Episode 412: Dr. Mark Hyman: How Ultra-Processed Foods Are Fueling America's Obesity Epidemic

Hi guys, it's Tony Robbins. You're listening to Habits and Hustle. Crash it. Hey friends, you're listening to Fitness Friday on the Habits and Hustle podcast, where myself and my friends share quick and very actionable advice for you becoming your healthiest self. So stay tuned and let me know how you leveled up.

The NIH study by Kevin Hall looked at this very carefully, and he did what we call a crossover trial. It was one of the best types of study designs where he took the same people, gave them a diet, and then let them have a break or a washout period, and then give them another diet for a few weeks, and then measured what happened. First part of the diet was eating real food, natural protein, fat, carbs, calories. Then they gave them ultra-processed food.

and they can eat whatever they want, eat whatever you want, as much as you want, as restrictions. When they were eating ultra processed food, they eat 500 calories more a day because their biology was dysregulated. Kids who are iron deficient will eat dirt. The body is going to crave more food and want more food

Because it's looking for nutrients, but we're looking for love in all the wrong places, right? Yeah. And so what happened is that you get dysregulated and think about that 500 calories a day in a weakest 3500 calories. That's a pound of waking.

Yeah. If you don't offset it with exercise. In a year, that's 52 pounds of weight gain. If you eat all your processed food, why is America the fattest country in the world? We have 75% of us that are overweight, 42% are obese. It's increased fourfold since I was born.

You've seen diabetes increase 400%. I mean, it's in the last 30 years, it's insane. And, you know, the metabolic dysfunction, even if you're not overweight, because you could be skinny fat. In other words, you look thin, but you're actually bad on the inside. Right. You're just sent to just that.

Yeah, your body fat is where the fat is. If it's in your belly, visceral fat, that's 93.2% of Americans have metabolic dysfunction. That means that 6.8% of us are healthy. And what does that mean? That 93.2% has either high blood sugar, high blood pressure, abnormal cholesterol, all the, by the way, caused by too much starch and sugar in our ultra process diet, or they've had a heart attack or stroke or they're overweight.

Yeah, that is unbelievable. Yeah, it's unbelievable. And so we're killing ourselves and it's the cost or staggering. I mean, the government, the US government pays 40% of the national health care bill, which is now $4.9 trillion. Probably good $2 trillion of that is totally preventable.

And is now being added to our federal deficit every year. And imagine what that two trillion can do for the economy, what we could do with social programs, how we could improve our infrastructure, how we could improve so many innovation, how we could fund different kinds of research. I mean, we're wasting wasting that money. And most people don't realize that. You know, it's one out of every three taxpayer dollars is for health care.

Some believe what I find to be unbelievable is that everyone seems to look for these quick fad diets or quick fixes. But yeah, like it's pretty, getting what you're saying is pretty basic, right? Like it's the same things that like if they watch what they eat, quality of the food, inflammation, like these, it's not that hard.

It's not that hard, but yeah, people are trying to overwhelm with all this noise. The other thing I wanted to ask you about Ozempic or any of these or Govees or whatever, can your body acclimate over time anyway? And so you end up even eating what you ate before you even started to eat.

Sometimes these drugs affects people differently. I had a patient who I didn't prescribe it, but he was telling me he lost, you know, he did, I was that big for six months. He lost two pounds. It didn't really make him feel great. He had all these side effects. He switched over to what I told him to do. He lost 60 pounds and he's reverse his diabetes and, you know, he's on his way back to full health. You keep us saying patients. Do you still see patients? I saw it too this morning. I had an old patient day yesterday. Yeah.

So you actually still steal a lot of... I don't just play one on TV. No, you don't just play. This is very refreshing. I thought of all the people of all the doctors you wouldn't have time because do you know how many times I've seen doctors sit in the same chair you are and they are doctors. Yeah, I guess they have a certificate, but they don't practice. They write books and they like to do media and they like to do all these other things. It keeps it real. It keeps you humble. It keeps you learning. People don't like to do it.

