The Doctor's Farmacy With Mark Hyman, M.d.

There are so many questions about how coronavirus can impact our health, and rightfully so. This novel virus has completely changed the way we function as a society and brought about a feeling of uncertainty most of us haven’t ever experienced. But we’re in this together. There is, of course, a wide range of common concerns—from how to protect ourselves and families to what kinds of treatment options exist—but also many new conversations popping up around what supplements we can safely trust for immune strength, if it’s safe to go outdoors, how the virus attaches to surfaces, and so much more.  Last week I was lucky enough to sit down with Dr. Patrick Hanaway for a video-call to talk about these important questions from a Functional Medicine perspective. Dr. Hanaway is the Senior Advisor to the Institute for Functional Medicine, their COVID-19 Task Force Coordinator, and Co-Chair of the IFM Expert Advisory Board. In case you missed it, we’re sharing that as the latest episode of The Doctor’s Farmacy. *For con

Hormone imbalances are epidemic these days. For example, symptoms of premenstrual syndrome (PMS), like mood swings, irritability, depression, anxiety, fluid retention, bloating, breast tenderness, sugar cravings, headaches, and sleep disturbances, affect 75 percent of women. But just because you’re a woman doesn’t mean you have to live with these symptoms.  The real fact is that suffering related to menstrual cycles is unnecessary. You might never know this from conventional medicine, which seems to subscribe to the idea that women are destined to suffer throughout their reproductive life and beyond. However, there are actually many things you can do to fix hormonal imbalances.  In this mini-episode, Dr. Hyman is joined by Dr. Elizabeth Boham to discuss the Functional Medicine approach to treating hormonal imbalances in women.  Elizabeth Boham is a physician and nutritionist who practices functional medicine at The UltraWellness Center in Lenox, MA. Through her practice and lecturing she has helped thousands

We’re all trying to make sense of the new world order. And while my wife and I stay at home and navigate these unusual times, we find routine and practice to be the core of our wellbeing. We’re meditating every morning, going for walks in the woods, and taking afternoon work breaks to check-in and find time to connect. These seemingly simple actions have become the parts of our day that keep us grounded and optimistic, so we actually even schedule them into our calendars.  One of my favorite people to talk to about the benefits of spiritual and wellness practices is Gabrielle Bernstein. I was so happy to connect with her over a video-call for this week’s episode of The Doctor’s Farmacy. Gabby is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Universe Has Your Back and has written six additional bestsellers, including Super Attractor which launched in September 2019. She was featured on Oprah’s Super Soul Sunday as a “next-generation thought leader” and The Oprah Winfrey Network chose Gabrielle to be part of

Multiple times a day, even multiple times an hour, we’re hearing new information about COVID-19. Some of the most common questions I’ve received have to do with testing. We had our first case of novel coronavirus the same day South Korea had its first case. Yet they are much further ahead of us when it comes to testing, something that has helped them quickly control the virus in a way we haven’t been able to do in the US. They also rapidly took on measures like quarantining and tracing the transmission of the virus. Of course, there are so many different components that go into successful testing and quelling a pandemic of this size. Today on The Doctor’s Farmacy, I hope to shed some light on those with my guest Dr. Steven Kleiboeker. Throughout our conversation, we cover who should be tested, when, and how, and what kinds of tests are currently available or soon will be. He is the Vice President of Research and Development for Viracor, and is responsible for the scientific direction and oversight of the comp

It’s natural to have a lot of questions right now. COVID-19 has quickly changed the way we think about health and go about our daily lives. And though we still have a lot to learn about the novel coronavirus, there are also a lot of ways we can keep ourselves, our families, and our communities strong and healthy. I recently hosted a webinar, along with the doctors at The UltraWellness Center, to answer some of the most important questions about COVID-19. If you missed it, I am sharing it here as a special episode of my podcast, The Doctor’s Farmacy. Elizabeth Boham is a physician and nutritionist who practices functional medicine at The UltraWellness Center in Lenox, MA. Through her practice and lecturing she has helped thousands of people achieve their goals of optimum health and wellness. She witnesses the power of nutrition every day in her practice and is committed to training other physicians to utilize nutrition in healing. Dr. Boham has contributed to many articles and wrote the latest chapter on Obesi

