METABOLIC HEALTH: SEED OILS, LEAKY GUT, ALZHEIMER'S AND LONGEVITY | 114 DR. MARK HYMAN, MD: Full Transcript

Transcript sourced from the original YouTube captions. Timestamps link directly to the video.

0:02

eat well, move, you know, have a community. Why is not translating it? Oh, that's a bigger question. Why do I think that conventional medicine hasn't embraced functional medicine over the last 40 years? I don't know. They're not the solution for the problem. If your diet is full of sugar and starch, the solution isn't a GLP-1 drug. How does it turn into a leaky brain and how can you measure and clear it up? Yeah, that's a good question. Inflammation is the driver of most chronic disease, including mental health issues, depression, anxiety, OCD. What's your thought about seed oils? Because it's a huge debate. How much time do you have? One message to Turkish people. It's your first time doing a podcast here. Yeah, I would say if I was advising my patients in America what to do for longevity, I would tell them to move to Turkey. All right. I'm Dr. Esra avu o lu and I've been living a sober life for the past 19 years. My battle with addiction drove me to seek new methods, devices, and supplements to improve my physical and mental performance, enhance my quality of life, and ultimately live healthier for longer. From my experiences in addiction recovery, biohacking, and longevity to the latest global developments, from groundbreaking entrepreneurs to expert academics, the conversations I've had over the years are now featured weekly on Sober Head Podcast. Welcome to Sober Head Podcast. Today, I'm joined by Dr. Mark Hyman, one of the world's most influential voices in functional medicine, metabolic health, and food policy. He has spent more than

1:33

and food policy. He has spent more than 30 years in clinical practice, written 20 books, and advised three US presidents on health policy. But this conversation is not just about what we should eat. Today, we go much deeper. We talk about the system behind our health, big food, big agriculture, big pharma, ultra-processed foods, seed oils, metabolic disease, and why so many people are being told their illness is a personal failure when in reality it may be a system failure by design. Mark Hyman explains why food is not only calories, but information for our biology and why the brain can be on fire long before we call it depression, dementia, or disease. But, also I asked uncomfortable questions like, when does the motto food is medicine become dangerous? Has functional medicine also become an industry? And is health becoming a privilege only for people who can afford testing, supplements, and boutique clinics? This is a powerful conversation about personal responsibility. Yes, but also policy, environment, biology, and truth. Let's begin.

3:41

Dr. Mark Hyman, welcome to Sober Up podcast. It's such a pleasure to have you in Istanbul. It's great. I love Turkey. I love Istanbul. I love the people, the food. It's amazing here. And we carry our podcast studio this time to Only Health because, you know, they're great friends of mine and yours. Mine, yes. Exactly. Mark Hyman, I would like to start with introducing you a little bit to my audience. Obviously, they know, but you spent over 30 years in clinical practice. Written 20 books and advised three US presidents on health policies. But, if I ask you to name the one belief you held 30 years ago, but you changed your mind now, what would your answer be? say 30 years ago was the era of higher carbohydrate, lower fat diets. Mhm. So, I believed then that, you know, like people should eat a lot of pasta, grains, and and I ate more of that. And and it really, you know, I wasn't overweight, but I think that that was a really belief that changed around the requirement for more fat and more protein. So, you changed. You were using that philosophy as well. Yeah, and I think, you know, as as we've evolved over the last, say, you know, 50 years and and across the world, we've seen more metabolic disease and more insulin resistance and more diabetes, obesity, and and so this is a real problem. And this is everybody's on GLP-1s and that's not the answer. I mean, you can get the result better or same without the side effects, without GLP-1s, if you understand how to

