Great Pods
Mark Hyman: Do THIS For 10 Days and You'll Stop Feeling Like Crap! (Doctors Won’t Tell You THIS)

Key Points

Average newborn babies have 287 toxins in their umbilical cord blood before taking their first breath
Inflammation is at the root cause of almost all chronic illnesses and aging itself
Sugar and starch are highly inflammatory - Americans average a pound of sugar and flour per day
Ultraprocessed food makes up 60% of American diet and 73% of grocery store shelves
93.2% of Americans are metabolically unhealthy - only 6.8% have proper metabolic function
Food is medicine and can change gene expression, hormones, brain chemistry, and immune system within minutes
10-day elimination diet can provide 70% reduction in chronic disease symptoms
Visceral belly fat acts as an incubator for inflammation, causing heart attacks, strokes, cancer, and diabetes
Most autoimmune diseases can be reversed by addressing root causes like gut health and removing inflammatory foods
67% of people are deficient in basic nutrients even at levels that prevent deficiency diseases
Hunter-gatherers historically consumed 22 teaspoons of sugar per year vs. 22 teaspoons per day today
Americans eat 8 grams of fiber daily vs. historical 150 grams, affecting blood sugar and inflammation
33% of Americans have positive autoimmune antibodies indicating disease or pre-disease state
Environmental toxins, processed foods, antibiotics, and stress are major drivers of autoimmune conditions
Mental health issues like depression and anxiety often have physiological root causes including nutrient deficiencies
Regular blood testing can detect diseases like cancer in early stages when treatable
Sleep, stress management, movement, and thoughts all directly impact biology and health outcomes
Medical schools don't teach nutrition, environmental toxins, microbiome health, or how to create optimal health
Full Transcript

Language: en
The average newborn baby today has 287
toxins in their umbilical cord blood
before they take their first breath.
The ongoing debate over which foods are
most healthy is a subject of
co-founder and chief medical officer of
Function Health, Dr. Mark Heyman.
What is inflammation doing to your body?
Inflammation is at the root cause of
almost all chronic illnesses and aging
itself. That visceral fat is like a
incubator for inflammation. A fire in
your belly cause heart attacks, strokes,
cancer, diabetes.
What are the highly inflammatory foods?
The sugar and starch. In America,
average eat a pound of sugar and flour a
day per person.
What do you think the US healthcare
system needs to be focused on?
All the ultrarocessed food, which is 60%
of our diet. You know, we have a whole
food system that's turned into
ultrarocessed food that we're consuming
in massive amounts. It's 73% of what's
on the grocery store shelves.
Can someone know that they have some
symptoms of an autoimmune disease? You
might be a little bit tired. You might
be a little constipated. You might a
little dry skin. Your nails might crack
a little bit. You might feel a little
depressed. You might have lower sex
drive. Gain a little bit of weight.
People don't think of these as a
disease. But when you add them all
if someone's listening right now and
they're thinking, "I feel like crap."
What do they do?
The number one health and wellness
J Shetty.
The one, the only J. Shetty.
Hey everyone, welcome back to OnPurpose,
the place you come to become happier,
healthier, and more healed, where we
talk to the experts and the thought
leaders who illuminate to us how we can
truly transform our lives. Today's guest
is one of your favorites, one of our
favorites here on OnPurpose, someone
that I know personally and grateful to
know off the screen as well as on the
screen talking about none other than Dr.
Mark Heyman. Dr. Mark Hyman is a
practicing family physician, founder of
the Ultra Wellness Center and founder of
the Functional Medicine Center at the
Cleveland Clinic. A leader in functional
medicine, Dr. Mark Heyman authored 15
New York Times bestsellers and hosts the
Dr. Heman Show, a podcast that you
should definitely subscribe to if you
haven't already. and he's known for his
food as medicine philosophy and work in
addressing the root causes of chronic
disease through nutrition and lifestyle.
Please welcome back to OnPurpose, Dr.
Mark Hyman. Mark, it's always great to
have you on the show. I'm so happy to
have you back.
Thanks, Jay. It's good to be here. I
love this place.
Mark, I'm actually really grateful
you're here because we actually had a
date scheduled for you to be on the
Yeah. And then I sadly learned from your
team that it had to be cancelled,
but it was for
cuz I almost died.
Yeah. It was really extreme.
Talk to us about this near-death
experience because I've known you to be
a longevity expert,
a health expert.
You always look in great health. You
always feel in great health. Every time
I've been around you, your energy is
You you carry it with you. I know you
practice what you preach. I know it's
not made up.
Yeah. You're you're an authentic person
in the work that you do, it impacts
millions of people worldwide and then
you have a near-death experience.
Walk me through what happened.
Yeah. You know, thanks Jay for asking. I
um I joke that my biological age is 39,
but my back age is 139. And when I was
32, I lived in Idaho in a logging town.
I was chopping wood and carrying heavy
wood. And I ruptured a disc. And it it
basically caused massive damage and a
permanent paralysis of my right calf. So
I've limped for 30 odd years and my
back's just degenerated and I developed
you know a lot of degenerative disc
disease and so I've had a lot of back
pain and I ended up having an injection
which is pretty common treatment to help
relieve pain and one of the risks of
injections of any needle is infection
and in a closed space of the spine it
just took off and very quickly within a
couple days I couldn't walk uh within a
week I had surgery they opened me up
they closed me up because they couldn't
reach the abscess it was on the front
and they said, "Uh, we can't do
anything." And basically left me to die.
Gave me antibiotics and said, "Cross
your fingers and here's some
painkillers." And
they said there was no no cure.
Mm- And then a friend of mine was uh a
doctor called me. He said, "What's
happened? I heard you're sick." And I
told him, he said, "You need a second
opinion." So I got an opinion from the
top neuros surgery center in the world
in UCSF. And they said, "Get out here
right away." So I took a ambulance jet a
and had s another surgery a month later
that was really relieved the absess. But
in that intervening period I got septic.
I was feverish. I lost 25 lbs from where
I am now. I was in bed. I couldn't eat
sitting up. I literally had to lay down
with four pills under my leg. And after
the surgery, thank God it worked. But it
was a it was a hailmary surgery. And
they said I was maybe a couple of days
away from dying. And I remember, you
know, going under anesthesia
on the day of the second surgery and I
was like, this could be my last moment
of consciousness in the aftermath of
that, you know, I had to sort of I was
on a walker. I couldn't stand up. I
couldn't brush my own teeth. I couldn't
wipe my own ass. Like it was like it was
bad. And I had to depend on other
people. But slowly, you know, just
determined I clawed my way back to
health and using every principle that I
know of how to create health. But I'm
65. I'm not a spring chicken. And I I
know what to do. And I did it. And it
and I wasn't sure if it was going to
work at 65. You know, how much can you
get back, but I put on more muscle and
I'm stronger than I was even before the
surgery. Uh, and I just did it every
day. It was like compounding interest.
Every day I ate the best I could. I got
in the gym with my physical therapist, a
trainer every day, sometimes twice a
day. I got treatments and acupuncture.
And I just clawed my way back. took my
supplements, took my creatine, took all
the things I needed to do and uh it took
about five months and and then I really
started to kind of come back and it's
only been 7 months from the recording of
this podcast. And so I'm I'm back and I
feel good and I feel actually better
than I ever have because I've doubled
down on my health practices.
Oh my goodness.
But it sort of shows you, you know, if
you if you know the laws of nature, the
laws of biology, how the body works, how
it's designed, how to create health,
right? Because doctors don't learn about
that. They don't learn about how to
create health. They learn about how to
diagnose and treat disease, which is
important. But if you say to your
doctor, "How do I create health,
doctor?" And they're like, "I don't
know. Just eat better, exercise." But
there's is it's a very specific
methodology. It's really what functional
medicine is about. It's about how do you
create optimal function
and how do you create optimal health and
what is the science of that? And so
doing that, I was able to actually build
myself back up and create health and
actually feel better now than I did
before the surgery. Oh my gosh. What did
it take for you to rebuild? Because
we always talk about being proactive. We
always talk about
being well first, which you focused on
and you have.
And when you end up in a position like
that, it's hard mentally.
And then of course it's harder
physically. As you said, your body is
65, even if your biological age is 39.
There's a reality to that.
