>> Hi.

I'm Lewis Howes, New York Times best-selling author and entrepreneur.

And welcome to "The School of Greatness," where we interview the most influential minds and leaders in the world to inspire you to live your best life today.

In this episode, Dr. Mark Hyman, a pioneer in functional medicine and best-selling author, joins us to discuss the profound impact of relationships and emotional health on your life-span.

Learn about the seven core biological systems, how light exposure affects your health, and how to align your health span with your life-span.

This conversation is a must watch for anyone looking to live a long, healthy life.

I'm so glad you're here today.

Now let's dive in and let the class begin.

♪♪ ♪♪ I'm curious.

You've been studying this for a while now.

You've gone all over the world and studied this with people who've lived the longest.

You've been, you know, a doctor for many, many years.

You've researched this stuff for a long time.

Do you think it's possible to live in our 90s, in our 100s, fit, mentally sharp, healthy at that age still?

>> 1,000%.

>> Really?

>> I mean, here's my plan.

I want to be 120, maybe 150.

We'll see how it goes.

Wow.

>> I want to go for a hike in the mountains.

I want to swim in a cool lake with my love.

I want to go back to the cabin, make a beautiful dinner, have a glass of wine, make love, and just drift off into the neverland.

>> At 150?

>> Yeah.

Why not?

>> 120, 150.

>> Actually, yes.

Because, you know, what we see as aging in this country is really abnormal aging -- decrepitude, decline, frailty, disease, disability, loss of cognitive function, faculties.

And those are abnormal things that happen.

They don't have to happen.

You know, I was in Sardinia and I met this guy Pietro, who was 95 years old, and he had literally just stopped being a shepherd where he was hiking up and down the mountains five miles a day, guarding his sheep for, I don't know, 80 years probably.

And he was like straight up fit, strong, bellowing voice, super strong handshake, eyes clear.

I'm like, man.

You know, it's possible to be very vibrant if we know how to take care of ourselves.

And what we've done in our culture is activate all of our disease systems and degradation and dysfunction.

But we now know that we have an innate healing system and we can activate our healing system.

When I was in medical school, I studied a book called the "Pathologic Basis of Disease."

>> Mm-hmm.

>> We never had a book called the "Scientific Basis of Wellness."

Right?

We never took that class.

But now we understand that the body has its own innate mechanisms for repair and healing and rejuvenation and renewal that can be activated at any point in life.

>> Okay, so what are the disease systems that most of us are turning on throughout the world.

>> Well, so, listen, we have an extraordinarily sick society.

You know, America was 4% of the population of the world now, and is 16% of the cases and deaths for COVID.

Why?

>> So, wait, America is 4% of the population.

>> In the world.

>> Of the world.

>> But we were 16% of the cases and deaths -- four times what it should have been, and probably, considering we have a great health care system, it should have been half of that, right?

>> Why is that, you think?

>> Yeah.

It's not a question.

There's a clear answer.

It's because we are a very sick population.

So we were pre-inflamed.

We were overweight as a society.

93.2% of us are metabolically unhealthy, meaning we have high blood pressure, high cholesterol, high blood sugar, have had a heart attack or stroke, or are overweight.

>> Mm-hmm.

>> That means 6.8% of us are healthy.

So, when COVID hits that population, who is obese and pre-inflamed, who is chronically ill, which is also a disease of inflammation, or is elderly, which is also a disease of inflammation, the COVID takes over and just kind of wipes these people out.

And, so, we are suffering from diseases of heart disease, cancer, diabetes, dementia, all the things we see as people get older.

And these are all entirely preventable.

They're relatively new.

I mean, if you look back in the 150 years ago in all the hospital records in Mass General or the hospitals in Boston, diabetes was almost nonexistent as an admitting diagnosis.

So there was a case of a heart attack, the entire, you know, medical school, the residents, the doctors would all come around to see this rare case.

It's like if somebody had, like, schistosomiasis today in a hospital... >> Really?

>> ...you'd come in and everyone, "Well, what is this disease?"

You know?

Yeah, for sure.

It was so unusual.

So we now have a society where 6 in 10 of us have chronic disease, where 4 in 10 have more than one, where, if you're over 65, you know, 80% have a chronic disease.

And probably even more when you look at things a little more subtly about dysfunction that happens.

