The Dr. Hyman Show

Sometimes we need to get quiet to really find the answers we’re looking for. What better time to do that than during this down-time at home? Artists, creators, and dreamers have always been our best teachers on breaking free from the distractions of life and just “being” with ourselves. They take facts and turn them into stories from which we can gain new perspectives. We can all learn many different lessons through various mediums—one of my personal favorites is poetry. 

This week on The Doctor’s Farmacy* I sat down for a deep talk with poet IN-Q. IN-Q is a National Poetry Slam champion, award-winning poet, and multi-platinum songwriter. His groundbreaking achievements include being named to Oprah's SuperSoul 100 list of the world's most influential thought leaders, being the first spoken word artist to perform with Cirque Du Soleil, and being featured on A&E, ESPN, and HBO's Def Poetry Jam. He's inspired audiences around the world through his live performances and storytelling workshops. Many of his recent poetry videos have gone viral with over 70 million views combined. 

This episode is sponsored by Joovv, AquaTru and AirDoctor purifiers, and Farmacy.

I recently discovered Joovv, a red light therapy device. Red light therapy is a super gentle non-invasive treatment where a device with medical-grade LEDs delivers concentrated light to your skin. It actually helps your cells produce collagen so it improves skin tone and complexion, diminishes signs of aging like wrinkles, and speeds the healing of wounds and scars. Check out the Joovv products at joovv.com/farmacy and use the code FARMACY at checkout. Once you’re there, you’ll see a special bonus the Joovv team is giving away to my listeners. 

We need clean water and clean air not only to live but to create vibrant health and protect ourselves and loved ones from toxin exposure and disease. That’s why I’m teaming up with AquaTru and AirDoctor to offer you the AquaTru Water Purification System

and AirDoctor Professional Air Purifier systems at a special price. Learn more at www.drhyman.com/filter.

Everyone gets off track from time to time, that’s why I founded a new company Farmacy to create best in class protocols that combine food, lifestyle habits, and supplementation to support true wellness. Our first protocol, The 10 Day Reset is a systems-based approach designed to help you get back on track and reclaim your health. Learn more at getfarmacy.com.

Here are more of the details from our interview: 

• Why IN-Q named his book Inquire Within (7:27)

• The value of putting down our phones to just be with ourselves (13:26)

• The week I spent alone and decided to become a doctor (15:29)

• How we can feel connected by connecting with nature (17:23)

• Reframing our pain (18:19)

• IN-Q shares his poem “85” (25:55)

• Examples of American’s creating Victory Gardens and coming together during World War II (38:34)

• IN-Q share his poem about climate change, “One Little Dot” (40:26)

• Being vs doing (48:00)

• Learn more about IN-Q at https://in-q.com/. Follow him on Facebook @INQlife, on Instagram @inqlife, and on YouTube at IN-Q, and pre-order his book, Inquire Within, available March 21, 2020 here.

*For context, this interview was recorded prior to the World Health Organization’s declaration of the coronavirus outbreak as a pandemic.

Today’s food labels are deliberately misleading and confusing, which serves the interests of Big Food, but not the rest of us. Most of us are completely oblivious to what we are eating and its impact on our health and our world. We are mostly unaware of the chemicals that are added to our foods; how the hormones, antibiotics, plastics, and toxins we eat in our everyday foods harm our bodies. There are over 10,000 additives in our food supply, yet only 43% of them are recognized as safe by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). And the average American consumes three to five pounds of these additives every year.

In this mini-episode, Dr. Mark Hyman talks about food labeling, food additives, and how the FDA is asleep at the wheel in protecting us. Learn more about these topics and the undeniable harm our food system is doing to human health and to the environment in Dr. Hyman’s new book, Food Fix. foodfixbook.com

Most of us (including most doctors) do not recognize or know that digestive problems wreak havoc in the entire body, leading to allergies, arthritis, autoimmune disease, rashes, acne, chronic fatigue, mood disorders, autism, dementia, cancer, and more. So having a healthy gut means more than simply being free of annoyances like bloating or heartburn. It is absolutely central to your health. It is connected to everything that happens in your body. That is why Functional Medicine almost always starts helping people treat chronic health problems by fixing their gut.

In this mini-episode, Dr. Hyman is joined by Dr. Elizabeth Boham to review two patient cases focused on treating the gut.