What were the key things you had to work
on? You talked about building muscle
again. What what were the things you had
to do in order to get back to standing
in front of me right now and looking
The the biggest um component I think of
of your health is the thing that's
between your ears. It's it's your
mindset. It's
something you talk about a lot. It's
your determination. It's the belief that
you can actually get better. And and I
was physiologically depressed. I lost
half my blood volume. So my blood count
was half of what it should have been. I
was super anemic. I My hormones all were
in the toilet. My testosterone, my
thyroid, nothing was working. I was very
nutritionally depleted. I hadn't been
able to eat.
And and so for me, it was it was just
the will to get up every day and do the
little things even when my mind was like
just stay in bed.
Just give up. It's not worth it. You
know, and I think for a lot of people,
it's hard to divorce your thoughts from
reality. I think you you you know, you
lived in a monastery and that's
basically what you learn is how you're
not your thoughts. You're not your
beliefs. You're not your body. You're
not right. And and so, you know, but
when you're in it, like it's you're in a
body, you're in a physical body that
feels bad. How do you how do you fix
that? And so that's what I've done for
30 plus years with my patients with
functional medicine is when they feel
bad and a lot of Americans out there
feel bad. You know, six out of 10 of us
have a chronic illness and 93% of us are
metabolically unhealthy.
Most of the population has what I call
FLC syndrome. That's when you feel like
crap, you know. Yeah. you know whether
it's just little things like painful
periods or headaches or constipation or
joint aches or skin rashes or whatever
it is you know people suffer and there
is a way through that and so for me it
was it was a mindset of not believing my
thoughts and no matter how
physiologically depleted I was to just
do the baby steps every day that got me
to where I am now which is feeling
awesome and I was in the gym at Equinox
working out for an hour this morning I
was like right
that's amazing And I'm so I'm so glad
that you've I mean you've helped so many
people over the years, but it's a
special feeling when you reuse your own
work to rebuild. I mean, you must have
so much conviction and confidence and
everything you're about to share
in this episode now to help everyone
else. You must have a double sense of
affirmation that this stuff works
because you've had to do it in the most
dire of circumstances.
Absolutely. And I had to track all my
blood work and I had to track my my
nutrient status and you know adjust it
and customize it. But it was you know
having the the knowledge that I have and
the data I have which really now is is
through the magic of technology and the
explosion of the changes in our
scientific framework of how we
understand the body. like we're in this
like paradigm shifting moment in in
medicine and healthcare and and the the
the promise of actually reversing
chronic disease, of creating health, of
people getting free from a lot of the
suffering, the needless suffering that
they have is is now really possible. And
that's really what I'm so excited about.
I mean, I'm just like 65 and I'm working
harder than I've ever worked because I
believe that there's this moment where
all the things that I've done one-on-one
with people or through my books and you
know, people come up and say, "Oh, Dr.
Heyman, you saved my life." or whatever.
I'm like, it's one by one by one. But
what if what if this can scale through
through the ability of technology to
make sense of all your personal health
data, give customize an exact plan for
you, and guide you exactly on what to
do, when to do it, and how to adjust it
over time. It's that's where we are.
It's pretty It's pretty cool.
Absolutely.
What do if someone's listening right now
and they're saying, "Dr. Markman, I feel
like crap."
Yeah. Like if someone's listening right
now and they're thinking, "I feel like
Where should they start? What do they
That's a great great question. You know,
there's a more serious version, Jay.
It's called FLS. It's when you feel like
[&nbsp;__&nbsp;]
Yeah. Right.
But uh you know, I I um you know, have
found that food is the most powerful
tool to change your biology. It's
basically code or instructions that
changes your physiology with every
single bite. It changes your gene
expression. It changed your hormones,
your brain chemistry, your immune
system, your microbiome, your
neurotransmitters. Everything has
changed not in like years or decades,
but literally in minutes. And and so
food is the most powerful way to quickly
shift your biology. And most people,
Jay, have no clue that what they're
eating is making them feel bad or that
their sense of how they are and their
conditions that they're suffering from
are caused by food. And so what what
I've done through functional medicine is
is it's often called an elimination
diet, but I like to call it an addition
diet because you're you're adding in all
the healing medicinal foods in your
diet. You're taking out the inflammatory
foods. And so, uh, I created a a program
that I've used my patients called the
10-day detox diet. And sometimes I would
have people on for a year. You know, if
I call it the 10-year detox diet, nobody
would do it.
No one's going to sign up.
No one's going to sign up. But but I
call it the because in 10 days it's it's
kind of miraculous. And I run programs
around the world where I have people
come together and we spend a week and
and the average reduction in symptoms
from the FLC syndrome, you know, whether
it's, you know, sinus issues or
allergies or irritable bowel or
headaches or joint pains or acne or
insomnia or depression or all the little
stuff that isn't like, you know, cancer
or dementia or, you know, heart attack
that's more serious. All that stuff
literally you don't have to suffer from
in 10 days.
Yeah. And and there's a 70% reduction in
all symptoms from all diseases in 10
days. I mean, I was like when I first
got to Cleveland Clinic, I I gave a talk
and this gentleman comes up to me and
says, "Dr. Heyman, I have rheumatoator
arthritis, but I did your 10day detox
and it went away in 10 days. Is that
possible?" I'm like, "Yes, possible. It
happened to you." You know,
walk me through the the two types. What
are the medicinal foods and what are the
highly inflammatory foods? So, so the
highly inflammatory foods are obviously
all the ultrarocessed food, which is 60%
of our diet. You know, we have a whole
food system that's designed to produce
commodity crops that's turned into
ultrarocessed food that we're consuming
in massive amounts. It's 73% of what's
on the grocery store shelves. It's hard
to get away from it. And it's it's, you
know, stuff that, you know, you wouldn't
have in your kitchen. You wouldn't have
butilated hydroxy taluine to sprinkle on
your vegetables or mono and diglycerides
and bottle it to put on your salad
dressing, right? It malttodextrin like
all the crap that's in there is super
inflammatory. Emulsifiers, additives,
colors, dyes, and then there's just the
sugar and starch. I mean, we eat we each
in America average eat a pound of sugar
and flour a day per person. That's an
insane amount of sugar and flour and
that's incredibly inflammatory. Some
people react to dairy. Some people react
to gluten or grains. And so I take away
all the things that that are potentially
reacted, not that they're necessarily
bad foods, but a lot of people have gut
issues and that that people have gut
issues have trouble with grains. And
gluten in this country is very different
than other places like in Europe where
we were just talking about where we both
were this summer. And and they're the
it's a different genetic strain. They
don't use the same chemicals on it. They
don't spray it with glyphosate, which is
a microbiome destroyer. Uh and so that
that often is a factor in causing leaky
gut and inflammation. So I remove that
remove all that sugar, processed food,
flour, grains, uh and add in all the
foods that are healing, alcohol,
caffeine sometimes, and then add in lots
of fruits and vegetables, nuts and
seeds, you know, good quality protein,
lots of good fats, avocados, coconut,
all that stuff. It just pretty simple.
It's like not that hard and it doesn't
have to be that expensive. And uh in in
a very short amount of time, people feel
better. The first few days, people feel
bad because what happens is when you
stop eating the foods that you're
reacting to, uh you get what's called a
a die- off reaction. So basically, all
the immune cells that are busy dealing
with all the crap you're eating all the
time have nothing to do. So they form
these things called immune complexes,
like they glom together, and then it's
like you feel like you have the flu. And
that lasts maybe a couple days. And then
after day three, four or five, you're
like sleeping better. you have more
energy, your head's clear, your symptoms
are getting better, and even in 5 six
days, 70% reduction, and and uh you
know, we we have an online program. It's
called the 10day detox diet. You can go
to 10daydetox.com. We've done it with
thousands of people. It's it's like I'm
always astounded when I see like, does
this really work that well? You know,
cuz it's like it's it almost sounds too
good to be true.
That's incredible.
Uh but it's just it just shows you that
food is medicine and it's not it's not
metaphorically medicine. It literally is
medicine. And a lot of people have
digestive issues
and it's really continuing. A lot of
people have this low-grade inflammatory
stuff going on in their bodies and and
it's really it's unfortunate because we
know how to fix it and when a baby comes
out it's generally perfect, right? It's
beautiful. It's healthy. Everything
works, right? And then things break
down. But imagine it like if your
computer is, you know, not working or
it's on the fritz and like my WhatsApp
wasn't working today and I just had to
reboot it, right? Or reboot my computer.