So what we see as aging today is something that gives us an impression that it's bad to get older because you're going to become disabled, decrepit, dysfunctional, frail.

But that's a model that is now being challenged by researchers in longevity, and who are proposing that we may be able to even reach something called longevity escape velocity.

Meaning, we can escape death by advancing science that will keep us living longer and longer each year we're alive.

>> Really?

>> I'm not sure I'm into that.

'Cause I don't know if I want to live to be 1,000.

But I do think that it is pushing the boundaries of what we thought as possible.

And we know, in animal models, we've been able to extend life by a third, right?

So if we do certain interventions, we can take animals and make them live a third longer, which means, for humans, you'd live to be 120.

>> Mm.

>> So we've had women who've lived to be very old, like Madame Calment, who lived to be 122 years old, who was a French woman who was documented legitimately to be 122 years old.

>> That's incredible.

>> It's incredible.

And she was a wine-drinking, smoking chocoholic.

But I wouldn't follow her longevity plan.

>> She had other things going for her to go against that, yeah?

>> Yeah.

For sure.

So that was an anomaly.

But there are cases of very vital, healthy people.

And I traveled through the blue zones around the world where people lived to be well over 100.

I had a couple that had a combined age of 210.

>> Oh, my gosh.

How long were they married together?

>> I think too long, according to them, maybe.

Maybe like 100 years, I don't know.

>> Oh, my gosh.

>> You know, 90 years or something.

It's really wild, right?

>> That's incredible.

>> So we see these pockets, and we've learned a lot from them about how to activate our longevity pathways.

And they have a society and a culture that by default does it.

We don't have it.

We have a default society that makes us sick and overweight and creates early death.

>> What are the -- What would you say are the 3 to 5 main causes of our society that causes us to get overweight and get sick easily?

>> I mean, hands down, it's the food.

You know, we are eating a diet, a toxic diet that is unlike anything we've eaten in human history.

60% of our calories are ultra processed food, which means they're made from basically food-like substances that are from soy, corn, and wheat and other additives and ingredients and fillers and colors and dyes and thickeners that are highly toxic to our systems.

And they're inordinately high in sugar and starch.

We've talked about this, but we eat about a pound a day of sugar and starch per person per day in America.

Flour, sugar.

And that's average.

>> Right.

>> So, we're having a lot more.

And it's just physiologically not something we evolved with.

We used to eat 22 teaspoons a year as hunter-gatherers if we were lucky to find a beehive or a berry patch.

Now we have that every day on average.

And kids have like 34, which is like two and a half soda -- like large sodas a day.

>> Right.

>> So that what's driving a lot of this, and that drives this phenomenon called insulin resistance, which is at the heart of the aging process, and that insulin resistance causes inflammation and all the age-related diseases.

>> What is insulin, for those who don't know what that is?

>> So insulin is what your pancreas makes in order to drop your blood sugar and keep your blood sugar balanced.

So we all know type 1 diabetics need to take insulin shots, but type 2 diabetics -- I mean, by the way, there's, I think, been a 400% increase in type 2 diabetes in kids in the last 30 years, which is frightening to me.

But they used to call it adult-onset diabetes, and they had to change the name because little kids were getting it.

>> Wow.

>> 15-year-olds were now getting liver transplants because of fatty liver from drinking too much soda.

I mean, this is really scary stuff.

So, insulin is important to keep your blood sugar in balance.

But if you eat too much starch and sugar, your body pumps out more and more insulin.

And then, just like the boy who cried wolf, your cells don't pay attention anymore.

You get resistant to the effects of insulin, and then you need more insulin.

And that causes the deposition of belly fat, and belly fat is this dangerous fat around your organs that is not just holding up your pants, but it's a whole organ itself.

It's producing hormones and inflammatory molecules and neurotransmitters that are regulating your appetite.

So it makes you really sick.

And it's the central driver of all these age-related diseases.

So that's a huge factor.

There are other factors like toxins or sedentary lifestyle, chronic stress or sleep disruption.

These are all things that are activating our disease systems, not our healing systems.

>> But food is the main thing.

>> Food is for sure the main thing because, think about it, you eat pounds of this stuff every day, and it's not just calories, it's information.

So the molecules in the food make a difference.

