jonathan: hey, everyone, jonathan bailor here and i am...

entheos.com The Calorie Myth 1

Jonathan: Hey, everyone, Jonathan Bailor here and I am even more excited

than I usually am. We have a gentleman whose work I’ve

followed personally for many, many years. A man who is out

there in the mainstream helping really hundreds of thousands,

if not millions, of people live better, illustrating just how much

deeper ultra-long term wellness is than counting calories and

how we can dig so much deeper but still keep things simple.

He’s the author of a myriad number one New York Times

bestselling books including The Blood Sugar Solution, Ultra

Metabolism, The Ultra Mind Solution, The Ultra Simple Diet, and he’s

also the co-author of Ultra Prevention. I am ultra-excited to

welcome Dr. Mark Hyman to the show. Hi, Dr. Mark, how’s it

going?

Mark: I’m great. Thanks, Jonathan. Thanks for having me.

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http://www.entheos.com/The-Calorie-Myth


Jonathan: Dr. Hyman, it is an absolute pleasure, absolute pleasure to have

you here. Before we dig into all things medical and deeper than

calories, can we take a step back? You’re an MD, you’re a

practicing physician. How did you make the transition from let’s

call it your normal, everyday physician to the sort of Superman

physician that you’ve become today?

Mark: Well, you mean how did I get into the ideas that I’m working with

now or how did I get to have bestselling books?

Jonathan: A little bit of both. You’re still a practicing physician. How do you

fit it all in?

Mark: That’s right, hard work basically. I think I started out predisposed

to these ideas. I actually was very interested in integrative

medicine before it was called integrative medicine, nutrition I

studied in college, I studied yoga. I was raised in the world of

nutrition and health.

In fact, in medical school I was sort of an outcast and a pioneer

thinking about these ideas. In college I read a book called

Nutrition Against Disease which was a very profound book by

Roger Williams, the father of sort of biochemical individuality,

one of the fathers of functional medicine. That book really kind

of woke me up to the possibility of using food as medicine.

That was just in my consciousness. Then when I went through

medical school I got brainwashed and I basically realized that

after a while of doing this that giving prescriptions to patients to

deal with symptoms wasn’t the solution, that I needed to get to

the root cause. The root cause was usually what they were eating

in their lifestyle and environment.

That’s what functional medicine is. It’s a way of dealing with the

causes, not just the symptoms. It’s medicine by cause, not by

symptom. It’s a very profound way of thinking about how to

create health and it’s really the science of creating health.




That’s what I do every day in my practice. I have an ultra-wellness

center in Lenox, Massachusetts and we work with thousands of

patients and we help them regain their health from complex

issues that really no one else can figure out because they’re not

thinking the right way.

It’s really a thinking problem and when you use a road map, the

architecture of functional medicine, you begin to look through a

different set of lenses and you begin to see patterns and how

things connect and how everything relates to everything else.

Using that information you can help someone create health.

Food is just a natural part of that. In fact, it’s the most powerful

drug that I have. I use other treatments but food is by far the

most powerful drug on the planet.

Jonathan: Food seems like it’s so much more than just calories, Dr. Hyman.

Why is it still controversial in the mainstream western medical

community that things that we put into our body, other than

prescriptions, can have a pharmacological effect?

Mark: Yes, well that’s great. I’ve written a lot of books and I wrote my

first book talking about this ultra-metabolism about eight or nine

years ago really where I brought up the idea that all calories are

not the same, that really the calories, the thing that you talked

about is really what’s keeping us back which is the idea that it’s

all about energy balance, calories in, calories out, food is just

energy and if you focused on that you’d be successful losing

weight.

Well, it’s not really working. Exercise more, eat less just doesn’t

work. The question is what’s really going on here. Food is not just

calories, it’s information. It’s a big headliner, food is not just

calories, it’s not just energy, it’s information.

What do I mean by that? Well, information gives instructions to

your body. It’s like a software coding your body, telling it what to

do. It’s messages sent directly to your DNA with every single bite.