How do you do that with your body? 93%
it's been determined of our health
issues are not genetic.
It's everything that we're exposed to.
It's what we eat. It's movement. It's
sleep. It's stress. It's our gut
microbiome. It's environmental toxins.
It's our thoughts. Our thoughts actually
transform our biology. Literally, it's
the biggest between your ears. And so,
all those things you have control over.
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I want to dive into each of those three
areas of the inflammatory foods. First
of all, for anyone who's not aware or
doesn't totally understand, what is
inflammation? What is that doing to your
body? Why is it important to
have medicinal foods and avoid
inflammatory foods?
Yeah. Well, you know, Jay, inflammation
is is something that now is being
understood to be at the root cause of
almost all chronic illnesses and aging
itself. You know, you don't know if you
have inflammation, right? You have a
sore throat, you get an infected finger
from a splinter, you sprain your ankle,
you know, those are signs of
inflammation. Yeah, those are signs of
inflammation. But there's another kind
of inflammation that's a little more
silent and and we can measure that
through blood tests like Crack Rack
Protein which we do through function
health and the the amount of of people
who are inflamed is just so massive
because of our diet. And so that creates
this elevation in in these molecules in
our body called cytoines. And you from
co everybody heard about the cytoine
storm. What killed people was this
overwhelming inflammation. And and why
did Americans die at a far greater
rates? We are 4% of the population but
16% of the deaths and cases of COVID in
the world. So four times what we should
have been. It wasn't because we didn't
have access to medical care or we didn't
have good doctors. It's because we're
all pre-inflamed. We're all
metabolically healthy. And the the worst
kind of inflammation is that that comes
from your belly fat. So I I just saw a
guy a couple days ago who was 52 years
old and you know looked pretty healthy
but he had like a little gut on him like
not big and he had 32% body fat in his
belly and that visceral fat is like a
incubator for inflammation. It's
basically a fire in your belly. And that
visceral fat caused heart attacks,
strokes, cancer, obviously diabetes.
And and that he he had a blockage, a 90%
blockage in his heart. And and it was
because he had this inflamed silent
killer inside of him. And so so it's not
just inflammation that you know by
getting a sore throat. It's it's the
quiet inflammation that you don't know
you have.
Yeah. And and that leads to all these
things like can like whe not just the
obvious things like autoimmune diseases
which we can talk about allergies but
you know things that are more subtle
whether it's you know hormonal issues
like menstrual cramps or um issues like
migraines or headaches or fatigue or all
these things are are signs of of this
fire raging through your body that you
don't know about that's killing you. And
so by eating an anti-inflammatory diet
and removing the inflammatory foods like
your body will quickly reset. I mean
your body has this innate intelligence.
This is what's such a miracle for me
when you think about it. Your your body
is a healing machine. Like look what
happened to me. Like I mean I was in
bed. I was couldn't walk. I was on a
walker. I was emaciated. I was close to
death. And when I put the right inputs
in, my body healed and it it's amazing.
I've had patients who were 65 with heart
failure, diabetes, hypertension, kidneys
failing, liver failing, who actually
didn't take 10 days, but like you know 3
months they were off all their
medications. They reverse all these
conditions. The even at 65 or 66 years
old, the body can do that. And so that's
really what I want for people. I want
them to have access to the knowledge,
the ability, and the tools to be able to
do this for themselves and to try it.
And I don't I don't say the smartest
doctor in your room is your own body. If
you listen to it, gee, when I eat this,
my stomach doesn't feel good. When I
have that, I get a headache. But most
people don't connect the dots between
what they eat and how they feel.
Yeah. We base it all on lifestyle. And
we also, like the gentleman you were
treating, we still live in this world
of, oh, I'm not that big, small. We're
looking at this physical attribute when
actually the inflammation is all
happening on the inside.
Yeah. like he was jogging every day. He
was eating healthy.
Yeah. He's doing all the right things.
But but there's this hidden part. One of
those hidden things is sugar.
I find it really shocking when I was
playing pickle ball the other day
and someone said to me that, "Oh, let's
have this drink." Like we didn't have we
we we didn't have any water accessible
at the time. We were all feeling
thirsty. It was pretty hot.
And and he had these like packs of
drinks. And so he handed to me. My wife
has trained me to
look a label.
Look a label. But I turned it around and
it was like 40% of your daily sugars in
this little pack, right? It was tiny. It
was I don't even know what it was
40% of your daily sugars. Had all these
other non-natural ingredients I didn't
recognize at all. Massive list.
And and I said to him, I said, "Dude,
I'm not drinking this."
Yeah. I was like, I'm not going to have
it. I was like, I'm not going to have
40% of my sugars in in this. And I try
and avoid refined sugar anyway.
And but to him that was crazy. He was
just like, oh, dude, it's fine. like
we're running for like 3 hours like we
you know it's just a hydration. I was
like yeah but you don't need the sugar
with it. And and I find that sugar is
something I still get a lot of push back
on people. Yeah. People even that's
that's my reaction
cuz I feel like I've been so like well
educated by yourself the other experts
on the show my wife who constantly cuz I
used to be addicted to sugar.
Well easy
and all of a sudden you get so talk to
me about sugar because I think there's a
way in which we've been brainwashed to
think it's okay.
Yeah. No, actually Jay, you know, we
know alcohol is addictive, right? But
there's been large studies done using
the Yale food addiction scale, which is
a scientifically validated metric that
measures food addiction, and it's
primarily sugar and starch. And 14% of
people in this country are alcoholics,
but 14% are also addicted to food. And
14% of kids, which is a lot of kids, so
it's it's biologically addictive. Uh, a
little bit is not going to hurt you. If
you're healthy, if you're fit, you can
have some. It's it's just the volume
that we have in this culture. I mean,
it's something that our bi biology
doesn't know what to do with that.
Historically, we were hunter gathers. We
had 22 teaspoons a year. Now, the
average person has 22 teaspoons a day.
That that is mind-blowing. 22 teaspoons
a year. So, you were a hunter gather,
you'd like get some honey. Oh my god, I
found honey. You know, um and and you'd
eat it. Uh but it was hard to get sugar
and you were more active then too.
Yeah. And you were running all the time.
You're looking for that jar of honey
once. Yeah. Not jaw, sorry.
It was actually I was I was in the Hadza
tribe which is one of the last
huntergather tribes in in Africa. And
they they eat a lot of honey. They eat
like 20% of calories honey but they're
super fit healthy because they're just
like eating tons of fiber. So they
basically all the roots and the tubers
have massive amounts of fiber. Americans
eat about eight grams of fiber a day. We
were historically as hunter gathers
having 150 grams a day. Uh and and fiber
basically is like a sponge. So if for
example, if you take your Coca-Cola and
you throw in a bunch of Metamucil, it's
going to have a very different effect on
your blood sugar. It's going to turn to
gel first of all if you leave it there
for long enough. And then if you drink
it, it's not going to cause the same
spike. So it just not it just the whole
context of our diet is just become
highly processed, lots of sugar, and it
and it drives the visceral fat. So sugar
and starch. By the way, below the neck,
your body can't tell the difference
between a bowl of corn flakes and a bowl
of sugar or a loaf of bread and a, you
know, a bowl of sugar. It's the same. In
fact, sometimes in terms of glycemic
index, the the bread is worse because
it's pure glucose, whereas sugar is
fructose and glucose, which has
different effects on your blood sugar,
but basically they're both the same. And
and what that does is that is that
drives the deposition of belly fat. And
that belly fat, which is not just
holding up your pants, it's it's
metabolically
very active. It produces tons of
inflammation, screws up your hormones,
it causes infertility, it causes
Alzheimer's disease, it causes cancer,
it causes diabetes, causes heart
attacks, it causes aging itself. And
when when you look around in America,
93% of us, well, 93.2 to be exact, have
this metabolic dysfunction. That means
6.8% of us don't, which is frightening.
Frightening. And And that's not how
humans evolved. We didn't evolve like
that. People, the Native Americans,
they're, you know, genetically diabetic.
