Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
Dr. Mark Hyman: How Entrepreneurs Can Reverse Aging and Unlock Peak Health | Mental Health | E349
Mon, 05 May 2025
Dr. Mark Hyman isn’t just focused on aging; he is committed to thriving throughout life. In his sixties, he co-founded Function Health, a startup dedicated to optimizing biological health and wellness for peak performance. In this episode, Mark discusses the power of functional medicine in unlocking longevity, the secret to aging backwards, and small, daily changes that can improve health, boost productivity, and lead to a longer, more fulfilling life. In this episode, Hala and Mark will discuss: (00:00) Introduction (01:10) The Science of Aging and Longevity (06:27) How Functional Medicine Optimizes Health (12:02) Functional Medicine vs. Biohacking (14:37) The Secret to Aging Backwards (19:23) The Role of Diet, Sleep, and Toxins in Aging (27:23) Living a Life of Purpose and Career Fulfillment (29:33) Navigating Modern Food Challenges (35:22) Why Your Social Circle Matters for Longevity (40:58) Practical Wellness Strategies for Entrepreneurs Dr. Mark Hyman is a family physician, author, and educator, transforming aging and disease prevention through functional medicine. He is the co-founder and Chief Medical Officer of Function Health, a platform providing personalized health insights through comprehensive data analysis. Mark is also the founder of the UltraWellness Center and the Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine. Sponsored By: Indeed - Get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/profiting Shopify - Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period at youngandprofiting.co/shopify Microsoft Teams - Stop paying for tools. Get everything you need, for free at aka.ms/profiting Mercury - Streamline your banking and finances in one place. Learn more at mercury.com/profiting OpenPhone: Streamline and scale your customer communications with OpenPhone. Get 20% off your first 6 months at openphone.com/profiting Mercury - Streamline your banking and finances in one place. Learn more at mercury.com/profiting Airbnb - Find yourself a co-host at airbnb.com/host Resources Mentioned: Mark’s Website: drhyman.com Mark’s Book, Young Forever: bit.ly/YoungForeverBook Mark’s Podcast, The Dr. Hyman Show: bit.ly/DrHymanShow Active Deals - youngandprofiting.com/deals Key YAP Links Reviews - ratethispodcast.com/yap Youtube - youtube.com/c/YoungandProfiting LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Instagram - instagram.com/yapwithhala/ Social + Podcast Services: yapmedia.com Transcripts - youngandprofiting.com/episodes-new Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurship Podcast, Business, Business Podcast, Self Improvement, Self-Improvement, Personal Development, Starting a Business, Strategy, Investing, Sales, Selling, Psychology, Productivity, Entrepreneurs, AI, Artificial Intelligence, Technology, Marketing, Negotiation, Money, Finance, Side Hustle, Mental Health, Career, Leadership, Mindset, Health, Growth Mindset, Mental Health, Psychology, Motivation, Mindset, Manifestation, Brain Health, Life Balance, Self Healing, Positivity, Happiness.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic of this episode?
Today's episode is sponsored in part by Airbnb, Open Phone, Shopify, Mercury, Built, Indeed, and Microsoft Teams. As always, you can find all of our incredible deals in the show notes or at youngandprofiting.com slash deals. You want to live to be 120 years old. Why do you actually want to live so long?
Chapter 2: What is the science behind aging and longevity?
I love life. What is the definition of health? It's not the absence of disease. It's something else. How do we unlock the keys to optimal biological performance? I've spent 40 years studying the science of the function of the body. Frailty is not a normal consequence of aging. It's a consequence, a phenomenon that happens as we get older if we don't do something about it.
We have dysregulated sleep schedules. We have tremendous amounts of stress. We eat crappy food. We don't exercise enough. There's all these things that we're doing to impede our ability to actually live a vibrant, long, healthy life.
What did you do to reverse your age 20 years?
I had been eating.
Let's say he gave you a 35-year-old. They're stressed, exhausted, running on coffee. If you had a year to transform their health and performance, what are the things that you would change?
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Chapter 3: How does functional medicine optimize health?
I would immediately have them get it.
Yeah, fam, imagine feeling stronger, sharper, and more energized as you age, not the other way around. Well, today's guest is gonna help teach us how to just do that. Dr. Mark Hyman is a leading functional medicine expert and the best-selling author of books like Young Forever and Eat Fat, Get Thin.
He's going to share some science-backed insights to help you improve your health, extend your lifespan, and defy aging. But first, make sure you follow and subscribe to Young and Profiting Podcast. Whether you are a frequent listener or a brand new listener, make sure you're subscribed to the show. That way, you'll never miss an episode packed with expert insights like this one.