It’s not just protein, fats and carbs. It’s not just fiber. It’s not just




vitamins and minerals. There’s also other components,

phytonutrients and phytochemicals from food that we don’t

think are essential but are actually regulating all sorts of

chemical processes, regulating information, detoxification and

immune function.

We have also RNA. Plant RNA we realize is being absorbed into

our bodies and regulating our own genes. Plant genetic material

is talking to our genetic material, telling it what to do.

Also, protein, fats and carbs are not all created equal. We have

different qualities of the foods. Protein from let’s say a feed lawn

cow is very different from like a wild elk in terms of its

composition, in terms of the fatty acids that are there, in terms of

its effect on your immune system, in terms of the effect on your

metabolism.

It’s really important to understand these very fine differences

between these foods. You begin to realize that food is actually

medicine, that when you go to the grocery store you should be

thinking of it as your farmacy, F-A-R-M-A-C-Y, right? We need to

be thinking of farmacology in a different way which is F-A-R-M-O-

C-O-L-O-G-Y.

Farmacology is really the idea that what we’re growing our

plants, is really the medicine that we should be using. It’s not like

a drug, it actually is a drug. In fact, it regulates your gene

function, it regulates your enzymes, your biochemistry in very

direct and specific ways that are very well mapped out.

I think that’s what people don’t get, that what they put on their

fork at the end of the day is really the most important thing they

can do for not only their health but for the health of the planet

and the environment as well.

Jonathan: Dr. Hyman, with all the patients you see I can imagine that you

may once in a while get someone who comes in and says, “Mark,

come on, wasn’t there that professor that ate 1,400 calories of




Twinkies and Ding Dongs every day and lost weight? Why can’t I

just do that?”

Mark: Well, you could. You could absolutely do that and you might lose

weight. If you restrict calories enough you will lose weight, but

how will your health be? Weight loss is not the same as health

creation. In fact, the thing that I focus on with patients, I never

tell patients to lose weight. I have never said, “You need to lose

30 pounds,” or, “You need to be on a diet and lose weight.”

Never.

What I teach them is how their body works and how to create

health. When you create health, weight loss happens

automatically. You don’t have to make people lose weight. You

just teach them how to eat in a way that nourishes their body.

We know that processed dough, drinks that people use like Slim

Fast or Twinkies or Subway diets, those can help people lose

weight but that doesn’t mean you’re healthy. We have to simply

not equate the idea of weight loss and health and teach people

that the information that they put in their bodies is really the

main determinant of the quality of their health and the quality of

their lives.

Jonathan: It sounds like, Dr. Hyman, there’s a critical distinction between

weight loss and health. Have you also seen a big distinction

between weight loss and long-term slimness? It seems like we’ve

all lost weight, that’s not really the issue. The issue is keeping it

off and then enjoying our lives throughout the process.

Mark: Right. Right. Last night I had a group of people over for dinner.

One of them was my patient and a friend who’s also a patient. I

have her on a diet that’s a healthy diet.

People think it’s about deprivation, it’s about not having good

quality food, it’s about going on and off a diet. It’s not. It’s eating

in a way that sustains you.




We made roasted chickens, they were organic chickens. I had an

incredible salad I got from a farmer’s market with lettuce and

spinach and fresh shaved beets and carrots and fennel. We had

roasted sweet potatoes. It was a completely nutrient-dense diet.

I had roasted vegetables. I roasted peppers I got and brussel

sprouts and cauliflower roasted in the oven with a little olive oil.

Just really amazing food.

It was not a deprivation diet. It was something that’s incredibly

delicious. Someone said, “This is the best chicken I’ve ever had.

This is the best meal I’ve ever had.” That’s what we should be

saying every day, not that this is a job. It’s eating medicine. It

doesn’t taste like medicine, it tastes like a delicious, nourishing

meal.

That’s the difference. People don’t have to go on a diet and go off

a diet. If you lose weight and you go on a diet to lose weight,

that’s a bad idea. You want to eat in a way your body was

designed to eat and then it’ll automatically lose weight and

create health.

