For years, Dr. Mark Hyman, a 63-year-old physician and senior advisor at the Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine, has been preaching longevity strategies and is living proof that humans can reverse their biological age—his biological age is around 43.
“Functional medicine is really a model of thinking, it’s not a specialty,” he tells Penta. “It’s basically an operating system for thinking about the body as an integrated whole, as an ecosystem, and what are the root causes of disturbances to the ecosystem and how do you restore healthy ecosystems.”
Before becoming a physician, Hyman was a yoga teacher, he studied Buddhism, and engulfed himself in the world of nutrition at Cornell University. After medical school, he was appointed medical director of Canyon Ranch, one of the leading wellness resorts in the country. Shortly after he stepped into the role, he got mercury poisoning from living in China, which led him on his own wellness journey. After seeing countless doctors and several unsuccessful attempts to properly treat his condition, he was introduced to the framework of functional medicine.
“Through that, I was able to heal myself and help my patients, and it was a shock at how powerful it was to address the root causes of chronic disease,” says Hyman, who is a 15-time New York Times best-selling author. “That led me to be kind of an evangelist and really passionate about spreading the word. I realized there was so much suffering out there that was so needless that could get resolved if they just had the road map.”
Helping people get healthy has always been Hyman’s mission. Today, he practices at UltraWellness Center in Lenox, Massachusetts, in addition to the Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine. He’s founder and chairman of the Food Fix Campaign, which aims to improve our agricultural system, hosts one of the top wellness podcasts called the Doctor’s Farmacy, and is co-founder of Function Health, a membership-based program that includes over 100 lab tests and uses machine learning to empower patients to take ownership of their health and records. Hyman is also chief medical officer of the new RoseBar longevity resort at Six Senses Ibiza, where he occasionally hosts weeklong retreats.
Penta sat down with Hyman to talk about the ways he believes we can live longer, the future of healthcare, and more.
Penta: What do you think are some misconceptions about functional medicine?
Mark Hyman: Pretty much the standard refrain of traditional doctors or academic medicine which is “we practice evidence-based medicine,” which is a smokescreen for saying that you’re not doing what I do, so it’s not based on evidence. But the truth is there is plenty of evidence.
What are a few of the projects you are currently working on that you’re excited about?
The thing I’m most excited about is democratizing healthcare and making functional medicine affordable and accessible because right now it’s kind of a bottleneck. I co-founded a company called Function Health that is allowing people to access their own biological data. You should know what your lab data is. You should be able to analyze it and figure out what’s in it and learn what to do about it. We started this company that allows you to get US$15,000 worth of biomarkers for under US$500. It’s a membership model which allows you to recheck on a regular basis with very detailed guidelines on how to interpret them, what the test means, what you can do with self care, when you need medical care, and how to follow through on solving some of the issues and using machine learning and AI to analyze this. We’ve had over 13,000 people become members and we have over 1 million data points of lab data now.
You’ve often said that you strive to live to 120 years old and strongly believe it’s possible. Why do you feel strongly that it’s possible for humans to live past 100?
We have evidence of it. Madame [Jeanne] Calment lived to be 122 years old, so it’s happened at least once. I think reaching 100 is for sure accessible to most people if you address first the root causes of dying, which we now know what they are. I write a lot about this in my book Young Forever. We can actually understand the mechanisms of what goes wrong when we age, and we can modify those things through lifestyle interventions and various practices, and potentially even treatments whether it’s stem cells, regenerative medicine, plasmapheresis, or exosomes. But just the basics of diet, exercise, and lifestyle have a huge impact.
What are three things that you do everyday that increase your longevity?
I get eight hours of sleep. I workout and do strength training four times a week and I take my protein shake in the morning. And I build deep community and friendships. It’s basically what you eat, it’s how much exercise and the kind of exercise, and the social network and your relationships.
What are some scientific developments that excite you about the future of medicine?
There’s a deep understanding about how to personalize diet and lifestyle and various nutritional supplements. But then there’s a whole raft of other therapies I mentioned like rapamycin, stem cells, plasmapheresis, exosomes, hyperbaric oxygen therapy, peptides, or various adjuncts that we can use to support our health. We’re going to be 3-D printing organs soon. We’re going to use nanorobots to deliver treatments in medicine. We’re going to be doing gene editing. There’s a lot of things that are coming down the pipe pretty fast. There’s also something called the Yamanaka factor, which is not ready for prime time, but basically it allows you to reprogram your stem cells to embryonic stem cells, which then will allow you to rebuild tissue.
With the advent of AI, how do you think healthcare will change?
It will change everything. We’re seeing this convergence of multiple different scientific discoveries or advances. The first is a rethinking of medicine with systems biology, network medicine, functional medicine—whatever you want to call it. It’s really understanding the body as a biological network. The second is understanding the [genomics] revolution all in this sort of map and diagnosing what’s going on in the body. And the third is the quantified self movement whether it’s an Oura ring or Apple Watch, a lot of this is to collect thousands of data points. And then you have big data capabilities, AI, and machine learning. And those things are happening simultaneously. And they’re all converging.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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