Like, it's impossible to find like the big joke is that I can't find a doctor. I love it. I mean, I love taking care of people. It's so, I mean, it's amazing. You actually are like, would you take another another patient? I need a doctor because there is such a shortage of doctors. I know. I know. Like, what is the waiting list for that? Like, do you have like a crazy waiting list? I wish I could see everybody. I really wished. I mean, it's the heartbreak of my life. And I can't tell you where I probably get five to 10 texts, emails, requests every day.

Easy my mother this my friend this i'm sick this and like people are close to me and i'm like i just wish i could help everybody and i can't and and so that's really why i co-founded function health right what i know and make accessible not to a few hundred or thousand people but two millions and millions even eight billion person problem.

That's exactly true, right? And what we're creating a function is something that is revolutionary. It's why we're the fastest growing health care company in the world. We're creating something called medical intelligence. You know, you have chat, GBT, and all this. But think about where you take all your own data and all your data is sorted through with the use of technology. Because now we can process. I mean, just in your microbiome alone, there's a hundred thousand terabytes of data. I don't even know what a terabyte is, but it's a lot of information. A lot, I guess. Yeah.

So no human mind can comprehend all that. So we're able to take all this data and actually understand what's happening to you and input it all into the system and then give you a predictive model of where you are that trajectory from wellness to illness, because things don't happen overnight, right? For example, we were mentioning some of these Alzheimer's tests at Pete House 217 or 80 or 40 or neurofibrillae light chain. There's other biomarkers. And we're now able to see from our blood tests that

You could be developing early cognitive brain injury that you don't even know about because you're not symptomatic. You can tell with brain imaging up to 30 to 40 years before you get Alzheimer's that you're starting to get trouble in the brain. But now with these blood tests, we can detect it. And then you can do something to intervene and actually reverse that trajectory. That's never been possible before.

How is it even possible? I thought there was no cure. Could you give us a comment? Well, there is. Of course there is. I mean, you know, like, give us some things that we can do for our brain health. This is actually fact. I mean, if you look at the studies being done out of Europe, the finger trial, the pointer trials, these are large scale clinical trials using aggressive lifestyle intervention, risk factor modification, and actually showing that just.

reverse slowing down or delaying the progression of Alzheimer's, but reversing. How? How can we reverse Alzheimer's? What you eat, exercise, dress management, sleep optimization, nutritional optimization, hormonal optimization, addressing all the root causes, toxins, gut microbiome. It's a process. It's a deep involved process. I've written a book about this called The Ultra Minds Solution about 15 years ago.

It was a way ahead of its time, still ahead of its time. And colleagues of mine like Dale Bredesen have taken that and really upgraded it. And he's got a recode program now. He's written a book called the end of Alzheimer's, which talks about the root causes. It's not just happening in a vacuum, it's not such a random event. Why have we seen Alzheimer's increase by 150%? Why? Now, why? Because we have the shitty diet, which is sugar. I mean, they're calling Alzheimer's type three diabetes now, which is in some resistance. Why we have 93% of the population have some degree of insulin resistance.

But this would not understand. There's more education out than ever before, right? We're more educated. You'd think that this information out there, how is it instead of getting less obese, we're getting more obese? Instead of getting healthier, we're getting more sick. When all we are overloaded with people and information, like the health industry, longevity industry, it's a trillion dollar business.

Yeah, we live in a toxic cesspool of food and toxins. I mean, it's just the truth. I mean, the food industry has produced a food that is making us sick and making us die early. And we also have completely unregulated environmental toxins in the society that people just polluted. You know, if we were food, we wouldn't be safe to eat as human beings are so polluted.

Why is it different here than the UK? Well, in other countries, they don't allow the same ingredients. I mean, you might have heard the recent... Yeah, yeah. You're awful about Kelloggs, and these are friends of mine. I was gonna ask you about that, right? Yeah, I mean, like, you know, it's ridiculous. Like, in Europe, they have regulations. They have something called the reach legislation in the European Union, which limits the use of chemicals. So here, the way it works is, if you're a company, you get to use whatever you want, and you get it approved, as generally recognized as safe,

And then you only get to have it taken off the market if it's shown later to be harmful. So innocent until proven guilty. Wow. As opposed to you have to prove this is safe before you put in the food.