Jonathan: When you say automatically lose weight and create health, this

is a message that really resonates with me and the research I’ve

done. Can you explain a little bit about the underlying

biochemistry? Let’s geek out a little bit here, Dr. Hyman. How is it

that when we nourish our body properly it will automatically

pursue a healthy weight as it might now automatically be

pursuing an unhealthy weight?

Mark: Sure, let’s just take a few examples. Let’s just sort of break it

down like protein, fat and carbs so people understand those.

When you eat protein, are all proteins created equal? Yes or no?

The answer is no. In fact, if you eat a feed bought beef cow it’s

full of hormones, antibiotics, pesticides, it has a different fatty

acid composition. It creates an increase in inflammatory

molecules called cytokines like CRP and others, tin alfalfa, IO1,

all of which are promoting disease and aging and cause you to

gain weight.




Whereas if you eat a grass fed or wild animal you’ll have 500

percent less bad fats in them. You will produce anti-

inflammatory molecules in your body. It will help improve your

metabolism. The quality’s really important.

Fat’s the same thing. Gram per gram, if you eat trans fat versus,

say, omega-3 fats, trans fats which are manmade fats that are

made by taking a vegetable oil, injecting hydrogen and making it

solid at room temperature, margarine basically or shortening, it

actually binds to receptors in your cells called p-bar which are

little receptors on the nucleus of your cells. Is this too icky?

Jonathan: No, this is not icky. I’m just like woo hoo, I love it, keep going.

Mark: Okay. When you said geek out I thought that was like permission

here to geek out.

Jonathan: It absolutely is.

Mark: These little receptors on your cells called p-bar, these regulate

insulin, the regulate inflammation, they regulate your

metabolism. When you eat trans fat or shortening, let’s say Cool

Whip or a Twinkie, you’re binding these fats to the receptors.

What that does is, one, it creates inflammation. Two, it slows

your metabolism. We call it oxidated phosphorylation which is

how you process food in your mitochondria. You basically slow

your metabolism. It makes you more insulin resistant so you

become diabetic.

You take, for example, omega-3 fats which our body was

designed to eat, you eat that and it binds in the same spot in

your cells in the nucleus, but it has the exact opposite effect. It

improves your metabolism, speeds it up. It improves insulin

sensitivity so it prevents diabetes. It reduces inflammation and it

does that through regulating your gene expression.




When you eat one fat it turns on bad genes, when you eat

another fat it turns on good genes. Even though it’s the same

gram of fat, same calories.

Same thing with carbohydrates. If you take carbohydrates from

broccoli or you take carbohydrates from soda they are both

carbohydrates, right? Not all carbohydrates are the same. Soda

will be all high fructose corn syrup or sugar. It will drive a fat

factory in your liver, it will produce a fatty liver, create

lipogenesis which is like this fat factory and you create the

production of a fatty liver.

It increases insulin resistance, increases inflammation. It messes

up your hormones. In men it lowers testosterone, in women it

increases testosterone. It leads to a whole cascade of events that

leads to heat disease and diabetes and cancer.

Whereas if you have the same number of grams of carbohydrate

from, let’s say broccoli, it’s full of fiber, full of phytochemicals like

sulfuorphane, glycocynolate, it’s full of folate, magnesium,

other vitamins, all which optimize your metabolism. None of

which raise your blood sugar, none of which create insulin

production, none of which make your cholesterol abnormal,

which the carbohydrate from sugar will do.

Even though it’s exactly the same calories, totally different

biological effect.

Jonathan: This calorie myth, it really seems like it’s missing the point in the

sense that what you just said, if I’m understanding it correctly,

you could consume the exact same number of calories and have

a wholly different metabolic response that has nothing to do

with that number of calories at all. It’s completely irrelevant. It’s

everything other than calories.

Mark: That’s right. In fact, it’s even more than that. There’s information

molecules in food, but if you for example take the same protein

grams, same fat grams, same carb grams in different qualities of

this, it will have a different effect. Even if you juggle around the




protein, fat and carbs and have the same calories, it can have a

very different effect.

