Dr. Mark Hyman on Function Health & GLP-1 microdosing | E2334

0:00Most doctors don't use any kind of tech to make decisions. One in three Americans are like skipping going to talk to a doctor when they have an issue because they can't afford it. It's except a 10 with chronic illness, 93% with metabolic dysfunction. You know, where have 75% or obese are overweight. I mean, this is just, we have a staggering problem that is not being addressed by our system. And we spend more and more money. We're getting sicker and sicker 65% with my insulin levels, which can ever get checked. A Harvard study, chat, UBT's and the large language models. Basically, we're as accurate or more accurate than doctors. The preference of the patient in the bedside manner, the results from the LLN. Well, okay. It's gone from caribou to actually pretty good. This week in startups is brought to you by RIPLING. Don't settle for AI that's all talk. Head to rippling.ai slash twist and get the only AI built to give you full visibility across your startup and take complex actions across your entire organization. That's r-i-p-p-l-i-n-g.ai slash twist.

1:03Sign up for exclusive access today. Northwest registered agent got a new business idea. Northwest registered agent helps you bring it to life. Get a free domain, email, phone number, and more with no purchase required. Learn more at www.northwestregisterdagin.com slash twist domain. Oh, do. The all-in-one business platform. Your first app is free. Get started today at od.o.com slash twist. All right, everybody. Welcome back to the program. Super excited to have podcaster, entrepreneur, doctor, and all around great guy, Dr. Mark Heimann, is here. How are you doing, Dr. Mark? Great. I'm feeling great. Awesome. Life is good. How do you, you do have a great life? How do you split your time? I mean, you got this great podcast. I tune in once in a while. You know, with the topic and then I jump in. Sometimes it's for lady. Sometimes it's for guys. But it's great because you're so candid and honest during it. You obviously have function health is surging.

2:04Yes. I'm going to talk a lot about the entrepreneurial journey there. And then are you a doctor as well? Like, I'm actually a doctor. I'm a real doctor. I have a practice up in Massachusetts for him now and I see patients. I have a limited patient roster compared to how I used to, which was just full time all the time. I know, after tens of thousands of patients, I'm like, slow down a little bit. Actually, you know, a function is my main focus because it's really a way to scale what I'm doing to millions, if not billions of people. And I think I could sit and see patients all day every day and I'd never be able to sort of bridge the gap. It's happening in healthcare right now, which is really to get people to understand their biology and using technology to help accelerate their ability to create health in life. Yeah. And you were very early to this, which I describe and I don't know if I'm using the right descriptor as self-directed healthcare, people taking ownership of it. I think, you know, my friend Tim Ferris, maybe they call it biohacking. Yeah. The Joe Rogan's of the world have their own view on it.

3:06But what is function health and how should we look at this movement of, hey, I'm not just going to be a passive participant in my healthcare. What is the proper term here? And more importantly, what is the philosophy that we as patients should have in the age of AI and always amazing services available to us? A function is really about giving people agency, democratizing healthcare, and allowing people access to their own biology. Because up until very recently, you know, and I'm a doctor and I'm an healthcare system, you had to go to the doctor, you had to ask for what you want. If you even knew what to ask for, you had to hope they would, he or she would agree to do it. You have to hope your insurance would pay for it. And if they did, you know, it usually was quite a bit of money. And people didn't, didn't have a real understanding of what's happening under the hood. And so function health is really an attempt to bring your biology online to help people have access to their data, to own their own health data. And to use that information to understand where they are, the trajectory of their health,

4:09and how to either identify current problems and issues which we do very often with function, or just see where you're headed in the trajectory and get on the off ramp. If you're heading down to a serious disease like diabetes or Alzheimer's or something terrible. So function is really empowering people with their own data to you. And using technology and AI to help understand that data makes sense of it. And we have a complex being and we have so much going on all the time. And human mind can only comprehend so much. And that's why we have super-suspecialization, but the body is not a bunch of different parts of organ. It's one system. Yeah. And as a doctor, well, two questions. One, this is term functional health. I never knew what that meant. The name of your company's function. Yes. That's what people refer to it as. Should I understand what the word functional health is? Yeah. Functional medicine and function health are two different things. But functional medicine is a discipline, yes. Yes. So function health is really our personal platform that's empowering people with their own data.

5:11And it's informed by all traditional medical science and all our most emerging understandings. For example, traditional medicine understands that the microbiome plays a role in health, but there's really no focus on it clinically. Or there's a real understanding that nutrition plays a role in health, but doctors don't really understand how to apply that and don't learn about it in medical school. And so a functional medicine is a framework for understanding the body as a new, not as a bunch of organ parts of it, but actually as a cohesive system. And that it's really more focused on the science and creating health and treating disease. So it's focused on lifestyle medicine, your diet, exercise, stress, sleep, your nutritional status, hormonal balance, and also like understanding the role of your gut microbiome and your matter of conduct and inflammation and toxins and things that are in the ether that people are hearing about, but they don't understand that there's actually a system of medicine. It helps you see the world to a different set of lenses that gets to the root cause of disease.

6:12So it's really root cause focused. It's really systems focused. It's creating health focus. And those principles are embedded in function health, but it's not all that function health. It's really the full spectrum of medicine from soup to nuts and it includes all that. This is one of the key differences I think in this movement is people are now pursuing this with trying to have their health span increase and feel healthier as opposed to looking at the health care system, which is in this country, I'm sure we'll get into this at some point. That could be a whole other episode. It's quite dysfunctional. I mean, when I just read the statistic when I was getting ready to talk to you that one in three Americans are like skipping going to talk to a doctor when they have an issue because they can't afford it. Like in America, in this like incredible country, these people are delaying mental healthcare. It's just really tragic. But there are people who have a little bit of privilege who have had to have these personalized

7:12doctors and they have this coalsy or doctor experience. And they get to experience something very different than the majority of Americans. And my perception is the role of function in your company is really to take what I started experiencing in the last decade once I had made a little bit of money that I didn't experience in the first 40 years of my life. When sometimes I didn't have health care. And I was like, you know what? I can't afford to see the doctor. So explain what the products and services are in the stack in the product now that helped bridge that gap between what somebody with a concierge doctor, which these things cost 25, 50 K a year. It's like, or more or more, some people are charging 250 K a year. I don't want anyone to get in trouble here, but I have heard of these numbers. Yes, yes, yes. I pitched by that number one. I would just get out by espresso, but putting all that aside, can't put a price up in a good time. Explain to me like where you saw the wedge to say, hey, wait a second.