Well, no, they're not. Like the Pima
Indians 100 years ago had no diabetes,
no obesity, um, no heart attacks, and
now they're, you know, get 80% get
diabetes by the time they're 30. And
even two-year-olds get type diabetes
because they're just drinking tons of
sugar, sodas, and flour and all the
commodities that we send to the
reservations that are all the crap we
shouldn't be eating.
Uh so, so yeah, if you put your genes in
the wrong environment, the genes may
load the gun, but the environment pulls
the trigger.
I want to give a shout out to this
incredible company that you brought My
Way, Function Health.
When you first brought it to me, I was
so impressed at what it does because I
think everything we're talking about.
The challenge is we don't know until we
feel something in quite an extreme way.
Right? So, we just don't know as humans.
We don't know these things. We were
never taught them.
If I didn't meet my wife, if I didn't
have this podcast, I wouldn't be
educated. I just how would I know this?
And when you talk about the 93.2%,
that's all of us who just don't know.
And then you, my wife, and you and
people like that are the 6.8%.
I love your wife, by the way.
And all of a sudden, you get educated
and then that's what functional health
does. The fact that you can take these,
you look under the hood,
you can get all the results. You know,
from being at home or or, you know,
popping to get a get a test done, you
have access
to actually know what's happening inside
your body. And I became a proud investor
in the company when you first brought it
to me because I'd never seen someone
that kind of data available at mass and
at scale. I was going to some concier
services which I'm very fortunate to
have access to.
But I didn't see how the world the 93.2%
could have access to these things. And
that's what functional health's doing.
Yeah. I mean imagine imagine driving
your car. You don't have any dashboard.
You don't know how fast you're going.
You know how much gas in the car, you
know how much oil's in there. You know
if the engine lights good, you know, if
your tire pressure is good. I mean,
think of the amount of sensors and
information you get from your car these
days, right? We practice medicine today
like listening to the noises a car makes
and hoping we can figure it out instead
of looking under the hood. And so, you
know, I believe we should be testing,
not guessing what's going on with our
health. And the wearables are great, you
know, or a ring or a Fitbit or, you
know, Apple Watch, awesome. Boop. They
tell you a lot, but they don't go under
the skin. And so you need to know what's
happening in your biology. And the truth
is that disease doesn't just happen like
that. One day you get a heart attack.
It's a slow progression over decades.
And you can see the continuum of what
happens. And you can see slight changes
and variations that will compound over
time and make you ultimately very sick.
And the beautiful thing about functional
health is you can actually get your
biomarkers done. There's over 110
biomarkers. Your initial test you do a
second test mid year. You can add on
test for looking at other things whether
you want toxins or allergens or Lyme
disease or whatever you want to know
about yourself. And then you get this
beautiful dashboard that shows you
exactly what's going on and like you
know you get like in a car dashboard and
you can see the change over time and
then you can learn what to do about it
and what's going on with your body and
how to make adjustments and you get all
the information. It's supported by all
the scientific literature in the world
by knowledge experts by your own
personal data set and it's really
medicine designed for you and it's it's
really quite a remarkable thing and
people seem to have taken to it because
we have you know hundreds of thousand
members and people are learning so much
about their health and I've been shocked
at the data that we're finding you know
like we found all these cancers. I was
just reviewing our our cancer screening
and god you know people don't know they
have cancer. I mean, I had a friend who
just died like a month ago who from
breast cancer at 45 years old was
heartbreaking, you know, and and now
through the blood tests you can get
through function health, you can
actually see like a liquid biopsy for 50
different cancers
and I was reviewing the spreadsheet of
all the people and what they found and
in a follow-up and I'm like they didn't
know they had cancer and then they found
it in an early stage and then it saves
their lives as opposed to waiting until
too late. So, you know, it's always and
and the whole thing about the metabolic
health. I mean, most doctors don't check
insulin, which is extremely important to
know about because insulin is what goes
up first, not your blood sugar. Most
doctors don't look at the right
cholesterol test, APOB is the most
important. I had a friend send me an
article, Dr. Heman, look at this
article. It's about this latest new test
for predicting heart attack risk. It's
better than any other test. I'm like,
what is it? I'm like, I looked it up and
I was like, oh, it's called Apo B. I'm
like, I've been testing that for 30
years. It's the most predictive, but
people check your LDL cholesterol.
That's not the thing that matters.
And and so we do that and we do deeper
analysis of your metabolic health, your
nutritional health, looking at toxins,
your hormones, uh, and we're finding
autoimmune diseases. I mean, I I looked
it up uh before I came on the podcast.
those cures because it it you know about
8% according to the you know CDC of
Americans have an autoimmune disease but
when I looked at our data we're seeing
33% have a positive autoimmune antibbody
which is incredible I mean that a third
of Americans have some either autoimmune
disease or pre-autoimmune disease and
there's stuff you can do about it and
get to the root cause and and what's
beautiful about it is that we use root
cause medicine not just oh you have an
autoimmune disease take this drug or you
have high cholesterol, take this drug.
It's like, well, well, how do I solve
this using all the world scientific
knowledge about how to best do this
through lifestyle and dealing with root
causes and creating health rather than
just mitigating symptoms or suppressing
symptoms. So, it's it's pretty exciting.
And and I think, you know, we we we now
have full body imaging for $4.99. You
know, you can get your whole blood test
for $4.99$ dollar 37 a day. I'm really
impressed by what you offered and I love
what Function Health has done so much
that I didn't just invest. I got every
member of my team a membership.
That's amazing.
Because I couldn't think of a better
give people than
accessing their knowledge and knowing
what's happening inside their body. Like
if I want people to perform at work and
feel their best and care about their
health, to me it felt like the right
thing to do. And so, and I know you've
actually created a
uh you've created a discount for our
community for us. Yeah.
So, what are you doing for us? It's
it's functionhealth.com/jshedy
and you get a $100 off your membership.
It's a membership twice your year
So, it's you know 400 bucks or $3.99
and and uh and you get to know what's
going on. It's and the gift of health is
you know what you did for your employees
is amazing because there is no better
gift than the gift of health.
Yeah. You only realize that when it when
it goes away. And I've had many episodes
in my life where my health has not been
And that's when you realize just how
valuable it is to know sooner,
you know, earlier and know before and
you know, I'm glad. So that's great. So
functionhealth.com/jshed.
That's right.
$100 off
and and as I said, I'm an investor and,
you know, really proud to be involved
really excited to to get it out. I want
to talk about the autoimmune diseases
because it feels like
I feel like right now I'm at that age
where I'm either hearing about
autoimmune or cancer
or sadly people dying.
More than I ever have in my entire
That's not just because I'm getting
older though.
It's becoming more prevalent.
It is. I mean the the the hockey stick
of chronic diseases is going like this.
It's really striking. I mean things that
were rare 150 years ago, you know, turn
of the or 120 years ago, turn of the
1900s, if you had a heart attack in a
hospital, it would be like seeing this
rare case of malaria in like Manhattan,
you know, like all the doctors would
rush around to see this unusual case.
Diabetes wasn't even a thing in type two
diabetes. If you look at the records of
Mass General in the 1850s, it wasn't
even a diagnosis. You know, people
didn't have it. So why why are we seeing
this explosion and autoimmune disease?
There are over 100 different autoimmune
diseases, you know, everything from
Hashimoto's thyroiditis, which is
affecting one in five women. That's an
autoimmune thyroid condition, one in 10
men. U lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, MS,
colitis, Crohn's disease. There are over
100 different autoimmune diseases and
people are suffering from these things.
And the drugs that we use are incredibly
toxic. They basically suppress your
immune system. They have all these side
effects and they're extremely expensive
and they don't necessarily always work
that well. And the question then is why
are we doing this? I mean this is what
functional medicine is about is what
function is created on the basis of this
idea of why. Not what disease do you
have and what drug do I get but why? And
the reason why we're seeing such an
explosion about autoimmune disease is a
combination of different factors. One,
our diet has changed dramatically over
the last 50 to 70 years because of
industrialization of agriculture, the
use of pesticides, herbicides. The
increasing rates of C-section means you
don't colonize your gut. And 60% of your
immune system is in your gut. And a lot
of autoimmune disease is caused by
trouble with the gut. the increasing
rates of formula feeding, you know, not
breast milk, which protects the baby's
immune system, is necessary for the
development of the I mean, 25% of the
the calories in breast milk is not
digestible by the baby. It's to feed the
microbiome, which is amazing.