For example, one example is my friend, Dr. David Ludwig from

Harvard. He found that if you took patients and put them on a

higher fat, higher protein, lower carb diet, a low glycemic diet

with the same calories and you took another group and put

them on a higher carb, lower protein, lower fat diet, the group

that was on the higher carb, higher glycemic diet, the one that

raises your blood sugar more, even though it was exactly the

same calories they burned 300 less calories a day.

That’s like running an hour a day. If you run an hour a day, that’s

the difference between 300 calories. [Inaudible 00:14:58] one

diet will speed up your metabolism, another diet will slow down

your metabolism even on the same calories. This has really

broad implications for your health. Does that make sense?

Jonathan: Absolutely. These isocaloric studies have gone on for decades,

Dr. Hyman. They blow my mind. People still seem to be surprised

by them. What is not getting communicated to them? You do an

amazing - I admire the time you spend in the mainstream media

trying to communicate this message. Coca-Cola still puts out

billboards that say it’s just 140 calories. Why is everyone freaking

out? How do we get this message across?

Mark: That’s right, I love what the food industry did. They co-opted

Michelle Obama. When she came up with the Let’s Move

campaign they said, “We’re going to partner with you. What we’re

going to do is we’re going to take a trillion and a half calories out

of the food supply. How great is that?”

Do you know what they did? They made Oreo cookies 90 calories

instead of 100 calories. That’s what they did. They made Twinkies

120 calories instead of 130 calories. It’s still Twinkies, it’s still

Oreos, it’s still bad information.

We really are stuck on this whole idea of calories and I love the

fact that you created this book The Calorie Myth because it speaks




to this whole idea. I’ve written a lot about this in my books but it

really needs to get out there more and I appreciate the work

you’ve done to synthesize the data.

It’s real and we’re totally confused. The real issue here is that the

government, the media and most physicians and nutritionists

still believe in calories. Almost every major agency like American

Heart Association, American Diabetic Association, American

Nutritionists I think it’s the Dietetic Association, all of them still

believe in the calorie myth.

Until we really shift our policies, until we sort of shift our

recommendations we’re not going to really get much change in

our obesity epidemic.

Jonathan: It seems like there’s another insidious myth that is a close

brother or sister to the calorie myth. Maybe it’s not a myth, let’s

see what you think. It’s this myth of moderation because when

we talk about calories sometimes people say, “Well, it’s just 140

calories,” or just a little bit. When you talk about it’s not like a

drug, it is a drug, we don’t say smoke in moderation, we say don’t

smoke.

Mark: Right, right. I think there’s two issues here. One is you have to

eat, so what do you eat? Two is the calories really matter and

why should we focus on calories and what about a different way

of thinking about things?

I really never focus on calories with patients. I think it’s a bad

idea. Plus, who can count calories? I’m a trained physician,

nutritionist, studied nutrition for decades. I have no freaking

idea. You can buy a calorie book and counter but only if you eat

processed foods. You have to weigh and measure everything.

Who’s going to do that? It’s insane.

You have to have a different methodology that works for people

and that makes sense. Counting calories doesn’t even make

sense even if we were able to do it, which we’re not.




I did a segment on the Today Show which is 100 calories of, let’s

say blueberries, versus 100 calories of Oreos. They have these

100-calorie packs of food and we think, “It’s only 100 calories, it’s

no problem.”

It has a totally different effect on your body. The net calories is

different. It’s even more complicated than that because the

calories lead to the effect of gut flora that you have. You have

this entire universe of gut bacteria called the gut micro biome. It

actually uses the food that you eat and transforms it and then

regulates your metabolism through its own metabolic activity.

Your gut bacteria are in effect controlling your metabolism.

What controls your gut bacteria is what you eat. If you eat

blueberries versus Oreos, very different effect on your gut flora,

very different effect on your metabolism.