5:11

GLP-1s, if you understand how to fix your metabolism by reducing the amount of starch and sugar and ultra-processed food and starting the day in the right way. Just it's it's not that hard. Let me jump in for a very quick second. If you can hear me right now, we know you're watching Sovereign Health, but are you subscribed? Could you check it for me? Very honestly, our subscriber count gives us real leverage when it comes to convincing the guests we invite to join the show. So, if you want to keep watching some of the best experts in their field right here, please subscribe to the channel. My second question would be about your book, and you have multiple wonderful sayings, but this one is going to be coming from your book. This isn't a personal failure, it's policy failure by design. For Turkish listeners who has been told forever that it's their problem, they have diabetes, they're fat, they need to pay more attention on what they eat and so on. So, explain please Mr. Hyman. I would encourage anybody who believes that to go look at pictures from 50 or 60, 70 years ago of anybody in Turkey, you're not going to see anybody overweight. Mhm. But all of a sudden in the last 50, 60 years, obesity has gone up. It's not because we've had a genetic mutation, it's because our environment's changed and globally we've had a food system that is producing food that's making us sick. This food is now the number one killer in the world. It kills over 11 million people according to the Mhm. global burden of disease study. It's completely preventable, reversible, and yet uh, you know, policies have not caught up on the food industry is very smart about driving policies that favor them and undermine public health. So, they privatize the profits and they

6:42

So, they privatize the profits and they socialize the costs. And that needs to stop and I wrote a book called Food Fix about this because we can't leave it up to the individual to make the change because they only can do so much. You you have to have an environment that that makes the default behavior the healthy behavior, not the behavior that's going to make you gain weight and sick. I did enough of a podcast with people like Jenny Goodman and wonderful people around agriculture and stuff. Yeah. And you know, Bayer, which is a German company Yeah. actually, recently paid over 11 billion in Roundup cancer settlement. That's right. And still, they're spraying to all the crops everywhere but in Europe. Yeah. That's right. Well, that's because Europe has better legislation. Mhm. So, 70% of the crops, at least in the United States, have glyphosate sprayed on them, which is In Turkey as well. And this is a very toxic compound that is an herbicide Mhm. that has led to epigenetic changes that are generational, that cause cancer, that really disrupt the microbiome Mhm. in a bad way causing a real disturbance in the gut ecosystem which creates all kinds of downstream health problems. So, it's very concerning to me and and most people those studies but most people just check their urine they'll find you pretty high levels of glyphosate. Even if you try to eat healthy, it's on everything. Yeah, because they don't pay attention I guess like you know, you can spray here but with wind and everything it flies everywhere yeah, unfortunately. What's your thought about seed oils? Because it's a huge debate. How much time do you have? Yeah, I mean I know that you don't have I have all the time you don't have

8:12

I have all the time you don't have I think it's complicated. First of all, we historically ate a diet that included, you know, probably a four to one to two to one ratio of omega-6 oils to omega-3s. Mhm. Omega-6 are nuts and seeds and beans. They're they're not bad and they're fine to consume. The problem is we've industrialized the process of making them through soybeans, through corn oil, through safflower oil, canola oil in an industrial way that we've we've now are consuming massive amounts of it in industrial processed food. So, it's not necessarily the seed oils themselves if they're in the natural forms that they come in or even if they're made from expeller pressed or cold pressed versions that aren't oxidized, that aren't deodorized, that aren't used hexane and all kinds of chemicals to process it. If you look at the literature as a whole, in general people who consume, you know, seed oils it's it's not showing that much harm. The problem is that the forms that we're eating are oxidized. So, I've written a lot about it. It's it's a complicated picture. We don't really have solid data. I wrote about it in my book Eat Fat, Get Thin. I analyzed all the data. This was a few years ago. And my view is that, you know, I think people are too focused on that. I I think they're too focused on the seed oils and not the real problem. Which is starch and sugar and the seed oils that are in industrial processed food. So, if you eat real whole foods, you shouldn't have to worry about it. Cuz you could get it naturally from the food you're eating nuts and seeds. It's even in olive it's fine. Omega-6 oils are fine. They're They're not a problem, but they're consumed in in massive amounts

