Dr. Jeff Bland has been called the father of Functional Medicine—and for good reason. His groundbreaking work helped shift our understanding of chronic disease and inspired a generation of doctors to look beyond symptoms and toward root causes. On this episode of The Dr. Hyman Show, I sit down with Jeff to talk about what he’s learned from more than 50 years of studying the science of health, aging, and disease prevention. We explore: • Why your biology is not predetermined by your genes—and how to unlock your full potential • What Jeff’s own health journey reveals about inflammation, biomarkers, and aging well • How what you eat can shape everything from inflammation to longevity • Long-term disease risk is shaped by what surrounds you—and how your body responds Tune in for an insightful conversation with one of my greatest mentors—and discover how science, curiosity, and personal agency can help you live a longer, healthier life. View Show Notes From This Episode Get Free Weekly Health Tips from Dr. Hyman https://drhyman.com/pages/picks?utm_campaign=shownotes&utm_medium=banner&utm_source=podcastSign Up for Dr. Hyman’s Weekly Longevity Journal https://drhyman.com/pages/longevity?utm_campaign=shownotes&utm_medium=banner&utm_source=podcastJoin the 10-Day Detox to Reset Your Health https://drhyman.com/pages/10-day-detoxJoin the Hyman Hive for Expert Support and Real Resultshttps://drhyman.com/pages/hyman-hive This episode is brought to you by Seed, BON CHARGE, Timeline, Paleovalley, and AirDoctor. Visit seed.com/hyman and use code 25HYMAN for 25% off your first month of Seed's DS-01® Daily Synbiotic. Go to boncharge.com and use code DRMARK to save 15% on your PEMF mat today. Support essential mitochondrial health and save 10% on Mitopure. Visit timeline.com/drhyman to get 10% off today. Get nutrient-dense, whole foods. Head to paleovalley.com/hyman for 15% off your first purchase. Get cleaner air. Right now, you can get up to $300 off at airdoctorpro.com/drhyman.
Chapter 1: How did Jeff Bland reverse his biological age?
Coming up on this episode of The Dr. Hyman Show. Your chronological age was 79, but your biological age was 62. Your testosterone levels were that of a 30-year-old. What's most contributed to that?
It's about how do you maximize the genetic potential that lies within your genome to be the best person you can be.
Jeff Bland is the father of functional medicine, a pioneering nutritional biochemist who turned his own body into a lab for longevity. Most doctors don't know how to assess mitochondrial health, assess function. Now we're realizing it's connected to so many of the chronic illnesses. It's an energy problem.
If you have impaired mitochondrial function, your immune system is tired. It's worn out. It's engaged with reduction of longevity.
The most effective treatments for everything that I've come across is something we call In functional medicine, we always start with the gut. It's at the core of nearly every aspect of health, from digestion and immune function to brain and skin health. Your gut microbiome regulates inflammation, absorbs nutrients, and maintains the integrity of your gut barrier.
That's why I take and recommend Seeds DS-01 Daily Symbiotic, a next-level probiotic designed to go beyond digestion. With 24 clinically studied probiotic strains and a pomegranate-based prebiotic, Seeds DS-01 supports gut immune function, gut barrier integrity, and even heart health through the gut-liver axis. But here's what's really exciting.
Research now shows that gut health directly impacts skin health through the gut-skin axis. Seeds DS01 contains targeted strains clinically validated to support clear, hydrated skin from within. As a member of Seeds' clinical board, I've seen the science behind their formulations. And new research shows Seeds DS01 supports short-chain fatty acid production.
which is key for gut barrier function, immune health, and healthy aging. If you're ready to optimize your gut health, Seed is offering my community 25% off your first month. Just head to seed.com slash hyman and use code 25-hyman at checkout. That's seed.com slash hyman with code 25-hyman for 25% off your first month of Seeds DS01.
I know many of you are as focused on recovery and longevity as I am, especially when it comes to managing pain and optimizing healing. After a recent back procedure, I needed something to help support my recovery and ease tension, and that's when I found the Bond Charge Infrared PMF Mat.
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Chapter 2: What is the significance of mitochondrial health?
And so you've got to think about how are we responding to the outside world through signals or through messages. And so when I went to that level, I said, okay, so let's look at that. You have the gut microbiome, you have the nervous system, and you have the immune system, all of which are intimately interrelated, one with the other, and are communicating with the outside and inside world.
Which of those is most able to change quickly? And then I recognize that the immune system turns over every 120 days. Every 120 days, our immune system are different cells than they were previously. Now just think of that for a moment. We're making over 2 million new white blood cells, immune cells, A minute. We are constantly reproducing our immune system.
So the question is, is it as good as, better, or worse than the cells that it's replacing? The answer to most people over life is it's worse. That's immunosenescence. Our immune system declines. So people say, oh, yeah.