Our biology is a web, it’s a complex web that has an enormous

impact on your health and it directly interacts with our

environment all the time with what we’re eating, what we’re

thinking, what we’re feeling, toxins. We have to kind of

understand the complexity of this.

Even, for example, toxins have a role. We talked about calories

but if your body’s toxic you can’t necessarily even metabolize

your calories. We injected toxins into rats. Sorry for all your

animal lovers out there but sometimes science uses animals and

I didn’t do the research, I’m just reporting on it.

The rats were infected with toxins and they were eating the same

calories. They were gaining weight even though they ate the

same calories, because the toxins poisoned their metabolism.

We need to kind of get away from counting calories, we need to

get away from this idea of it’s all about the calories. I think the

whole idea of moderation, as you said, is really interesting.

Part of what I recommend is unlimited amounts of foods. I like to

eat. If you tell me to restrict my eating, I’m not going to do it




because I love to eat. I’m just not going to do it. I have to eat

foods that I can eat a lot of.

Last night, we had an enormous salad so I must have had three

plates of salad, which was spinach and a great kind of lettuce,

some funky lettuce from the farmer’s market, grated beets,

grated carrots, fennel. Oh my God, it was so good. I just ate three

plates of that because I ate unlimited refills. I have unlimited

refills. If I want to eat a large volume of food I get to eat it

because I like it.

I wouldn’t do that for other parts of my diet. I might have a sweet

potato but I wouldn’t have ten sweet potatoes. I might have a

half a sweet potato. There are areas of my plate that are for

unlimited refills. Those are the areas that I put on all the non-

starchy vegetables, the things that are very low glycemic, very

nutrient dense, relatively low calorie. You can have large volumes

and be completely fine.

If you wanted to have 750 calories you could have a piece of

cheesecake and it’s 750 calories. Or you could have 21 cups of

broccoli. Good luck if you could eat it, but 21 cups of broccoli is a

lot of broccoli. The point is you can just eat as much of that stuff

as you want. There’s a lot of benefits to it because it provides all

the nutrients and nutrient-dense compounds you need.

Jonathan: You mentioned the term metabolism and regulating your

metabolism. That really seems at the heart of this issue. I don’t

want to take this too far, but we consciously need to regulate our

metabolism by counting and doing math when we eat and then

monitoring and doing what the treadmill says.

This isn’t mushy, this is as scientific as it gets, versus tapping into

this internal balance system that already regulates our

metabolism and our gut flora working with our hormones,

working with our hypothalamus. Why do people think our body

is broken innately versus understanding that wisdom that’s

within it?




Mark: Right, that’s so true. We have to sort of recognize that if you eat

in the way we’re designed to eat and you just eat real food, that

your body knows what to do. It’s way smarter than any of us.

Hormones shift into balance, your gut flora balance, your

immune system balances, your mitochondria start working

better, everything kind of happens.

Really, for me it’s about balance and abundance and joy and

energy and that’s what I want to feel, that’s what I want to give

my patients. The best way that I found to do that is by just

picking quality food, real food. What should we be eating? Fruits

and vegetables, nuts, seeds and beans, lean animal protein or

just good quality animal protein, it doesn’t even have to be lean if

it’s good quality fats. Very limited amounts of whole grains,

limited amounts of starchy vegetables.

Then really pretty much no processed foods, just zero. Do I eat

processed foods? Yes, I’ll have a piece of chocolate. Dark

chocolate, that’s processed. Will I eat ketchup that’s organic

ketchup, yes I’ll have that sometimes. I’ll eat some things that are

minimally processed but basically if you can give the product to

someone in fifth grade and they can’t read the label then you

shouldn’t eat it. If they can’t pronounce the ingredients and they

don’t understand what’s on the label then you shouldn’t eat it.

By the way, most of us even who’ve had multiple college degrees

can’t read most food labels that we eat, processed food, and

actually tell you what it is. That’s not really food, that’s a factory

made science project and we should not be eating it.

Jonathan: Speaking of factory made science projects, what do you say to

patients when they say, “I’m going to eat this Ding Dong,” and

then I’m going to jog for half an hour to cancel it out?