9:43

they're consumed in in massive amounts and they're consumed in forms that are potentially harmful. So, we should be focused on starch and sugar, not so much seed oils. It's unfortunately when I speak to people that who works for us in our home or in our companies, when they think of the seed oils, it would be the canola oil and the sunflower oil. Yeah. And you know, unfortunately the economic burden on these workers is that they cannot afford the quality olive oil. Unfortunately, they keep leaning toward that and the restaurants Yeah. who are using them. It's so difficult to In America, at least you guys have some restaurants that you can pick like, okay, these places are not using few. Very few. But yeah, it's in it in fried foods, it's in industrial food, it's in restaurant food, it's in It's tough. So, I I think people should should try to minimize industrial processed food in general, including industrial oils. Mhm. So, with that I want to jump into a metabolic health problems. It's the biggest problem in the modern medicine and it's the biggest blind spot in my opinion because, you know, you can have someone fasting glucose is normal, hemoglobin A1C is normal, but they don't check the insulin and so on and so forth. I don't want to get into too much detail. Especially lately, I see that there's a raise in the fatty liver, which is not related to alcohol use. What are they missing in the panels? This is really important and now I I co-founded a company called Function Health where we do a full diagnostic panel, including insulin. And I was recently um visiting a dean of a medical school, Mhm. the Alice Walton School of Medicine in Arkansas,

11:13

Arkansas, who was an Indian woman, East Indian woman, and she's she's a doctor. And she went to her cardiologist and said, "I want you to measure my insulin." He's like, "I'm not going to do it. You don't need it." Mhm. She says, "But I'm East Indian, I'm more likely to be insulin resistant." He's like, "It's not important." And And this is the mindset of traditional medicine. At Quest Diagnostics, which is our testing partner in America, I asked the head of the laboratory, what percent of tested or submitted to you measure insulin? He's like less than 1%. So, doctors are not checking it, and insulin is so important because it's the first thing to go up. Mhm. Getting metabolic crisis is is a multi-stage process. It can happen over years, and it starts with your insulin starting to rise after you eat. So, your your sugar's normal, your fasting insulin is normal, your A1C is normal. The only thing that's abnormal is your insulin after you eat. Then, your insulin fasting starts to go up. And the normal range in the lab test is wrong. Normal range is like this. range in America, I don't know what it is in here Turkey, but it was it's like up to 16 or 18. It should be under five. yeah. I think that my family needs to listen because five to 10, it starts to be a concern. Over 10, I'm very worried. Mhm. And I saw somebody the other day that was like 75. And so, this was a very overweight guy, and he's had very severe metabolic crisis. And so, we need to be really measuring insulin resistance, and there's a new test in America. I don't know if they do it here. It's using mass spectrometry, which is a more sophisticated way of measuring things in the blood that measures insulin and

12:43

the blood that measures insulin and C-peptide. And you get we call it an insulin resistance score, and it's like doing a glucose tolerance test with insulin, but it's very easy to do. It's a simple blood test. Really an important way, and everybody should know what's going on with their insulin levels. The thing is, you know, you you don't always need a test. You just have to look in the mirror. If your stomach is bulging out and you got a belly, you you have visceral fat, and that that your insulin is for sure high. And how high we don't know, but like I can usually tell by looking at someone. And then, if you're older and you're thin, you still might have a problem because you lose muscle, and then you you have sarcopenia, which means you have loss of muscle, and that means, you know, you look thin, but you're really fat on the inside, and your muscle's been replaced by fat, and you can have a high insulin even if you're older and thin. What is the worst thing that one can eat that rising that insulin you think? It's sugar, fructose, sugar? Yeah, sugar. You also say that bread is Actually, you know, sugar is fructose and and glucose. And the the glycemic index of sugar is less than that of white bread. Mhm. Because bread is all glucose. So, glucose is the thing that raises insulin. Fructose through another mechanism, not through raising insulin, will actually cause fatty liver and cause insulin resistance, but it's just a different mechanism. I want to go to the brain because you have a great quote again. When your joint is inflamed, it turns red and hurts. When your brain is inflamed, it doesn't hurt. It comes out as depression, dementia, autism, ALS. All these disease are different

