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Should You Go Down the Road?

Happy Friday. I’ve been getting a lot of questions along the lines of “What if I [or my parents] are told by the doctor that I’m at risk for heart disease or diabetes? Should I not take the drugs? This email isn’t a “100% anti-drug” mindset, but I do recommend several steps before embarking on…

The Child is the Father of the Man

As a new parent, there’s so much talk about how to most effectively teach children. But we don’t talk enough about how much we need to learn from babies:  Children are truly the fathers of adults – there is nothing more to society than ensuring their natural inclinations thrive. The foundation of public policy in…

Sit Under a Tree

The amount of light a human is exposed to outside is 116 times more than inside with artificial light. Even sitting under a tree, a human is exposed to 50 times more light than sitting inside with artificial light. And again, for most of human history, there was no “inside” or artificial light. For almost…

Deadly Lightbulbs

I’ve been diving deep into the science of circadian rhythm for the book I’m writing with my sister. I’ve always thought this was a relatively frivolous concept, but this opinion has dramatically changed: Humans have evolved for millions of years, but we have only had lightbulbs for 140. Over these millions of years, a rhythm…

Young Forever II

As discussed in the last blog, I think the new Mark Hyman book Young Forever is one of the best primers on how to shift to a “functional medicine” view of health. Mark’s framework should be the basis of healthcare policy (shifting from a view that sees diseases as isolated issues to realizing they are connected). Still,…

Young Forever

As you probably know from reading this email, I believe Mark Hyman is indispensable in this movement to put food and metabolic habits at the center of health. His books (he has 14x bestsellers) have changed my life. He has a new book out today called Young Forever. It focuses on longevity – which inevitably…

Sickcare or Healthcare

Thank you for all the messages after the Bari Weiss podcast. I’ve been having many interesting conversations and want to clarify one point about the Ozempic debate.  This debate about whether we should be using taxpayer money to subsidize Ozempic for obese/overweight Americans symbolizes almost every important larger issue with healthcare policy.  I want to…

Which Road Are We Going to Take? 

Recently, I debated a leading Harvard obesity doctor about Ozempic on the Bari Weiss Podcast. I put my heart and soul into this podcast and think it is a robust debate that covers the larger question of where healthcare should go. Give it a listen here. If it resonates with you, please comment on this…

Drop Acid 

For 99.9% of human history, we didn’t know where our next meal came from. Because of this, it was well-advised for humans to eat as much as they could when food was available, particularly high-sugar food like fruit. As Dr. David Perlmutter points out in his book Drop Acid, an evolutionary trigger called uric acid…

Don’t Call it Preventative Health

Over the next several blogs, I will highlight books that have changed my view on health – and quickly summarize the key point. ___ So often, food or lifestyle interventions are put into a niche “preventative health” box – both in how policy is made and how we think. “Serious” medical interventions occur after we…

Are the children lazy? 

I recently completed a podcast with Bari Weiss, an independent journalist I admire greatly.  On the podcast, I debated a leading Harvard obesity doctor who is advocating that taxpayer-funded Ozempic (lifetime obesity injections) be available to 45% of teens and 78% of adults (the populations who are obese or overweight).  We both agreed that this…

The Bi-Partisan Issue of Our Time

If you told me on January 1st that I would be ending the month talking to Tucker Carlson about my mom’s death, the need to move government spending from Ozempic to healthy food, and the societal importance of psychedelics – I would have said you were crazy. This has been a crazy ride! I put…

The Essence of Wetness

Foundational Health Principle 14: Drink CLEAN water Step back and think about the incompetence we have seen from our government and other trusted institutions over the past decade. Time and time again, they let us down. But for some reason, most Americans simply assume this incompetence does not transfer to one of the most essential…

Death and Gratitude

My mom’s abrupt death two years ago had a huge impact on the journey I’m on today. The most surprising part about the experience was the emotions I felt. If you told me that my mom would be diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and die 13 days later, I would have expected to feel sadness, anger,…

True Medicine

We’ve been talking a lot about the problems with medicine, and some have been asking how I’m trying to solve them.  I wanted to share more about the company I’m devoting the bulk of my time to – which is trying to fix the core issue of incentivizing people to be healthy. This sounds simple,…

Food is a Matching Problem 

One topic my sister and I are exploring for our book is the idea that we are being deliberately confused about food.  Keto, paleo, vegan, carnivore… There is an endless debate about what dietary philosophy is best.  But this debate ignores the key questions:  What nutrients do I need from food to keep my cells…

Is Nutrition Complicated?