Mark: That’s a good idea. Did you know you have to run four and a half

miles or walk four and a half miles to burn off one soda? You’d

have to run four miles every day for a week to burn off one

super-sized meal. That’s every single day for a week to burn off




one meal. If you eat that every day you’d have to run a marathon

every day.

If you want to run a marathon every day, fine, do whatever you

want. Even then I think you’re not getting the right information.

I think the whole idea that you’d get to have a work-out treat, you

work out and you get to have a drink of this and that, these are

just bad ideas. Unless you’re Kobe Bryant running around the

court for 48 minutes flat out, you don’t get Gatorade. Even then

there’s all kinds of issues with it.

I think we have to forget about counting calories, forget about

even calories when we exercise. We need to figure out what kind

of exercise we need to do, what’s the quality exercise, what’s the

quality food. Then forget about it and your body will figure it out.

Your body figures it out. You don’t have to get into all this kind of

technical mumbo-jumbo. We didn’t do that for centuries, we still

won’t do it. If we focus on what’s true, what’s real and

essential, the rest all works out.

Jonathan: Dr. Hyman, what can we expect? Let’s say we are one of these

individuals. I’ve seen this in my own life and the lives of my loved

ones where maybe we are really active and we can get away with

eating some of these foods which spike our blood sugar and

infuse us with these toxins. That gets back to your earlier point

about, sure you can be skinny and sick, can’t you?

Mark: Yes. What’s really frightening is we have about almost 70 percent

of Americans that are overweight. That means about 30 percent

are thin. Of those who are thin, a quarter of them are what we

call skinny fat. They look thin on the outside but they’re fat on

the outside. They’re sick on the inside and look okay on the

outside.

How is that? The information they’re putting in their body is

creating changes that lead to obesity. It’s not obesity that you

can see. It’s the same metabolic, biochemical picture as if you

were fat, but you’re thin because you lose muscle, you gain fat,




you change your hormones, you increase inflammation, all of

that happens as a result of eating the wrong things.

In fact, in a study of children they found that there was almost

one out of four kids who have pre-diabetes or type two diabetes,

adolescents. More frightening, there were about 37 percent of

the skinny kids. Thirty-seven percent of the skinny kids had

either pre-diabetes or some other biochemical abnormality. They

were hypertensive, they had high cholesterol, high blood sugar,

abnormal lipids. They were thin.

Think about it, almost 40 percent of thin kids are metabolically

obese. What are the implications for that in terms of heart

disease, diabetes and all of the rest of the things that we see as

people age.

Jonathan: Dr. Hyman, that really breaks my heart and is one of the things

that gets me up in the morning. If you go into a school cafeteria

and you look around it’s not like there’s a group of kids who are

eating kale and wild caught salmon and they’re the thin kids and

then there’s a group of kids who have Cheetos and Pepsi and

they’re the overweight kids.

All the kids are eating basically the same garbage in most schools

and some are skinny and some aren’t. What’s going on there?

Mark: Well, I think we’re all genetically quite different. Some of us are

more likely to gain weight, others just get skinny fat, which is

skinny on the outside and fat on the inside. Some people have

very resilient metabolisms and can tolerate a more wide range of

stresses.

Eventually it catches up with you. U.B. Blake lived until he was

100 years old. He said, “If I knew I was going to live so long I

wouldn’t have smoked and I wouldn’t have drank so much.”

There are people who just got the lottery and that’s true. For

most of us it’s just not true.




Jonathan: What is this? It seems to be more of a moralistic view many of

us in our culture have on obesity. You’ve probably seen this in

your clinic where an obese person will come in and say, “I swear

to you, Dr. Hyman, I’m not eating any more than my peers. I stop

when I’m full. I don’t know what else to do.” Then the media just

tells these people they’re weak and should try harder. What do

you say to them?

Mark: It’s interesting, the sort of social stigma on obesity’s huge.

