Ep. 75: Food as Medicine With Dr. Mark Hyman- Physician, Author and UltraWellness Center Founder

We are delighted to have Dr. Mark Hyman on Health Gig to help us navigate the increasingly difficult time dealing with the covid-19 pandemic. Dr. Hyman is a physician, and New York Times bestselling author, including his recent book, "Food Fix”, and is also the Head of Strategy and Innovation of Cleveland Clinic's Center for Functional Medicine Dr. Hyman founded the UltraWellness Center as a way to bring innovative and collaborative solutions to bringing optimal health to all communities, and has his own podcast and web series, The Doctor’s Farmacy, to bring wellness and activism to the forefront for all communities. One thing Dr. Hyman notes during this time of crisis is: “This is the moment for Americans to reclaim their kitchens and reclaim your food. ” Enjoy listening.

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Show Notes

[1:56] The challenge is how well we can manage social distancing, because the more we can do that, the more we can slow the spread, the more we can protect our health care workers and hospitals from becoming overburdened with very sick patients.
[2:25] I think it's a challenge for all of us. But on the other hand, it is something that is bringing together humanity in a way that nothing else has. You know, we're all in this together. Borders don't matter. Beliefs don't matter. Ideologies, politics, your dietary philosophy is whatever.
[3:32] And I think it's important to focus on how we as a society take care of ourselves better. I was disappointed to see an article in your times about how everybody's indulging in comfort and junk foods. This couldn't be a worse time to do that because it suppresses your immune system, makes you more likely to get sick, more likely to have severe complications. So this is a last moment that we should be focused on eating more, more junk food and comfort foods
[5:24] At this point, we need all hands on deck. We need to be open to all therapies. We need to really think about things out of the box because the traditional ways of doing things aren't working.
[7:37] You know, intermittent fasting means a lot of things that can be fasting one day a week or eating low calories for two days a week. But typically people mean time restricted eating. Meaning you eat within an eight hour window. I had a patient who is a diabetic with kidney failure who was doing it within a four hour window and having amazing results. It's a very quick way to improve metabolic health or to improve your overall health. It reduces inflammation. It increases your antioxidant enzymes. It increases your stem cells. It reduces the inflammatory belly fat, increases muscle mass. So there's a lot of benefits in time, restricted eating.
[9:03] And I think, you know, what I encourage people to do is to include foods that we know are medicinal. So the foods that I'm choosing for example Indian food is full of ginger, which is very anti-inflammatory and anti-microbial. Garlic, turmeric, which is anti-inflammatory. They're just so beneficial for our immune systems and for regulating inflammation. And I think of food as medicine. And I'm trying to eat my medicine as best I can every day to make myself stronger and healthier so I can do what I gotta do to help fight this. I'm doing what I can.
[10:50] So the mask issue and the reason you're hearing sort of conflicting confusion and information about masks, the mask is not designed to protect you if you take a cloth mask or bandana or just a regular little mask. If you just use that, it's going to prevent you from getting other people sick. So if you go to the grocery store and you're a carrier and you don't feel bad, you might be spreading it to breathing or just talking. And these aerosols are different. They travel far more than droplets in other forms of waste to spread it. So wearing a mask is a social act that will protect your community and your friends and your family when you go out.
[12:19] We have to try to do our best to reduce the spread. And we can do that by doing our civic duty and sitting at home wearing masks when we go out and being sensible.
[14:39] There is a treatment that's being used. It's a very old medical therapy. It's called convalescent plasma injection. So what they do is they take let's say somebody was sick, they take their blood, they spin it down and they extract the antibodies from someone who's had coronavirus and then they concentrate them and then they give you a shot in the butt. And that gives you what we call passive immunity. It's sort of like colostrum, when you breastfeed a baby, the mother's passing its antibodies to the baby, which protects the baby. Same thing. We used to do it for hepatitis A shots. You get a shot in the butt. If you were traveling, you remember that you'd be safe from getting hepatitis A for a while and then you went traveling again, after three months, you might need another shot. So this could be used to protect our health care workers, treat patients who are mildly ill.
[15:50] Fever actually is how your body kills infections. So you don't want to treat a fever unless you know it's so high that you might get a seizure or something. But if you have a fever, 103/104, you know, it's not fun. But it definitely is a way for your body to fight the infection faster.
[17:25] China. The data was pretty staggering, 10 times as many deaths from Covid, 19. If you heart heart disease, seven times as many deaths if you had diabetes, three times as many deaths if you were obese. If you have these conditions, they are incredibly treatable with food. I can't underscore how powerful food is. I mean, we have patients literally within three days who are changing their diet, get off insulin within a few weeks, literally can normalize your blood sugars and get off medications.
[18:31] And I think it's time for us to actually double down on self-care both as an act of self-preservation and as an act of public service, because the more we care for ourselves, the less likely we are to get sick, less likely we are to burden the healthcare system. And I think this just exposes the real underlying issues in our society, which is the fact that our food system is created, a food supply that is incredibly toxic, that's driving these chronic diseases and that 60 percent of our calories are ultra processed food.
[19:31] So I think it's really important for people to really take seriously this time and understand that it's exposing the weaknesses in our diet, in our diet system, and that need to be fixed because this covid 19 epidemic and pandemic has really revealed the extent to which chronic disease is an issue. If we had 88 percent of our population metabolically healthy, then we wouldn't have full issues. We wouldn't see thousands of deaths a day. We wouldn't be seeing this problem.
[20:21] We need to have food literacy and fitness. You know, if we don't pass it down to our children, we don't teach our children because it's the food marketers that prey on our children.
[21:16] When you look at the fact that if kids are overweight, their life expectancy is 13 years less, that their likelihood of going to college is less, their likelihood of having a good income is less. Their likelihood of dying of a chronic disease is much higher. I mean, this is terrifying for our children.
[23:04] You know, the CDC has produced a very clear report on the problems of adverse nutrition in kids and their academic performance, absenteeism, problem solving focus, disruptive behaviors and so on. So the data is there. And what's exciting to me is that we don't need to change anything. We don't need the extra money. We just need to implement some of these initiatives that are happening around the country in schools.
[23:44] And then the problem is, once these kids get hooked early, it's hard to get them off of food for life. And they know once they get their customers young, they get them for life. And that's why they spend so much effort, billions of dollars a year in marketing just targeted at children. And, you know, we have the First Amendment in this country, but I don't think it precludes us from protecting our children.
[26:22] So we know that depression, suicide, ADHD, violent behavior, these are all linked to food. And in poor communities who live in food swamps and in all these food swamps as opposed to food deserts because they're unable to get good food and all they can get is the junk. They also suffer from more mental illness and more violence and higher rates of incarceration. And I don't think it's a coincidence. I'm excited by the data that show that by changing diets, we can have such a dramatic impact on our kids and even on adults.
[29:49] You know, all these unemployed people, let's train them up as community health workers as this pandemic kind of fades out, which it will. Let's employ them to be health activists in their communities and go into people's homes and start to address this chronic disease epidemic in this food problem.
[30:59] And so right now is the most fascinating dichotomy because everybody's back in the kitchen. Not by freewill, but just by the force of this virus. And it's a perfect time to learn how to cook. I'm having the best time, I admit, you know? Okay. What are we having today? We're having Chinese. What do we have? You know, we're having Vietnamese. We're gonna have pho. But, you know, like, I've never made it before. But I'm going to learn. And it's like my mother used to say, if you can read, you can cook, get a cookbook.
[31:38] This is the moment for Americans to reclaim their kitchens and reclaim your food. And please do not eat a lot of junk and sugar and processed food down. Now is not the time you're gonna be jeopardizing your own health. And you're going to be jeopardizing public health and threatening our hospital system. So take care of yourself and take care of all of us together.