Mark, welcome to Young and Profiting Podcast.
Thanks for having me.
I'm so excited for this conversation and there's so much to talk about, but I just want to jump in and get started. So I was reading your book, I was researching you, and I found out that you want to live to be 120 years old.
Oh, if I can do everything I love to do, yes. If I can, no. I'm still riding my bike at 119. I'll keep going.
That would be amazing. I also interviewed Dave Asprey a few times, and he tells me he wants to live to be 180 years old. So there's this trend of biohackers like you guys that want to live to be 120, 180 years old.
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Chapter 4: What is the secret to aging backwards?
I would just say I'm not a biohacker. I'm a functional medicine physician. And so I use deep science. Some of the tools are similar, but functional medicine is really the ultimate biohacker.
Yes. And we're going to talk all about functional medicine. And I'm going to try to help my listeners understand what that is if they're not familiar. But you guys are on a quest to live as long as you can, right? So that's the two things that you guys have in common. Maybe it's not biohacking. But when I think about that, I think about frail, old, bedridden. I don't
Really want to live to be 120 years old, at least by today's standards. So I want to understand when you imagine yourself at 120 years old, what do you actually imagine yourself being capable to do? What does 120 year old and thriving look like?
I mean, it means being able to do whatever you love to do. If it's sitting there rocking Jeremy to book, it's that. If it's hiking up a mountain, it's that. If it's making love with your partner, then it's that.
So for me, it's really being able to get up in the morning and do what you love to do and not be encumbered by some of the conditions that are mostly preventable that we seem to think of as normal of parts of aging. They're not really. And what's happening on the science is quite exciting.
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Chapter 5: How do diet, sleep, and toxins affect aging?
We're seeing a lot of research, for example, there's a Washington Post article recently about the aminoc factors, which is Basically, a scientific discovery that won the Nobel Prize that allows you to reprogram your genes back to a younger you. It's called epigenetic reprogramming, and it's being researched by the Altos Lab and Jeff Bezos and also by Sam Altman's lab.
So there's a lot of really amazing research going on in this right now in the longevity space. That's going to be an unlock. For most of us, I think we can expect to get to our 90s or be 100s. you know, vigorous and good health if we know what to do to take care of our bodies. And I saw this all over the place.
I mean, I was in Sardinia and I was in Ikaria and I just saw people who are like really old and really thriving. And, you know, this woman was like 87 years old and she was like running up and down the side of this mountain. I couldn't keep up with her. And she was, you know, tending to her giant gardens and farm and animals and trees. And it's quite amazing to see.
So I think if we understand the things that impede our health, We can remove those and we understand the things that enhance our health. We can add those. And it's really not that hard. It's just knowing what to do.
So I was listening to your audio book, Young Forever. It was really entertaining. And you were talking about how you went to Sardinia and went to the Blue Zones. But talk to us about what actually sparked your interest in longevity.
I've always been interested in the science of optimization in terms of how we function, whether it's the word functional medicine or the company I co-founded, Function Health. The core value is how do we unlock how to function at your best and how to unlock the keys to optimal biological performance? And it's really something that we're not only discovering.
No one's really asked the question in medicine before, what is the definition of health? It's not the absence of disease. It's something else. And if you go to your doctor, you feel good, say, I want to feel better. I want to optimize my health. They don't know what to do. Like, if you have symptoms, great. If you have a disease, they'll give you a drug.
But do they understand the science of creating health? No. That's what I've spent my life studying after medical school, the science of creating health. And it's something we now know how to do. And that's what's so exciting. We know the basic biological systems that go right.
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Chapter 6: Why is purpose and career fulfillment important for longevity?
And in the field of longevity, the science is really getting exciting because we're talking about these concepts called the hallmarks of aging. The hallmarks of aging are these fundamental biological things that go wrong or break down as we get older that are underlying all disease. It's like the roots or the trunk. And all the branches and the leaves...
are all the diseases and all the specialties. So whether it's heart disease or cancer or diabetes or Alzheimer's or whatever it is, autism, depression, they share common roots. And there are only really a few things that impede health. You have to identify what those are. There are toxins, there's allergens, there's microbes that change your microbiomes.
Chapter 7: What are modern food challenges we face today?
Stress can be physical or psychological stress. And poor diet, which most of us eat. And then there's a few things our bodies need to thrive. So you need to get rid of the bad stuff and put in the good stuff. And then there's ways of even accelerating optimization. Things, for example, like how do you optimize your mitochondria? How do you optimize your microbiome? How do you optimize...
neurotransmitter function? How do you optimize your immune system? These are things that we now know how to do. If you say to your doctor, I want to optimize my mitochondria, figure out how to optimize my immune system. And they're not going to know what to do. How do I optimize my microbiome? I'll take a probiotic, eat fiber. They're not going to really understand because it's not what they do.