8:13There's a way to get in here because as an investor in companies, man, I wanted to invest in so many health care companies. And I was just like, ah, this just feels like we're not going to make any progress since it's too dysfunctional. But you figured it out. We did somehow. We did. It's quite amazing that the way this took off in the last four years. I mean, we launched three years ago and we know we have just an extraordinary growth trajectory. And I think that just speaks to the fact that people are hungry, being able to own their own health and to check their health. And I think, you know, the offering is very similar in a way to a country. Here's Dr. because you get really deep analysis of your biology, your full medical histories in there that you put in an access to EMR, all your wearables can be connected. You get a deep stack of lab testing, which is over 100 CC by markers. Tested twice a year plus add-ons if you want for a dollar a day, which is so affordable. Like the membership is basically a dollar a day. Now I've done these labs for years and years on patients and the retail price on these

9:14is like $15,000. It's really inaccessible. Yeah. And. And. And what are those tests so expensive? Is it just the dysfunction of our insurance kind of and hospitals? And but then you have like everybody seems to be using Quest or there's some platform behind it that is actually turns out to be really cheap, but they don't give you any interpretation of it. So you're kind of flying blind. Yeah. We don't actually own lab. We partnered with Quest, our testing partner and there's over 2,000 draw stations across the country and they'll draw and process the labs. We also, you know, them in-house and home-buffled lot of you can get labs shot at home. They also have imaging, whole body imaging, whole body imaging. You can get for, I think, $8.99 now, quite affordable. And it's very quickly. Wait, $899? $199? Yeah. That is a fraction of how you said another service. Three years ago, and it was $3,000. This price coming down. Yeah, but it's coming down.

10:16In the AGI future, maybe you'll just be able to ask your personal agent any question and get immediate perfect answers. But today you still need simple time saving tools to send invoices, run your website and keep track of all the data you need to understand your business. That's why here at Twist, we recommend ODO, O-D-O-O, the all-in-one management software. That's already being used by 16 million users across more than 170,000 companies. ODO is bringing everything you need into one platform. That means your CRM sales, accounting, manufacturing, website, inventory, and point of sale, all the right way you need them. And these tools are all in constant communication with one another. So no more logging every change across three different apps and spreadsheets. Make a sale, and invoice gets created while your inventory gets the same update. So easy, so simple. So if you're still cobbling together, your back office across five different apps or more,

11:16get started today at odo.com slash twist. And your first app is free. That's odo.com slash twist. It healthcare is funny. It's like that. I don't know if you ever saw that. It's healthcare, the airlines operate like healthcare. It would be, it would be like it's so cheerful. And I used to work at Cleveland Clinic and they're in the Cleveland Clinic lab. And the company would be $300. If you go to Quest, it might be $10. That's kind of how healthcare is. You could imagine buying a tailed on one lot for end grant and the same time another lot for 100 grand. That's kind of how healthcare is. There's no transparency in pricing. It's very bizarre. So we know the kind of democratized the access to the pricing. And then you imagine all your data gets sent into your personal health platform that you have access to that is a dashboard for your health. The integrated solid information that provides an AI chat and helps you understand what's going on. It gives you an action plan after understanding what's happening with your biology. And identify a lot of things.

12:17And we're seeing so much going on in the population. This is a health for population. But we saw a lot of sort of Americans who are just sort of middle class Americans. I think the average income is under 100 grand. And the results we're seeing are astounding. We're seeing like 65% with high install levels, which can ever get checked. We're seeing almost 70% of people with a traditional deficiency at the level that the lab says is low. It's not what I would say is optimal. We're seeing 54% with high APOB, which is a lipid biomarker that most doctors don't check. That is more important than LDL or any other cholesterol biomarker based on the American college cardiology literature. And yet it's not checked. So we are really going deep and looking at heavy metals and hormones and traditional status, humanabolic status. And then you're really good at people understanding what's happening. You can even look for cancer through multi cancer early detection testing. And there's a new test. There's a blood test. Yes, I took this blood test a couple of years ago. That is a just a generic blood test for cancer.

13:19And it, you have to have us have to follow up. I was told it's 80% accurate or 90% that could be false positive. Yada Yada. But that's like a relatively new thing to be able to take. Yeah. Yeah, generalized cancer. It's quite amazing actually because many cancers are, you know, we don't have a screening test for, you know, you can get a class, come being in a, you know, PSA, Proprostate, there's controversy about that. A mammogram, you can get a pap test. But it's like, there's not a lot. And I, we believe that, you know, cancer is greatest enemy as early detection. And you know, getting it later is hard. I mean, cancer treatments are improving, but it's still not great. And so there's this new developments in cancer diagnostics, which are quite amazing. And then this is the multi cancer early detection test called gallery. We offer that and it looks at over 15 different cancers. It's about 75% good at picking up things. It doesn't get everything all the time. And it has very low false positive rates. So I don't like going to show you a positive. It's not there. There's also a newer, newer emerging tests that are coming out pro.

