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[00:00:00.320 --> 00:00:02.000] Coming up on this episode of the Dr.
[00:00:02.000 --> 00:00:04.000] Hyman Show, you founded Whole Foods.
[00:00:04.000 --> 00:00:06.720] It's changed the face of food in America for the better.
[00:00:06.880 --> 00:00:10.640] First store was called Safer Way, changed the name of the Whole Foods Market, and it took off.
[00:00:10.640 --> 00:00:14.160] It became the highest volume of natural food store in the United States six months after it opened.
[00:00:14.160 --> 00:00:18.480] Why have you sort of turned your attention from groceries and food to healthcare?
[00:00:18.480 --> 00:00:23.600] I had a tab of LSD, and it was incredibly powerful, the strongest dose of any psychedelic I've ever taken.
[00:00:23.600 --> 00:00:25.680] And I basically was swept away.
[00:00:25.680 --> 00:00:36.560] John Mackey, co-founder of Whole Foods Market, grew one store into a $22 billion natural foods empire and champions conscious capitalism to elevate humanity.
[00:00:36.560 --> 00:00:40.720] Today, chronic diseases, not infectious diseases, are what are killing us.
[00:00:40.720 --> 00:00:42.560] Chronic disease can be contagious.
[00:00:42.560 --> 00:00:46.480] You're more likely to be obese if your friends are overweight than even if your family's overweight.
[00:00:46.480 --> 00:00:48.800] We spend almost 18% of our GDP.
[00:00:48.800 --> 00:00:50.880] But where are we in terms of longevity?
[00:00:50.880 --> 00:00:53.440] When I checked it out today, we were 48.
[00:00:53.440 --> 00:00:56.160] You started basically a movement called Conscious Capitalism.
[00:00:56.160 --> 00:00:58.880] We had some shareholder activists that were trying to take over the company.
[00:00:58.880 --> 00:01:04.400] Basically, Amazon was the best solution for us in a very situation where we didn't have a lot of good solutions.
[00:01:04.400 --> 00:01:06.880] Conscious capitalism has four basic principles to the mark.
[00:01:06.960 --> 00:01:14.080] First principle is in functional medicine.
[00:01:14.080 --> 00:01:15.280] We always start with the gut.
[00:01:15.280 --> 00:01:20.480] It's at the core of nearly every aspect of health, from digestion and immune function to brain and skin health.
[00:01:20.480 --> 00:01:25.920] Your gut microbiome regulates inflammation, absorbs nutrients, and maintains the integrity of your gut barrier.
[00:01:25.920 --> 00:01:32.160] That's why I take and recommend SEADS DSO1 Daily Symbiotic, a next-level probiotic designed to go beyond digestion.
[00:01:32.160 --> 00:01:42.320] With 24 clinically studied probiotic strains and a pomegranate-based prebiotic, DSO1, supports gut immune function, gut barrier integrity, and even heart health through the gut-liver axis.
[00:01:42.320 --> 00:01:44.160] But here's what's really exciting.
[00:01:44.160 --> 00:01:49.040] Research now shows that gut health directly impacts skin health through the gut-skin axis.
[00:01:49.040 --> 00:01:54.160] DSO1 contains targeted strains clinically validated to support clear, hydrated skin from within.
[00:01:54.160 --> 00:02:05.320] As a member of SEAD's clinical board, I've seen the science behind their formulations, and new research shows DSO1 supports short-chain fatty acid production, which is key for gut barrier function, immune health, and healthy aging.
[00:02:05.480 --> 00:02:10.360] If you're ready to optimize your gut health, SEED is offering my community 25% off your first month.
[00:02:10.360 --> 00:02:14.200] Just head to seed.com/slash hymen and use code 25-hyman at checkout.
[00:02:14.200 --> 00:02:18.440] That's seed.com hymen with code 25-hymen for 25% off your first month.
[00:02:18.440 --> 00:02:22.600] There's a big misconception about protein, and it's one that can hold you back from real results.
[00:02:22.600 --> 00:02:30.920] You see, our bodies don't use whole protein directly, instead, they break it down into amino acids, the true building blocks your body uses to create muscle, skin, bone, and more.
[00:02:30.920 --> 00:02:32.920] But not all amino acids are used equally.
[00:02:32.920 --> 00:02:40.040] Some go toward rebuilding tissue, while others, especially if they're in excess, may be converted into energy or stored, adding to your overall calorie load.
[00:02:40.040 --> 00:02:41.720] That's why I'm a fan of Perfect Amino.
[00:02:41.720 --> 00:02:49.080] It delivers only the essential amino acids your body actually needs and in the exact ratio that supports efficient protein synthesis with minimal waste.
[00:02:49.080 --> 00:02:56.200] It's a clean, targeted way to support lean muscle recovery and tissue repair without the added calories or digestive burden of whole proteins.
[00:02:56.200 --> 00:02:57.640] Try PerfectAmino today.
[00:02:57.640 --> 00:03:02.360] Go to bodyhealth.com and use code hymen20 for 20% off your first order.
[00:03:02.360 --> 00:03:03.960] You'll feel the difference.
[00:03:03.960 --> 00:03:05.800] Okay, John, welcome to my podcast.
[00:03:05.800 --> 00:03:07.240] We've known each other a long time.
[00:03:07.240 --> 00:03:08.680] It's great to see you here.
[00:03:08.680 --> 00:03:09.240] We're in LA.
[00:03:09.240 --> 00:03:14.360] Actually, we both live in Austin, so I don't know how we ended up in LA doing a podcast because we both had some business here.
[00:03:15.240 --> 00:03:19.480] You founded Whole Foods, which everybody now knows.
[00:03:19.640 --> 00:03:22.680] It's changed the face of food in America for the better.
[00:03:22.680 --> 00:03:27.720] You know, you sold food, but now you're kind of focused on healthcare, which is really interesting.
[00:03:27.720 --> 00:03:31.720] And, you know, if you understand that food is medicine, it's not such a big leap, right?
[00:03:31.720 --> 00:03:32.480] But it's interesting.
[00:03:32.720 --> 00:03:37.400] Why have you sort of turned your attention from groceries and food to healthcare?
[00:03:37.400 --> 00:03:39.720] Well, I do think it's a continuum.
[00:03:39.720 --> 00:03:45.040] They're both about helping people to become healthier, to be the healthiest version of themselves.
[00:03:45.040 --> 00:03:47.840] And I mean, I did, I co-founded Whole Foods.
[00:03:47.840 --> 00:03:50.240] I led it as CEO for 44 years.
[00:03:44.440 --> 00:03:50.720] 44 years.
[00:03:51.040 --> 00:03:52.400] 44 years, exactly.
[00:03:52.400 --> 00:03:55.840] We sold it to Amazon, not because we wanted to sell out.
[00:03:55.840 --> 00:03:59.280] We were independent, publicly traded company for 25 years.
[00:03:59.840 --> 00:04:03.520] Well, for a long time, in 25 years as a public company.
[00:04:03.520 --> 00:04:07.520] So, but we had some shareholder activists that were trying to take over the company.
[00:04:07.520 --> 00:04:11.840] And Amazon, it's a long story, which I detail in my book, The Whole Story.
[00:04:11.840 --> 00:04:20.160] The short version of that is basically that Amazon was the best solution for us in a very situation where we didn't have a lot of good solutions.
[00:04:20.560 --> 00:04:32.640] So I signed on for five years with Amazon to help integrate Whole Foods into Amazon, make sure that the culture, the values of Whole Foods were protected as best I could protect it.
[00:04:32.640 --> 00:04:36.000] And then those five years were up and I retired from Whole Foods.
[00:04:36.320 --> 00:04:39.200] And also, I didn't want to work as hard, to be honest.
