogurt commercials and sold at your pharmacy and grocery store. Ever since gut health has come to the forefront, probiotics have become a popular topic. So, do they really help?

Imagine eating 12 pounds of food a day and staying thin and healthy.

That is exactly what hunter-gatherer ate for millennia without any obesity or chronic diseases like heart disease, diabetes, cancer or dementia.Today, I wouldn’t advise anyone to eat 12 pounds of food each day, because the food in our society lacks one major secret ingredient that our ancestors ate in nearly all their food – fiber!

You might wonder how fiber can prevent obesity and all of the chronic diseases of aging.

It’s actually quite simple. It slows the rate at which food enters your blood stream and increases the speed at which food exits your body through the digestive tract. That keeps your blood sugar and cholesterol in ideal balance, quickly eliminates toxins from your gut and reduces your appetite.

“Dr. Hyman, I have been so confused about saturated fat,” writes this week’s house call. “The government still says to limit saturated fat, yet I read in the news how maybe it’s not really connected to heart disease? Is butter really back?”

I understand why there is so much confusion around butter and saturated fat. The diet debates have America spinning. Some advocate for putting dollops of butter in coffee, while others shun avocados and nuts as harmful, heart-disease-promoting and fattening foods. What’s the average eater to do?

Three recent studies add to an increasing body of evidence that saturated fat is not the evil, heart-disease-producing substance we once thought. A recent large review of the research found that the higher the saturated fat intake in the population, the lower the risk of stroke.

“Dr. Hyman, I’m about to start your Eat Fat, Get Thin Plan, which is completely different from the way my family normally eats,” writes this week’s house call. “I want my kids to eat good food, too. Can they eat the foods on this program? And do you have any tips for helping me trick them into eating healthy foods?”

I can understand how change can become nerve-wracking for parents and kids. Just like you might feel nervous starting a new way of eating, your kids might feel nervous about missing their daily favorites.

The key is to create new favorites together. Build healthy habits for your kids at an early age to create a path toward optimal, vibrant health. That might be tough with picky eaters, but think about the alternative. You don’t want your child to suffer lifelong obesity and poor health.

“Dr. Hyman, you often talk about superfoods and their benefits,” writes this week’s house call. “Can you share some of your favorites?”

I realize “superfood” carries a certain hype, but some foods do earn that status. Food is medicine. And some foods are more powerful medicines than others! Food is the most powerful tool to create optimal health. Food is the first and most powerful drug in my arsenal to treat patients.

I’ve discussed numerous superfoods and you how to get them into your diet in The 10- Day Detox, Eat Fat, Get Thin, and my other programs. Here, I share five superfoods I frequently enjoy that you should also incorporate into your eating plan.

“I’ve hit a stubborn weight-loss plateau,” writes this week’s house call, “even though I seem to be doing everything right, like eating the right foods and exercising. How can I overcome that obstacle?”

I’ve discussed different reasons for weight-loss resistance in past blogs. Many obstacles have nothing to do with what you eat or how much you exercise. Instead, they involve things like nutritional imbalances, chronic inflammation, metabolic challenges, leaky gut, changes in your microbiome, environmental toxins and your genes.

One huge but often-overlooked reason for weight-loss resistance involves hormonal imbalances.

No contest: The monster hormone that causes weight gain, inflammation and chronic disease is excess insulin. Think of this hormone as your fat cell fertilizer! My new book, Eat Fat, Get Thin, discusses how to naturally regulate insulin so you can shift your body from fat storage mode to fat-burning mode.

At the same time, insulin isn’t the only player; other hormones also affect your weight and health. Three big disruptors are: thyroid, cortisol and sex hormones. I discuss these hormones in-depth in The Blood Sugar Solution, however, let’s briefly look at each of them here.

“Dr. Hyman, I’m ready to start a path toward my best health, but there are so many options out there,” writes this week’s house call. “I’m choosing among The Blood Sugar Solution, The 10-Day Detox Diet, and the Eat Fat, Get Thin plans, but I’m unsure which is the best one to serve my needs.”

Ultimately, any plan that eliminates toxic foods and uses whole, real foods as medicine is the right step forward. Each of my programs starts with this foundation, which has the power to transform your health.

What’s most important is to affirm your personal goals and health concerns based on your health and lifestyle. The 10-Day Detox Diet is obviously a 10-day program, the Eat Fat, Get Thin plan is a three-week program and The Blood Sugar Solution is an eight-week program. And, each program is designed to be a foundation for lifelong lifestyle change.

So, let’s take a closer look at each of these three programs to determine which one best suits your needs.

“Dr. Hyman, I recently read how endocrine disruptors like environmental toxins can interfere with your hormones,” writes this week’s house call. “I’m really freaked out. I feel like my house is full of toxins. How can I minimize their impact?”

Unfortunately, today we become exposed to a greater number of environmental toxins than ever before. Sadly, many experts fail to connect the dots between toxicity and diabesity, which has hit record numbers.

Environmental toxins can feed cancer, interfere with glucose and cholesterol metabolism and induce insulin resistance and obesity through multiple mechanisms including inflammation, oxidative stress, mitochondrial injury, altered thyroid metabolism and impaired central appetite regulation.

“Dr. Hyman, I’m so confused about coffee,” writes this week’s house call. “One day I read that it’s so bad for me and the next it’s good for me. Why all the conflicting information?”

Let’s face it: Americans love their coffee, which is the number one source of antioxidants in our diet – which actually makes me kind of sad!

In a recent animal study, researchers saw improvements in non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and cholesterol when mice consumed coffee and fat together. (More on that combo in a minute.) They also found coffee can help reduce gut permeability or leaky gut.

Among its other benefits, studies show coffee decreases your risk for type 2 diabetes, lowers cancer risk and improves mood and memory. Coffee can also boost metabolism and sports performance.

On the other hand, coffee can become highly addictive, altering stress hormones while making you feel simultaneously wired and tired.

So I understand the confusion. It feels like one day we see studies that support coffee and the next day we see 10 reasons why coffee is bad. So let’s uncover the truth about this aromatic beverage that most of us love.