Yeah. It's crazy. And when you eat have
formula, you don't have that in there,
and so the microbiomes are disturbed and
then you get leaky gut. We use lots of
antibiotics in children. We have
accelerated vaccine schedules. Now,
vaccines I believe in. I think they're
important. But like when I was a kid and
when I my kids were kids, it was that
long ago, there was, you know, a limited
set of vaccines. And now it's
free-for-all. And vac
like you got to take 15 or 16.
Yeah. It's like 72 different jabs of of
shots. And so that that affects your
immune system. And they they they do
they do things that affect your immune
system by putting in irritants like
aluminum. Uh, and then the exposure to
environmental chemicals has exploded.
Heavy metals, pesticide. The average
newborn baby today, Jay, has 287
toxins in their umbilical cord blood
before they take their first breath,
including stuff that's been banned for
years like DDT and dioxin, PCBs,
phalates, flame retardants, lead,
mercury, pesticides, herbicides. I mean,
you name it, it's in there. And so, all
that has an impact. And they're called
oigens. There's a whole science around
this that these are environmental toxins
that cause autoimmunity. And I've seen
many patients with with autoimmune
diseases that we I cured by getting rid
of their heavy metals or detoxifying
their bodies. Uh and so these these
toxins are a huge factor. And then
you've got all the modern stresses. You
know, we don't sleep. You know, we're
under too much chronic stress. You know,
light pollution. Who knows what EMF? I
don't even know if that's a thing, but
I'm not saying it is. I'm saying it's
all this stuff that we never had to deal
with and we're just seeing our immune
system become so disregulated and the
ultrarocessed food revolution has been
another huge factor because in
ultrarocessed food there's all these
emulsifiers. Emulsifiers are basically
the things that make stuff creamy and
you know like if you ever got some of
the like nut milks and they separate out
when you put in your coffee it's cuz
they don't use emulsifiers, right?
Right? And emulsifiers basically make
things creamy and they're used in almost
all ostroposed food and they damage the
gut lining and they they cause a what we
call a leaky gut where the cells come
apart and then food and bacteria leak in
between your cells and then right
underneath your cell lining which is
just one cell thick is most of your
immune system. And think about why is
why is most of your immune system in
your gut? Well, it's cuz we're exposed
to most of the foreign stuff every day.
You're putting pounds of of foreign food
in there and you're putting all the
bacteria from your microbiome. There's
three lbs of bacteria in there that is,
you know, basically a sewer, you know,
and it's like one you're one cell away
from a sewer. And so when that breaks
down, your immune system go, this isn't
me. What's going on? And it starts
attacking things. And then it creates
just a lot of of mistaken identity
things we call molecular mimicry where
it thinks it's attacking a bacteria or
food, but it then'll attack your joints
or your eyes or your your your nerves
and get MS and your thyroid gland. So
basically, we're seeing this explosion
and and the beautiful thing is by
understanding the root causes that you
can actually reverse it. I had an
autoimmune disease. Um I actually had
mold in my house. I' I've gotten
everything known to man. I've got Lyme
disease, mold disease, and I had I lived
in an old barn. I got really bad mold
poisoning. Um, and then on top of that,
I had a root canal,
had it removed, had an antibiotic.
The antibiotic called something called
Cadiff, which is a bacteria that causes
really bad gut infections that turned
into ulcerative colitis. My whole
intestinal tract was just one big red
mess, and I had to heal it. And so uh
you know there is a methodology for
creating health and that's that's that's
that's what I want people to know.
That's why functional health is so
important because it teaches you how to
turn on your own innate healing system.
You've got a healing regenerative repair
and renewal system. That's why I could
come back from the dead because I knew
how to turn it on, you know, and that's
what I want everybody to know. And
that's really why I do what I do, why I
have the podcast, why I write books, why
I travel around speaking like you. It's
the same. It's the same movie,
different different story. And you know
what what are the signs for someone
who's listening of a weak immune system
and a strong immune system? Yeah.
How do they tell?
I mean, you know, the inflammation
immune system are a little bit different
cuz you're, you know, you're you can be
inflamed but have a weaker immune
system. So, um, frequent infections,
frequent colds, um, feeling run down. I
mean, there there are signs that that
your immune system's not working. um and
and uh you get, you know, less resilient
to stress, you get sick more easily. And
so there's those are signs that there's
problems. And and one of the things we
find through function health is that so
many people have nutritional
deficiencies and nutrients like zinc and
vitamin D and iron. These play big role
in your immune function. And and
it's actually even supplements is such a
bad word for supplements because it
sounds like something that you know,
you're just supplementing, but it's like
it's not necessary.
Yeah, exactly. That's what I mean,
right? The word supplement in and of
itself feels like it's an add-on
rather than like this is necessary.
Right. Like I think we're still living
in this time where supplements haven't
become the norm. People see it as some
health hack tip as opposed to no this is
just what your body needs as nutrients.
My joke is I don't think anybody needs
supplements but only under certain
conditions. They have to hunt and gather
their own wild food. They have to drink
pure clean water. Be exposed to no
environmental toxins. Have no chronic
stress. Sleep 9 hours a night. Go to bed
with the sun. Wake up with the sun.
Right. Then then if you do all that, you
might not need self like
I'm good with the last six, but bad at
the first three.
You haven't gone hunting today.
Yeah. Yeah. I didn't go hunting today.
And and so our soils have become damaged
because of industrial the soil, right?
And the way your plants get nutrients is
because of the organic matter in the
soil has a symbiotic relationship with
the microbes in the soil and with the
plant roots that then allows it to
extract the nutrients. But if you
basically grow plants in dirt, not soil
where there's no nutrients or they're
not accessible because the body that the
plants can't get them because they don't
have the right organic matter to create
the symbiotic relationship. Your
broccoli today is 50% less nutrients
than it did 50 years ago. Plus, you
know, we do a lot of things to cause
more stress to our bodies. We need more
nutrients. And like magnesium is a very
big nutritional deficiency because when
you're stressed, you pee out magnesium
and then we don't eat a lot of magnesium
rich foods like nuts and seeds and beans
and leafy greens, right? It's not a big
part of Americ's diet. So, a lot of
people are low in magnesium uh and low
in vitamin D. We see 80% of people being
insufficient or deficient in vitamin D,
which is incredibly important for immune
function. And I mean in COVID, if your
vitamin D was low, you were 75% more
likely to end up in the ICU and die.
Whereas if your vitamin D was over 50 in
this big Israeli study, there were no
deaths. So it's that it's that powerful
there. There there are things that
regulate almost every biochemical
reaction in your body. And you've got 37
billion trillion chemical reactions
every second happening. Every one of
those. And that's a big number. I don't
even know how many zeros that is slot. I
think there 27 zeros. Um and and every
single one of those reactions requires a
nutrient to work as a co-actor for the
enzyatic reaction. And most of us are
deficient. In fact, with function
health, we do deep nutritional testing,
omega-3s, vitamin D, all the B vitamins,
iron, so forth. And we find 67% of our
members who you think would be forward
thinking about their health are
deficient in nutrients. Not at the level
that I would think would be optimal, but
at the level that prevents a deficiency
disease. So like not the ideal amount,
but the bare minimum so you don't get
like ricketetts or scurvby or you know
like and that's and that's 67%. So if
you expanded the criteria to be what's
optimal, it would probably be even more.
Yeah, it's it's scary to think about it,
but it's so important to start being
aware right now. Can someone know that
they have some symptoms of an autoimmune
disease? Like, is it possible?
Well, there's pre-autoimmune disease,
like there's pre-diabetes or
prehypertension. And I don't like those
terms because they imply that it's you
haven't gotten into trouble yet. But but
you are in trouble. You're there is
something bad happening. And so, you
have to actually look at at the the
blood work to help you identify if
you're heading in the wrong direction.
And you can see, but then you could you
could be somebody who's suffering from
low-grade symptoms. You might not know
it. Like thyroid is really common. You
might be a little bit tired. You might
be a little constipated. You might a
little dry skin. Your nails might crack
a little bit. You might be losing the
outer third of your eyebrow. You might
feel a little depressed. You might have
lower sex drive. And these things people
don't really might gain a little bit of
weight. People don't think of these as a
disease, but when you add them all
together, it's an autoimmune thyroid
issue, right?