Elizabeth Boham is a physician and nutritionist who practices functional medicine at The UltraWellness Center in Lenox, MA. Through her practice and lecturing she has helped thousands of people achieve their goals of optimum health and wellness. She witnesses the power of nutrition every day in her practice and is committed to training other physicians to utilize nutrition in healing. Dr. Boham has contributed to many articles and wrote the latest chapter on Obesity for the Rankel Textbook of Family Medicine. She is part of the faculty of the Institute for Functional Medicine and has been featured on the Dr. Oz show and in a variety of publications and media including Huffington Post, The Chalkboard Magazine, and Experience Life. Her DVD Breast Wellness: Tools to Prevent and Heal from Breast Cancer explores the functional medicine approach to keeping your breasts and whole body well.  

This episode is sponsored by AirDoctor. We need clean air not only to live but to create vibrant health and protect ourselves and loved ones from toxin exposure and disease. Learn more about the AirDoctor Professional Air Purifier system at a special price at www.drhyman.com/filter

In this episode, Dr. Hyman and Dr. Boham discuss:

• What is leaky gut, and why does it lead to so many other health issues, including food sensitivities?

• How our diet, food supply, over-reliance on antibiotics, acid blockers, steroids, and more can lead to leaky gut

• Using stool testing and Cyrex testing to assess gut health.

• The ‘5R’ program (remove, replace, reinoculate, repair, and rebalance) that Functional Medicine uses as a guide to treat chronic issues. 

• Remove stressors: get rid of things that negatively affect the environment of the GI tract including allergic foods and parasites or other bad bugs such as bacteria or yeast. This might involve using an allergy “elimination diet” to find out what foods are causing GI symptoms or it may involve taking drugs or herbs to eradicate a particular bug. 

• Replace digestive secretions: add back things like digestive enzymes, hydrochloric acid, and bile acids that are required for proper digestion and that may be compromised by diet, drugs, diseases, aging, or other factors.

• Reinoculate. Help beneficial bacteria flourish by ingesting probiotic foods or supplements that contain the so-called “good” GI bacteria such as bifidobacteria and lactobacillus species, and by consuming the high soluble fiber foods that good bugs like to eat, called “prebiotics.” Probiotics are beneficial microorganisms found in the gut that are also called “friendly bacteria.” Use of antibiotics kills both good and bad bacteria. Probiotics in the form of supplements or food are needed to re-inoculate the gut. Fermented foods, such as yogurt, miso, and tempeh are food sources of probiotics. Prebiotics are nondigestible food ingredients that selectively stimulate the growth of beneficial microorganisms already in the colon. In other words, prebiotics feed probiotics. Prebiotics are available in many foods that contain a fiber called inulin, including artichokes, garlic, leeks, onion, chicory, tofu, and other soy products. Grains such as barley, flax, oats, and wheat are also good sources of prebiotics. Another good prebiotic source is a supplement called “fructo-oligosaccharide” or FOS.

• Repair. Help the lining of the GI tract repair itself by supplying key nutrients that can often be in short supply in a disease state, such as zinc, antioxidants (e.g. vitamins A, C, and E), fish oil, and the amino acid glutamine. 

• Rebalance. Pay attention to lifestyle choices – sleep, exercise and stress can all affect the GI tract.

• For more information visit drhyman.com/uwc

Additional resources:

“Is Your Digestive System Making You Sick, and Fat?”

https://drhyman.com/blog/2010/05/20/is-your-digestive-system-making-you-sick/

“How to Feed Your Gut”

https://drhyman.com/blog/2018/04/13/how-to-feed-your-gut/

“A New Approach to Autoimmune Disease”

https://ultrawellnesscenter.com/2018/06/27/a-new-approach-to-autoimmune-disease/

“Lab Spotlight: Testing for Food Sensitivities”

https://ultrawellnesscenter.com/2019/09/27/lab-spotlight-testing-for-food-sensitivities/

“The Wrong Gut Bugs Can Make You Fat and Sick (and How to Fix Them)”

https://ultrawellnesscenter.com/2017/09/21/the-wrong-gut-bugs-can-make-you-fat-and-sick-and-how-to-fix-them/

“Top 5 Diet Changes for Autoimmunity”

https://ultrawellnesscenter.com/2017/06/30/top-5-diet-changes-for-autoimmunity/

“Gut & Digestive Health” 

https://ultrawellnesscenter.com/2012/10/17/lesson-4-gut-digestive-health/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Did you know dementia begins in the brain decades before symptoms start showing up? We can see changes in brain scans 30 or 40 years before forgetfulness and other disconcerting symptoms creep in. But I’ve seen so many patients overcome symptoms of brain dysfunction through the right diet and lifestyle changes. If our actions can have that much power to reverse some forms of brain illness, why aren’t we talking more about using them for prevention?  I’ve seen people with genetic predispositions avoid a diagnosis altogether by living a conscious life. 