So immunosenescence means getting older. That's right. Aging. So it's the aging of our immune system.
Which can be more rapid than our number of birthdays.
And it's why people who are older were more likely to get severe COVID and die.
That's exactly right.
And people with chronic disease also were more likely to end up in the hospital and die because their immune systems were not working properly.
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Chapter 3: How does diet impact inflammation and longevity?
And so then it begs the question, doesn't it, during SARS-CoV-2 infection, Why did we in the United States do more poorly than any other developed country in terms of intubation, hospitalization, death? And it was not because we're an older society. It was because we had the poorest immune state of vigilance. We were immunosenesced as a country.
And on our bodies, we're not able to manage the effective SARS spike protein. Yeah. as people in other countries that had a more vigilant, resilient immune system. And shame on us.
I mean, we were 4% of the world's population and 16% of the cases and deaths. And basically, we were pre-inflamed when the virus hit us. Everybody remembers that term cytokine storm. That's what happens when you're pre-inflamed. It's like lighting a match to gasoline. It just blows up.
And then that's why we saw such a catastrophic amount of death and suffering in America compared to other countries, despite having better medical care, better hospitals, better doctors, better nursing care. I mean, we literally have the best healthcare system in some ways, but we also have the worst in other ways because we're dealing with problems in ways that aren't getting to the root cause.
So it was absolutely just what you said that caused me to wake up one morning and say, maybe I need one more shot at the goal here. Maybe I need to really focus my attention. Now that we've gone through gastrointestinal restoration, now that we've gone through metabolic detoxification, now that we've gone through mitochondrial resuscitation, maybe we need immunorejuvenation.
Maybe we need to study how to rejuvenate the immune system. It's not boosting the immune system. We don't want to boost immune system that's imbalanced. That only makes it worse. We want to activate resilience and make it more functionally adaptive. And that is immunorejuvenation. So the cells that we replaced are better than the ones they came from, not worse.
And that becomes a whole different strategy. And when I hit on this idea, my colleagues, Annette Giardi and Trish Ury, who work with me now for 30 years, they said, Jeff, you know, you're a fairly big guy in stature. This is a pretty bold idea. So maybe you need one more company. Why don't we call it Big Bold Health?
And let's just go after this concept and see if we can't find a way of approaching how to rejuvenate the immune system. And lo and behold, the last five years, we're learning it. We're learning how to do that. And it's not just us, the whole field of immunology is changing. This whole immunological connection is now blossoming. It's revolutionary how fast things are changing.
Yeah, I mean, one of the things that I learned as a young functional medicine doctor was the power of food to regulate inflammation in the body. And one of the tools that we were taught, and I think it's probably one of the most effective treatments for everything and anything that I've come across, is something we call the elimination diet. But I don't like that term.
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Chapter 4: What are the principles of functional medicine?
Yeah, I mean, there's a very famous quote. I'm kind of going to butcher it, but it's really about how basically the doctor just kind of has to let nature take its course to kind of heal the body that nature does most of the work. We're now able to accentuate nature by providing nature in the form of things like Himalayan tartar, buckwheat, or other foods that are going to heal and repair the body.
This is an amazing conversation. I kind of want to end by asking you, what are the next frontiers in this field of personalized longevity medicine? How do they get to the average person because, you know, people don't want to wait around for 30 years till science gets turned into medical practice, which is often what it takes.
I think that what's happening right now, and Mark, you're an exemplar of this, is the use of these digital communication tools to be able to accelerate the adoption of these concepts so we don't wait at the roadblock of somebody holding back on the information because they are the gatekeeper. And that accessibility of information, and truth wills out, I believe.
Ultimately, I think truth will find its path, but you need to have distribution systems to get the information out. And those are now happening. I mean, your podcast alone is an exemplar of a distribution system of a different set of principles upon which a person can operate.
I think that what I'm very excited about is a combination of AI with the data set analysis now from big data banks that start looking at wearable device information in real time, coupled with biometrics like what Function Health is doing. and then tying that together with the regenerative agriculture and planetary survival methods.
So we think that there is a system that people can participate in, that their body is getting healthy as they're helping the planet to maintain its health, that we're all part of a system because that feed-forwards the psychology of wellness. And I think there's no, let's not dismiss the sociobiology of wellness as a community process.
All these things work together to create a shift of the paradigm that can happen, I think, remarkably quickly. I mean, when I think in my life of coming down to the wall between East and West in Germany, which people thought would never happen.
All these various things can happen remarkably quickly when you get a certain critical mass of individuals who recognize that the alternatives and options are there and available for their action.
So really we're entering a world where we're moving from analog medicine to digital medicine. Yeah.
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