Mark Hyman, M.D.

Mark Hyman, M.D. is an internationally recognized authority in the field of functional medicine—a revolution in 21st century medicine that provides a new road map for navigating the territory of health and illness. He is founder of The UltraWellness Center where he treats patients using this new model in his medical practice and is co-founder of UltraWellness whose mission is to make the principles of functional medicine accessible to everyone. You can learn more about Dr. Hyman’s exhaustive work to change healthcare as well as his program for achieving UltraWellness by signing up for his nine-week online program at UltraMind Solution Club, following him on Twitter, watching his videos on YouTube, connecting with him on LinkedIn, or becoming a fan on Facebook. Dr. Hyman is the author of multiple New York Times best-sellers including The UltraMind Solution, The UltraSimple Diet, UltraMetabolism, and the weekly UltraWellness Newsletter in which he provides insight into how you can integrate functional medicine into your life and achieve the state of UltraWellness—which is nothing less than vital mental and physical health, optimal weight, and a renewed lease on life. He is also Vice-Chair of the Board of Directors and faculty of the Institute for Functional Medicine; is on the Board of Directors of the Center for Mind Body Medicine in Washington DC; on the Board of Advisors and faculty for the “Food as Medicine” training program; and is a part of Memhet Oz’s HealthCorps.  In each of these capacities he actively advocates for fundamental changes in healthcare—changes that takes into account diet, lifestyle, and personalized treatment based on the paradigm of functional medicine as essential components for medical education and practice.

Last week I began a discussion about a modern epidemic, a deadly disease that one of every two Americans has, a disease that’s making us fat and sick. And 90 percent of those affected don’t even know they have it!

This disease is diabesity, the continuum of abnormal biology that ranges from mild insulin resistance to full-blown diabetes.

Medicine doesn’t always come in a pill. In fact, some of the most powerful medicines are delicious and can be found at your local supermarket or “farmacy.” Healing foods have been used for centuries in Asia as part of the cuisine. In fact, in Asia, food and medicine are often the same thing.

Here are five superfoods that you may never have heard of but that can be found at most Asian markets and even places like Whole Foods. Try them. You might be surprised by their unique and extraordinary good taste. And they may help you lose weight, reverse diabetes, lower cholesterol and prevent cancer.

Twenty years ago, as a freshly minted doctor, I swallowed the propaganda that doctors are invincible — that “MD” stood for “medical deity.” During my training, one of my surgical residents told me, “real doctors don’t do lunch.” I thought I didn’t need to follow the same rules of biology like everyone else. I believed sleeping, eating real food and resting were luxuries, not necessities.

In fact, even though I knew all about nutrition and living a healthy lifestyle and had always exercised, I felt I could push the boundaries of my body. When I started my medical career, I worked 80-100 hours a week as a family doctor in a small town in Idaho. I delivered hundreds of babies, ran the emergency room, and saw 30-40 patients a day. Sleep was an afterthought. I ordered Starbucks coffee by the case straight from Seattle, bought an espresso machine and served up 4-5 espressos a day. I lived in a perpetual state of fatigue and pushed my way through on adrenalin.

What you put at the end of your fork is more powerful medicine than anything you will find at the bottom of a pill bottle.

Food is the most powerful medicine available to heal chronic disease, which will account for more than 50 million deaths and cost the global economy $47 trillion by 2030. All you need to do is eat your medicine and think of your grocery store as your pharmacy.

Recently, I went to Asia to lecture on prevention, wellness, health, nutrition and the new field of nutrigenomics, the science of how molecules in food interact with our genes to support or interfere with our health. I came away feeling humbled and awed as I realized that the average Chinese person knows more about the medicinal properties of food than I do after years of research. Medicinal foods are part of their everyday diet, and I learned more from matter-of-fact discussions about the healing properties of food I shared with my Chinese hosts than from my hours researching medical journals.

Do vitamins kill people?

How many people have died from taking vitamins?

Should you stop your vitamins?

It depends. To be exact, it depends on the quality of the science, and the very nature of scientific research. It is very hard to know things exactly through science. The waste bin of science is full of fallen heroes like Premarin, Vioxx and Avandia (which alone was responsible for 47,000 excess cardiac deaths since it was introduced in 1999).

That brings us to the latest apparent casualty: vitamins. The recent media hype around vitamins is a classic case of drawing the wrong conclusions from good science.

It’s confirmed. Dairy products and sugar cause acne.

As our sugar and dairy consumption has increased over the last 100 years, so has the number of people with acne. We now have more than 17 million acne sufferers, costing our health care system $1 billion a year, and 80-90 percent of teenagers suffer acne to varying degrees. The pimply millions rely on infomercial products hawked by celebrities or over-the-counter lotions, cleansers and topical remedies. Recent research suggests that it’s not what we slather on our skin that matters most but what we put in our mouth.

Many have suggested a diet-acne link, but until recently it has not been proven in large clinical studies. Instead, dermatologists prescribe long-term antibiotics and Accutane, both of which may cause long-term harmful effects.

If you can’t convince them, confuse them.
— Harry Truman

The current media debate about the benefits (or lack of harm) of high fructose corn syrup in our diet misses the obvious. The average American has increased his consumption of HFCS (mostly from sugar-sweetened drinks and processed food) from zero to more than 60 pounds per year. Obesity rates have more than tripled and diabetes incidence has increased more than seven-fold. HFCS is not perhaps the only cause, but one that cannot be ignored.

Doubt and confusion are the currency of deception, and they sow the seeds of complacency. Recently, these have been used skillfully through massive print and television advertising campaigns by the Corn Refiners Association’s attempt to dispel the “myth” that HFCS is harmful and assert through the opinion of “medical and nutrition experts” that it is no different than cane sugar. It is a “natural” product that can be a healthy part of our diets when used in moderation.

Except for one problem: Even when used in moderation, it is a major cause of heart disease, obesity, cancer, dementia, liver failure, tooth decay and more.

We’re all programmed to like sugar, but new research shows that some people are genetically much more prone to sugar addiction than others.

As I noted in my previous blog on food addiction, science demonstrates that people can be biologically addicted to sugar and other foods in the same way people can be addicted to heroin, cocaine or nicotine. Bingeing and addictive behaviors are eerily similar in alcoholics and sugar addicts. In fact, many recovering alcoholics switch to another easily available drug: sugar.

Are millions of us born with a genetic defect that makes us produce too much stomach acid? Do we just have a major evolutionary design flaw that requires us to take powerful acid-blocking drugs to prevent heartburn and reflux?

I believe that the answer to all of these questions is a resounding “no.”

At least 10 percent of Americans have episodes of heartburn every day, and 44 percent have symptoms at least once a month. Overall, reflux and heartburn (also known as GERD, or gastroesophageal reflux disease) affect a whopping 25 to 35 percent of the U.S. population! As a result, acid-blocking medications are the third-top-selling type of drug in America today. Two other drugs to treat reflux, Nexium and Prevacid, are among the world’s best-selling drugs and account for approximately $5.1 and $3.4 billion in sales annually.

One day, vitamin D seems like the cure for everything, and the next, we are inundated with warnings about dangers and lack of science. Confusion is rampant about the Dietary Reference Intakes (DRIs) for Calcium and Vitamin D recently released from the Institute of Medicine.