[00:04:39.440 --> 00:04:44.240] I mean, I was getting older and I wanted to play more pickleball.
[00:04:44.240 --> 00:04:46.400] I want to play more pickleball, exactly.
[00:04:46.400 --> 00:04:51.520] And read and travel and spend time with my wife and friends and family, et cetera.
[00:04:51.520 --> 00:04:53.120] That's how I got out of Whole Foods.
[00:04:53.120 --> 00:05:04.640] But here's the thing: it's like I really felt like I knew how to help thousands of people and maybe in the long term, millions of people be healthier, to live a healthier, more vital life.
[00:05:04.880 --> 00:05:06.160] How could I not do that?
[00:05:06.560 --> 00:05:08.480] Would I get to the end of my life with the regret?
[00:05:08.480 --> 00:05:12.000] Yeah, sure, I could lay on a beach and read and do whatever I wanted.
[00:05:12.000 --> 00:05:13.600] I'd made enough money.
[00:05:13.600 --> 00:05:16.160] But I don't think that would be fulfilling for me.
[00:05:16.160 --> 00:05:18.240] I'm a very purpose-driven human being.
[00:05:18.560 --> 00:05:23.280] I feel like I needed to be contributing in some way to helping.
[00:05:23.280 --> 00:05:37.240] So, you start out your career basically working in a co-op, sweeping the floors, moved to create one of the most iconic brands in America that has really improved the health for so many people who shop there.
[00:05:37.400 --> 00:05:40.920] And now you're 72 and you're still at it.
[00:05:40.920 --> 00:05:43.880] Hey, I've got three weeks perform 72.
[00:05:44.440 --> 00:05:47.320] You're biologically 60, but I'm going to enjoy them as well as I can.
[00:05:47.720 --> 00:05:52.120] But you're really now focused on a new venture, which is very ambitious.
[00:05:52.120 --> 00:06:02.840] And I'm just curious: what was your early experience in your life that shifted you to think this way, to have this philosophy around food and health and consciousness?
[00:06:02.840 --> 00:06:11.400] And because you've not only done the work you've done around creating a business like Whole Foods, but you started basically a movement called Conscious Capitalism.
[00:06:12.280 --> 00:06:12.680] I'm in a game.
[00:06:13.160 --> 00:06:16.520] I'm going to give you like a three to five minute history there.
[00:06:16.520 --> 00:06:17.000] Really?
[00:06:17.160 --> 00:06:18.360] In my book, The Prologue.
[00:06:18.680 --> 00:06:19.320] The whole story.
[00:06:19.320 --> 00:06:20.120] The whole story.
[00:06:20.200 --> 00:06:20.520] Exactly.
[00:06:20.840 --> 00:06:21.800] You got to get a copy.
[00:06:21.800 --> 00:06:24.360] Adventures in Love, Life, and Capitalism.
[00:06:24.680 --> 00:06:26.840] And starts out, the prologue.
[00:06:26.840 --> 00:06:31.880] I've just turned 22 years old, and I'm living by myself, not in a very good space.
[00:06:31.880 --> 00:06:35.800] I'm an atheist studying philosophy, existentialism.
[00:06:35.800 --> 00:06:36.680] That'll make me depressed.
[00:06:36.760 --> 00:06:42.360] I took a very, I didn't know it because back in that day, you didn't know what you were getting in terms of dosage.
[00:06:42.360 --> 00:06:44.280] But I had a tab of LSD.
[00:06:44.280 --> 00:06:50.360] I took it by myself, and it was incredibly powerful, the strongest dose of any psychedelic I've ever taken.
[00:06:50.520 --> 00:06:53.160] And I basically was swept away.
[00:06:53.320 --> 00:06:59.240] I use the metaphor, it's like, imagine Niagara Falls and you're hanging onto a rock with one hand.
[00:06:59.240 --> 00:07:00.440] How long can you do that?
[00:07:00.440 --> 00:07:01.240] Not that long.
[00:07:01.240 --> 00:07:03.400] And so I got swept away.
[00:07:03.400 --> 00:07:06.760] And then I found my ego dissolving.
[00:07:06.760 --> 00:07:09.080] Basically, that separateness.
[00:07:09.080 --> 00:07:09.800] You're Mark.
[00:07:09.800 --> 00:07:10.760] I'm John.
[00:07:11.080 --> 00:07:11.880] It's water.
[00:07:11.840 --> 00:07:13.160] Right, it all disappeared.
[00:07:13.120 --> 00:07:15.200] Yeah, I was, there was really no thoughts.
[00:07:14.440 --> 00:07:20.400] I'm now reflecting back on that state of consciousness when there was no thoughts, really.
[00:07:14.840 --> 00:07:21.440] There's no separation.
[00:07:21.920 --> 00:07:33.840] And what I realized, I realized that I was a manifestation of the one being as are you, as is everything, because that's all there is, is the one being.
[00:07:33.840 --> 00:07:35.840] I realized I'd always existed.
[00:07:36.160 --> 00:07:38.400] There was no beginning and there's no end.
[00:07:38.960 --> 00:07:41.520] And I realized that life's this adventure.
[00:07:41.920 --> 00:07:45.520] And it's like, I can make it whatever I want it to be.
[00:07:45.520 --> 00:07:48.240] I can create whatever I want to create.
[00:07:48.240 --> 00:07:50.640] And so that was so life-changing.
[00:07:50.640 --> 00:07:51.760] That changed my life.
[00:07:51.760 --> 00:07:53.760] So there's a funny story about this.
[00:07:53.760 --> 00:07:59.040] So I'm coming, I'm coming down on the trip and I'm walking around this neighborhood now.
[00:07:59.040 --> 00:08:02.240] And I run into my East Coast somewhere?
[00:08:02.240 --> 00:08:03.520] No, no, I'm in Austin, Texas.
[00:08:03.520 --> 00:08:04.400] Oh, in Austin, yeah.
[00:08:04.400 --> 00:08:04.960] Yeah.
[00:08:04.960 --> 00:08:09.280] I'm walking around and I run into my philosophy professor that I idolized.
[00:08:09.280 --> 00:08:12.800] He was my intellectual hero, a guy named Bob Solomon, Robert C.
[00:08:12.800 --> 00:08:13.360] Solomon.
[00:08:13.360 --> 00:08:16.880] He's written 40 or 50 books on philosophy.
[00:08:16.880 --> 00:08:18.400] And he was an existentialist.
[00:08:18.400 --> 00:08:23.520] And he was at that time very influenced by Sartre and Camus and Nietzsche and Kierkegaard.
[00:08:23.920 --> 00:08:28.720] And he believed life was absurd, that there was no purpose and meaning to life at all.
[00:08:28.720 --> 00:08:30.240] And so I ran into him.
[00:08:30.240 --> 00:08:32.960] And I mean, I think I ran into him.
[00:08:32.960 --> 00:08:34.320] I think he was there.
[00:08:34.320 --> 00:08:36.800] I had a conversation with him.
[00:08:36.800 --> 00:08:39.600] And I asked him, I said, Professor Solomon, it's John Mackey.
[00:08:39.600 --> 00:08:40.480] I'm one of your students.
[00:08:40.480 --> 00:08:42.240] I've been taking a few courses from you.
[00:08:42.240 --> 00:08:45.680] And he kind of vaguely recognized me, but he didn't know my name.
[00:08:45.680 --> 00:08:47.840] And I said, so, Professor Solomon, I have two questions.
[00:08:47.840 --> 00:08:56.240] First question is, you know, you teach that life's absurd, that there's absolutely no meaning whatsoever to life, that we're just sort of thrown into here.
[00:08:56.240 --> 00:09:00.360] It's all been random chance, and we're going to die, and that's it.