14:21You know, mixed tests, we're going to be adding and other things that are quite exciting that are really even better. So there's, there's, there's, there's, there are tens of thousands of people now on function. Hundreds of thousands. I know that the company is very big, but I'm trying to get an idea of like, what's the footprint of the data you have in just three? We've done over a hundred million biomarkers, a hundred million biomarkers. So we have to divide that by some number per person. Like, maybe you don't just move the number of people on it, but I was assuming it's at least tens of thousands of people. No, no, no, no, it's hundreds of hundreds of thousands. Okay. Yeah. Well, I mean, we're reaching, we're reaching millions of people through all of the things that we do. Yeah. And I think, you know, the growth and success is really speaks to how hungry people are to not just advocate their healthcare to the health care system. And it's great when you have an acute injury, but for, you know, preventive care for proactive care for care, this actually focused on creating health, dealing with a lot of common problems that people have, we don't really have a good model. And I think that function healthy just hit that sweet spot in the market where there was

15:26a big gap. And we didn't even know how big it was until we thought, you know, I mean, basically, we were seeing an apportional Hawaii during COVID. It's like, it was ideal, my friend and they're like, okay, and here we go. Yeah. And that, you know, 400 bucks a year, whatever the membership is. And I guess you can do two blood tests a year. So the 365 account counts for twice your testing. Wow. And I'm sure there's some upsells on like more detailed testing. Yes. So you can do more testing. Yeah. And then we can get into maybe low thousands, one, two, three thousand. Yeah. Sure. You can do a lot. I mean, we do brain health screening. We do boxing screening. We do cancer screening. We do more hormone analysis. We do more nutritional analysis. More metabolic analysis. But then in the different year with all those is, I decide. I'd say, I'm reading them in the app. This seems like something I would like to know. This seems like something if I'm going to spend $10,000 going on a vacation or I treat

16:26myself to a business class flight for $5,000 or something. You know, now a person can say, you know what? Instead of buying a $5,000 bag or watch, I'm going to buy a thousand dollar one and I'm going to put three or four thousand dollars into my health and get all this stuff checked. And that's, I think, what you guys have inspired in people. And I'm starting to see amongst friend groups that the, the wealth is in the health and that. What do you guys have? Who cares about your health insurance? Just like if it's a thousand dollars or less, just do it. Like, why wouldn't you just do it? And that is not just from a person of privilege. This is now the middle class can say that. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, 100%. I mean, this isn't really, you know, we have in America's more disease insurance, not so much health insurance. Like, you know, Doug, I want you to help me get healthy. They're like, well, I don't know. You know, code is that. It hurts. We don't, we don't really have that. And so I think I think we're good at acute care medicine. But when it comes to the crisis that's happening in America today, which is, you know, six

17:27out of 10 with chronic illness, 93% of metabolic dysfunction, you know, we're, have 75% or obese are overweight. I mean, this is just, we have a staggering problem that is not being addressed by our system. And we spend more and more money. We're getting sick, sicker. And I think, you know, people are sick and tired of being sick and tired. So that's why I think function is hit, hit such a note in this is not culture. You mentioned the full body scan. I want to double and then triple click on it. You bought a company as a last year. Yes. They do this full body scanning. Yes. My friend from Spotify, Daniel, like he's got one. There's one in the market. I can't remember the name of it. I did it. That's different. That's not an MRI. Yeah. Daniels is not, but yeah, Daniels is not. So explain to me what this general area is. The differences. And when I did the one I did with I think Prunovo, if I'm pronouncing correct, my doctor was like, don't do it. You know, this is my concierge doctor. I said, well, I'm sorry. Don't do it. Why? And they were like, it's, you're going to find a nodule. You're going to find something.

18:28And then you're going to be super anxious. I'm like, I'm fine. I'd rather know I got it. And so I was like, you know, I'll do respect them doing it. And they don't even know what to interpret. He's like, I don't, he's like, I have a lot of patients talking about her doing it. So it was very confusing for me to have a concierge doctor, then telling me it's a waste of time. Yeah. You tell me, Dr. Mark. Tell me, Dr. Mark, what should I think about these? And that general reaction from classic doctors. Well, we're entering a whole new era of data driven healthcare, which we never had before. Doctors are trained very specifically to the minimum amount necessary to make the diagnosis and then find the drug or the surgery to treat that diagnosis. It's not about gathering lots of data that really have a deep understanding of human biology. That's never been possible before. And so doctors have a very bad bias against testing and against imaging, unless it's for confirmation of a presumed diagnosis. That's how we're trained. What's happening now, Jason, is that we're in a data driven healthcare model. We're, we're able to get, you know, 100 to 100 biomarkers where you look at new metabolomics,

19:32which is 6,000 metabolized proteomics, which is tens of thousands of proteins, genetics, which is 20,000 genes and millions of stamps. We're able to look at your microbiome, which has petabytes of data in there. We have imaging now where we can get, you know, a parent terabytes of data on your own body to imaging and make sense of it all. Because no human mind can make sense of all that data. And Lee Hood has done a lot of this work. He's a kind of the instances biology. He's not a program called phenol help, which is sort of almost like a nonprofit version of function, where they're gathering large data sets on people looking at trends in a predictive model. It calls a P4 medicine, which is preventive, predictive, personalized and participatory. And you have to do something to get better. And that's where we should be going with P4 medicine. That's really what functions focusing on. And I believe we're going to be entering here. We're, we're going to start to be able to make sense of all the state of with AI, in a way that is going to really help highlight where you are now with your biology,

20:34what's out of whack and what to do with it and optimize your health to feel better now and to live 100 healthy years. And that's, that's really the mission of function. Regular listeners already know that if you've got a great idea for a new business, our friends at Northwest registered agent want to help you bring it to life. They're going to be the most amazing partner you've ever had. Even if you're not ready to form an LLC, you still need to take care of some basics. So Northwest registered agent is now offering free identity services. That means a free domain name, open source website hosting, a business email and a phone number and everything else that's going to make your new startup look and feel like a professional company. All with no purchase required and you know you can rely on Northwest because they've been helping people like you start businesses for nearly 30 years. If you have an idea, you can't get out of your head. Or even if you're already building something amazing, you already got started. Northwest registered agent is the best way to establish your new company. Learn more at northwest registered agent.com slash twist domain.

21:37Let's talk about those scanners. What are you looking for when you tell somebody, hey, get a scan? And is that something a 30 year old should do? A 20 year old should, you know, if you had a nephew, a cousin, whatever, and they were 25 years old, and they're like, I got the money to do it. Should I do it or not? Any downside? I mean, the baseline, no downside to an MRI. It's basically non-radiation. It's with our technology, which is a bit of a proof we get 22 minute old body scan, which is amazing using AI to help sort of compress the data. And we were able to sort of sequentially over time, you know, do it at an affordable price. It allows you to get a longitudinal picture. So one, any one data point is not that helpful unless you really find something. But over time, if you need less time in the scanner, you get better data. And you're able to see change over time that can predict where you're headed. Now, you will sometimes find stuff that's an incidental finding. It's not a problem, like a kidney cyst or a liver cyst or something like that. Usually, the reality is you can tell what that is. Sometimes you'll find stuff that you know, might be concerning.