They’ve done studies on this where they’ve asked kids, “Would

you rather be in a wheelchair or be fat?” They’d rather be in a

wheelchair and be disabled than be fat because of the level of

stigma.

Part of it is because we really blame the fat person in this

country. If someone’s in a wheelchair we don’t blame them for

being in a wheelchair, but if someone’s fat it’s your fault, you’re

just a fat, lazy pig and you eat too much. Just stop stuffing your

pie hole and everything will be fine. Get out of your chair and

start walking and you’ll be fine.

Unfortunately this is so not true. Nobody wants to be fat.

Nobody wakes up and says, “I want to be fat. I’m going to just

make myself fat because I want to be fat.” It just doesn’t happen

like that. What happens is there’s a hormonal and biological

reality to us that gets triggered in response to eating 150 pounds

of sugar and 146 pounds of flour every year per person.

That’s almost a pound of sugar and flour combined every day for

every man, woman and child in America. When you do that it

triggers biological addiction, which is actually the subject of my

next book The Blood Sugar Solution Ten Day Detox Diet that’s

coming out in February.

We get triggered into a set of physiologic responses that create

this ongoing cycle of chaos, of hormonal imbalance or chaos that

creates obesity.




When you are in that state it’s almost like your biochemistry is

locked in this state. Even if you actually don’t eat that much there

are all kinds of factors that are driving to keep the weight on. It

could be the type of food you’re eating. If you’re not eating that

much it will increase insulin. It could be that it’s inflammatory

foods. It could be that you’re allergic, it could be that you’re toxic,

it could be that you have abnormal gut flora. All these things will

drive you to gain weight independent of your calorie intake.

Jonathan: Beautiful segue there, Dr. Hyman. You’d think we planned this.

Speaking of your wonderful February release of The Blood Sugar

Solution Ten Day Detox Diet and addiction, you have a different

take on detox. Cleanses and detoxes have been talked about for

a while but I’ve always admired your metabolic understanding.

What can we expect to see in this book and how is it different

from some of these more gimmicky cleanses and detoxes out

there?

Mark: Listen, you can do a juice cleanse, you can do a flush, you can do

all kinds of stuff. All that’s great. All that’s wonderful and people

can get a short-term benefit and clean out their diet. I encourage

people to experiment with that.

What I’m really talking about is true detox, like detox from heroin

or detox from cocaine or detox from nicotine or caffeine. These

are biologically addictive substances. The science has shown us

unequivocally that these foods are biologically addictive.

Processed foods and sugar is biologically addictive. Sugar is eight

times more addictive than cocaine.

There was a study at Connecticut College a few weeks ago that

showed that Oreos lit up the brain like cocaine. Not even like

cocaine, worse than cocaine. Would you give your kid a line of

coke? No. You give them Oreo cookies when they come home

from school. Does that really make sense given what we know

about the biology of food addiction?

Most people are hooked in this cycle of food addiction. The

purpose of my book is to bring consciousness to the idea that




processed foods, sugar in pharmacologic doses, is biologically

addictive. Two, to provide a clear path to people to detox and

reset their hormones, reset their metabolism and get unhooked

from food addiction.

Using the science of functional medicine, treating the whole

system, we devised a strategy to balance all the hormones and

all your molecules and change your biochemistry very quickly

through food and through some simple lifestyle practices that

reset everything.

We did this with 600 people. We had a few thousand start, about

600 finished filling out all the data, which is what they had to do.

Most people didn’t feel like filling out the data. We had 600

people actually fill out the data.

We had extraordinary results. Not only did people see dramatic

improvements in weight and the reduction in waist size and so

forth, but their overall symptom score from all diseases and all

symptoms reduced by 65 percent. They got healthy.

Thirdly, their addiction was gone in a couple of days. You go

through a physiologic withdrawal, if you take rats and you give

them sugar and then you cut the sugar out they go through

withdrawal just like if you were getting them off of heroin or

cocaine. They have agitation, they have the shakes, they’re

irritable, they’re just agitated. Just like what happens when you

get off sugar.