14:13

these disease are different developmental, neurodegenerative, autoimmune. You argue that they're coming from the same four root causes. What is going on is an epidemic of inflammation. Mhm. And inflammation is the driver of most chronic disease, including mental health issues, depression, anxiety, OCD, you know, even things like ADHD, autism, Alzheimer's. Uh obviously that's not a mental illness, but it's neurodegenerative conditions. Mhm. All are inflammatory disease. So is obesity. So is diabetes. So is heart disease. So is cancer. So is obviously autoimmune disease, allergic disorders, skin disorders. These are all disease of inflammation. And that's what's really driving it. Then the question is what's causing inflammation? And it's really a very short list. Too much of the bad stuff and not enough of the good stuff. Right? The bad stuff is our ultra-processed diet. It's food sensitivities or allergens from the environment, things like gluten. It's microbes. So it could be infections or mostly it's the microbiome. That's a big driver. It's the leaky gut and inflammation from the gut. And environmental toxins. Environmental toxins are everywhere and we're all poisoned, but those will drive inflammation. And then stress. Those five things drive inflammation. And then if you don't have enough of the right stuff, your body can't fight it. You don't have enough whole real food, the right level of certain nutrients, vitamin D, you don't have enough light, air, clean water, rhythm, rest, you know, sleep, movement. These are all sort of in community, love, meaning. These are all things that really help your body thrive, and you need to have more of those and less of the bad stuff.

15:44

more of those and less of the bad stuff. I know that you're very focused with the the brain, the neurodegenerative diseases, and the gut-brain axis. Yeah. When the gut barrier leaks, toxins enter to the true blood-brain barrier to bloodstream and trigger the inflammation, how does it turn into a leaky brain, and how can you measure and clear it up? Yeah, that's a good question. Yeah, brain is difficult. Gut is kind of a little easier. Measuring what's going on in the brain is tricky, but there are ways to do it um through just looking at your systemic inflammation. So, if you have a high CRP is one. If you have this to be causing a problem, like if you have visceral fat, that's just going to be causing all kinds of cytokines, which create inflammation. You can measure them like TNF alpha, IL-1, IL-6. These are things that, you know, typically doctors don't measure. The problem is when you have a leaky gut, it's creating systemic inflammation, and it's creating toxins that are going through your body from your gut, and that affects the blood-brain barrier. And then this can cause changes in your brain. So, does stress stress causes a leaky brain. We call it leaky brain, but it's a barrier like a like in the gut that protects your brain just as a barrier in your in in your brain that protects your brain just as like there's a barrier in your gut that protects your gut. And when that breaks down, then you get all kinds of insults coming into your brain. And that's why we're seeing such an epidemic of brain disorders. I mean, you know, depression, anxiety, mood disorders, ADHD, autism, and of course all the neurodegenerative conditions. And we're just seeing these go up and up even as our medicine's getting better and better, we're we're getting sicker and sicker. And it's very difficult to reverse it,

17:15

And it's very difficult to reverse it, but I took note on two of what you listed. The numbers are crazy like in 1970 it seems like in America only one in 10, 000 children had autism now one in 36. I think it's getting worse and yeah it's even more than that now. It's getting worse and and it's and and now you know we we people say well it's how we define autism it's broader definitions not really real even if half of it was because we're having a more inclusive definition it's still affecting so many people. You know I see it so much. Well how do you guide mothers? Tell a message to the mothers what they should do. I think it's tough. I think the the important thing is to do as good a job as you can as making sure your health is good before you get pregnant for the man and the woman not just the woman. And that means you know making sure your guts healthy making sure your nutrient levels are optimized making sure that you reduced your toxic exposures and load and and this all will have an impact on the health of your child. And then make sure if you can obviously C-sections are not great but if you have to you do but it but you need to inoculate the baby with vaginal flora. There's an very important probiotic critically important for development because autism is a massive amount of inflammation in the brain. If you look at an MRI of a kid with autism their brains are swollen literally swollen and they're inflamed. When you do kids for example with autism get an accident they die they do a biopsy in their brain they see just full of inflammation. They really have to look at the gut. The gut