As you might have seen, my TrueMed co-founder Justin and I have been calling attention to the recent NIH-funded nutrition study that said Lucky Charms are healthier than eggs and beef. This culminated in nightly scrutiny of the study on major networks and Joe Rogan linking to our content in a post with over 900,000…

What’s Happening in Japan?

I’m en route to Florida for an hour-long interview with Tucker Carlson about food/health incentives. I am so grateful to carry this message forward, and hope these emails have sparked some interesting ideas! Over the weekend, I posted the above chart, which sparked a lot of reactions. I think the idea being pushed by pharma-funded…

Ozempic

There’s been a lot of talk about obesity drugs like Ozempic. Besides the breathtaking conflicts of interest, Ozempic concerns me because it furthers the great lie in healthcare that diseases are siloed. It is increasingly clear that heart disease, diabetes, many forms of cancer, dementia, and most other chronic diseases are actually roots of the…

Stress Your Cells

photo: Sisu Lifestyle Foundational Health Principle 13: Expose your cells to targeted stress (heat and cold exposure) Fact 1: 10-15 Minutes of Cold Exposure Increases Dopamine 250% Above Baseline. (Dr. Andrew Huberman) There’s been a lot of talk on health podcasts about cold plunges and saunas. These tools are becoming all the rage – and…

Getting out of Ruts

photo: Healthline Foundational Health Principle 12: Consciously facilitate states of transcendence and awe. My TrueMed co-founder Justin Mares published an article that coincides with Principle 12, which we discussed in the last blog. I can say this experience of the transformational impact of psychedelic therapy with his partner resonates with my experience. I think we all…

Shock and Awe

photo: Alivio Medical Center Foundational Health Principle 12: Consciously facilitate states of transcendence and awe. Fact 1: 67% of the volunteers in a Johns Hopkins psilocybin study rated the experience to be among the top five most meaningful experiences of their lives – on par with the death of a parent or birth of the…

Hunt for Fiber

Foundational Health Principle 11: Eat Over 40 Grams of Fiber Per Day Fact 1: 95% of Americans don’t get enough fiber. (PubMed) As I’ve embarked on this journey to discover items we should be encouraging in the American diet, fiber is an essential macronutrient that constantly arises. Fiber, which processed foods often don’t contain, is essential…

3 Graphs that Describe Everything

So what do we do now?  As I’ve discussed the broken food system over the past few weeks, this is the most common question.  This email covers 25 health principles we must prioritize individually to get back on track.  But let’s keep focus: if there is one Golden Rule for how we should structure our…

5 Facts That Changed How I Think About Sleep

Foundational Health Principle 10: Get Consistent Quantity of Sleep We know sleep is important, but increasing research shows it is the foundation of health – to the degree that you should sacrifice exercise and most other habits if you are not getting a good baseline of sleep. One tip: Eight Sleep was one of my…

Our Siloed System

Whenever I go to a new city, I am struck by how the largest and fanciest building is often a hospital.  The Texas Medical Center in Houston has 2.1 square miles of buildings that can be seen from space. OHSU (the largest hospital in Portland) has 37 major buildings. The largest building in my town,…

Miracle Cure for Obesity? 

You might have seen that the American Academy of Pediatrics recently recommended anti-obesity drugs for children as young as 12.  There are a lot of reasons for skepticism when the incentives of this decision are analyzed:  Most importantly, we have finite choices of where we spend our healthcare dollars. Drug companies are arguing that the…

You are Made of Sunlight

Foundational Health Principle 9: Get Sunlight in Your Eyes Every Morning Facts of the day: Viewing sunlight in the morning causes ~50% increase in circulating cortisol, epinephrine, and dopamine. (Andrew Huberman) There’s been a lot of talk recently about exposure to sunlight. Stanford Professor Andrew Huberman, who has created the country’s most listened-to health podcast,…

9 Blood Sugar Hacks

Foundational Health Principle 8: Implement Blood Sugar Stabilization Strategies Facts of the day: Eating vegetables/fat/protein before carbs can lower glucose spikes by 28.6% versus the reverse order. (PubMed) One of the most important lessons I’ve learned in the past several years is that glucose dysregulation is the root of most diseases disease.  A core is…

4 Facts on Big Food

Following my Tucker interview, Fox invited my True Medicine co-founder Justin to discuss further how our food system is rigged. Watch the segment here.  I am glad Fox is exposing this topic on two of the three most-watched cable shows in the country. This is a brave move because much of their advertising revenue still comes…