[00:09:00.360 --> 00:09:02.120] Our consciousness is extinguished.
[00:09:02.200 --> 00:09:03.480] There's just really no purpose.
[00:08:59.520 --> 00:09:05.720] But you take sort of a romantic stance to that.
[00:09:05.880 --> 00:09:12.200] You said there's no real objective meaning, but we can make something up so we can be romantic.
[00:09:12.200 --> 00:09:18.440] We can sort of throw our fist against a cruel reality and make our life into an adventure.
[00:09:18.440 --> 00:09:19.960] And I said, Is that what you believe, sir?
[00:09:19.960 --> 00:09:21.800] And he said, Yes, that's what I believe.
[00:09:21.800 --> 00:09:22.680] And I said, I thought so.
[00:09:23.000 --> 00:09:24.920] But let me ask you a second question.
[00:09:24.920 --> 00:09:26.760] Are you very happy?
[00:09:27.400 --> 00:09:31.080] And he looked at me and he said, No, I'm not very happy.
[00:09:31.560 --> 00:09:32.280] And he looked at me.
[00:09:33.080 --> 00:09:33.400] Yeah.
[00:09:33.400 --> 00:09:35.960] He looked at me and I looked at him and we went our separate ways.
[00:09:36.520 --> 00:09:42.360] And what I realized after that point is I just had this, I was still having actually this incredible meaning you were in the trip.
[00:09:42.520 --> 00:09:52.360] Well, I was coming down, but what I don't know for sure, was he still part of that trip or had I come down enough where he was actually, you know, what's the difference?
[00:09:52.360 --> 00:09:53.960] I mean, it's all a dream anyway.
[00:09:53.960 --> 00:09:55.480] It's all my anyway.
[00:09:55.480 --> 00:09:57.000] He's, I'm having this conversation.
[00:09:57.320 --> 00:09:58.760] I think I was down enough.
[00:09:58.920 --> 00:10:00.440] Point is that changed my life.
[00:10:00.680 --> 00:10:05.240] And you know what I started doing after I had, I stuck out my thumb and I started hitchhiking.
[00:10:05.240 --> 00:10:06.120] Across America?
[00:10:06.120 --> 00:10:07.000] Not across America.
[00:10:07.000 --> 00:10:09.000] I just, I was open for adventure.
[00:10:09.000 --> 00:10:13.480] A guy picks me up and he says, he says, son, where do you want to go?
[00:10:13.480 --> 00:10:15.560] And I said, wherever you're going.
[00:10:15.560 --> 00:10:16.360] I don't really care.
[00:10:16.360 --> 00:10:17.880] So he says, well, I'm going home.
[00:10:18.440 --> 00:10:19.160] Great.
[00:10:19.800 --> 00:10:23.240] He drives a couple of miles up the road and says, this is home.
[00:10:23.240 --> 00:10:23.960] I'm getting out.
[00:10:24.120 --> 00:10:24.760] I'm looking around.
[00:10:24.760 --> 00:10:26.120] I'm thinking, okay.
[00:10:26.120 --> 00:10:27.800] So then I start walking back.
[00:10:27.960 --> 00:10:30.840] And that's actually when I ran into Professor Solomon.
[00:10:30.840 --> 00:10:38.120] Anyhow, after that, Mark, pretty soon after that, I moved into this vegetarian commune co-op.
[00:10:38.360 --> 00:10:40.840] And I wasn't vegetarian at that time.
[00:10:40.840 --> 00:10:43.000] I really didn't know much about food at all.
[00:10:43.000 --> 00:10:46.320] I didn't eat vegetables or I really ate the standard American diet.
[00:10:46.320 --> 00:10:47.760] I was a junk food eater.
[00:10:47.760 --> 00:10:50.400] I moved in and I had my food consciousness awakened.
[00:10:44.840 --> 00:10:51.280] I'm almost to put it.
[00:10:51.840 --> 00:10:53.360] I started to cook.
[00:10:53.360 --> 00:10:55.760] I learned about natural and organic foods.
[00:10:56.080 --> 00:11:02.880] For the first time, I began to realize, my gosh, I'm not just a machine that needs fuel, driving to McDonald's and fuel up.
[00:11:02.880 --> 00:11:04.080] I'm a living being.
[00:11:04.080 --> 00:11:08.160] I need to nourish my cells with nourishing food.
[00:11:08.160 --> 00:11:10.800] And that was when it began.
[00:11:10.960 --> 00:11:13.600] I went to work for a small natural food store.
[00:11:14.240 --> 00:11:15.280] I worked there for a few months.
[00:11:15.280 --> 00:11:17.840] And I came back home to the co-op.
[00:11:17.840 --> 00:11:25.680] My girlfriend, Renee, I went to Renee and I said, Hey, Renee, what do you think if we opened up our own natural food store?
[00:11:25.680 --> 00:11:27.120] What do you think about that?
[00:11:27.120 --> 00:11:29.920] And she said, I think that'd be cool.
[00:11:30.960 --> 00:11:32.160] So we did it.
[00:11:32.160 --> 00:11:35.200] I was 23 and she was 19 at the time.
[00:11:35.360 --> 00:11:36.240] That's incredible.
[00:11:36.240 --> 00:11:38.000] So we didn't know what we were doing.
[00:11:38.160 --> 00:11:41.920] But let's just say we made a lot of mistakes and I was a fast learner.
[00:11:41.920 --> 00:11:43.840] First store was called Safer Way.
[00:11:43.840 --> 00:11:47.040] And Mark, it was so idealistically pure.
[00:11:47.040 --> 00:11:48.560] It was a vegetarian store.
[00:11:48.560 --> 00:11:49.680] We didn't sell alcohol.
[00:11:49.680 --> 00:11:50.960] We didn't sell coffee.
[00:11:50.960 --> 00:11:52.960] We didn't sell sugar.
[00:11:52.960 --> 00:11:54.960] We didn't sell white flour.
[00:11:54.960 --> 00:11:56.880] We were very, very pure.
[00:11:56.880 --> 00:11:57.680] Love that.
[00:11:57.680 --> 00:11:59.760] We didn't do much business.
[00:12:00.400 --> 00:12:02.080] Safer Way really struggled.
[00:12:02.080 --> 00:12:15.840] And then we relocated it, merged with another small natural food store, changed the name to Whole Foods Market, started selling meat, seafood, beer and wine, coffee, tea, sugar, and some products with white flour.
[00:12:16.160 --> 00:12:18.480] But then natural organic focus.
[00:12:18.480 --> 00:12:19.600] And it took off.
[00:12:19.600 --> 00:12:23.200] It became the highest volume natural food store in the United States six months after it opened.
[00:12:23.200 --> 00:12:24.240] It was a huge success.
[00:12:24.400 --> 00:12:26.880] I've driven by there and it's downtown Austin, right?
[00:12:26.880 --> 00:12:27.280] Yeah.
[00:12:27.440 --> 00:12:27.680] Yeah.
[00:12:27.680 --> 00:12:28.400] Amazing.
[00:12:28.400 --> 00:12:29.440] I had a similar experience.
[00:12:29.440 --> 00:12:34.760] I actually had a psychedelic experience in college, very similar to that.
[00:12:34.760 --> 00:12:38.680] And then I moved into a house with eight vegetarians.
[00:12:38.680 --> 00:12:38.920] Really?
[00:12:38.920 --> 00:12:39.320] You're kidding?
[00:12:39.480 --> 00:12:40.360] In Ithaca, yeah.
[00:12:40.760 --> 00:12:42.440] And that was where Moosewood Cookbook.
[00:12:42.680 --> 00:12:43.720] Moosewood Cookbook.