22:39And you need to follow it up. We found aneurysms. We found pituitary tumors. We found, you know, people with more serious problems. And if you find a cancer in an early stage, it's durable. I say, one is durable, whereas if you'd wait till three or four, it's definitely not. So I think, you know, the imaging is accessible now. It's affordable now. And and longitudinal is where it really becomes high value. Got it. If you and I had it, I'm 55. I think you're like my brother, maybe one or two years older, but. No, I'm sorry. 67 Jason. Amazing. You look at me. I don't know how you look better than me, but okay, here we go. I guess you have the inside track on this. But I've been on a health journey myself. And if we had this, you know, if you and I had it from our, you know, from the 70s, the 80s, the 90s, what would that have? What would that unlock for us potentially when we do a consultation with a doctor or God forbid, something comes up? I think the more data you have and the better it's sorted with AI, the better you're going

23:43to be able to engage with your own health and your health, your system and your doctor, to ask the right questions to find the right things. And I think, you know, we're in this real pivotal moment from like, episodic fragmented disease-based symptom-based care to, you know, proactive data-driven, longitudinal, continuous healthcare. And with tech, we can finally issue that. And I don't know most people listening realize this because I know you folks don't attack. But healthcare is so antiquated and in that critic in terms of data. Like, when I tell you that most doctors don't use any kind of tech to make decisions. Like in other words, if you're a financial analyst, you have to use spreadsheets and you use a computer. Yeah, you got a little bit of internal. You've got an analyst working for you. If you're a doctor, you basically take a history, you get some lab tests, you process in your brain, you're writing, and you're using electronic medical records, and basically just like a

24:44computer, you know, two-dimensional paper-winning computers. And for the first time, we're able to actually start to have AI help us assemble large data sets and make sense of it and create a model that never exists before it helps you. So I think, you know, it still needs to get kind of worked out, but I think we're going to rapidly iterate and get there. And then we have decision support. So now, you know, I have company like OpenEvidence, which is amazing. So now I can, you know, take a case of mine. I can throw it all in there. I can, you know, get the best available literature. And I can actually, as the doctor, interact with an AI model, it makes me a better doctor. It makes me, you know, a better eyeball to understand the data that my patient is presenting, because I might not have seen, you know, 45 cases of X, Y or Z. I might have had three. And I'm not going to kind of refresh her. And so using AI as a decision support for providers and for your own personal health is really where we're all going. And this is really interesting because there was a Harvard study recently, last couple of years,

25:44it might have been the last year. And the chat, GPTs and the large language models basically were as accurate or more accurate than doctors in comparable situations. And then the one that kind of shocked me was in terms of the preference of the patient and the bedside manner, the results from the LLN. So we take from that what we will. But in your sort of anecdotal experience, like using this, and then obviously constructing the product and putting rails on it in harnesses to make sure you do people good advice, where are we at here in this summer of 2026? If you could have a choice like your, I don't know, a person in a disadvantaged place and you just, it's going to take you six months to go see a doctor or you can make a decision with chat, GPT today. I'm giving you like hard situations here to, yeah. A illustrative of the progress, what would you advise that person to do? Take the raw response on their cold or their screen?

26:48Maybe, but I mean, the doodling malfunction is that it's $365 and you get access to your data and then there's a doctor in the loop. So it's not just the AI. There's a doctor in the loop that makes sure that the output that you're getting is actually bad. It's kind of a guard real on it. I'm asking a super hypothetical person on a desert island, but let's put that out of the thing. Just in general, do you trust the data coming out of them right now? When I put in, here's how I'm feeling, here's my symptoms, what should I do next? I'm constantly amazed. And then I bring that to a doctor or an urgent care and they're like, yep, that's exactly right. Yeah, I mean, it's fun. I can tell you just personally using it and trying it out over years and also in the context of trying to understand it from a function. Just in the last year for years, since it's all been going, it's gone from Caribal to actually pretty good. I don't think we're quite there to unleash it without any guard real. So from terrible to pretty good, no guard real. We need guard reals. It's like a seven out of 10

27:49or something. Yeah, I would say trusted trusted verify. Yeah, it kind of makes sense to me. And you know, I think at the core of it, I'm not sure if you're aware of these companies, but we invested in a company micro one, they do date, you know, it's like enhanced data label and they hire doctors, they hire accountants and they very specifically look at all of the output of the LLMs and then retrain them and actually certify, yes, this. That's what we're doing. That's exactly what we're doing. That's you're doing that too. Yeah. Within our company, where we have lots of doctors who are viewing everything that are actually coming out of the LLMs and making sure that, you know, it comports with what actually a clinical perspective is that's a human, which is good. So we didn't get to wearables yet. You guys don't have a wearable, but you authenticate with them. Yes. So you can, you can actually all your wearable connected into function. You just have to click about it. It'll connect everything. It will also, you can do your e-mar like that. You can also upload all your other lab data. So if you had other imaging other lab data, you can put it in there.

28:53So it basically becomes your own health repository data. And then does it exist now? Like when you, when I see a patient, they got a lab from here, they went to this hospital, and they said, that doctor, they're like, it's impossible for me to provide her to try to make sense of all. And then I have like, you know, chart it. We call it chart a magnly where some people come in with a chart, like, you know, this stick. And you have to kind of read through everything and it's an nightmare. But now, and this hipocompliance, you just, if you ask your own doctor, can I have my thing? They're like, yeah, I'm like, okay, great. Here's my email. They're like, sorry, I'm going to have to send you a CD, Ram with a walk code on it. And then you're going to have to turn the key at the same time. As me, I'm like, we're not taking off a nuclear bar rocket here. Like just, I don't care if my health care gets hacked. I'm going to treat it anyway. I'm just going to be, I'm going to be, no, it gives me shit. But the hip has like made it impossible to just share records, which is insanity. Like in your system, can I just like give access to my doctor and say, hey, you can right now, you can provide them your password and your email to get in. They can see it all or you can download the things