18:45

really have to look at the gut. The gut is really driving so much of the autism epidemic and the reason we have a problem with our gut is the women the mothers have taken antibiotics in their life they don't have the healthy flora that they need to inoculate their baby with even if they have a vaginal birth it's called bifidobacterium infantis very important bacteria. You can take it now as a supplement it's called Evivo. I don't have any relationship with them but you go e v i v o dot com you can read about it lots of research. You want to make sure your baby has that. Every baby should have this. And that prevents allergies, inflammation. And also, you know, breastfeeding is ideal. If you can breastfeed, if not, you know, you want to have the right kind of formula. You want to make sure you probiotics. You want I mean, 25% of the calories in breast milk are not digestible by the baby. Therefore, the microbiome, they're fiber, oligosaccharides for the baby's microbiome. So, making sure, you know, you really do all those the common sense things. And then that will, you know, reduce your toxins in your home. I mean, I'm writing a new book called The 100, where I'm talking about how do you take care of all these systems in your body? How do you optimize your gut? How do you reduce your toxic exposures? How do you optimize your health and immune system? These are really important basic things that people need to know about their body. Nobody teaches them that. Nobody knows how to take care of your body. So, we're writing like a second owner's manual for for your body. And we definitely need it. I'm in this like for the last 6 months. And got healing process, it takes a lot of time. Oh my god. Yeah. It takes some time. How do you feel about stool transfer for autism? I mean, there's been some research about it. And I've seen some amazing case studies. I think there are risks to it.

20:17

studies. I think there are risks to it. Um so, I'm not sure. But it's it's coming along. Dr. Terry Wahls, she was able to treated her own MS through mitochondrial focus protocol. Why do you think that they're not taking that as a guideline to treat MS? Oh, that's a bigger question. Why do I think that conventional medicine hasn't embraced functional medicine over the last 40 years? I don't know. I I think the reason is that one, paradigms are very hard to change. So, if you think the earth is flat, it takes a lot of convincing that the earth is not the center of the universe, takes I mean, even today people debate evolution. It was 150 years ago, they still are debating evolution. It's hard to change people's mind about a paradigm. Second is that their entire entire medical system is based on diagnoses, so labeling people with the name of a disease, and then reimbursing based on that through insurance. So, the whole payment system, the whole way we're trained, the whole medical education system, we basically are learning an outdated model of medicine and it's so hard for people to understand that. They There's a quote I like to use from a psychiatrist from the' 60s, R. D. Laing. He said, "Scientists can't see with their way of seeing." They have a certain way of seeing and they can't see what's right in front of them. So, I mean, I've been doing this for so long, but when I started talking about the microbiome or the gut, you know, 30 years ago, people would just laugh at me. Now, it's like, "Oh, yeah, okay, the microbiome." Or inflammation, "Oh, yeah, okay, inflammation." Or environmental toxins, "Okay, yeah." So, people are starting to wake up to this, you know, like we're

21:47

wake up to this, you know, like we're reading about microplastics and how in the New England Journal of Medicine, there's article on how microplastics are found in the plaque in your heart that are causing heart disease. So, I think people are starting to come around, but it it it's a very slow process to change. So, I'm building a company to try to change that from the outside. It's difficult. Doctors are very stubborn. When I went to have a full body MRI here in Turkey, not in America, with one of these already established places like Prenuvo, the doctor was like, "Why do you need one?" I said, "Because I want. I want to see what's inside and what's happening." So, it's like there's a huge resistance to all these screenings and stuff, but they love to give you statin when you have your cholesterol high. Right. I mean, the sad thing is that so much of medical care is determined by the research and the research is determined by the pharmaceutical companies and they study their drugs. And so, we have a very pharmaceutically based model and and the drugs can be extremely helpful and can be very useful and I definitely encourage their development and their use in the right setting, but they're not the solution for the problem if your diet is full of sugar and starch, the solution isn't a GLP-1 drug. It's not a diabetes drug. It's not insulin. The solution is changing your diet and start moving. You know, it's not that complicated. I took notes on that. You know, the GLP's are just fixing the same way statins are fixing the cholesterol. It's just fixing from outside. It's not fixing how the won't and it won't have the degree of effect. Like I I had a patient