Numerous things can contribute to cancer development and cancer recurrence. Studies show diet, exercise, thoughts, feelings, and environmental toxins all influence the initiation, growth, and progression of cancer. And when it comes to treating cancer, we are good at cutting it, burning it, and poisoning it with surgery, radiation, and drugs, but many doctors fail to treat the root cause of the cancer. Functional Medicine empowers patients and practitioners to achieve the highest expression of health by working collaboratively to address the root causes of disease. For example, a Functional Medicine practitioner might say that yes, we still need radiation and other conventional approaches, but what else can we do?  In this mini-episode, Dr. Hyman is joined by Dr. Elizabeth Boham to discuss the Functional Medicine approach to cancer and cancer recurrence prevention. Dr. Boham shares patient cases as well as her own experience with a breast cancer diagnosis. Elizabeth Boham is a physician and nutritionist who p

Only about 12% of Americans are considered “metabolically healthy.” That means the other 88% of us aren’t meeting basic medical guidelines for things like blood pressure, blood glucose, cholesterol, and other markers of metabolic health. Which percentage do you fall into? When it comes to answering that question, one common factor is how many fast carbs you’re consuming. These are the carbohydrates that have been processed—yes, that includes sugar—but it also means starches like refined flours and other processed grains. Whole wheat bread is indeed a fast carb.  This week on The Doctor’s Farmacy I sat down with Dr. David Kessler to break down the differences between fast and slow carbs, how they affect our health, how our diet became so inundated with fast carbs and what we can do to regain metabolic strength. Dr. Kessler served as commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration under presidents George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton. He is the author of A Question of Intent and The End of Overeating, a New

For decades we were taught there was no stopping or reversing cognitive decline, now we know this simply is not true. The brain responds to all the same insults as the rest of the body — stress, poor diet, toxins, lack of exercise or sleep, nutritional deficiencies, high blood sugar, insulin resistance, and more. The term dementia is just a label or diagnosis we associate with a collection of symptoms, it doesn't get to why a person has those symptoms.  In this mini-episode, Dr. Hyman is joined by Dr. Elizabeth Boham to discuss the Functional Medicine approach to treating cognitive health and to review patient cases in which they treated individuals with dementia, memory loss, and cognitive decline. Elizabeth Boham is a physician and nutritionist who practices functional medicine at The UltraWellness Center in Lenox, MA. Through her practice and lecturing she has helped thousands of people achieve their goals of optimum health and wellness. She witnesses the power of nutrition every day in her practice and is

Sometimes we need to get quiet to really find the answers we’re looking for. What better time to do that than during this down-time at home? Artists, creators, and dreamers have always been our best teachers on breaking free from the distractions of life and just “being” with ourselves. They take facts and turn them into stories from which we can gain new perspectives. We can all learn many different lessons through various mediums—one of my personal favorites is poetry.  This week on The Doctor’s Farmacy* I sat down for a deep talk with poet IN-Q. IN-Q is a National Poetry Slam champion, award-winning poet, and multi-platinum songwriter. His groundbreaking achievements include being named to Oprah's SuperSoul 100 list of the world's most influential thought leaders, being the first spoken word artist to perform with Cirque Du Soleil, and being featured on A&E, ESPN, and HBO's Def Poetry Jam. He's inspired audiences around the world through his live performances and storytelling workshops. Many of his recent

Today’s food labels are deliberately misleading and confusing, which serves the interests of Big Food, but not the rest of us. Most of us are completely oblivious to what we are eating and its impact on our health and our world. We are mostly unaware of the chemicals that are added to our foods; how the hormones, antibiotics, plastics, and toxins we eat in our everyday foods harm our bodies. There are over 10,000 additives in our food supply, yet only 43% of them are recognized as safe by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). And the average American consumes three to five pounds of these additives every year. In this mini-episode, Dr. Mark Hyman talks about food labeling, food additives, and how the FDA is asleep at the wheel in protecting us. Learn more about these topics and the undeniable harm our food system is doing to human health and to the environment in Dr. Hyman’s new book, Food Fix. foodfixbook.com