29:58in Senator and eventually there's going to be that integration multiplayer mode is what we need. We really need multiplayer mode in this. And I hope function could be that sort of place. It happens to every business at some point. You're nearing the end of the month or maybe it's the quarter and your sales team is at risk of missing their quota. You could waste days pulling together data from across the entire organization or you could just ask rippling AI. Rippling's already built on your real time people in business data. Obviously. So rippling AI can pull metrics from both rippling and your CRM into a meeting ready dashboard. See exactly how close you are to hitting that quota, break down your revenue by region or sales rep or more, all in just seconds with rippling AI. Look, you're running a company. You're busy. You have critical questions that you need immediate answers to and you can't just probably take it and wait a week for your team to get around to sending you a report and you don't want to sit around waiting for reports. We need an actionable insight right now. So if you're ready to rule your business, head to rippling.ai

30:59slash twist to get the only AI bell to give you full visibility and let you take complex actions across your startup. Do you wear a wearable? Do you think it's important to obsess over sleep, the whoops, the auras, the apples? Because I've gotten a little obsessed with these things. Over time, I'm looking at my recovery, my HRV, my sleep, everything stress. I have a little low CD when I get it. It makes you more stressed watching it than it's probably not a more stressed, but it has shaped my behavior when I'm like, wow, going out till 2 a.m. Rex, you for three days, going to Japan, your sleep is just, just screw for six, seven days, and then I start feeling a little guilty about it. But I'm in Japan, it's pretty cool. So let myself go. I'm like, I'm going to go for a score. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. No, no, no, no, no. You wear one, do you think it's like an important part of the mix? It's just like, I think it is important because I think we're able to through these technologies pick up this very subtle signals where things are off and whether it's heart disease, blood pressure, there's a lot of,

32:01you know, bobe, I mean, there's a lot of things that show up. So if you have the data integrated in a way with technology, it's a good, it's a good brometer where you're at. And also, like, it helps you change behavior. So people really shift. I mean, I know, for example, myself, like I noticed, I used to drink a little bit here and there and I'm like, I, I'm like, well, really, you've actually sleep and that problem is I went to the oven summit and I bought your freaking tequila. And so careful with that. Oh, it's very, I bought your tequila. I'm like, wait a minute. Now, what do I do? You're sip it. I mean, I, I think it's like really super important because I did learn, I think twice in like two or three years of, like, the latest wearable I'm in experiment with, I had one time, it was like, hey, by the way, your HRV is really off. What's going on? And then I had a cold. And then another time, it was like, your skin temperature is crazy. And then I go, I want to get, I have a cold. And I

33:03was like, wait a second. This is incredible because if that was COVID, if I am correct, that would mean I would have taken whatever that for whatever, packs of it in the window, because you have a window to take it. It would have actually, if I'm correct in my, the time I got it. And that's what exactly it was. It was COVID. It was so crazy. My skin temperature went up two degrees. And it was like, hey, dummy, something's wrong. And I was like, okay, my wife said, hey, dummy, take a COVID test. I took a COVID test. Yeah. Yeah. That's good. Yeah, I think I think it is, it is excited, Jason. I think, you know, we're seeing a convergence of multiple things happening all the same time. We're seeing the convergence of like AI with the emerging model of systems, medicine, and biology with the quantified self-awareveled movement with capacity to sort of get large data sets on individuals with, you know, the omics revolution, where we look at, you know, very cheap genomes very soon, very full, you know, omics, which gives you so much more data. You know, the average doctor would be like

34:0520 blood tests. We do 160, but you've got 6000 metabolites in your blood from metabolomics. You've got, as I said, 10,000 proteins and all these genes. And that, that, that's useful information. I think, I think more information for me as the doctor is always better. The more data I have, the more intelligent decision I can make, the better I can help my patients, the better people can learn about themselves and make in-powered decisions about how to activate their own health. Yeah. The alcohol and sugar, those are the two really, I think, people underestimate the negative impact of those two compounds. Yeah. Yeah. Well, they actually mentioned sugar thing. Yes. I think we have an epidemic of, of, of, or metabolic health, which means people are somewhere in the spectrum of diabetes from pre-dibedies or pre-pre-pre-pre-dibedies to pre-dibedies and type-dibedies. And, and we, you know, we see 90, according to the data from tops, 93% of Americans have some version of this. And not full of pre-dibedies, but like some degree, any estimates are maybe one and two to, you know, maybe three and four have pre-dibedies

35:10depending on the definition. And, and what's going on is that, you know, doctors don't test for it because there's no easy drug for, I mean, GLP1's can help, but there, there's no testing for this on a systematic basis. And so if function health, we check insulin. It is probably one of the most important biomarkers for your health, period. And it's super cheap. It's like literally dollars. It's like under $10. I don't even know what it is. Maybe a couple of dollars. It's, I've been testing in for 30 years. I asked Quest of all the labs that get submitted to you. What percent you include insulin? They're like, oh, less than 1%. So, doctors are not looking at this. They don't have interpreters. But should be the first thing people are checking in America with the obesity. It is. And, and I literally just had a patient this morning whose blood sugar was normal, but whose insulin was like 100, which is extremely high. So, the insulin keeps things normal, and when she was overweight, she had, you know, menstrual fads, she was not healthy, but your blood sugar was called normal. And doctors check your blood sugar, but that's a very, very late sign. That's like, but it's how your blood sugar was up. You already been, you know, going down the road

36:13of metabolic crisis for a long time. So, insulin is super important. And it's one of those things that I think everybody should have tested. And it's, you know, one of the key things we test with function. And we check, you're A1C, and we check your article number inside for cholesterol, which gives you an idea of what's going on with your metabolic health too. So we check. What about these glucose monitors? People is, I'm noticing a lot of healthy people, like the health nut group, wearing a glucose monitor like, whoa, you're like a beast. You look like an adonis. What are you doing? Oh, yeah, no, I really want to understand my body. Those things seem to cost like, I don't know, low hundreds of dollars a month, I think. And people are kind of getting into that. Is that something you recommend for people to understand their metabolism better, especially people who maybe like myself were obese for some kind of time? Absolutely. I mean, absolutely. I don't think you have to use it forever, but it's a way to understand how different foods affect you. It's really important. And everybody's different. The microbiome of texture glucose surges. And so everybody needs to check what foods are good for