And even even gut issues, you know,
irritable bowel. A lot of people have
digestive issues
and it's really a continuum from
irritable bowel to autoimmune
bowel disease which is where you get
colitis or Crohn's disease. And so it's
a continuum. A lot of people have this
lowgrade inflammatory stuff going on in
their bodies. And and it's really it's
unfortunate because we know how to fix
it. And and this is really what we do in
functional medicine. It's why I think
testing and understanding what's going
on with your body before you get in
trouble. It's like, you know, the first
symptom of a heart attack, you know what
it is for most people? For 50% of people
with heart disease, the first symptom is
sudden death. You don't have to have a
heart attack. Like this guy was telling
you about, he was jogging and he kept
having chest pain and he was ignoring
it. And then he finally decided to go
check it out cuz his girlfriend made him
go and and uh turned out he had a 9%
blockage and he wouldn't know. He could
have literally just dropped out of a
heart attack like that.
What are the shifts we should be making
right now? If someone's listening,
they're going to go get the test if they
can. If they can't because, you know,
for whatever reason, they don't live in
the States cuz we're not available
internationally.
No, not yet. We're getting
Yeah, not yet. Yeah, I get a lot of that
in my comment section like, "Hey, Jay,
we there's a lot of people I know in UK
and Europe who really want it and
Australia and other places."
But, uh, you've got your results, you
know what's going on. Where would you
encourage people to begin if they
don't have anything serious right now,
but they want to make sure they get this
Yeah. I mean, I'm not trying to sell
anything here, but I I think doing a um
a short-term reset is powerful. The way
I think about it is how how do you turn
your body back to its original factory
settings? You know, when a baby comes
out, it's generally perfect, right? It's
beautiful. It's healthy. Everything
works, right? And then things break
down. But imagine it like if your
computer is, you know, not working or
it's on the fritz and like my WhatsApp
wasn't working today and I just had to
reboot it, right? Or reboot my computer.
How do you do that with your body? And
that's really what the this dietary
change I call the 10-day detox diet is
about. It's about really putting your
body back to its original factory
settings. For most people,
it will create a dramatic shift. If you
don't get better from it, it's usually
because there's something more serious
like you have Lyme disease. You have
mold exposure that's causing toxicity.
You have maybe environmental toxins or
Lyme disease or something serious uh
that needs another treatment. But for
most people, just a simple 10day
approach to resetting your system by
getting enough sleep, by cutting out the
bad stuff, by taking walks, by doing a
little breathing exercises and radically
changing your diet. You'll go, "Oh my
you could do that at home. This isn't
you don't."
No. And it's basically
can't afford to go on a retreat or what?
You can do it 100%. Most people do it at
home. And it's so it's it doesn't really
cost you any extra. Maybe it'll cost you
less because you're not buying all this
extra crap. And so if you 10day research
10 days and if you try it it's like the
body just has this desire to be healthy
and illness is just your body's best
attempt to deal with a really shitty set
of circumstances. Change the
circumstances meaning what you're
exposed to your diet lifestyle and then
you'll change you know because 93% it's
been determined of our health issues are
not genetic. They're from our collective
environment. What we call the exposome,
not our genome. Our exposome is is what
it sounds like. It's everything that
we're exposed to. It's what we eat. It's
movement. It's sleep. It's stress. It's
our gut microbiome. It's environmental
toxins. It's our thoughts. Our thoughts
actually transform our biology.
Literally, it's the biggest pharmacy is
between your ears. And so, all those
things you have control over, which is
what's so exciting to me. It's about
being empowered to actually make those
changes. And and people just suffer so
badly. I mean, I think I told you maybe
that I did a a program with a
faith-based wellness program with Rick
Warren at this church where we got a
quarter million pounds, lost over 15,000
people in a year by doing a a
faith-based wellness program. And the
amount of people that had radical
changes in their health was just so
remarkable. This one woman had been in
and out of psychiatric hospitals. She'd
been on every psychiatric medication you
could imagine from anti-depressants to
anti-anxiety medications to
antiscychotic medications. She was, you
know, about to commit suicide. You know,
she she was also overweight. And she did
this dietary change. Essentially, I did
the faith-based wellness program
included the the 10day detox diet. And
she's like, I'm completely cured. Like,
I don't have any depression. I'm off all
my medications. I feel good. How is that
possible? And you know that's the other
thing Jay you know there's so much
mental illness there's so much
depression anxiety bipolar disease you
know think more serious things like
severe OCD or even schizophrenia these
things actually are physiological
problems or not always emotional
problems so sometimes they are like you
know your spouse dies you're depressed
yeah I get it you know but
a lot of times and for many people there
there's actually a physiological reason,
you know, we talk about the mind body
effect, which is how the mind affects
the body, which is profound. But there's
also the body mind effect.
So, if you're magnesium deficient, you
can be anxious, right? If you're vitamin
D deficient or omega-3 deficient, you
can be depressed or you can have ADD.
Uh if you're don't have enough folate or
B12, you can get depressed. I mean,
these are things that you can fix. If
you have heavy metals, which I did, it
can cause you to have depression and
insomnia and anxiety. I mean, I'm
treating a little girl right now who's
got severe OCD, and it turned out she
had a strep infection that turns into
this autoimmune reaction against your
brain that's causing her to have OCD
behaviors like ticks and weird things
that we think is psychological. So, I I
think, you know, I I I often call myself
the accidental psychiatrist because I I
was treating people for all these
physical things and then these
psychiatric problems would get better.
And I wrote a book about it called The
Ultra Mind Solution: How to Fix Your
Broken Brain by Fixing Your Body First.
and and you can just get that off the
table and then you know if you have
other deeper trauma or things yeah I
think the revolution now in in in
metabolic psychiatry nutritional
psychiatry and then psychedelic medicine
and psychiatry are I think going to
change the face of mental healthare for
the long term
absolutely what what are some of the
mistakes you see people making in curing
autoimmune diseases what are some of the
mistakes what are the things we get
well because they don't treat the cause
is the biggest thing you know I had a
patient when I was at Cleveland Clinic
who was a business coach who was 50
years old and she had a a lot of
problems and I jokingly call myself a
holistic doctor because I take care of
people with a whole list of problems you
know and she had everything you know she
had uh irritable bowel she had reflux
she had migraines she was depressed she
had pre-diabetes and she had this
horrible autoimmune disease called
seroriatic arthritis you know the
heartbreak of psoriasis these horrible
thick scaly red itchy plaques on your
skin and it also can attack your joints
and it was attacking your joints
She was on a drug but and she was seen
it by the top doctors and and she was on
a drug that cost $50,000 and it wasn't
really fixing her and she was seeing the
top specialists for neurology for her
migraine psychiatry for depression
gastrology for her gut ancology for
pre-diabetes rheumatologist for her
arthritis and her skin issues
dermatology. was like, "Well, she had a
doctor for every inch of her." And I
said, "Gee, you know, you're getting all
these medications, you're not really
better, you're mitigating your symptoms
a little bit. Maybe we think about
treating the root cause." And so,
because she had so many digestive
symptoms, and she'd been on lots of
antibiotics, she'd been on lots of uh
steroids for heritis that really messed
up the gut, too. I said, "You have
reflux, you have bloating after eating,
you you have um all these gut issues.
why don't we treat your gut? So, I
basically gave her an antibiotic to kill
off all these bad bugs that were in her
gut. And I gave her an antifungal
because she had a lot of fungal
overgrowth from all the steroids and the
antibiotics to kill off the bad bugs. I
gave her some probiotics. I put her on
the 10day detox diet. Basically, got rid
of all the inflammatory foods, got rid
of the sugar, processed food. She comes
back in 6 weeks and she's like, "I'm all
better." I mean, what do you mean? She
goes, "Well, I stopped all my
medications." Well, I didn't tell you to
do that. She's like, "No, I I just was
feeling so good. I stopped everything. I
don't have migraines. I'm not depressed.