And I've spent the 40 years studying the science of the function of the body. And that's really what we have come to in terms of understanding how to create these shifts in our biology that create abundant and vibrant health and that don't provide a breeding ground for disease.
So with traditional medicine, really they're focused on a specialty, right? They don't treat the whole body holistically. So can you give us an example of, okay, I go to the doctor and I'm like, hey.
I'll give you an example. I'll just tell you a patient, actual patient I had. I'm not going to use her name, but she was a business coach about 50 years old. She was overweight. She had prediabetes. She had depression. She had migraines. She had reflux. She had irritable bowel, bloating.
She had terrible psoriatic arthritis, which is a horrible condition where you get psoriasis all over your skin and body. And you also get arthritis, which is debilitating. So she was on a drug for that that cost $50,000. She was seen by the best docs at one of the best healthcare centers in the world.
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Chapter 8: Why does your social circle matter for longevity?
And she was getting the best GI treatment for reflux, the best treatment for irritable bowel, the best treatment for depression, quote, the best traditional view, the best treatment for migraines, the best treatment for her prediabetes, the best treatment for psoriatic arthritis. And she was seeing a doctor for every inch of her. And no one said, what is linking all these problems together?
For her, it was inflammation. She had tremendous amounts of inflammation that were driving all these conditions. Now, we know that depression is inflammation, right? We know that if your gut's upset, it's inflammation. We know that obviously if you have inflamed skin and arthritis, that's inflammation. We know that diabetes is inflammation or prediabetes or obesity is inflammation.
So I said to myself, well, what did the root cause for her? She was having so many gut issues. I believe those are the cause. She had severe bloating. She had all these history of taking antibiotics, the steroids for various things like for her autoimmune condition. I said, why don't we just do something really simple? Rather than taking all these drugs, you can continue to take them.
In the meantime, let's just try you on a whole foods, low sugar, low starch diet, which removes the common inflammatory triggers. For my practice, for people who have autoimmune disease, getting rid of grains and beans, dairy, gluten, which is part of the grains figure, processed food, alcohol, really makes a difference. So I said, put her on that diet. I said, let's kind of reset your gut.
I gave her an antibiotic and an antifungal to reset her gut. And then I gave her probiotics and things to rebuild her gut. And I gave her, I think, vitamin D and some fish oil, not a lot of stuff. And six weeks later, she comes back. She says, Dr. Hyman, I got off all my drugs. I'm like, wait, I didn't tell you to do that. She said, no, I just was feeling so good. I stopped everything.
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Chapter 9: What practical wellness strategies can entrepreneurs use?
And she had no more steroid arthritis. Her skin care cleared up. She had no more migraines. She had no more depression. She lost 20 pounds. Her prediabetes was gone. Her reflux was gone. Her irritable bowel was gone. And so I just treated the root cause, not the symptoms. Inflammation is a common trigger for most chronic diseases.
And for me, after seeing this for 30, 40 years of patients like this, I can see it when they walk in. I know what's going on. And it's not that hard to treat, but she was getting... all these symptom suppression treatments that weren't really working. They were marginally working. They were keeping her functioning sort of, but they didn't really deal with the problem.
So functional medicine is about really understanding the body as a network, as a system, as a system of systems that you have to keep optimized in order to live well. And they map almost entirely perfectly across the hallmarks of aging that scientists have been discovering.
So when your mitochondria don't work, when your detox system doesn't work, when your immune imbalances or hormone imbalances or neurotransmitter imbalances or your gut's off, These are things that we know actually know how to treat. Your mitochondria aren't working. These are things we know how to treat with functional medicine.
And talk to us about how your company, Function, services these types of problems.
What we've done with Function is really create the first health platform that allows people to fully access their own data. Now, people are wearing Oura rings, they're wearing Apple watches, they're wearing glucose monitors. That's all great. That's just a few data points. But what if you could unlock all of your biology?
What if you could know all your biomarkers and your metabolome and your microbiome and your genome?
imaging, your wearables, and your medical history, and your EMR, your medical records, all gets into a platform that is personalized to you and allows you to identify where the imbalances are, where the dysfunctions are, and gives you deep insights and content based on machine learning AI to help you actually optimize your health for you. Because no two people are alike.
And everybody's different. And if we try to treat to the mean, we often miss the mark. And this is what medicine does. It treats to the mean. There's no average person, right? Everybody's different. And the studies work by something called randomized controlled no-blind trials, which means you basically have two populations that are as identical to each other as possible.
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