23:17

degree of effect. Like I I had a patient with Cleveland Clinic and her hemoglobin A1C was 11 and in 3 months it went to 5 and 1 / 2. 11 is like you know, her blood sugars in the hundreds, you know, and came down to normal and it wasn't through a GLP-1 drug and you couldn't see the magnitude of that effect with a drug, whatever drug. And she was already on a pile of drugs. She was already on insulin. So, your latest work shows that mitochondria are actually communication networks sensing emotional trauma. Yeah. So, the mitochondria are are sense organs. They they sense everything that's happening and we used to think of them as just things that produce energy in the cell from food and oxygen, but they actually do so much more. They regulate hormones, they regulate immune function, they they have kind of like they're like sense organs that are sensing the environment all the time and they including including stress, psychological stress or physical stress. So, as a result they're they're very much sensitive to the environment and they will be affected by by your thoughts and your feelings and your emotions and your past and your trauma. So, it all everything everything kind of connects to everything else. That's basically the fundamental principle of functional medicine. The body's a web and you can't separate everything out. Do you believe into these you know, cold plunges, infrared saunas? You know, I believe in God. I don't necessarily believe in things that are scientific and you can prove by science. Believe meaning like you do these things. I look at the data, I look at the science and I you know, belief is like I do I believe in the tooth fairy, you know, I don't know. That's a belief. But I think uh saunas have been shown to be very effective for preventing

24:48

very effective for preventing cardiovascular death for mortality. They they've been shown to reduce toxic toxic load in the body by sweating out toxins. They help regulate heart rate variability, they induce the innate immune system to produce better immunity, they create heat shock proteins which actually help repair damaged proteins which just happens as you age. And and so yes, they they have a lot of science behind them. Cold plunges are a little newer, but there's scientist from Denmark who's been on my podcast, she's written a book about this I think and and you know, it does help increase you know, obviously neurotransmitter dopamine, adrenaline, helps mental clarity. It also helps reduce inflammation and it helps activate brown fat which is your mitochondrial rich fat so it can help with metabolism. So there's a lot of benefits. They're kind of shocking for some people. Yeah. Most people like a hot bath instead of a cold bath. Exactly. The hot is a little better I guess than the cold. Yeah, but how am here? You don't have like a ice bath in in the Turkish hammam? So in this the whole longevity talk, these debates like eat protein, don't eat protein, vegetable, what's your belief into? When you're younger, you have what we call trophic factors. So you have hormonal support to maintain your health and your body and your muscle. So hormones for example, the growth hormone, testosterone, even women, when you start to become older, you lose these these hormonal supports. You can take them exogenously, you can take them, but people end up with more anabolic resistance which is a term that means when you strength train or you try

26:19

means when you strength train or you try to build muscle, it's hard to build muscle. So you can overcome that by increasing your protein intake. So when you're younger, you can get away with less protein and when you're older, you can't. And we should when looking at all the studies, you know, especially over in your 60s, you start to really need more protein and you need higher quality protein. So you need animal protein or whey protein. You can use plant proteins but you have to add extra leucine which is the rate limiting amino acid to build muscle. And you can also add creatine, which helps both the brain and the muscles. So, you can add about 5 to 10 g of creatine. So, I usually do a whey protein smoothie in the morning, go whey I like, I put in 10 g of creatine, and that kind of keeps me going, and I I had a bad illness about a year and a half ago, and I had to gain 25 lb of muscle. So, I gained 25 lb of muscle in a year and a half. So, even at 66 years old, like you can do it, but you have to know what you're doing. Where do you see this new technologies are going, like gene therapies and stuff? Are you doing any of the gene therapies, stem cells? Yes, I mean, I think this is all experimental. We don't have any good clinical trials. There are risks. I personally will use things that I won't recommend to my patients, cuz I I'm willing to take a risk. So, I think there are emerging, you know, things like clotho, which is an mRNA therapy that's being studied right now for Alzheimer's. So, there's there's things that are moving along, and I think that there are other things that can be used for stem cells

27:49

things that can be used for stem cells for, you know, various kinds of medical treatments that involve joints. For example, I've had a a knee arthritis from an injury, and I've used stem cells, and my knee has helped. So, I I but you have to really be careful. I mean, you can also get into trouble with it. So, I think they're they're part of the future, but we still need a lot more funding and research. How about peptides? This is a conversation a peptide. GLP-1' s a peptide. There's There's Vyleesi, a drug used for women's sexual arousal disorder, that's a peptide. Peptides are things the body makes. There are thousands and thousands of them. The body uses them to regulate the communication systems in the body. It's like the telegraph in the body. It tells us what to do. They regulate everything from sleep to hormones to immune system function to mitochondrial function, tissue repair, collagen formation. So, they're they're incredibly important. The problem is, and we saw this recently with Bryan Johnson, where he he said, "I've used this peptide, and then I didn't I everything got worse." And I'm like, "Yeah, well, if you take a bottle of Tylenol, it's going to kill you. You use doses that were were super physiological, that weren't properly used with other compounds in that were harmful. And so, if you do a stupid thing, you're going to end up with a bad result. So, I think peptides used under the supervision of a doctor who knows what they're doing, who who's explains to their patient the the where the science is and where it isn't, so where there's risks, then I think it can be used. But, we use peptides all the time in medicine. Let me jump in for a very quick second. If you can hear me right now, we know you're watching Overhead.