My lost 20 lbs. My skin's cleared. My
joints don't hurt. My reflux is gone. My
irritable bowel is gone. And so if you
treat the root, which is was her gut in
this case, I just gave her I just gave
her the unleash diet and I gave her the
antibiotics and the antifungals. I gave
her probiotics, vitamin D, some fish
oil, not a lot. And in six weeks, not
only was she feeling better, but she
like saved the healthare system, you
know, tens of thousands of dollars.
Yeah. It's it's almost like it sounds
like magic when you're listening to it
and you go, "Yeah, no, it's not because
we've just been trained to believe that
this way makes sense."
Well, it's it's it's funny. We're more
that a manufactured pill will solve our
body than the things that our ancestors
have lived off.
That's right.
For years and years and years.
That's right. So if you if you if you
don't know how to turn on the body's
healing system, then yeah, you need
medication. And and what's so exciting
to me, Jay, is like we're in this
revolution in medicine right now where
we're finally understanding root causes.
And it's in the scientific literature,
but it takes decades for that to get
into clinical practice. I mean, to
change medical education, to change
reimbursement, to change how doctors
practice, it's just such a it's like
it's like we're all walking around
thinking the earth is flat when it's
really round. And so this paradigm shift
is is such a profound change in how we
think about disease that it's going to
revolutionize everything we do. And it's
and it's only now be accessible to
people through things like function
because we're able to through technology
be able to get the amazing amount of
world scientific literatures. You know
AI can read it in like 5 seconds right
and it can synthesize it and then it's
your own personal health data set. It's
not like your, you know, doctor's
treating you based on a study that was
on 70 kg white men from Kansas, which
doesn't apply to a an Indian guy, you
know, or somebody who's in like, you
know, Vietnam, right? And and so
basically, we are treating to the masses
where we should be treating to the
individual. We call this precision
medicine, personalized medicine. But
medicine should be personalized. It
should be predictive. It should be
preventive. And it should be proactive
that you actually don't have to react
like we do in medicine, but be
proactive. And and that's really, you
know, my life's work is not only, you
know, taking people with very serious
illnesses and reversing them, but
actually getting people earlier. I mean,
Benjamin Franklin said it right. An
ounce of prevention is worth a pound of
cure. And so I can give a pound of cure,
but it's a lot harder than an ounce of
prevention.
What are you most excited about at the
forefront of medicine and functional
medicine at the moment? Yeah. Is it AI?
Is it
Yeah. Well, you know, as I said to you,
like there's 37 billion trillion
chemical reactions in the body. It's the
body is so complex. It's it's physics is
complex. You think about how complicated
a rocket is, right? Like I can't even
understand that. But that's a knowable
thing, right? Scientists and physicists
can figure it out and then send a guy to
the moon or build a spaceship that goes
to Mars like Elon Musk. But like the
body is so infinitely complex and we we
see it in this reductionist way where
every different organ has a different
specialist and the body is all these
different parts. But that's not how
we're designed. Everything's in an
ecosystem. Everything's connected. You
know, we're we're one whole weblike
organism where where everything's
interacting with everything else all the
time. And and so that paradigm of
thinking that way and functional
medicine isn't a test. It's not a
supplement. It's not a new specialty.
It's literally a meta framework for
thinking about the nature of health and
disease based on root causes and based
on the body as a system and based on
asking the question why not what disease
do you have and what drug do I get but
why do I have this and and how do I
create health not treat disease and when
I create health disease goes away as a
side effect and so that scientific
paradigm is is now emerging and before
it it you know you know it was
frustrating for me doing this work for
30 years because you know just it was
hard to convince people like look the
earth is around No, no, it's flat. See
right there? It's flat. And they go,
there's that disease and it's real.
Like, yeah, you know, rheumatoid
arthritis is a thing, but it's not how
we think about it. We're thinking about
it the wrong way. And so, I'm so excited
now because of AI and and the ability to
synthesize massive data sets. I mean,
you have a 100,000 pabytes of data in
your microbiome. A pabyte is a million
gigabytes. Okay? Your computer has four
terabytes maybe, right? Which is a
thousand gigabytes or something. I mean,
it's just such a massive amount of
information that's just in your
microbiome. And so you your body is so
complex and we need technology and AI to
help us start to understand that and
then apply it to you as an individual
and then help create a road map for
looking at where your weak points are
and how do you correct those and then
how do you optimize? And so that's what
I'm so excited about and that's that's
why at 65 I'm like doing the startup. I
mean, I was I was with one of the uh one
of the investors on a panel and I'm like
she's like somebody said, "Well, how do
you how do you uh figure out what
companies to invest in?" They go, "Well,
we invest in the founders." And I'm
like, "Well, have you ever had a founder
that's been on Medicare before,
you know?"
And I'm like, "What am I? I mean, like I
hope to live to beund and something, but
you know, I'm doing this because I don't
want to see so many people suffering.
They don't have to suffer." And I get
these calls every day from friends and
would you help this one? They help that
one. No one can help me. And I'm like,
I'm only one guy. I could like work 24
hours a day for the rest of my life and
I wouldn't make a dent in the amount of
suffering there is in the world. But
imagine if we could put, you know, a
thousand or 100,000 doctors in your
pocket that are trained on the future
paradigm of medicine
and make it accessible to you in real
time on a day-to-day basis to guide you
and coach you and support you. That's
what functional health is aiming to do.
And I'm so excited about it because it's
like, wow, we couldn't do this before.
We couldn't take this amazing complexity
of human biology and help a single
doctor understand. It's just hard. Like
I I see the patterns. I can look at
something quickly and I know in a few
minutes like what to do. But it's it's
only because I've seen tens of thousands
of patients and millions and millions of
biomarkers that I can make those
connections. And I'm not that good
compared to like what technology is
going to be able to do.
Yeah. What what do you wish doctors were
taught today?
Oh my god. Don't get me started. My
daughter just graduated from medical
school. She's brilliant. And she she's
now going to be an orthopedic surgeon,
which I think is great because you need
that. Like you know, if you break your
hip, you need new hip. Uh so that's a
kind of medicine that I think is we're
really good at is is acute care
medicine. But what what she didn't learn
about was nutrition, which okay, we have
a a chronic disease epidemic in this
country. It's caused primarily by food.
It can be cured mostly by food. And yet
doctors know nothing about food, right?
So nutrition. Didn't learn about the
microbiome.
Didn't learn about environmental toxins.
Didn't learn about how to create health.
Didn't learn about the body's networks
and systems. didn't learn about
mitochondria. I mean, yes, she got like
her first, you know, semester, she
learned about the KB cycle and
biochemistry, but didn't understand how
to diagnose people with mitochondrial
issues, which is our energy powerhouse
and how how everything works in our
body. So, those are things that doctors
don't learn anything about. Didn't learn
about how to optimize your immune
function. Didn't learn about how to
treat uh gut issues in the right way by
fixing a leaky gut. So there's so many
areas that that are part of the
framework of functional medicine that
they don't learn anything about.
Yeah. So no wonder when you go and talk
about how you're feeling.
You're not getting the information that
you need.
No. I mean, you know, you go doctor, you
know, I feel this and that and the other
thing and they go, "Well, you know, I
did your exam. That's okay. Your lab
tests look okay." Because they do a very
limited set and you know, you're fine.
Just go home and take Prozac. You know,
but the there's only one or two things.
It's true. one, either you're crazy and
making it up or your doctor's missing
something. And nine times out of 10,
they're missing something because they
don't know how to think. They don't know
how to think about the human body except
in a very reductionist way. And it's
just not how things are. You know, we we
are a dynamic ecosystem and everything
is interacting with everything else in
real time and changing. And how do you
play with that? How do you as a as a as
a practitioner or even as an individual
learn how your body works? I mean, most
of us have no clue how our bodies work
and how to create a better functioning
body. You know, we take better care of
our animals than we do our health,
right? I mean, you wouldn't feed your
dog a Big Mac fries and a Coke, would
Definitely.
And a milkshake. No,
we give that to our kids.
Right. as someone who grew up in London,
England and had the National Healthare
Service and then you moved to the United
States and of course most of it's
private and yeah there's not really any
healthcare available as as far as I know
you know
what do you think the US healthare
system needs to be focused on?