The way I’ve designed the program is to minimize all those

effects and to quickly redial your molecules and your hormones

so that you don’t feel that. I really want to bring to light the

addiction story, I want to bring to light that there’s a path out of

that and that there is rehab for your metabolism. It only takes a

few days and in ten days you’ll be completely reset.

Jonathan: It’s such a compelling message for two reasons, Dr. Hyman, I

feel. The first is that it really does show that this isn’t a moral

failing of people. It’s an information problem because I don’t




know any parent that gives their child cocaine. Why? They know

how bad it is for them.

It seems like step one is, like you said in your book The Blood

Sugar Solution Ten Day Detox Diet, to educate people on how

much more serious this is.

Mark: It’s very serious. It’s very serious. I mean, when you really stop

and think about it it’s very serious. If this is true and I believe it is

and science shows it is, then the implications are huge. Why do

we allow this without warning labels? We allow alcohol, we allow

nicotine, right? There’s warning labels. Don’t drive when you

drink this, this will kill you if you smoke it.

Okay, we should have on every label of soda it should say, “If you

drink this it will cause addiction and make you fat and sick and

kill you.” Yes, that’s what it should say. It should be a food label.

I know that sounds like a crazy idea but if this is really true and it

is, then we regulate seat belts, we regulate vaccines, we regulate

all sorts of things in society. We make people regulate tobacco.

We have regulations that protect our citizens. We need to think

differently about this.

People say, “Well, people have to eat.” Yes, they do. They don’t

have to eat junk food, they don’t have to eat processed food. In

fact, these were just new inventions in the last 50 to 100 years.

They didn’t even exist before.

No, we don’t have to eat that. I think it’s a problem because we’ve

got a one trillion dollar food industry that profits from making

people sick and fat and that’s not going to go away easily. It’s

going to take people like you and me and others talking about

these issues, getting out there in the news, the media, changing

the conversation, getting people to have the experience, having

them talk about it and seeing the truth about this.

This isn’t just a new gimmick. Your book Calorie Myth, it’s not a

gimmick. It’s not a quick fix thing. It’s an intelligent conversation




about why we’re in this pickle and why everybody’s advice isn’t

working. Just eat less, exercise more. It’s all about the calories, it’s

all about energy balance. This is a myth that’s getting us into

trouble.

Jonathan: Dr. Hyman, I’ve got a little chills here. I can’t think of a better way

to end the show but tell us a bit where we can learn more about

your upcoming book The Blood Sugar Solution Ten Day Detox Diet

as well as you just have so many free resources, where can we

get more info?

Mark: You can go to my website, DrHyman.com. I’ve written a book The

Blood Sugar Solution and the Blood Sugar Solution Cookbook which

are great resources. I have plenty of free articles and videos on

my website all the time.

In my book that’s coming out in February with a public television

show that’s coming out at the same time, I’ll be having an online

course that will be supporting people to actually participate. I

believe that it’s not just about doing it alone, it’s about doing it in

community.

The power of the community, the power of friends and social

networks and peers to sort of encourage you and connect with

you and support you is really going to make this much easier. All

those are available and if you want to pre-order the book I think

it’s up on Amazon now.

Jonathan: I love it. Well, friends, if you have not checked out Dr. Hyman’s

work, absolutely please do. One of the individuals out there

rooted in the science, and also as you can tell from this

conversation understanding this is about so much more than

weight loss.

This is about giving us back that which is innately ours and that

has been stolen from us, and that is health, vitality and the ability

to manifest the purpose that we were put here to live. We’re not

just all lazy and stupid, there’s something else going on. Dr.



http://drhyman.com/


Hyman, thank you so much for all the work you do, all the lives

you save and for sharing your time with us today.

Mark: Thank you, Jonathan, that was great.

Listeners, again, thank you for joining us. Please check out Dr. Hyman’s work and

remember, this week and every week after, eat smarter, exercise smarter and

better. Chat with you soon.



jonathan: hey, everyone, jonathan bailor here and i am...

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