That’s exactly what my guest and good friend, Max Lugavere, and I get into on this week’s episode of The Doctor’s Farmacy. Max lost his mom last year to a rare disease called Lewy body dementia, which comes along with the neurodegenerative and physical symptoms of both Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. Max is a filmmaker, health, and science journalist and the author of the New York Times bestselling book Genius Foods: Become Smarter, Happier, and More Productive While Protecting Your Brain for Life. He is also the host of the #1 iTunes health podcast The Genius Life. Max is excited to release his sophomore book, The Genius Life: Heal Your Mind, Strengthen Your Body, and Become Extraordinary, a lifestyle guide to living happily and healthily with proven, research-based lifestyle tactics, which we dig into more throughout this episode.

This episode is brought to you by Lumen, Thrive Market, and Farmacy.

I’ve recently started using an exciting new device called Lumen that measures your metabolism through the breath and gives you feedback on how your nutrition impacts your metabolism. If you’re interested in improving your metabolism and getting personalized nutrition, you should definitely check out Lumen. Right now they’re offering my listeners $50 off with the code HYMAN50. Just go to Lumen.me and use the code HYMAN50 to personalize your nutrition and improve your metabolic efficiency on a whole new level. 

Thrive Market has made it so easy for me to stay healthy, even with my intense travel schedule. Not only does Thrive offer 25 to 50% off all of my favorite brands, but they also give back. For every membership purchased, they give a membership to a family in need, and they make it easy to find the right membership for you and your family. You can choose from 1-month, 3-month, or 12-month plans. And right now, Thrive is offering all Doctor's Farmacy listeners a great deal, you’ll get up to $20 in shopping credit when you sign up, to spend on all your own favorite natural food, body, and household items. And any time you spend more than $49 you’ll get free carbon-neutral shipping. All you have to do is head over to thrivemarket.com/Hyman.

Everyone gets off track from time to time, that’s why I founded a new company Farmacy to create best in class protocols that combine food, lifestyle habits, and supplementation to support true wellness. Our first protocol, The 10 Day Reset is a systems-based approach designed to help you get back on track and reclaim your health. Learn more at getfarmacy.com.

Here are more of the details from our interview: 

• How Max’s mother’s illnesses as well as her life and death inspire him to become an expert how how to fix your brain (5:56)

• The interconnectedness of our brains, our cognition, our emotional wellness and our gut health, hormones, heart health, and more (11:19)

• The effects of natural and artificial light on the body and the brain (16:18)

• The importance of our body’s relationship to temperature and how to activate our thermoregulatory pathways (22:20)

• Nature as medicine and how air pollution affects cognitive function (27:54)

• Vitamin D, its connection to Alzheimer’s and depression, and how to get optimal levels (32:04)

• Fasting, intermittent fasting, and early time restricted eating (43:43)

• The connection between brain health and exercise, the benefits of resistance training, how muscle supports the body, and high intensity interval training (50:21)

• Max’s new book The Genius Life and his 21-Day plan for genius living to help us reset our brain and body to its factory settings  (59:11)

• Healing our relationship to food and the importance of avoiding ultra processed foods (1:02:24)

• Learn more about Max at https://www.maxlugavere.com/ and follow him on Facebook @MaxLugavere and on Instagram @maxlugavere.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We need to transform our food system and address one of the biggest threats to our well-being: our lack of a coordinated and comprehensive food policy. The outside influence that industrial food and agriculture lobbyists have on our policies encourages a food system that engenders disease. Lobbying power in Washington is rarely in the best interest of the public, supporting food and agriculture policies that undermine public health, harm the environment and increase private profits for Big Food. Big Food and Big Ag spend millions of dollars in Washington every year for the power to block policies that hurt their bottom lines and promote policies that make them money, whether or not it’s harmful to our society or the environment. 

On this week’s mini-episode, Dr. Mark Hyman talks about the dirty politics of Big Food, how that influences our government food policies, and why we need to change it. Learn more about these topics and the undeniable harm our food system is doing to human health and to the environment or climate in Dr. Hyman’s new book, Food Fix. foodfixbook.com

The thyroid tends to be an underappreciated organ, but despite being a small gland it has massive implications for your health. While thyroid disease can occur in various forms, one of the most common is called Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, an autoimmune disease where the body attacks the thyroid gland and diminishes its ability to create precious hormones—ones that impact every cell of the body. Hashimoto’s is the leading cause of hypothyroidism (an underactive thyroid) in the US and roughly 14 million people in the US are struggling with this diagnosis, with women at much higher risk, being 7 to 8 times more likely than men to get it. 

In this mini-episode, Dr. Hyman is joined by Dr. Elizabeth Boham to review patient cases in which thyroid issues were treated.