[00:12:44.600 --> 00:12:45.480] That was one of my cookbooks.
[00:12:45.480 --> 00:12:45.800] That's right.
[00:12:45.800 --> 00:12:47.720] Well, Moosewood Restaurant was in Ithaca.
[00:12:47.720 --> 00:12:48.520] That's right.
[00:12:48.520 --> 00:12:50.040] And so we used to go there.
[00:12:50.040 --> 00:12:51.880] And then every night we had to cook.
[00:12:51.880 --> 00:12:55.560] And we took our backyard, which was we rented a house in town.
[00:12:55.560 --> 00:12:57.000] And I had a room for $100.
[00:12:57.640 --> 00:12:58.280] How old are you?
[00:12:58.440 --> 00:13:00.760] I was 19, you know.
[00:13:00.760 --> 00:13:05.640] And we took the backyard, we tore up the grass and we planted a whole garden.
[00:13:05.640 --> 00:13:08.520] One of the guys, we had these maple trees on the street in front of us.
[00:13:08.520 --> 00:13:12.360] He was tapping the maple trees and we made like a pint of maple syrup.
[00:13:12.360 --> 00:13:13.160] Oh my gosh.
[00:13:13.160 --> 00:13:14.520] And we had to cook every night.
[00:13:14.520 --> 00:13:15.640] And so we rotated.
[00:13:15.640 --> 00:13:18.040] So every night we had basically a family dinner.
[00:13:18.040 --> 00:13:21.640] And one of us was a chief chef and then one of us was like the helper chef.
[00:13:21.640 --> 00:13:22.120] Right.
[00:13:22.120 --> 00:13:27.000] And then we got fresh, delicious vegetarian food every night.
[00:13:27.640 --> 00:13:29.160] How long did you stay in that community?
[00:13:29.160 --> 00:13:30.840] We lived together for a couple of years.
[00:13:30.840 --> 00:13:31.320] Yeah.
[00:13:31.320 --> 00:13:37.800] And then I ended up moving on to an abandoned commune in Ithaca and lived in a yurt with no electricity or running water.
[00:13:37.960 --> 00:13:39.080] We were both were hippies.
[00:13:39.720 --> 00:13:40.760] That's right.
[00:13:41.080 --> 00:13:43.160] No, like there's a no running water.
[00:13:43.560 --> 00:13:48.040] I had to take my water from a well like a quarter mile away with these two five-gallon buckets.
[00:13:48.040 --> 00:13:50.120] What motivated you to become a doctor?
[00:13:50.280 --> 00:13:54.120] Well, I don't know if you know this john, but I was a student of Buddhism.
[00:13:54.120 --> 00:13:55.400] So you had that first?
[00:13:55.400 --> 00:13:55.720] Yeah.
[00:13:55.720 --> 00:13:57.400] So I was studying Buddhism and I did.
[00:13:57.480 --> 00:13:58.200] Do you still practice?
[00:13:58.200 --> 00:13:59.720] Do you do vipassana still?
[00:13:59.720 --> 00:14:05.760] I do meditate, and I still, a lot of the principles are kind of ingrained in me as sort of just my way of doing it.
[00:14:05.840 --> 00:14:07.960] You've got a more eclectic approach now.
[00:14:08.120 --> 00:14:08.520] Yeah.
[00:14:08.520 --> 00:14:17.600] And uh, I was ended up uh taking a course called the Medicine Buddha and about, you know, the kind of the healing framework of Buddhism, which is really healing of the mind.
[00:14:17.840 --> 00:14:21.760] Yes, and and I was like, Well, I don't really want to become a monk, so what are we going to do?
[00:14:21.760 --> 00:14:39.920] So, I graduated, you know, basically with what am I going to do with a degree in Buddhism, you know, and I ended up my degree in philosophy, but yeah, taking a hike for a week in the Shenandoah Mountains, and I took Moby Dick and just me and myself and I and ended up realizing maybe I should try to go to medical school and see if I liked it.
[00:14:39.920 --> 00:14:42.720] And if I didn't like it, I would quit, you know, but so far, so good.
[00:14:43.440 --> 00:14:46.560] You have a doctor, either a parent's doctor?
[00:14:46.640 --> 00:14:47.760] No, no, nobody.
[00:14:48.320 --> 00:14:57.520] The story was that my great, my grandfather's grandfather from Russia was the doctor to the czar last czar, but I think it's probably made up.
[00:14:57.520 --> 00:14:58.640] I don't believe it.
[00:14:58.960 --> 00:15:02.000] So, so you were you were not pushed into no, no, no.
[00:15:02.720 --> 00:15:08.240] You will say you were led by your heart or your soul, your deeper spirits.
[00:15:08.320 --> 00:15:13.680] Yeah, and I was studying all these ancient healing systems, and I learned Chinese and studied Chinese medicine.
[00:15:13.680 --> 00:15:16.560] And so I was very much thinking differently from the beginning.
[00:15:16.720 --> 00:15:18.400] Mark, you have to write your story.
[00:15:18.400 --> 00:15:18.960] I know, I will.
[00:15:19.840 --> 00:15:20.960] You've got a lot of books out there.
[00:15:21.200 --> 00:15:24.080] You know, I always tell people everybody should write a memoir.
[00:15:24.320 --> 00:15:32.240] Because in some ways, only looking retrospectively, a lot of patterns and threads came together in writing the book.
[00:15:32.240 --> 00:15:34.880] It's like, wow, I never quite thought of it that way before.
[00:15:34.880 --> 00:15:37.600] You know, as you know, when you write, it's a discovery process.
[00:15:38.480 --> 00:15:42.320] You're creative and you're discovering things.
[00:15:42.560 --> 00:15:46.880] It's hard, but you are discovering things that you didn't necessarily put together before.
[00:15:46.880 --> 00:15:50.240] And a memoir is also a gift to your family, your children, your descendants.
[00:15:50.800 --> 00:15:51.680] Yeah, it's true.
[00:15:51.680 --> 00:15:53.200] I think, you know, you're right, John.
[00:15:53.360 --> 00:16:03.240] You can't always tell going forward where things are connecting, but looking back, you can see all the threads and all the choices and all the decisions that led you to the moment that you're doing what you're doing.
[00:16:03.560 --> 00:16:11.320] It helps you actually, I think, moving forward as well, because when you're clear about those patterns, then you have less sort of uncertainty.
[00:16:11.320 --> 00:16:12.680] I think people live a lot in fear.
[00:16:12.680 --> 00:16:14.040] I think it's one of the challenges.
[00:16:14.280 --> 00:16:16.840] Fear is what keeps people from following their hero's journey.
[00:16:17.160 --> 00:16:20.840] I think we're all called to a hero's journey and all in our own unique ways.
[00:16:21.240 --> 00:16:22.920] But, you know, we're too scared.
[00:16:22.920 --> 00:16:28.600] It's scared we might fail, scared of ridicule, scared our parents won't improve, blah, blah, blah, blah.
[00:16:28.600 --> 00:16:29.800] I just did it anyway.
[00:16:29.800 --> 00:16:30.200] Yeah.
[00:16:30.200 --> 00:16:31.240] And so did you.
[00:16:31.240 --> 00:16:31.480] Yeah.
[00:16:31.480 --> 00:16:33.640] I don't know what makes some people like that and others not.
[00:16:33.800 --> 00:16:34.680] I was always like that.
[00:16:35.000 --> 00:16:44.360] I actually have a title for my memoir, which I started, but I haven't really finished yet, which is called Notes from God and Stumbling Toward the Truth.
[00:16:44.360 --> 00:16:45.160] And it's basically.
[00:16:45.640 --> 00:16:46.280] You shouldn't tell that.
[00:16:46.280 --> 00:16:47.800] Don't that's such a great title.