So, in Icaria, for example, one of the blue zones in Greece, they eat tons of wild food, wild greens.

They have summer greens, winter greens, wild mushrooms.

Every day, they have wild sage tea because it's just free and cheap, right?

They're poor, but they go out in the backyard and they pull this.

And it's like, turns out I looked it up, and it's full of catechins, which are these compounds in green tea that make green tea such a longevity compound, an antioxidant compound, an anti-inflammatory compound.

So we really have this amazing cornucopia of drugs all around us in our plant chemicals that we don't consume very often.

>> Sure.

>> I think, what, 2% of the Americans eat the recommended amount of vegetables.

>> Sure.

Sure.

What would you say are the five main ingredients or foods to support longevity?

Whether it be like a -- >> Well, this is great.

That's a great question, right?

So, what should we be eating?

Right?

We shouldn't be eating ultra processed food.

We shouldn't be eating too much starch and sugar.

We shouldn't be eating refined oils.

We shouldn't be eating additives and chemicals.

We should eat about 5 pounds of additives per person a year.

We shouldn't be eating pesticides, herbicides, all that crap.

So that's just a given.

But what should we be eating?

Well, start out with the most important things for longevity, which are these phytochemicals in plant foods.

So the majority of your diet, by volume, should be colorful fruits and vegetables, and weird stuff if you can.

You know, eat dandelion greens, eat seaweed, eat all this weird stuff because that's where all the medicine is.

So the more colorful it is, the more heirloom it is, the more regenerative it is, the more organic it is, the more wild it is, the better it is.

So if you had a wild strawberry, it's about the size of a, you know, a peanut, but it tastes like an explosion of flavor, if you ever ate a summer wild strawberry.

>> Sure, sure.

>> But you can go to the supermarket and buy these giant strawberries that look great, but you put them in your mouth, it's like, "Mm, I think it's a strawberry.

>> An apple.

>> Yeah, like an apple.

But it's not very tasty because the phytochemicals aren't there.

So we know that you want to include a rich array of these phytochemicals, and the special ones for longevity are things like fisetin that's in strawberries.

From pomegranate, you can produce urolithin A, which improves your mitochondrial function.

So you can have green tea, which is epigallocatechin gallate compounds, which I talked about in the sage.

You can have resveratrol, which is in red grape skins.

There's a lot of plant compounds that you can start to include, curcumin, which is a powerful anti-inflammatory.

So you can have a wonderful time having a delicious diet.

And then, mushrooms.

They're not really a vegetable.

They're its own category.

And mushrooms have an incredible array of compounds, these polysaccharides that turn out are immune modulating, anti-cancer, adaptogenic.

And, so, we need to be including a lot more good mushrooms.

And you can take mushrooms as supplements, but you can also eat a lot more of the good mushrooms.

Also, garlic and onions are really important for sulfur and the broccoli family specifically because they upregulate glutathione, which is important for detox.

So you really want to have a wide array of these medicines in these plant foods.

The second thing you want to do is eat the right fats.

So omega-3 fats are key.

Olive oil is key.

Those are real longevity foods.

And then, protein.

And this is where it gets sticky for people in terms of controversy.

Because a lot of longevity, researchers are saying, well, we shouldn't eat protein because it activates this pathway that inhibits the body's own ability to clean itself, called autophagy.

Autophagy means self-cleaning, self-cannibalism.

It's like a Pac-Man that runs around cleaning up old cells.

And, you know, we've all heard about now time-restricted eating, intermittent fasting, and all these things, ketogenic diets.

Well, they activate this process, which is built in.

It's a built-in recycling, repair, and regeneration, renewal and longevity pathway.

Now, when we eat all the time, we inhibit that pathway.

So it's like making food in your kitchen for a month and never washing the dishes.

Right?

It's going to be a mess.

So you don't want that to happen.

You want the cleaning crew to come in every night and clean up, and so, that's what we have to have.

But if you eat protein all the time, that pathway is inhibited.

I mean, that pathway is stimulated, so you can't actually get the the autophagy to happen, the clean-up to happen.

So the key is you want to inhibit this pathway called mTOR, which I can talk about.

mTOR is this really amazing kind of key longevity switch -- I call it a longevity switch -- that is inhibited by fasting.

It's inhibited by certain plant compounds.