Elizabeth Boham is a physician and nutritionist who practices functional medicine at The UltraWellness Center in Lenox, MA. Through her practice and lecturing she has helped thousands of people achieve their goals of optimum health and wellness. She witnesses the power of nutrition every day in her practice and is committed to training other physicians to utilize nutrition in healing. Dr. Boham has contributed to many articles and wrote the latest chapter on Obesity for the Rankel Textbook of Family Medicine. She is part of the faculty of the Institute for Functional Medicine and has been featured on the Dr. Oz show and in a variety of publications and media including Huffington Post, The Chalkboard Magazine, and Experience Life. Her DVD Breast Wellness: Tools to Prevent and Heal from Breast Cancer explores the functional medicine approach to keeping your breasts and whole body well.  

This episode is sponsored by AirDoctor. We need clean air not only to live but to create vibrant health and protect ourselves and loved ones from toxin exposure and disease. Learn more about the AirDoctor Professional Air Purifier system at a special price at www.drhyman.com/filter

In this episode, Dr. Hyman and Dr. Boham discuss:

• Symptoms of hypothyroidism which can include sluggishness in the morning, poor concentration and memory, low-grade depression, dry skin, hoarse voice, thinning hair, coarse hair, being very sensitive to cold and having cold hands and feet, low body temperature, muscle pain, weakness or cramps, low sex drive, fluid retention, high cholesterol.

• Evaluating thyroid health by testing thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH) levels as well as free T3, free T4, thyroid antibodies, reverse T3 testing, and DIO2 gene testing. 

• Looking for associated problems such as gluten intolerance, food allergies, and heavy metals, as well as deficiencies of vitamin D, selenium, vitamin A, zinc, and omega-3 fats.

• Avoiding raw cruciferous vegetables and GMO soy. Instead, steam or cook cruciferous vegetables and eat non-GMO, whole food soy.

• Implementing lifestyle practices to support thyroid health such as reducing stress.

• Using supplements and medication to support thyroid health.

Additional resources:

When I was growing up we had news sources we could trust. Under The Fairness Doctrine, news on the radio, TV, and in print was partial and fair. But in 1987 during the Reagan administration, this was repealed, leading to alternative media and more misinformation than ever before. And now with the internet, we are truly in the wild west of sharing information, collecting data, and trying to maintain privacy. Big companies take advantage of that from all angels with their marketing, which is now ultra-targeted (and often in ways you wouldn’t even be able to recognize). 

Today on The Doctor’s Farmacy, I sit down with Andy Russell to talk about what data really means, who has yours, how they got it, and how they use it. Andy is a digital media, ad-tech, marketing-tech, and data science innovator and pioneer as well as a self-taught Behavioral Economist. He has invested in, incubated, or run over 50 technology companies, including Daily Candy, Thrillist, Tasting Table, Idealbite, PureWow, Zynga, Betaworks, Business Insider, Sailthru, RapLeaf and LiveRamp, SpongeCell, AdRoll, and Bounce Exchange. He is the Founder and Chairman of Trigger Media, InsideHook, and Fevo. 

This episode is brought to you by ButcherBox and Joovv.

I recently discovered Joovv, a red light therapy device. Red light therapy is a super gentle non-invasive treatment where a device with medical-grade LEDs delivers concentrated light to your skin. It actually helps your cells produce collagen so it improves skin tone and complexion, diminishes signs of aging like wrinkles, and speeds the healing of wounds and scars. To check out the Joovv products for yourself head over to joovv.com/farmacy. Once you’re there, you’ll see a special bonus the Joovv team is giving away to my listeners. Use the code FARMACY at checkout. 

Now through March 29, 2020, new subscribers to ButcherBox will receive ground beef for life. When you sign up today, ButcherBox will send you 2 lbs of 100% grass-fed, grass-finished beef free in every box for the life of your subscription. Plus listeners will get an additional $20 off their first box. All you have to do is head over to ButcherBox.com/farmacy.

Here are more of the details from our interview: 

• How much do sites like Facebook and Google watch our online actions and what are they doing with the information? (8:30)

• Why we have an unregulated internet (14:14)

• What does data really mean, who has yours, and how did they get it? (18:26)

• The repeal of The Fairness Doctrine and the regulation that alleviates digital platforms from responsibility for third-party content posted on their sites (24:42)

• The sale of your information by “Big Data” to Facebook and Google (27:27)

• How a computer or database can “know you better than you know yourself” (34:04)

• The current state of our personal data and political digital advertising (39:50)

• What we can learn from the Rwandan genocide (1:04:51)

• What you can do to know whether you’re being falsely advertised to (1:09:51)

• Should Facebook and Google get rid of political ads? (1:17:55)

It has been estimated that over the next 35 years, it's going to cost our society $95 trillion to address chronic disease. And not only is this affecting us economically, but our overall quality of life is decreasing. Imagine what we could do If we didn't have to spend as much money as we are currently spending on chronic disease. We would have enough money for other important things such as providing free education and healthcare. We could bring people up out of poverty, end social injustice, restore the environment, and help fund the reversal of climate change. 