Most of us (including most doctors) do not recognize or know that digestive problems wreak havoc in the entire body, leading to allergies, arthritis, autoimmune disease, rashes, acne, chronic fatigue, mood disorders, autism, dementia, cancer, and more. So having a healthy gut means more than simply being free of annoyances like bloating or heartburn. It is absolutely central to your health. It is connected to everything that happens in your body. That is why Functional Medicine almost always starts helping people treat chronic health problems by fixing their gut. In this mini-episode, Dr. Hyman is joined by Dr. Elizabeth Boham to review two patient cases focused on treating the gut. Elizabeth Boham is a physician and nutritionist who practices functional medicine at The UltraWellness Center in Lenox, MA. Through her practice and lecturing she has helped thousands of people achieve their goals of optimum health and wellness. She witnesses the power of nutrition every day in her practice and is committed to tra

Did you know dementia begins in the brain decades before symptoms start showing up? We can see changes in brain scans 30 or 40 years before forgetfulness and other disconcerting symptoms creep in. But I’ve seen so many patients overcome symptoms of brain dysfunction through the right diet and lifestyle changes. If our actions can have that much power to reverse some forms of brain illness, why aren’t we talking more about using them for prevention?  I’ve seen people with genetic predispositions avoid a diagnosis altogether by living a conscious life.  That’s exactly what my guest and good friend, Max Lugavere, and I get into on this week’s episode of The Doctor’s Farmacy. Max lost his mom last year to a rare disease called Lewy body dementia, which comes along with the neurodegenerative and physical symptoms of both Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. Max is a filmmaker, health, and science journalist and the author of the New York Times bestselling book Genius Foods: Become Smarter, Happier, and More Productive Whi

We need to transform our food system and address one of the biggest threats to our well-being: our lack of a coordinated and comprehensive food policy. The outside influence that industrial food and agriculture lobbyists have on our policies encourages a food system that engenders disease. Lobbying power in Washington is rarely in the best interest of the public, supporting food and agriculture policies that undermine public health, harm the environment and increase private profits for Big Food. Big Food and Big Ag spend millions of dollars in Washington every year for the power to block policies that hurt their bottom lines and promote policies that make them money, whether or not it’s harmful to our society or the environment.  On this week’s mini-episode, Dr. Mark Hyman talks about the dirty politics of Big Food, how that influences our government food policies, and why we need to change it. Learn more about these topics and the undeniable harm our food system is doing to human health and to the environmen

The thyroid tends to be an underappreciated organ, but despite being a small gland it has massive implications for your health. While thyroid disease can occur in various forms, one of the most common is called Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, an autoimmune disease where the body attacks the thyroid gland and diminishes its ability to create precious hormones—ones that impact every cell of the body. Hashimoto’s is the leading cause of hypothyroidism (an underactive thyroid) in the US and roughly 14 million people in the US are struggling with this diagnosis, with women at much higher risk, being 7 to 8 times more likely than men to get it.  In this mini-episode, Dr. Hyman is joined by Dr. Elizabeth Boham to review patient cases in which thyroid issues were treated. Elizabeth Boham is a physician and nutritionist who practices functional medicine at The UltraWellness Center in Lenox, MA. Through her practice and lecturing she has helped thousands of people achieve their goals of optimum health and wellness. She witnes

When I was growing up we had news sources we could trust. Under The Fairness Doctrine, news on the radio, TV, and in print was partial and fair. But in 1987 during the Reagan administration, this was repealed, leading to alternative media and more misinformation than ever before. And now with the internet, we are truly in the wild west of sharing information, collecting data, and trying to maintain privacy. Big companies take advantage of that from all angels with their marketing, which is now ultra-targeted (and often in ways you wouldn’t even be able to recognize).  Today on The Doctor’s Farmacy, I sit down with Andy Russell to talk about what data really means, who has yours, how they got it, and how they use it. Andy is a digital media, ad-tech, marketing-tech, and data science innovator and pioneer as well as a self-taught Behavioral Economist. He has invested in, incubated, or run over 50 technology companies, including Daily Candy, Thrillist, Tasting Table, Idealbite, PureWow, Zynga, Betaworks, Busines