37:17them or not. And I think why is that? Why is it that my body when I eat a bowl of cereal might be different than your body when you eat a bowl of cereal? There's a lot of reasons. Genetics play a big role. So like, for example, the Native Americans are a great example. The 80% have type 2 diabetes. But a hundred and five years ago, there was zero cases of type 2 diabetes. It was because their genetics are really good at starvation and storage, whereas others are not. And if you might have a can of coke and your insulin might go up really high, mine might go up a little bit. Same can of coke. So it's not the food that your biology has a response to it. And so I think people are learning what foods affect them and which foods are blood sugar, which foods don't how to construct a meal to balance your blood sugar is so important because that blood sugar is the key phenomena that you have to have for healthy aging. I remember a lecture that I heard from a head of preventive cardiology at Harvard, Dr. Jorge Pletsky years ago and he said, if you were to take a group of 100 year old people that have clean arteries,

38:21they'd have one thing in common. And I said, what's that? He said they be insulin sensitive, meaning their blood sugar would be well regulated and they would not be insulin resistant, which most Americans are like like at least three quarters of or two thirds of our members that function have an it's a level that is over the reference range. Of course for the lab, which is 18 optimal should be like under 10 or even five. So the way we come up with the quote normal ranges is we say what's what's the average in a population to stand deviations away. So if you're like a marshal in America, it's normal to be overweight because 75% of us overweight, it's not optimal, but it's normal. That doesn't make any sense. I mean, that sounds like somebody doing an insurance table or something fugacy is trying to make that happen. And then I also learned like I was like this, I would get hungry 11 o'clock a night, I have a bowl of cereal, then I have a second bowl. And I watch, I'm like, oh my god, I'm spiking like crazy. Then I do

39:21the experiment. I have some hogging to us. It barely spikes. I'm like wait a second. Come on, I can have a scoop of ice cream instead of a bowl with cereal. It's got that in protein. And it's got some protein in it. Exactly. And cereal and when starches, those sugars are just deconstructed industrial science project that spiked your sugar rating. So yeah. Yeah. And we sold on our whole life. Yeah, I just have a bowl of wheaties. You're grit. It's like, no, that's like I'm not three balls of three balls of sugar. Yeah, I'm like, I have a confession to make. I'm a serial killer. C-E-A-R-S-O-G-L. Serial kill. Exactly. I loved it myself. And then the other thing I learned doing it was the order of like eating stuff matter. So it's yes. Yeah, if you want to have some mashed potatoes, yeah, after you have your steak or after you have your fish, you can have some of the pasta, but just eat it in that order. I'm like, so I did that experiment. Yeah. And then the final one that was incredible was, oh yeah, walk 10 minutes to your star after dinner. Yeah. And it's a whole different profile. So then I made this tiny adjustment. You go to the

40:23parking lot. I'm going to a restaurant. I don't use the Valet. I saved 20 bucks, Dr. Mark. I parked on the street five blocks away on purpose. That's great. Save $20. And then if I'm five blocks away, it's a half mile together. So here I go. Yeah. And sometimes I'll make a loop. It's a very simple thing that I would never have done if I didn't actually run experiments myself. That's I think. Yeah. Don't use carbs first. You know, walk after eating. It's very simple. Right. Don't eat serial eat ice cream. Well, I, you know, so let's talk about GLPs for a second. I think this is really interesting. I was listening to a podcast with my friend Tim Ferris and his pal Kevin roast for five years ago during COVID. Yeah. And my friend Kevin Roes who did the website dig was saying, you know, he's a biohacker. He's like, yeah, I'm using this osempic thing. I've taken this pan is for diabetics because I want to get rid of some visceral pavillari out of here at go to my doctor. I say listen, I'm going to get on this thing. I'm literally 213 pounds. I'm 5.8 and half. Like I was 40 plus pounds overweight. And my doctor's like, I don't know what you're

41:24talking about. That's for diabetics. I'm like, yeah, can you listen to this podcast? It's like, what's a pocket? Oh my god. Okay. Here we go again. What's up? I'm 50,000 a year. What's a bike? Yeah. What's a pocket? Anyway, I said, listen, if you can get me this great, if you don't get it, I'm going to another doctor. And this is the end of a relationship. I want to do this experiment. You should want to do it too, because this is the future. He's like, all right, whatever, Jake, I do it. Unbelievable. Just and I start to intermittent fasting. Boom. Yeah. I also have a friend who is not me who tested doing some reddit true tide. I was someone who is not me. Swim. My friend swim. It's not me. And I was just able to go from 233 to 168. Yeah. Just very elegantly. And I feel great. I had a little muscle. What is this magic of GLPs? And then where is this going to be in another year or two? Because I had a couple people in my life. They refuse to take that little shot. There now I have three people in my life who are taking the pill. And is it advisable? Because I got a lot of friends who are part of this Austin fitness lunacy.

42:29And they're look like adonis is from the cast of 300. And they're taking a micro dose. And sparking a micro dose. Is everybody going to be on a micro dose? And that's a great question. I think I think we have had really altered microbiles. And our diets are not optimizing our microbiome. And a healthy microbiome is necessary for actually your own endogenous GLP1 production because the body makes GLP1. And so we have kind of a lot of reasons why we kind of have this whole BC epidemic. And I think GLP1s are at cool, like any other tool. They're not a panacea. They do have concerns and side effects. You know, there's about a 4% serious adverse side effect profile of these. Now 4% doesn't sound like a lot. But it took a hundred million people and put them on it. That's 4 million people. And about 75% have digestive issues. There's muscle law. The people aren't focused on maintaining muscles. So I think you used in the right way for the right person. Probably not the person who just wants to lose like five pounds. But you know, you can