29:20

you're watching Overhead. But, are you subscribed? Could you check it for me? Very honestly, our subscriber count gives us real leverage when it comes to convincing the guests we invite to join the show. So, if you want to keep watching some of the best experts in their field right here, please subscribe to the channel. There are two compounds that are very promising, lots of research. One is urolithin A, the other one is spermidine. There's a lot of people wondering what are they. I had a podcast with Dr. Singh actually from Timeline Nutrition. But, I received a tons of questions that I should ask this question to you with these two compounds. Okay, well, urolithin A is something that when you eat certain foods like pomegranate I've been having a lot of pomegranate here in Turkey. It's amazing. I had pomegranate like vinegar and pomegranate seeds. And I love pomegranate. If you have a healthy microbiome, which most of us don't, you can convert the um the ellagitannins in pomegranate into a compound called urolithin A. So, this is called a postbiotic, not a prebiotic or a probiotic, it's a postbiotic. And And what's interesting is you have, you know, 20, 000 genes, you probably have 2 million bacterial genes. What do genes do? They make proteins or they make, you know, molecules. These things have impact on your health. And so, the bacteria then if you have a healthy gut, well make the different molecules that your body will absorb and they work on different pathways. So, your urolithin A is a fascinating compound that's affecting mitochondrial function,

30:51

that's affecting mitochondrial function, mitophagy, exercise performance, immune function, inflammation. It's It's one of the most promising molecules, I think, in the longevity space. There's a lot of research on it. There's a lot of evidence that's published in major journals. So, I personally think it's extremely valuable and I use it. Spermidine also is another compound that's been, you know, researched and it's still, you know, emerging how you know, but it has has effects on telomeres, inflammation, and mitochondrial function. So, I think there's benefit to these. They're relatively safe and so, I think, uh, you know, people can use them if they want, but I I for for me, I think they can be very helpful. I would like to ask one very critical question, especially for Turkish people's income is not as high as in America. And we keep talking about longevity, this supplement, that supplement, and there's a huge reaction saying like, you know, this is becoming now this functional medicine world, longevity world, boutique clinics. Yeah. $ 500 worth supplement protocol and etc. is becoming now this like a small scale of the pharmaceutical almost like old medicine type push in front of people's face, they say. Yeah, listen, if I was advising my patients in America what to do for longevity, I would tell them to move to Turkey. All right. Because the food here is amazing. The culture is amazing. If you eat the traditional food, I mean, I've been eating so much food, I didn't even gain a pound. I feel good. The quality is so good. I mean, the the taste is so good. The phytochemicals are so much different. The The, uh, olive oil is so different and great here. So, I think if

32:22

different and great here. So, I think if you just focus on the foundations, you're going to get 80% of the way there or maybe more, you know, eating real food, cutting out starch and sugar, having good fats, quality protein, making sure you strength train and do cardio. Really important. Getting proper sleep, managing your stress, having good community relationships. These are things that are free, except for the food that you have to eat anyway. So, I think focusing on that, if you if people take all these peptides and they don't and they do all these things and they don't focus on that, it's it's the wrong strategy. Sure, if you wanted then enhance things and you you have the energy, the time, the money, yeah. There's some certain supplements that I think are really essential for people, vitamin D, most people are low, omega-3 fats unless you're eating a like good fish and most fish is full of toxins, so I tend to get it from my pills. I think, you know, people may make sure to make sure they check their blood and fix any nutrient deficiency, so at functional health, the company I co-founded, hopefully we'll be in Europe soon, but you know, we're we're we've done 80 million blood test and uh we're seeing 70% of people have a nutritional deficiency. And these are people who are already thinking about their health. These are people who are low not at the level I would think would be optimal, but at the level that the lab thinks is good. Mhm. Which is a reference range that's based on a sick population. So, vitamin D, let's say 30, it should be 50, the 30 they say anything above 30 is fine, it's not fine. Mhm. So, if you want optimal, it should be 45 or more, right? So, why is the message is not then translating? Because we keep hearing like eat well, move, you know, have a