It can be inhibited by drugs like rapamycin.

And, so, this is being looked at as a key strategy for enhancing longevity.

In animal models, it can extend life, again, by a third by inhibiting this pathway.

But it's stimulated by protein and by sugar.

So many longevity researchers say, well, no, you shouldn't have protein.

But, well, the other part of longevity is muscle.

>> You need the muscle.

So grip strength, you need muscle, you need to be able to get yourself off the ground if you fall, like all these things, right?

>> So, muscle is the currency -- >> You need bone density, right?

>> For sure.

So, you know, muscle is the currency of aging and longevity.

And what happens, as we age, is we lose muscle.

So we can be the same weight as we were at 25 at 70, but be twice as fat Like a rib eye instead of a filet mignon.

>> Yeah, that's not good.

>> And that marbled muscle filled with fat doesn't work right, and it causes inflammation and aging and diabetes and heart disease and cancer and dementia and all this stuff is coming from this.

Plus, you can't get it out of a chair and do the normal things you want to do.

I mean, most of the reason people end up in nursing homes is because they can't do their daily functions.

They can't tie their shoes, they can't get up out of bed.

They're kind of weak, you know, they can't get out of a chair.

It's not because they're sick.

So sarcopenia is real.

So you have to figure out the balance between building muscle and having the cleaning and repair crew come in at night.

So you want to have at least a 12- to 14-, even 16-hour overnight fast.

We used to call it breakfast.

Right?

If you eat dinner at 6:00 and you eat breakfast at 6:00 in the morning, that's a 12-hour fast.

But we just keep eating all night and then we get up, eat in the morning.

So you really got to give your body a break to do the cleaning.

And then, you want to load protein in at the right times, like when you wake up and have done this overnight fast.

You know, a good dose of protein, like 30, 40, 50 grams to activate muscle synthesis.

And you need the right quality protein.

And this is where it's controversial because a lot of people are saying be vegan because it's going to save you and save the planet.

But the truth is that plant proteins are low in leucine, which is a really important amino acid that's needed to turn on muscle.

So if you want to turn on the switch to build muscle, you've got to have the right amounts of this.

It's like the rate-limiting step.

>> Right.

But plant proteins, you don't have that much.

So you can eat six cups of brown rice, but no one's going to do that.

You know, you have a four-ounce piece of chicken, people can eat that.

>> Yeah.

So you want to have a balance of protein and fasting is what I'm hearing you say.

>> Yes.

So time on and time off.

So it's like that Goldilocks, right?

You want the demolition crew and the construction crew.

Right?

And so that's the beauty.

And, so, you don't want to stop protein synthesis because it's essential for life.

And if you start to lose muscle, that's when you start to become frail and disabled.

So I think I write a lot about this in the book.

It's not my opinion.

This is a group of protein experts from around the world who got together and wrote this paper, surveying all the literature in the world, looking at this and what we should be doing.

And it was called the PROT-AGE study.

>> What's it called?

>> PROT-AGE study.

It's in the book.

And, essentially, it says, look, as we get older, we need more protein, not less.

>> As you older, we need more protein?

Because our body, it's harder to keep the protein.

>> That's right.

>> It's probably harder to keep the muscle, right?

>> Right.

So there's a phenomenon called anabolic resistance, where anabolic means to build, to build muscle.

So we want to build muscle, but there's resistance of the muscles to build more muscle.

So you need more exercise and more protein.

So key is to eat a good dose of protein about an hour to two after a workout.

That's the best way.

And then you can add some things to it like creatine or other things.

Now, if you're vegan, you can also add amino acids.

You can eat your plant proteins, but then you need to add amino acids.

And I've seen these, you know, really jacked up bodybuilders who are vegan.

I'm like, "Well, how do you do that?"

"Oh, we, like, eat, you know, so much plant protein shakes," these highly processed, pulverized things that are jacked up with all sorts of amino acids.

It's cheating a little bit.

>> Sure, sure.

>> So you can't really get it directly from the food.

>> Plants.

>> Yeah, I mean, it's just the science.

I'm not making this up.

I wish it was different.

I mean, I was a vegetarian/vegan for 10 years, and I have a picture of me when I was 40 and 63.

I'll show you the difference.

You won't believe it.

>> Really?

>> Yeah.