[00:16:47.800 --> 00:16:49.400] Keep that title to yourself.
[00:16:49.400 --> 00:16:50.120] That's okay.
[00:16:50.520 --> 00:16:52.520] You can actually, you can write Moby Dick.
[00:16:53.080 --> 00:16:54.280] Nobody can copyright a title.
[00:16:54.280 --> 00:16:54.840] So it's okay.
[00:16:54.840 --> 00:17:03.320] But the idea is basically that, you know, when you're moving through life, there's these little doors that open, these little post-it notes from God, let's call them.
[00:17:03.800 --> 00:17:05.640] And you can choose to go through or not.
[00:17:06.120 --> 00:17:09.000] Somebody gave you a tab of acid and you're like, I'm going to try this.
[00:17:09.000 --> 00:17:10.520] And look what happened.
[00:17:10.520 --> 00:17:12.440] And then, you know, you needed a job.
[00:17:12.440 --> 00:17:19.880] So you went, you know, you worked in a natural food store and just one thing connected the next, but you chose to actually do those things.
[00:17:19.880 --> 00:17:26.920] And I think people live less from fear and more from love, which is why I love the title of your new company, the name Love, Life.
[00:17:27.240 --> 00:17:28.840] It's like an accident.
[00:17:28.840 --> 00:17:29.800] No, it's not an accident.
[00:17:29.800 --> 00:17:34.920] And those moments we often don't pay attention to in our life, those little notes from God.
[00:17:34.920 --> 00:17:40.440] But I think the more you pay attention to those and listen to those things, the better your life's going to be.
[00:17:40.440 --> 00:17:49.520] And I think what's happening around chronic disease in America is that people are not listening to their bodies or not listening to their conversation that they should be having with their soul.
[00:17:49.520 --> 00:17:58.560] And so they end up in this narcotized, polluted self that's sick and unable to think clearly and feel right.
[00:17:58.960 --> 00:17:59.280] 100%.
[00:17:59.360 --> 00:18:03.120] You know what I think about the notes from God is that they're always being written.
[00:18:03.120 --> 00:18:07.120] And you can, even if you haven't been listening to them before, you can start listening to it.
[00:18:07.440 --> 00:18:09.760] You just have to, it's always so you just have to quiet.
[00:18:09.760 --> 00:18:12.080] You have to be still, be quiet.
[00:18:12.080 --> 00:18:13.600] And it's always speaking.
[00:18:13.600 --> 00:18:16.640] And even if we make bad decisions, there's new notes.
[00:18:16.640 --> 00:18:22.640] It's like that's always waiting for us to listen to it and follow it.
[00:18:22.640 --> 00:18:26.560] I had been thinking about Love Life or something like that for a long time.
[00:18:27.440 --> 00:18:28.720] Just for people listening, what is Love Life?
[00:18:29.040 --> 00:18:34.880] Love Life is a holistic health center, a one-stop holistic health wellness center.
[00:18:34.880 --> 00:18:35.440] It's big.
[00:18:36.080 --> 00:18:39.360] Our first flagship location here is in the LA area.
[00:18:39.360 --> 00:18:42.480] It's down in El Segundo, Manhattan Beach.
[00:18:42.720 --> 00:18:45.920] It's got, it's an old Best Buy, so it's big.
[00:18:45.920 --> 00:18:48.400] So we have 45,000 square feet in there.
[00:18:48.400 --> 00:18:52.240] So just real quickly, you go in and, of course, I want to get you there.
[00:18:52.240 --> 00:18:56.000] I'd love to give you a tour and see what you're doing.
[00:18:56.160 --> 00:18:58.320] You go in, first, we have a healthy cafe.
[00:18:58.320 --> 00:19:04.080] So healthy food is one of the foundations for people to be as healthy as possible.
[00:19:04.080 --> 00:19:06.000] So starting with food.
[00:19:06.240 --> 00:19:14.000] Then we have sort of this whole community space, co-working space, but also a big gather room, community room where we can do lectures.
[00:19:14.000 --> 00:19:28.000] So let's say you were to come do a talk on functional medicine, then we would invite members and the outside community and we can we can get in that expanding it in the cafe, we probably get 75 people in there pretty comfortably.
[00:19:28.000 --> 00:21:08.560] Then you go into a fitness center so we've got like the category most people try to fit us into is like a gym because we have a really nice gym yeah but of course that's just one little small part of what we're doing and then in that fitness center we're sort of state-of-the-art like i think equinox in a way sort of upscale lots of the most recent cool technologies in there we have a physical therapy room we have a physical therapist on staff we really think physical therapy for many people that have injuries is very very efficacious for your pickleball injury well uh yes i we have lots of uh sort of biohacking stuff which i'll get to in a sec uh speaking of pickleball we have three pickleball courts there so i did hurt myself on the court one of the one of the biohacks we have there's a pymph machine so i went i did that a couple times and i think that's helped that's pulse electromagnetic frequency which exactly helps to sort of reduce inflammation yes yes it does and get i think it helps a little bit of the circulation and starts to move some of the the inflammation out of the out of the injured injured injured my in my case my calf so then we've got a yoga studio we've got a uh pilates studio in that yoga studio we do breath work besides yoga we do breath work we can do we do sound baths we do meditation classes we're we're about all things to help people be the healthiest version of themselves physically emotionally and spiritually those are all part of the love life vision we have a really nice spa so for you can do things you'd do in any really nice spa with lots of different kinds of massages, facials, wraps.
[00:21:09.520 --> 00:21:11.360] It's not a medical spa per se.
[00:21:11.360 --> 00:21:17.600] We're not doing botox or other other type of medical injunctions in that way.
[00:21:17.600 --> 00:21:21.280] We have all this recovery stuff in all these sort of biohacks.
[00:21:21.280 --> 00:21:23.280] So we've got our pimp machines.
[00:21:23.280 --> 00:21:26.880] We've got two hyperbaric oxygen chambers.
[00:21:26.880 --> 00:21:28.640] We've got cryotherapy.
[00:21:28.640 --> 00:21:31.040] We've got four red light beds.
[00:21:31.040 --> 00:21:33.520] We've got four infrared sauna rooms.
[00:21:33.520 --> 00:21:35.040] We have a huge steam room.
[00:21:35.040 --> 00:21:37.920] We have six cold plunges.
[00:21:37.920 --> 00:21:40.000] And we have the biggest sauna you've probably ever seen.
[00:21:40.000 --> 00:21:42.960] And jam like 40 people without sauna if we had to.
[00:21:42.960 --> 00:21:44.400] So those are for the recovery things.
[00:21:44.400 --> 00:21:50.080] And then, of course, what the real thing that sets us apart is that we have, you know, we have primary health care.
[00:21:50.080 --> 00:21:51.200] We have a center.
[00:21:51.760 --> 00:21:55.520] We do very comprehensive testing like function health blood tests.
[00:21:55.520 --> 00:21:57.360] We do a comprehensive blood test.
[00:21:57.360 --> 00:22:00.880] We add a gut test because we work with partnering with Viome.
[00:22:00.880 --> 00:22:02.240] So we do a gut test.
[00:22:02.240 --> 00:22:03.840] We do oral tests.
[00:22:05.040 --> 00:22:06.320] We're doing checking the feces.
[00:22:06.320 --> 00:22:07.840] We're doing a VO2 max.
[00:22:07.840 --> 00:22:08.880] That's your fitness level.
[00:22:08.880 --> 00:22:09.200] Yes.
[00:22:09.200 --> 00:22:10.560] Trying the grip strength.
[00:22:12.080 --> 00:22:13.200] We're doing lots of stuff.
[00:22:13.200 --> 00:22:13.920] Body composition.