It has been estimated that over the next 35 years, it's going to cost our society $95 trillion to address chronic disease. And not only is this affecting us economically, but our overall quality of life is decreasing. Imagine what we could do If we didn't have to spend as much money as we are currently spending on chronic disease. We would have enough money for other important things such as providing free education and healthcare. We could bring people up out of poverty, end social injustice, restore the environment, and help fund the reversal of climate change.  By addressing the overall dysfunctions in the food system, we can solve these problems. The solutions exist and they will call on a lot of us to fix it—multiple sectors and stakeholders from citizens and consumers to businesses and farmers, to policymakers in every level of government, including city and state to nonprofits, philanthropists, scientists. By coming together we can transform the food system.  Dr. Hyman speaks to all this and more in th

Research has shown that for every 10% of your diet that comes from ultra-processed food, your risk of death goes up by 14%. Yet 60% of American diets are made up of ultra-processed food. And though the government tells us to eat more fruits and vegetables, existing food policy subsidizes thousands of acres of corn, soy, and wheat that are turned into processed junk food, while only 2% of our farmland is used to grow fruits and vegetables. In fact, if everybody ate the government-recommended amounts of vegetables and fruits, there actually wouldn’t be enough to go around.  Part of what is driving these issues is that there is a major monopoly when it comes to seeds. Just a handful of companies control the majority of what and how crops are grown. We have to change our agricultural policies.  Dr. Hyman dives into these topics and more in this mini-episode of The Doctor’s Farmacy. He also outlines the problems and the solutions in his new book, Food Fix. foodfixbook.com

Racism is still rampant in our country, and it might exist in places you didn’t expect it. For example, Black and Brown populations are at a higher risk of exposure to environmental toxins and have less access to high-quality medical care or clinical medical studies on their specific populations. This is a major problem that can’t be ignored. And it’s hugely impacting our economy and the success of future generations in multiple ways. Every year we spend 50 billion dollars and lose 23 million IQ points to lead toxicity alone, which affects people of color the most, regardless of social class and income level.  Today on The Doctor’s Farmacy I sit down for an important conversation with Harriet Washington about these issues. Harriet has been the Shearing Fellow at the University of Nevada's Black Mountain Institute, a Research Fellow in Medical Ethics at Harvard Medical School, a senior research scholar at the National Center for Bioethics at Tuskegee University, and a visiting scholar at DePaul University Coll

In honor of Dr. Hyman's newly released book, Food Fix (foodfixbook.com), we are sharing a recent interview he did on Revolution Health Radio with Chris Kresser. *** RHR: Fixing Our Broken Food System, with Dr. Mark Hyman I’ve often said that health is not just an individual endeavor—a multitude of other factors contribute to it, including our food system. In this episode of Revolution Health Radio, I talk with Dr. Mark Hyman about his upcoming book Food Fix, which delves deeply into the problems in our food system and discusses how they can worsen global crises like the chronic disease epidemic, climate change, poverty, and more. In this episode, we discuss: What’s wrong with our food system How our food system affects our children The role regulation can play in our health Access to healthy food in underserved populations The damage that our industrial food system causes Hyman’s Food Fix Campaign Show notes: Mark Hyman The UltraWellness Center Food Fix: How to Save Our Health, Our Economy, Our Co

Eleven million people die every year from a bad diet. In America, six out of ten Americans have a chronic disease; four out of ten have two or more chronic diseases. And this is not just an American problem. Eighty percent of the world's chronic disease and obesity is in the developing world. We know that food is driving the majority of this death and disease but no one is really talking about it.  In this mini-episode, Dr. Hyman explores the global chronic disease crisis being driven by food and the food system. He also breaks down the principles of his “Pegan” diet, a middle ground between vegan and Paleo, focused on whole-foods; primarily colorful, high-fiber vegetables like kale, cauliflower, peppers, and radishes; healthy fats like extra-virgin olive oil and avocados; some low-glycemic fruits like blueberries and blackberries; free-range meats and eggs, used more like condiments than as the star of the plate; anti-inflammatory nuts and seeds, and flavorful herbs and spices.  Learn more about these all of