You can post it on the... >> We'll post it, yeah, yeah.

>> But it's like, "What?

Who's who?"

Because it's like I look, like, so jacked up at 62 compared to 40.

>> Come on.

>> Yeah.

>> Really?

>> Yeah.

>> And what are you doing differently at 60?

>> I just changed my diet and I did a little bit of band resistance training.

I was always doing yoga, running, biking.

I thought, that's enough.

But then I started doing a little bit resistance training.

I started doing this strategy of, you know, this time-restricted eating and then adding a bunch of protein after my workouts.

And it just -- And it worked.

You want to see?

>> Let's see it.

Yeah, I do want to see.

>> Okay, I'll show you.

>> You have to send it to me.

>> I'll send it to you but it's pretty wild.

Like, I can't quite believe it.

>> Will the same strategy be at 60, in your 60s, as in your 80s?

>> Yeah.

I think, you know, the possibility of staying young longer is amazing.

The research has shown that, if you take even 60 years old, they can perform at the level of 30-year-olds if they're trained right.

So you don't have to lose that much function.

And there's an amazing study on the Tarahumara Indians.

The Tarahumara Indians live in Mexico, and they were really very -- here's here's the picture, by the way.

>> Oh, my gosh.

That's crazy!

>> Yeah.

So the Tarahumara Indians... >> Yeah, we'll put it up on the screen, let 'em see.

>> ...had this belief that, if you were older, you were a better runner.

These were runners.

They would run 100 miles a day.

Right?

They would just do these ultra marathons before there was anything like that.

They would run from village to village, mountain to mountain.

And, so, they went down from Harvard and they tested these people.

And this is the power of mindset, right?

And the beliefs and what that does.

And, so, they believed that, as you got older, you got better.

So, the 20-year-olds are good, the 40-year-olds are better.

And the 60-year-olds were better by every objective metric, their pulmonary function tests, their VO2 max, all their performance metrics that were objective, not just how fast they could run, but all the objective measures of fitness were better than the 20-year-olds, which is unbelievable.

>> Isn't that crazy?

>> And you have receptors on your, like, immune cells, for example, for neurotransmitters.

So if you're stressed, your immune system is eavesdropping on your thoughts.

>> Wow.

>> That's why, if you're stressed, you are more likely to have an infection or get sick, or have other bad health consequences.

>> Why do you think it is that our body is built this way, that a thought can either make us feel and physically transform into joy and health, or feel sick and then become sick.

Why do you think our body -- >> Why?

From an evolutionary point of view?

>> Why do you think that is?

Isn't that crazy?

You think something, it's not actually -- It's in your mind, right?

You know, it's like -- And then, it transfers into your body.

>> Well, I think -- I don't know, Lewis, but I think, you know, we have a built-in stress response system, which we need it.

Like, if we're getting chased by a sabertooth tiger, well, you know, we need to get on a move.

>> Right, right, run.

>> And we need to, like, jack up our cortisol and pump our blood sugar up and get our blood pressure up and get our heart rate up and flood our body with glucose.

And, you know, just all this stuff that needs to -- >> Survive, yeah.

>> It's like, you know, the story of, like, how someone, you know, sees their kid under a car and can lift up a car.

Like, why can that happen, right?

Because we have the system built in to deal with acute stress, and that's a good thing.

The problem is, we have a society and a life that drives chronic, unmitigated, unrelenting stress.

So unless you are very clear about how to discharge that stress.

Because you can't avoid it, right?

But how do you discharge it?

How do you not react?

And how do you have a different perception of relationship to what's happening to you?

>> Yeah.

>> It's all about perception, right?

So I always say stress is the perception of a real or imagined threat to your body.

So it could be a real threat to your body, like a tiger chasing you, or it could be an imagined threat to your ego, like you think your wife's cheating on you, but she's not.

And you get the same physiology.

Or you can have the same input.

Let's say you're James Bond, and I put a gun to your head, versus Woody Allen.

It's going to be a very different set of responses, right?

Same input, very different response.

So that's the beauty of our minds is we have the power over our thoughts.

Remember Viktor Frankl who wrote "Man's Search for Meaning"?

He said, "Between stimulus and response, there's a pause, and in that pause lies a choice.

And in that choice lies our freedom."