43:33you can do it in conjunction with a doctor who folks on nutrition, adequate protein consumption, and strength training. So you don't lose muscle because that that's a big problem. You lose muscle. Then you're losing your metabolic engine. You burn less calories at the same weight. And if you gain back the weight, which most people do if they stop, then you end up in a worse situation because your game back all the way to fat. Then you're skinny fat. You're skinny fat. Yeah. Check that gold term. Yeah. All right. We call it toffee. Then on the outside, sat on the inside, skinny fat. Yeah. And that's not great. So I think, you know, my view is in their prescribed, they should be prescribed with nutrition and exercise program. And in terms of microdosing, there's a lot of people doing it. Kind of there's not a lot of data on it. You don't really know the long term benefits, consequences, people are, you know, raving about it. I personally don't think it's not necessary. I think if you understand your own biology, if you understand what works and what doesn't, you know, I'm 66. I'm going to be 67. I'm 10% body fat. I have no visceral fat. You know, I know what to do. I

44:38don't take any of these drugs. I know I exercise. I know how to eat. Well, do I have ice cream? Sure. I have ice cream and cookies and like everybody else, but they're just a, they're a very small part of my diet. So I think I think that's not to say that people like, you know, who struggle, and you've been one of those people who, you know, became an American culture, who've eaten all the sheet, processed food, who, you know, gets stuck. These drugs seem to be a life saver. And I, that was the thing I figured out from it is that like I gained two or three pounds a year. It used to be a marathon runner. I was railven. I was 162, 163 pounds running marathons. And then just got married. I had kids had two or three pounds a year. All of a sudden I look up and I'm like, well, how am I 45 pounds overweight? And then I looked at my weaving scale. And it was literally like every year or two or three pounds. And then you wake up one day and you're like, wow, everything hurts. So let's go to the working out part of this. You know, I have been, you know, listen to all your podcasts and everything. This rocking thing is really interesting. I got the

45:39weight vest. I start rocking around my ranch here out in the hill country. And it's a game changer of all game changes. Then I added the farmers walk to it. And I don't like workout with weights. I don't do serious cardio anymore. I just walk a mile or two and a weight vest 20, 30 pounds. And then I do a half mile, uh, alternating days or whatever with anywhere from 10 to 20 pounds on each arm, walking half mile. My heart rate goes crazy. And I sleep like a baby. Talk to me about this. Like what is the optimal working out that we figured out from the science? Because I know running in my knees hurt at this age from so many marathons. What's optimal for humans? And is it rocking? And this like farm. I think load on walking through the woods. What's up? Yes. I mean, weight, resistance to your body weight is important. And I, whatever it is with the trucking or caring weights or doing bands or doing weights or doing kettlebells, whatever it is, muscle is the currency of longevity. If you want to live a long healthy life, you need a muscle because it is not

46:45just there moving your skill around. It's the metabolic sink for your body. And whereas when you eat, and you move, you're mostly just going to your muscles. Do that. And it's basically soaking up all the glucose and doing all the things you need to do. And if your muscles are inefficient, if you've actually have a, you know, a rib eye instead of a wagyu rib eye instead of like a filet mignon, which is what a lot of people end up having. They get marbled fat. It doesn't function well. And it creates inflammation, it creates heart disease, creates diabetes, cancer risk, dementia risk. And so, so string training is really important. And I think it doesn't have to be a lot. It can be 20 minutes, three times a week. But you want to do all the major muscle groups. And then, you know, walking is, if people don't do anything, walking is great. And to do more of great caring, you know, caring weight, best is great also because that puts extra strain on your body also with bone density and metabolic health. So there's a lot of ways to do it. You just have to do what you like. I mean, I like to ride my bike. So I'm going to go for a bike ride after this. And I enjoy being in the

47:46country. You know, I do workout with bands when I'm traveling and riding, canning gym. I'll go to the gym. But I'm pretty consistent about it. And I can tell you it's really transformed my life. And as you're getting older, you know, losing muscle is what causes frailty, disability, dysfunction, and then the sort of a downward spiral. So I think, you know, I plan on going on. In the 50s and 60s, you should be trying to add a little bit of muscle to the frame and make the muscle strong so that it doesn't attribute to you. Yeah. I mean, I'll send you a picture of me and in my 40s and then me now. I look at it. It's kind of distorted is I'm my 40s. I was skinny. I was a runner. I buy it, but I didn't do any strain training. And then I started to strain training on a 59. And my body's completely transformed. I mean, it'll look like the hole because it's all the time guy. Well, I mean, 10% body, if I'm pretty, you're getting close to Michael Jordan level there. All right, as we wrap, you it's your choice here. I want to talk about this the massive amount of what I believe is overdiagnosis of mental illness and then people

48:49using all kinds of SSRIs and, you know, anxiety medications and I, you know, whether it's young kids or just I'm Gen X. So we were the first pro-Zach generation. I just have a lot of friends who've been on these things for far too long. They're taking speed, aka, Adderall. And they think it's a productivity thing. And then I have some of them come to me and they're like, you know, after 20 years of doing this is the biggest mistake of my life. I've lost a decade. They go on quantum. They're on SSRIs. And they went from being like, I'm having a tough time in life to being this is my standard way. I'm going to manage my brain chemistry. And, you know, friends of my on two or three of them, I just watch them lose a decade. It's like tragic. And then with the kids that I want to put like every kid on speed riddle and miss that because they are behind in math. And I'm like, who cares? The LLM and the sky's going to do all the math. They'll solve every math problem in the world. But why are we scrambling people's brains? What's your take on the overprescribing

49:54of this stuff? And then everybody's got a mental disorder. You can't possibly be this many people who are on the spectrum. We've been medical. No, no, you're not crazy. We've medicalized psychiatry. I mean, it's just I think, you know, we do have a mental crisis in America. And I think it's not well understood by traditional psychiatry, which likes to label people and then give them drugs for those labels or the suppression or ADD or OCD or whatever. The truth is that and I think function is highlighting this because there's a lot of biology that's underneath problems with mental health. And I literally this morning, I just was reviewing a patient's results and who had done function. And they they had low mega threes. They had low vitamin D. They had low B vitamins based on almost 16 tests, which we do. They had insulin resistance. All of these things cause psychiatric symptoms, whether it's depression or anxiety or low magnesium to do that. And so there are biomarkers of mental health and there are biological causes. And there now there's no whole