[00:22:13.920 --> 00:22:14.800] Yes, body composition.
[00:22:14.800 --> 00:22:15.760] We have a DEXA scan.
[00:22:15.920 --> 00:22:17.120] That's really one-stop shopping.
[00:22:17.360 --> 00:22:17.600] It is.
[00:22:17.760 --> 00:22:18.800] The whole thing is health and wellness.
[00:22:19.040 --> 00:22:27.920] One thing we don't have, although we have access to MRI because we have a deal with Prinova on that one, like functions, bought a company there.
[00:22:28.320 --> 00:22:38.000] But I think in our next center, which we plan on that being in Austin, although we don't have the location yet, we will put the MRI in because we really want to have that executive health.
[00:22:38.000 --> 00:22:47.840] So you can come and do everything there, bring a dermatologist in, maybe do a colonoscopy, and just so people can get a complete report card in depth.
[00:22:47.800 --> 00:22:52.160] So, but after you get the testing, now we sort of know where you're at.
[00:22:52.480 --> 00:22:54.520] You get your, you know, your baseline.
[00:22:54.520 --> 00:22:56.000] But that's a starting point.
[00:22:56.000 --> 00:23:01.640] I mean, unfortunately, I've learned kind of the hard way: knowledge is not enough to get many.
[00:22:59.840 --> 00:23:05.160] Some people get the knowledge, that's all they need, they never look back.
[00:23:05.400 --> 00:23:10.760] Yeah, others, that's that's interesting, you know, but they don't really want to change anything they're doing.
[00:23:10.760 --> 00:23:12.600] I want to eat my ice cream, that's right.
[00:23:12.600 --> 00:23:16.920] I want to eat my ice cream, it tastes good, I like it, and I feel okay.
[00:23:16.920 --> 00:23:29.880] Yeah, if you're feeling anxious or down or mentally foggy, it's easy to blame stress, but sometimes the root cause runs much deeper all the way to your DNA.
[00:23:29.880 --> 00:23:37.400] There's a gene called MTHFR that plays a huge role in how your body processes folate.
[00:23:37.400 --> 00:23:41.560] It's a key nutrient for making neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine.
[00:23:41.560 --> 00:23:46.920] And if you carry a specific variant for this gene, your brain may struggle to stay balanced.
[00:23:46.920 --> 00:23:55.960] It also affects a key process in your body called methylation, which has many, many things it does in your body, including detoxification and neurotransmitter function.
[00:23:55.960 --> 00:24:06.840] And if you have this problem with methylation, it leads to a buildup of something called homocysteine in your blood, a compound linked to inflammation, to mood disorders, even cognitive decline like dementia.
[00:24:06.840 --> 00:24:13.400] And I see it all the time in my patients: low energy, anxiety, brain fog, and it's often tied to this one gene.
[00:24:13.400 --> 00:24:19.640] But the good news is you can test for it and then you can support the function of this gene with the right nutrients.
[00:24:19.640 --> 00:24:21.480] And that's why we built function health.
[00:24:21.480 --> 00:24:28.680] It gives you access to over 160 advanced lab tests, including genetic testing for the MTHRFR gene and many others.
[00:24:28.680 --> 00:24:32.840] I use it myself, and I use it with every patient who wants real answers.
[00:24:32.840 --> 00:24:38.440] Go to functionhealth.com/slash mark and use the code hymen100 to get $100 off.
[00:24:38.440 --> 00:24:41.240] And this only works for the first thousand people to get it this week.
[00:24:41.240 --> 00:24:42.520] So sign up right away.
[00:24:42.520 --> 00:24:44.320] Your mood isn't random.
[00:24:44.320 --> 00:24:46.080] Your genes are talking.
[00:24:46.080 --> 00:24:48.160] Function helps you listen.
[00:24:44.760 --> 00:24:52.240] After my recent back surgery, I was looking for ways to gently support my body's recovery.
[00:24:52.480 --> 00:24:56.720] And one of the most helpful tools I found is the infrared PEMF mat from Bond Charge.
[00:24:56.720 --> 00:25:04.320] It uses low-level infrared heat combined with pulsed electromagnetic fields to support circulation, ease tension, and encourage the body's natural repair processes.
[00:25:04.320 --> 00:25:12.560] I've incorporated it into my routine after physical therapy and long days on my feet, and I found it to be a helpful part of managing post-surgical discomfort and promoting relaxation.
[00:25:12.560 --> 00:25:17.120] It's simple to use, just lie down, breathe, and let the warmth and pulses do their work.
[00:25:17.120 --> 00:25:21.360] I've noticed it helps me wind down and feel more at ease, especially in my lower back.
[00:25:21.360 --> 00:25:27.120] If you're navigating pain, stiffness, or just want to support your recovery at home, it's a thoughtful tool to explore.
[00:25:27.120 --> 00:25:31.520] Head to bondcharge.com and use code DRMARC for 15% off your order.
[00:25:31.520 --> 00:25:36.080] That's B-O-N-C-H-A-R-G-E.com, code D-R-Mark.
[00:25:41.120 --> 00:25:47.280] Most people, actually, I found, actually, don't want to get tested because they don't want to know because they don't want to change.
[00:25:47.280 --> 00:25:50.640] Anyway, so once we've got that, we now have a welcare team.
[00:25:50.640 --> 00:25:54.880] We have a medical doctor that is function medicine trained.
[00:25:54.880 --> 00:25:57.280] We have a nurse practitioner.
[00:25:57.280 --> 00:25:58.720] She can do IVs.
[00:25:59.120 --> 00:26:00.000] Well, she can do everything.
[00:26:00.000 --> 00:26:03.120] The doctor can really just, we don't have to pay quite as much.
[00:26:03.840 --> 00:26:09.440] We've got a registered dietitian, nutritionist who really knows her stuff.
[00:26:09.440 --> 00:26:11.840] We've got medical assistants.
[00:26:11.840 --> 00:26:14.320] We also have DEXA scan operators.
[00:26:14.320 --> 00:26:15.760] We've got a whole welcare team.
[00:26:15.760 --> 00:26:23.840] And so then the whole idea is: first, we test, then we create a plan, and then we track.
[00:26:23.840 --> 00:26:34.760] We track through additional testing, but also we can download into our app their Auroring results, their Apple watch results, Garmin.
[00:26:34.840 --> 00:26:38.440] We've got like, I don't know, 10 different devices we can put in.
[00:26:38.520 --> 00:26:41.320] Continuous glucose monitor, you can put that data in there.
[00:26:41.320 --> 00:26:45.320] That's another thing we test, by the way, is we have people wear that for a couple of weeks.
[00:26:45.320 --> 00:26:49.400] So we get all that information out, but mostly it's about the care team.
[00:26:49.560 --> 00:26:52.280] Problem you know, Mark, what's wrong with our medical system?
[00:26:52.280 --> 00:26:54.680] Is basically, I call it, it's a plumber's model.
[00:26:54.680 --> 00:26:55.160] Yeah.
[00:26:55.160 --> 00:26:58.280] It's when you get a plumber, when the sink's broken.
[00:27:00.520 --> 00:27:01.080] Exactly.
[00:27:01.080 --> 00:27:04.200] Most people don't go to a doctor until something breaks.
[00:27:04.680 --> 00:27:07.880] And that might have been fine 150 years ago.
[00:27:07.880 --> 00:27:12.440] But today, chronic diseases, not infectious diseases, are what are killing us.
[00:27:12.920 --> 00:27:15.240] And so we know heart disease is our number one killer.
[00:27:15.240 --> 00:27:16.680] Then we got cancer.
[00:27:16.680 --> 00:27:25.160] We know medical care itself is one of the leading causes for death for too many prescription drugs, mistakes made, infections they get in hospitals, et cetera, et cetera.