For those of you who don't know about Viktor Frankl, he was in Auschwitz and he was a psychiatrist in Auschwitz, and he chose not to let even the most horrific thing that's almost ever happened to human beings affect his own well-being and happiness and inner life.

>> Yeah.

>> That just blows my mind.

>> It's unbelievable.

>> So when you think, "Oh, my life is...and this and that," we always have a choice, you know?

And whether you have stuff or don't have stuff, it's all about our perceptions.

So mindset and your thoughts are a key part of longevity and health.

And having meaning and purpose, that was the other thing in these cultures -- they had so much meaning and purpose.

Like Carmine had such purpose.

He had to go and take care of his sheep, and he had to feed his family.

And he wanted to support the other members of the community by giving them food, and he fed his animals the extra.

And so he had a meaningful life.

And he he also had a very active mind.

He was reading books and learning all the time.

So, you know, that extends your life by up to seven years.

>> Wow.

Having meaning and purpose.

Because you hear the stories sometimes of, like, you know, someone in their older years, their husband or their wife dies, and then, within six months or a year later, they die.

>> Or a week later, yeah.

>> Or a week later, right?

You hear that story often.

>> All the time.

>> And is that because their meaning has lost or just more they have a broken heart and they don't know how to -- >> Both.

I mean, there actually is a phenomenon of a broken heart.

I had a patient with this once who had this incredible wife.

They were deeply in love.

They were married for decades and decades.

She got breast cancer and died, and he was relatively healthy.

And all of a sudden, he went into heart failure.

>> Come on.

>> Like, boom.

And it's in the medical literature.

It's literally a broken heart.

And it causes actual clinical heart failure where your heart muscle can't pump the blood around.

>> Now, that's from -- What is that from?

Is that from thinking?

>> Yes.

>> And then, feeling the heart, you know, the pain in your heart?

>> Yeah.

It's the physiological phenomena that happen when you have a stress response, the flood of all these stress molecules in your body that damages the heart.

And we were able to get him better, but it was through energy healing, which sounds kind of wacky and weird.

>> Mm-hmm.

>> But it was really through his own, you know, getting back in his body, being touched, being held, being energetically reset.

>> Wow.

>> He was able to reverse the heart failure.

It wasn't by taking some fancy drug or getting a heart transplant.

>> So he didn't pass away from that?

>> No, he didn't.

>> But some people do.

>> We fixed it, yeah.

But some people do.

>> They might isolate themselves even more and then their body just starts to shut down.

>> Loneliness is the biggest killer.

>> Really?

>> Loneliness seems to be a bigger risk factor than smoking or bad food or almost anything else.

>> What happens when we're lonely?

>> Again, it's a stress.

We're social creatures, Lewis.

We all are meant to belong.

We have a longing to belong.

And if you look at it from an evolutionary point of view, you stick a human out in the desert or a forest by himself... >> They're not gonna last long.

>> Forget it, you know.

And so this is not true just of humans, but it's all of creation.

And E.O.

Wilson, who was a Harvard professor, wrote many, many books.

He just died, but he was very, very thoughtful guy.

And he wrote a book called "The Social Conquest of the Earth."

And it's about how, from ants to humans, we all work together.

Like ant colonies, right?

They're all working together.

And, so, we have to work together to survive.

And that's why altruism is actually a medicine.

Altruism and serving and helping others actually activates healing mechanisms in our body.

>> Isn't that crazy?

>> It activates dopamine in the same way that cocaine or heroin does.

>> Altruism and serving, giving.

>> Yeah, yeah.

>> We hope you enjoyed this episode and found it valuable.

Stay tuned for more from "The School of Greatness" coming soon on public television.

Again, I'm Lewis Howes.

And if no one has told you lately, I want to remind you that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter.

Now it's time to go out there and do something great.

If you'd like to continue on the journey of greatness with me, please check out my website lewishowes.com, where you'll find over 1,000 episodes of "The School of Greatness" show, as well as tools and resources to support you in living your best life.

>> The online course Find Your Greatness is available for $19.

Drawn from the lessons Lewis Howes shares in "The School of Greatness," this interactive course will guide you through a step-by-step process to discover your strengths, connect to your passion and purpose, and help create your own blueprint for greatness.

To order, go to lewishowes.com/tv.

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