33:53

like eat well, move, you know, have a community. Why is not translating it? It's not automatic. It's so hard to live that way in a world that the default choice is the bad choice, where we have you know, all the stresses of modern life, where we have and we don't have to move our bodies anymore, where we basically have to, you know, we have food to eat that's that's grown in ways that are are not great and that the quality is poor. I mean, in Europe it's much better. I mean, in America it's really bad. In Turkey also, yeah, I'm sure you're eating great food taste-wise, but the agricultural problems, pesticides, and so Turkey is same, no different than America, actually. I'm sure. Yeah, I'm sure. People keep asking, you know, exporting fruits to Europe and they keep coming back because they find high amount of aflatoxins and pesticides and stuff. And they're asking me like, "Oh, what are they doing with these fruits?" And I asked to a guest, the guest says like, "They shouldn't worry because all the food that they're doing for internal usage is the same." So, you know, doesn't matter where they're sending the food that are coming back from Europe, doesn't matter. It's the same as that, as toxic. It's very difficult to get away from them. Yeah, I agree. So, you're 66 years old. Are you more optimistic that the life is going to be better for people than 10 years ago? It's uh it's complicated. I think, you know, we were science is advancing very fast, medicine is advancing very fast. The food industry, hopefully, can be brought under control. And America is really where it's we created the worst diet on the planet.

35:23

we created the worst diet on the planet. We're exporting it to every place in the world. I I do think that there are policy changes happening that could help. Uh there's one right now on ultra-processed food. That's the biggest killer. Like, everything else is like secondary to the food that we're eating. It's not even really food. If you look at the definition of food, it's something that supports the growth and the health and development of an organism. Junk food doesn't do that. Ultra-processed food actually makes you sick and kills you. So, by definition, if you look up in the dictionary what food is, it's not actually food. It looks like food. It might taste like food, but it's not food. Let me jump in for a very quick second. If you can hear me right now, we know you're watching Sober Head. But, are you subscribed? Could you check it for me? Very honestly, our subscriber count gives us real leverage when it comes to convincing the guests we invite to join the show. So, if you want to keep watching some of the best experts in their field right here, please subscribe to the channel. If there's one message to Turkish people, what would that be? It's your first time doing a podcast here? Yeah, I would say you know like really value your traditions and your culture and your foods. I mean I I was privileged enough to be staying in a house of a friend and he had a chef and she's Turkish and she was making us all these Turkish foods that were so delicious, so good, so traditional and she had a little cookbook and it was delish and she just made the most amazing food and and I'm like wow, this is great. I mean this is what people should be eating.

36:53

people should be eating. Mhm. And you feel nourished, it's delicious and you know that like in this morning we had like eggs and tomatoes and we had you know cucumbers and olive oil and olives and I'm like that's a great breakfast as opposed to cereal and French toast and pancakes and muffins and sweetened coffees and bagels and it's just you know terrible. So basically we shouldn't be Americanized. Definitely not. We're at Only Health. What are the treatments that you're having here when you come to Only Health? Here I actually got to do some things for IVs and some facial treatments. So I've had a some really good treatments here and I think you know Morado runs this is is a great leader. He's built a great clinic. There's all kinds of wonderful services here. A lot of modalities around you know things like ozone and plasmapheresis. I've done them before not this time not this visit but they've been great and I think I encourage you all that you know if they have a chronic illness or if there's something that's not getting better that traditional medicines are working you know some place like Only Health can really help you unpack what's going on and then provide a lot of modalities that can help you recover. So as far as I know there is no other more comprehensive biohacking clinic in Europe. I know. I agree with you. Thank you for your time. My pleasure.