Thank you for joining us on Health Gig. We loved having you with us. We hope you'll tune in again next week. In the meantime, be sure to like and subscribe to this podcast, and follow us on healthgigpod.com.

“I think it's a challenge for all of us. But on the other hand, it is something that is bringing together humanity in a way that nothing else has. You know, we're all in this together. Borders don't matter. Beliefs don't matter. Ideologies, politics, your dietary philosophy is whatever..” - Dr. Mark Hyman
“We have to try to do our best to reduce the spread. And we can do that by doing our civic duty and sitting at home wearing masks when we go out and being sensible. .” - Dr. Mark Hyman
“We need to have food literacy and fitness. You know, if we don't pass it down to our children, we don't teach our children because it's the food marketers that prey on our children.” - Dr. Mark Hyman
“This is the moment for Americans to reclaim their kitchens and reclaim your food. Please do not eat a lot of junk and sugar and processed food. Now is not the time to be jeopardizing your own health [because] you're going to be jeopardizing public health and threatening our hospital system. So take care of yourself and take care of all of us together.” - Dr. Mark Hyman
“I think of food as medicine. And I'm trying to eat my medicine as best I can every day to make myself stronger and healthier so I can do what I gotta do to help fight this. I'm doing what I can.” - Dr. Mark Hyman

Keywords

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