50:59school of nutritional psychiatry at Arbor metabolic psychiatry. It's Stanford. There's a lot of research going on in this. They're just doing nutritional interventions. Our ultra process diet is driving huge mental health crisis. There's a lot of pain on this. This is well established in the scientific literature. And so I think, you know, we are we are not treating the the cause. We're treating the symptom. And I I wrote about this one of my books. I was researching, you know, kids and all these mental health issues. And I've seen a lot of these in my practice and you get them healthy. They these things go away. But in this one study, they looked at human attention centers and kids who are violent aggressive and they were able to give them whole real food and get rid of the crap. And the violent crime went down by 97% in the you know, attention center. These restraints went down 75% and suicide went down 100% in these teenage boys, which is the number 30 leading cause of death in that age group. So it plays a huge role and people are looking. So I think, you know, we do over prescribed

52:01psychiatric drugs. We are medicalizing things. We're not dealing with the causes. And I think, you know, a company that functions in health and giving people access to data that allows actually just see these things and treat them. And I think that's it's important. I always thought Tom Cruise was right. When he started ranting about this and he's like, you know, diet, exercise, like, and that, you know, and he basically his rant is what you just said to a certain extent. And I was like, wow, how did he figure this out before anybody else? Like, and this psychiatry movement and the talk therapy movement, all stuff. Okay, perhaps well intentioned. And I'm sure there's great practitioners and everything, but they send people down this path of, like, just take a pill. And it's like, if you exercise, if you have anxiety and you go socialize and exercise and you meditate, I do this with my kids, say, if you're feeling blue or something is not right, have you your diet, your exercise, your sleep, your meditation, and your social visualization? There's a big five. 100%. And I said, these are the five I work on because sometimes

53:05I feel blue or I feel anxious or like depressed and I had a great life. And I'm like, did I go have dinner with my friends? Have I meditated? Have I what's my sleep like? What's my diet? When's the last time I actually exercise? Whenever I'm feeling blue, I have a 1.5 out of five score. Yeah. When I feel great, I've got a four or, you know, three, four or five. Yeah, that's right. As you're right. I mean, it is, it is really important that people understand that a lot of psychiatry problems can be treated with lifestyle and with foundational things that you talk about. And the data is there. The data is there about nutrition, about exercise, about meditation, about, you know, just overall nutritional status. So I think I think you're you're anything on the head. And I, I think for me, this is this has been a big passion of mine is how do we, that we re think, reframe and rethink about mental health in this country because what we're doing is terrible. I mean, we just, it's reframing it. Like if you, if you had a dog and the dog was not behaving well, and you say, Oh, on the days when the dog goes for a long walk, such a delightful dog. And the days when it's cooped up inside, it's like biting people. So how different are we?

54:09Let's end on psychedelics. Let's end on this incredible research we're starting to see PTSD, incurable depression or supposedly incurable depression at Stanford. I have a friend who's doing incredible work in ketamine drips specifically for people with like incurable cancer, I think curable depression, it's very severe. And they will have two weeks of like incredible. These are people who would, you know, 20 years depressed and then they have two amazing weeks or six months. Nobody knows. Like it's like a, it could go either way. And then I began and all these stories of people with PTSD coming back from worse, they take I began to tell me I have a couple of friends who did it. They said, Oh, my entire hard drive got refragmented. And yeah, I'm for some reason I'm not thinking about these horrible things that I witnessed in my life or I experienced. But then on the other side, a lot of biohackers with, you know, ketamine prescriptions of unknown origin. Yeah, that's not good. And I'm like,

55:09a little had a couple of friends and I'm like, Hey, you're taking ketamine on a Tuesday while watching Netflix and you're like, why? Yeah, what is this about? And it's like, I'm bored. And I'm like, you're bored and you're scrambling your brain for no reason. Like, so how do you think the United States should look at that class of compounds? And then what's the right modality if people were interested in, you know, understanding a learning more about them? And then what's the wrong way? Yeah, I mean, that's definitely not a function health question. And you know, it's fucking healthy. You know, like, you've talked about our on your pop. But I, but I, but I, but you know, from the, from as a doctor, talking about this, what I would say is that we're undergoing a phenomenal revolution in psychiatry that's really too prompt. One is this official metabolic psychiatry and the other is psyched off psychiatry. And I think, you know, we need more data. We need more investment. I think I don't Texas is putting up a bunch of money in the US government is putting up a bunch of money. I think this is an all good thing. And the

56:09early data is promising around psilocybin around MDMA around I begin. We just need more data. And it's not ready for prime time yet. It's not ready for expansion to the population as a whole. I think there are people doing it underground, but I think it really should be done carefully, rigorously and inside typically. And I think we will see that these compounds probably are doing things that involved repair of the brain, the neuroplasticity, you know, I've seen reports of, you know, MRI scans and proving from brain trauma with eye being, for example, these are just some really remarkable things that are just not just symptomatic treatment. They're literally like you said, almost like you're defragging or rewriting the software code in your brain. And I think it's really exciting because nothing like this has come up in psychiatry ever. I mean, and if given the choice, you know, if we as a society are going to look at this, you know, you're people who are suffering and they take the route of opioids. And man, the doctor class had a big part in that, right? Like you can just take a higher dosage of

57:10percussed or or oxycontin like they just seem to be obsessed with that pain relief. And then people do street drugs, fentanyl, whatever they try to like fix whatever's wrong with them. And then you have this like middle part SSRIs and anti-anxiety and let's hop you up. And then you have this third option, I, or these third and fourth option, your health, your diet, and then psychedelics like these two seem to be the last two, the place where we can really think as a society of investing in research. And really, you know, looking at that as potential model, this is my personal feeling. I agree. I think we're in this, we're in a quite an exciting era. I think medicine's changing as all I think function is at the forefront of that. I think psychiatry's changing. And I think it's a good moment. I think it's a good moment. Yeah. Perfect spot for us to end. You got to go on your bike ride and your time is valuable. Functionhealth.com everybody function health.com go to function health.com sign up. Get your blood work done. And yeah, get get get it dialed in. Take control of your health. Being a folks an hour with Dr. Mark Hyman. I got a couple of personal

58:14questions and I'm good. Got my free consultation with my new cosier's doctor. I do have a mole out here. What should I do? You know, my shoulder, I did a BPC from 1957 over here. All right, everybody will see you next time. All right.