Yeah, 100%. Well, I'm I'm excited. I
mean, I'm working right now with
Medicare and with NIH on how to how do
things need to change because they're
very open and they're very interested in
in changing the way we look at things
and and I think you know the even having
access to good health care which we
don't in this country I mean in the UK
you have the NHS the National Health
Service is great but you know maybe the
quality isn't always as good. The
reality is that you most of your health
is not happening in the doctor's office.
80 to 90% of it happens with things that
you can have control over. It happens in
your kitchen. It happens, you know,
where you play and eat and pray and
work. That's where health happens. I
mean, my wife's now uh studying at
Colombia for her masters in public
health, and she's just so excited
telling me that how she's learning about
how they're talking about the real
drivers of disease, and it's like 80 and
90% is not stuff that the doctor has
control over. It's it's the environment
that you live in and it's your choices
every day. And so those things you don't
really need healthcare for.
And so I think if we can build a health
system that activates people around
then you won't need the doctor most of
the time. And then they're there for
acute care medicine, you know, if you
like I had back surgery. Thank God
there's some guy who knows how to deal
with a spine infection and can put in
hardware and like, you know, kind of
build my back up. Great. Thank God. But
you know, but if I if I said to him
like, "What do I do to recover and
become stronger than I was before?" He's
like, "I don't know. Just do physical
therapy or eat better or
Yeah, it's a great answer. Really great
How do we hold ultrarocessed food
manufacturers more accountable for
getting away with putting excess sugars,
emulsifiers, unidentifiable
objects into our food?"
Yeah. Yeah. Good question. I mean I
think you know we've had a pretty lack
system of regulation in this country and
you know we have I think 10,000
chemicals that are allowed in our food
here in Europe is about 400 chemicals
and and they go through a very different
standard of regulation in terms of ultra
processed food and they they are very
restrict restrictive around GMO and
around herbicides and lots of things
that we don't do here and and I think
you know that's changing there's this
whole maha movement people are waking up
and you I was with my friend uh couple
days ago Mason Karp who was really
founded Hugh Chocolate if people like
Hugh Chocolate and uh he's been was very
writing a letter as a shareholder of
Kelloggs to the company saying you have
Froot Loops that you make in America
that have all these dyes and chemicals
that are known to cause hyperactivity or
immune issues or other problems in kids
and in Europe they don't allow it. you
make the same Froot Loops but with
natural colorings like from blueberries
or whatever. And basically they were
ignoring him. And then my friend Vani
Hari, they all went to Battle Creek,
Michigan and they had a protest in the
fall in October of 24. And finally this
week, Kelloggs agreed they were going to
actually take all that crap out.
Yeah. And uh you know the FDA uh has now
said they're they're working with food
companies to either voluntarily or
mandatorily have them remove food
additives and colors and dyes. That's
brilliant.
I mean I I've been I have a nonprofit
called the Food Fix campaign. I wrote a
book called Food Fix. A new one's coming
out called Food Fix Uncensored
next February and it's basically talks
about how this problem needs to get
fixed from field to the fork and what
regulations need to happen. But this
I've been working with my nonprofit for
the last 5 years and it's been amazing.
And the woman who was my key person
who's my seeing eye dog in Washington is
now the governor wife of West Virginia.
She's the first lady of West Virginia
and that was the first state because of
her to ban food dyes.
Wow. And then they also got SNAP
waiverss, which means they are going to
limit what you can purchase with food
stamps to not be allowed to buy soda or
certain kinds of junk food. And this is
happening across the country. There's
like over 30 plus states where now
there's there's uprisings. And I'm
living in Texas right now. And the this
woman uh um Senator Cole course is the
head of the Health and Human Services
Committee. She listened to my podcast.
She was a huge fan and she got so
excited about this that she introduced a
bill called SB25 in Texas that limited
the crap in the food that limited crap
in schools that mandates nutrition
education for doctors that starts a
chronic nutrition advisory group and it
passed the Senate. It passed the House
there and it got signed by the governor
into law and I I testified at the at the
hearing. And so there's this movement
happening now which I never thought
would happen in my lifetime that there's
a shift and I think the food companies
want to do the right thing but they
they're all in competition with each
other so no one company can act
independently because their competitors
will eat their lunch. M so literally and
so they they now that this is happening
at a nationwide level they're they're
fighting and they're kicking and
screaming but it's going to happen and
the new dietary guidelines are going to
come out which I've helped advise on and
and that is really exciting to me to
actually have something out there that's
going to help guide people on what to
eat. Food labeling is changing and
working with the FDA on food labeling.
Hopefully we can make progress on food
marketing. You know like
that's a big one. You know, like like in
Europe, if if if a stuff has some diet
in it or that's going to cause problem
with kids, it'll say, you know, this is
bad for your kid and if it eat if your
kid eats it, they'll get ADD and
whatever, hyperactivity and and so the
food companies don't want that. So, they
change their formulations. So, food
marketing is a big big driver of
behavior and these companies know it and
they spend $13 billion marketing junk
food every year. Uh, and there's a lot
of ways to fix that. You know, the first
amendment might prohibit us from
limiting the advertising, but they could
have warnings like they do on drugs.
They could, you know, prevent them from
being uh having a tax deduction for
spending all that money on food
marketing. And there's a lot of ways to
put pressure. Changing medical school
education also important getting doctors
more engaged in this. So, it's it's a
it's a multi-headed hydro that needs
multiple solutions across a lot of
government policies and also people
making different choices at the checkout
counter. You can vote with your fork.
Mark, I am so grateful that you
Oh, me too. I got more work to do.
I'm so Yeah, you've got so much work to
do and I'm so thankful that you're doing
it because
uh you know,
you are a startup founder at 65. You're
you've got so much renewed energy and
enthusiasm. It's such important work and
I'm so grateful that you came back on
the show to share it because it's
important work all the way from the
micro level of the individual to the
macro level of talking about government
level change and national level change
and I'm so excited for people to listen
to this conversation because I think
there's some really quick fixes that
people can take
completely
and there's been a lot of warnings in
this episode that I really appreciate
you share just
I think sometimes we need to feel a
sense of
just how challenging it will be.
If we don't make changes now and I feel
like you've really headlined some of
them for us. So, thank you so much.
Yeah. I mean, you know, Jay, for me,
it's like people people have all these
things that they suffer with and they
just think that they're way.
Yeah. They've got to live with that. And
and to me, I' I've been so sick so many
times from so many different things and
I've had to recover and and I see so
many millions of people suffering
needlessly. I mean, I I can't end war. I
can't end floods and, you know, famine
and I mean, but like this is a solvable
problem and they're not hearing about
it. They're not learning about it. And
that's why I'm obsessed. And that's why
I'm a founder of a company at 65 years
Yeah. Well, I'm so grateful, Mark. Thank
you so much. And again, I'm encouraging
everyone to head over to
functionhealth.com/jshedy
to get $100 off to get all your 110
biomarkers. Uh, of course, as I said,
I'm an investor in the company, so very
excited to give access to the knowledge
and information that you need to manage
your health better, to take to your
doctor, to have healthier conversations,
to actually be aware. And I think all of
our change, as we know, starts at
awareness. And that's the baseline.
That's the foundation. So, very excited
for you all to check that out. I hope
you'll make the most of it. Want to give
a big shout out to Dr. Mark Heman again
for being here and thank you so much for
sharing so many incredible insights.
Hope you keep coming back.
I hope you stay well. And uh again, let
me know what you're trying, what you're
testing, what you're giving a go. Maybe
you're going to try the 10day detox,
whether you're going to do it at home or
with Dr. Mark Heyman. Maybe you're going
to go off and get all the access to the
data through function health and you're
going to take a look at what you can
avoid for you and your family. Or maybe
you're going to just start making little
changes, whether it's to your diet by
adding more fiber, taking out
ultrarocessed foods, getting better
sleep. All these tiny shifts can make
such a huge difference. Tag me and Dr.
Markman on Instagram X, Tik Tok. Let us
know what you're changing, what you're
shifting, what you're working on. I love
seeing how you're turning these episodes
into action and I'll see you again on
another episode of OnPurpose. Thanks for
listening and thank you Mark.
if you love this episode, you'll enjoy
my interview with Dr. Daniel Aean on how
to change your life by changing your
If we want a healthy mind, it actually
starts with a healthy brain. You know,
I've had the blessing or the curse to
scan over a thousand convicted felons
and over a hundred murderers and their
brains are very damaged.
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