[00:27:25.240 --> 00:27:25.640] That's true.
[00:27:25.640 --> 00:27:28.280] People don't realize that, but I think it's the third or fourth leading cause of death.
[00:27:28.760 --> 00:27:30.040] Third leading cause of death.
[00:27:30.040 --> 00:27:39.080] And obesity, Americans, I'm sad to say, is that 73% of Americans are overweight, 73% and 43% are obese.
[00:27:40.280 --> 00:27:41.800] And the trend lines are continuing.
[00:27:41.800 --> 00:27:43.400] It's not like we've peaked.
[00:27:43.400 --> 00:27:44.600] It's still going up.
[00:27:44.600 --> 00:27:47.240] The standard American diet is killing people.
[00:27:47.240 --> 00:27:52.440] Yeah, I mean, when I graduated from medical school in 1987, there wasn't a single state that had an obesity rate over 20%.
[00:27:52.440 --> 00:27:55.080] Now there's not one under 30 and most are over 40.
[00:27:55.080 --> 00:27:56.680] Is Colorado and Utah over 30?
[00:27:58.120 --> 00:27:59.160] They were the two best.
[00:27:59.960 --> 00:28:00.920] Last time I looked at it, yeah.
[00:28:01.080 --> 00:28:02.840] Yeah, I think they're popping over 30 now.
[00:28:02.840 --> 00:28:05.480] Well, those trend lines keep going up.
[00:28:05.480 --> 00:28:13.000] And basically, America, the United States, as you know, spends far more than any other country on healthcare.
[00:28:13.000 --> 00:28:15.840] We spend almost 18% of our GDP.
[00:28:16.000 --> 00:28:17.280] That's $5 trillion.
[00:28:17.280 --> 00:28:18.080] Yes, exactly.
[00:28:18.080 --> 00:28:21.520] But where are we in terms of longevity?
[00:28:21.920 --> 00:28:24.640] When I checked it out today, we were 48th.
[00:28:24.640 --> 00:28:24.880] Yeah.
[00:28:25.360 --> 00:28:29.200] So most money on health care, we have terrible results.
[00:28:29.200 --> 00:28:30.240] I think we're worse than two guys.
[00:28:30.320 --> 00:28:31.920] I think we spend $184 a year.
[00:28:32.080 --> 00:28:36.240] So I'm saying all that because Love Life, we think, is one of the solutions.
[00:28:36.640 --> 00:28:39.280] We want people to join Love Life.
[00:28:39.280 --> 00:28:41.600] We want them to enter into our medical programs.
[00:28:41.600 --> 00:28:42.800] We do primary health care.
[00:28:42.800 --> 00:28:43.760] We'll see them.
[00:28:43.760 --> 00:28:56.080] It's not a coincierage program, but besides the doctor times to go over your test results and work on your plans, we have 10 acute visits a year you can use that are part of your membership as part of the membership.
[00:28:56.080 --> 00:28:56.640] Exactly.
[00:28:57.360 --> 00:28:58.560] I'll tell you one other story.
[00:28:58.560 --> 00:28:59.840] So how I got to this thing.
[00:28:59.840 --> 00:29:03.680] So at Whole Foods, we were self-insured.
[00:29:03.680 --> 00:29:12.400] So we paid, means we had United Healthcare might have been the administrator and they might have had a network, but we were actually paying all the cost of it.
[00:29:12.400 --> 00:29:20.320] What we discovered was, as we tracked it, was that 10% of our employees, team members, were spending 90% of our health care dollars.
[00:29:20.400 --> 00:29:20.800] That's right.
[00:29:20.800 --> 00:29:24.000] So we began to think, how can we take these 10%?
[00:29:24.000 --> 00:29:26.720] If we can get them healthier, that's going to be a win-win-win, right?
[00:29:26.720 --> 00:29:29.600] It'd be good for them, and it'll be good for Whole Foods.
[00:29:29.600 --> 00:29:29.920] That's right.
[00:29:29.920 --> 00:29:34.400] And it'll be good for everyone else as well, their families and everyone else connected to it.
[00:29:34.400 --> 00:29:38.000] So we began to create what we call a total health immersion.
[00:29:38.000 --> 00:29:44.720] And we worked with four different sets of four doctors, and we worked four different times a year.
[00:29:44.720 --> 00:29:48.240] And we would invite any team member to apply for it.
[00:29:48.240 --> 00:29:50.160] We'd cover all the costs.
[00:29:50.160 --> 00:29:54.000] And of course, we favored those who we knew were in our magic 10%.
[00:29:54.160 --> 00:29:56.480] What ended up happening was pretty extraordinary.
[00:29:56.880 --> 00:29:59.200] We'd go in a retreat setting for a week.
[00:29:59.200 --> 00:30:03.240] And my biggest takeaway from the retreats was: did you know?
[00:29:59.920 --> 00:30:06.920] I mean, you know this, the human body is far more resilient than I realized.
[00:30:07.240 --> 00:30:07.880] 100%.
[00:30:07.880 --> 00:30:11.320] If we just stop poisoning it, it starts to heal.
[00:30:11.320 --> 00:30:11.880] Bingo.
[00:30:11.880 --> 00:30:12.680] It's incredible.
[00:30:13.560 --> 00:30:18.280] I had not known that personally because I'd sort of been on this gradual health journey for decades, right?
[00:30:18.600 --> 00:30:20.760] So I never had any radical improvements.
[00:30:20.760 --> 00:30:28.200] But what we saw in those weeks were people that, if they were obese, they generally lose seven to 10 pounds in that week.
[00:30:28.200 --> 00:30:35.080] We saw type 2 diabetics that could actually, in even just a week, normalize and get off their meds.
[00:30:35.800 --> 00:30:42.600] We saw people's cholesterol drop 30 to 40 points in that week, and we saw blood pressure and sometimes drop 30 to 40 points.
[00:30:42.760 --> 00:30:47.160] That's what people don't realize, John, is that people are just a few days away from feeling better.
[00:30:47.160 --> 00:30:47.640] They are.
[00:30:47.640 --> 00:30:48.440] And they don't know it.
[00:30:48.440 --> 00:30:48.920] They don't know it.
[00:30:49.080 --> 00:30:50.760] It's like Dorothy in the ruby red slippers.
[00:30:51.080 --> 00:30:51.400] That's right.
[00:30:51.400 --> 00:30:55.000] That's what's so powerful about a type of retreat-like setting.
[00:30:55.000 --> 00:30:57.240] Because now, here's another takeaway, though.
[00:30:57.240 --> 00:31:00.760] Again, like knowledge, we taught people the principles.
[00:31:00.760 --> 00:31:02.760] We showed them what to do.
[00:31:02.760 --> 00:31:06.040] Some took that knowledge mark and they never looked back.
[00:31:06.040 --> 00:31:07.160] Their life was transformed.
[00:31:07.160 --> 00:31:11.080] I'd travel around and visit our stores and they'd come up and hug me and say, thank you, thank you, thank you, Mr.
[00:31:11.080 --> 00:31:11.560] Mackey.
[00:31:11.640 --> 00:31:12.280] You changed my life.
[00:31:12.280 --> 00:31:15.560] You know, I'm going to see my grandchildren now and I'm playing with my kids.
[00:31:15.560 --> 00:31:16.120] It's so great.
[00:31:16.120 --> 00:31:16.840] Thank you so much.
[00:31:16.840 --> 00:31:24.120] And others who were apologizing because they lost weight and then they gained it back because they went back to their diets.
[00:31:24.120 --> 00:31:31.880] And the takeaway was when you look a little further was for people to really make lasting change, some people can do it on their own.