By addressing the overall dysfunctions in the food system, we can solve these problems. The solutions exist and they will call on a lot of us to fix it—multiple sectors and stakeholders from citizens and consumers to businesses and farmers, to policymakers in every level of government, including city and state to nonprofits, philanthropists, scientists. By coming together we can transform the food system. 

Dr. Hyman speaks to all this and more in this mini-episode of The Doctor’s Farmacy. He also outlines the problems and the solutions in his new book, Food Fix. foodfixbook.com

Research has shown that for every 10% of your diet that comes from ultra-processed food, your risk of death goes up by 14%. Yet 60% of American diets are made up of ultra-processed food. And though the government tells us to eat more fruits and vegetables, existing food policy subsidizes thousands of acres of corn, soy, and wheat that are turned into processed junk food, while only 2% of our farmland is used to grow fruits and vegetables. In fact, if everybody ate the government-recommended amounts of vegetables and fruits, there actually wouldn’t be enough to go around. 

Part of what is driving these issues is that there is a major monopoly when it comes to seeds. Just a handful of companies control the majority of what and how crops are grown. We have to change our agricultural policies. 

Dr. Hyman dives into these topics and more in this mini-episode of The Doctor’s Farmacy. He also outlines the problems and the solutions in his new book, Food Fix. foodfixbook.com

Racism is still rampant in our country, and it might exist in places you didn’t expect it. For example, Black and Brown populations are at a higher risk of exposure to environmental toxins and have less access to high-quality medical care or clinical medical studies on their specific populations.

This is a major problem that can’t be ignored. And it’s hugely impacting our economy and the success of future generations in multiple ways. Every year we spend 50 billion dollars and lose 23 million IQ points to lead toxicity alone, which affects people of color the most, regardless of social class and income level. 

Today on The Doctor’s Farmacy I sit down for an important conversation with Harriet Washington about these issues. Harriet has been the Shearing Fellow at the University of Nevada's Black Mountain Institute, a Research Fellow in Medical Ethics at Harvard Medical School, a senior research scholar at the National Center for Bioethics at Tuskegee University, and a visiting scholar at DePaul University College of Law. She has held fellowships at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Stanford University. She is the author of Deadly Monopolies, Infectious Madness, and Medical Apartheid, which won a National Book Critics Circle Award, the PEN/Oakland Award, and the American Library Association Black Caucus Nonfiction Award. Her new book, A Terrible Thing to Waste, is a “powerful and indispensable” looks at the devastating consequences of environmental racism—and what we can do to remedy its toxic effects on marginalized communities.

This episode is brought to you by Thrive Market. Thrive Market has made it so easy for me to stay healthy, even with my intense travel schedule. Not only does Thrive offer 25 to 50% off all of my favorite brands, but they also give back. For every membership purchased, they give a membership to a family in need, and they make it easy to find the right membership for you and your family. You can choose from 1-month, 3-month, or 12-month plans. And right now, Thrive is offering all Doctor's Farmacy listeners a great deal, you’ll get up to $20 in shopping credit when you sign up, to spend on all your own favorite natural food, body, and household items. And any time you spend more than $49 you’ll get free carbon-neutral shipping. All you have to do is head over to thrivemarket.com/Hyman.

Here are more of the details from our interview: 

• Communities of color in America are being poisoned as a result of decisions and policies that expose them to dangerous levels of environmental toxins (5:29)

• The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) sanctioned case of toxic dumping in Afton, North Carolina (12:25)

• Lead poisoning, its effects on intelligence and cognition, and the populations it is most affecting (16:12)

• The lack of precautionary testing of chemicals in the United States (22:24)

• Unacknowledged fetal alcohol damage in Hispanic and African American communities (31:13)

• Environmental toxin rates among African American communities across all income levels (33:54)

• How to effectively test for and treat environmental toxin issues (39:38)

• What actions individuals and communities can take to protect themselves from environmental toxins (44:29)

• The connection between environmental racism and food injustice (48:39)

• The role that government, communities, and public health needs to play in protecting citizens from environmental toxins (1:06:57)

• Harriet Washington’s most recent book is A Terrible Thing to Waste: Environmental Racism and Its Assault on the American Mind.