The Loser is Our Kids

Recently, I had the opportunity to go on Tucker Carlson (the country’s most-watched cable show) to talk about the core themes of this email. Particularly, I discussed my experience as a political consultant, where I saw firsthand how the food and health systems are rigged against us, particularly kids.  This is a bipartisan issue, and I am…

Exercise is Medicine

Foundational Health Principle 7: Move for 150 minutes per week Fact of the day: Exercising 150 minutes weekly for four months straight is equally effective as a prescription antidepressant. PubMed Like 90% of Americans, I have often not gotten enough exercise. However, seeing exercise as medicine has changed my perspective and led to more consistent…

Food is Information 

Foundational Health Principle 6: Hunt for Micronutrients Fact of the day: 90% of Americans lack one or more key nutrients. What diet is best? Countless books, podcasts, companies, and Instagram influencers strive to answer this question.  Keto, paleo, vegan, carnivore… We’ve all heard the debates.  This is not the right question. Instead of asking what diet is…

Protect Your Bacteria

Foundational Health Principle 5: Don’t Kill the Microbiome with Pesticides Fact of the day: A recent study found glyphosate in the urine of 99 percent of the pregnant women they observed. Higher glyphosate levels were associated with lower birth weight and higher neonatal intensive care unit admission risk. U.S. glyphosate (most popular herbicide) use per…

Good Fats

Foundational Health Principle 4: Increase Omega-3 Fats Fact of the day: Omega-3 supplements (1,000 mg per day of EPA) were as effective in reducing depression as the leading SSRI. (PubMed) In the past 100 years, our source of fats has dramatically changed from a diet high in Omega-3s to one high in Omega-6s. There’s much more…

Weaponized Grains

Fact of the day: 88% of U.S. agriculture subsidies go to the 3 grains that are the foundation of processed food: corn, wheat, and soy.Less than 0.5% of subsidies go to fruit or vegetables.  Like seed oils, highly processed grains didn’t exist until the early 1900s. Today, they are a cornerstone of our diet.  So, what…

Scan the Label for Seed Oils

Foundational Health Principle 2: Don’t Eat Seed Oils Fact of the day: Today, soybean oil is the single-largest source of calories in the United States. 120 years ago, it didn’t exist. As many of you know, I’m starting a company that issues diet and lifestyle habit plans to prevent and reverse disease – which unlocks…

Why Sugar is Bad

Reducing sugar consumption should guide public policy and our personal decisions – but we first need to understand what it does to our bodies. Here’s the best/shortest explanation I can muster: Our body is made up of 37 billion interconnected cells, and each one is a self-contained energy factory. The preferred fuel for cells is…

The Deadliest Drug In America

Foundational Health Habit 1: Don’t Eat Sugar Okay – we know sugar is bad. But until recently, I didn’t understand the scale of how evolutionarily unprecedented the problem is and the science of why it is actually so destructive. Wrapping my head around these two questions has helped me start implementing changes more effectively.  Today’s email will…

Don’t Consult Your Doctor.

Most health resources end with a clear disclaimer: Always seek the advice of a physician or other qualified healthcare provider with any questions…  The data leads to the opposite conclusion: When it comes to preventing chronic disease – which make up 8 of the 10 top killers of Americans – you should decidedly not consult the…

Free Market?

You can’t have a free market when the current market is rigged. Healthcare and food companies have co-opted free market thinking. They have lobbied more than any other industry to rig the system and then cry that anyone who questions that system is “anti-free market.” Sadly, even some of the most intelligent conservatives I know fall…

We Are All on Drugs

NOTE: This is the first edition of a daily email outlining tangible health ideas from my work launching True Medicine and writing a book on metabolic health. If this resonates, sign up here: In a recent podcast interview, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson gave his reason for not trying psychedelics: “I have always valued objective reality. I don’t…

More Money on Healthy Food, Less Money on Pharmaceuticals

11 out of the 12 leading killers of Americans are caused by or worsened by processed food. 

Healthcare is the only industry where “innovation” (more drugs and procedures) equals higher costs and worse outcomes – spending is outpacing inflation and yet outcomes are getting worse every year. This is because we’re addressing downstream, separate symptoms…

Is the Proliferation of Antidepressants Good?

This proliferation of antidepressants (SSRI’s) represents so much of what is wrong with healthcare today. Antidepressants are a way for the medical system to earn recurring revenue without solving the root causes of what is actually making people depressed. This article contains 6 surprising facts.

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