[00:31:31.880 --> 00:31:33.880] Most people need a community of support.
[00:31:33.880 --> 00:31:34.520] 100%.
[00:31:34.520 --> 00:31:41.000] And so Love Life aims to be that community of support for people who really want to become the healthiest version of themselves.
[00:31:41.160 --> 00:31:50.400] If just like I say, like, let's say you're an alcoholic and we send you to rehab for 90 days and you come back sober, you don't crave alcohol any longer.
[00:31:50.400 --> 00:31:54.880] But if you go back into the same social network, all your friends are alcoholics, right?
[00:31:55.920 --> 00:31:58.720] And you're going to be back off, you're going to fall off the wagon pretty quickly.
[00:31:58.720 --> 00:32:00.800] So you need a new set of friends, basically.
[00:32:00.800 --> 00:32:05.200] We found that out, and it's like, that's my takeaway from the total health emergence.
[00:32:05.200 --> 00:32:05.920] You need community of support.
[00:32:06.000 --> 00:32:08.640] And how did you apply that at Whole Foods after that?
[00:32:08.640 --> 00:32:17.360] Because I think that you're hitting on something that's very important: we call chronic illness non-communicable disease, but that's completely wrong.
[00:32:17.360 --> 00:32:19.600] It's not infectious, but it's contagious.
[00:32:19.600 --> 00:32:20.160] Yes.
[00:32:20.160 --> 00:32:30.800] And just as chronic disease can be contagious, you're more likely to be obese if your friends are overweight than even if your family's overweight because you're basically as healthy as your five closest friends.
[00:32:30.800 --> 00:32:38.480] You know, if all your friends are drinking green juices and going to yoga, as opposed to drinking beer and having burgers and fries, you're going to be healthier, right?
[00:32:38.480 --> 00:32:45.200] Yeah, that's why they, you know, it's like if you were a teenager that hanged around kids that smoked, you more likely become a smoker.
[00:32:45.200 --> 00:32:46.400] Yeah, and community is medicine.
[00:32:46.400 --> 00:32:48.640] And we did this at the Saddleback Church with Rick Warren.
[00:32:48.640 --> 00:32:52.320] We got 15,000 people to lose a quarter million pounds by doing it in community.
[00:32:52.640 --> 00:32:53.440] And it was powerful.
[00:32:53.440 --> 00:32:56.720] And I'm curious how at Whole Foods you did the community paces.
[00:32:57.280 --> 00:32:58.880] This was the flaw in the program.
[00:32:58.880 --> 00:33:00.160] We're still doing the program.
[00:33:00.160 --> 00:33:02.720] We still have follow-up with people afterwards.
[00:33:02.720 --> 00:33:03.680] Here's the problem.
[00:33:03.680 --> 00:33:11.360] We've, you know, got over 100,000 team members, and they're from all over the country and in Canada and the UK for that matter, too.
[00:33:11.360 --> 00:33:19.040] So they might go back, but the people they met, the community of people that they were with, they are scattering.
[00:33:19.360 --> 00:33:22.160] So that community is not together.
[00:33:22.160 --> 00:33:26.320] Now, if some of them came from the same store, then they have a little bit of community support.
[00:33:26.720 --> 00:33:29.720] We could put them in touch with others that were on the journey.
[00:33:29.720 --> 00:33:32.040] But again, they're so spread out.
[00:33:32.040 --> 00:33:33.320] We didn't solve for it.
[00:33:33.320 --> 00:33:34.200] It's still a problem.
[00:33:29.360 --> 00:33:35.000] It's still a challenge.
[00:33:35.320 --> 00:33:45.480] I really do think these, what Love Life's doing and what other wellness centers, holistic health centers will create will be also social places for people to go and hang out.
[00:33:45.800 --> 00:33:47.560] We've designed it in that way.
[00:33:47.960 --> 00:34:02.600] When you see our space, you'll see the co-working space, the community areas, the cafe, the couches, the comfortable chairs are all set up for people to hang out, work, network with their friends that are there.
[00:34:02.600 --> 00:34:08.680] You know, most health clubs' formula is to get people to become members and just keep paying, but hopefully never come.
[00:34:09.480 --> 00:34:11.160] We have the opposite philosophy.
[00:34:11.160 --> 00:34:15.400] We'd really like people to spend a couple hours or more every day at Love Life.
[00:34:15.880 --> 00:34:25.320] Come in after work, do some of the recovery modalities or do a workout, do some recovery, have a meal, meet some people, play some pickleball, take a class.
[00:34:25.320 --> 00:34:27.640] We have all kinds of different classes there.
[00:34:27.960 --> 00:34:32.360] There's so many, stay around for one of our talks or one of our events that are happening.
[00:34:32.360 --> 00:34:34.600] We really want to nurture community.
[00:34:34.600 --> 00:34:36.760] And how do you see this intersecting with healthcare?
[00:34:36.760 --> 00:34:44.120] Because, you know, people have their health insurance and people aren't very motivated usually to pay out of pocket for healthcare, which they think this should be.
[00:34:44.600 --> 00:34:46.360] That's the biggest challenge, to be honest.
[00:34:46.840 --> 00:34:48.360] Of course, everybody asks about that.
[00:34:48.360 --> 00:34:50.280] We do create super bills for people.
[00:34:51.560 --> 00:34:56.120] But most of our docs, our doctors are out of network, most likely for them.
[00:34:56.120 --> 00:35:02.200] For a lot of the testing that we're doing, you can also use your 125, your HSA, your HRA.
[00:35:03.000 --> 00:35:04.360] Those can all go towards this.
[00:35:05.080 --> 00:35:08.120] I was talking to somebody about it recently, and I just said, you know what?
[00:35:08.120 --> 00:35:11.160] Insurance will be one of the last dominoes to fall.
[00:35:12.280 --> 00:35:23.440] It won't change until the market demands that it change, until people are complaining, and then until the government maybe steps in and starts saying, You need to cover this stuff, too.
[00:35:23.440 --> 00:35:29.200] But also, if you track your data at Love Life, you can see longitudinally how people do.
[00:35:29.200 --> 00:35:29.920] Oh, we do.
[00:35:29.920 --> 00:35:34.560] And that way you can actually show payers how this is actually saving them money.
[00:35:34.560 --> 00:35:35.840] And that's going to change reimbursement.
[00:35:36.160 --> 00:35:45.200] I really do think before we get the insurance companies to change, now we have, we're, this is a, we think a B2B potential is big there.
[00:35:45.280 --> 00:35:48.240] Like, remember, I told you about how Whole Foods was self-insured?
[00:35:48.240 --> 00:35:52.480] We think we can go to big employers in the area and do two things.
[00:35:52.480 --> 00:36:01.760] We can say, look, give us your sick people because we know if you're self-insured that like Whole Foods, 10% are spending 90% of your money.
[00:36:02.320 --> 00:36:08.960] Give us those people that are motivated, only the ones that want to come, because we can't do anything if people don't want to heal themselves.
[00:36:08.960 --> 00:36:14.560] And we can help them heal and we can help them heal pretty quickly and do that on a fee per person basis.
[00:36:14.800 --> 00:36:27.600] And also, but also, we'd like to go to those same corporations and say, now give us your up-and-comers, your executives, and get them an optimized member, optimize gold membership at Love Life as a perk, as a benefit.
[00:36:27.600 --> 00:36:31.440] These are the people you're counting on to make the most important decisions in your business.
[00:36:31.760 --> 00:36:36.160] The healthier they are, the more vital they are, the better their decision-making they're going to be.
[00:36:36.160 --> 00:36:41.280] And the less likely they're going to leave because this is one of your perks that the competitors are not offering.
[00:36:41.600 --> 00:36:43.760] So there's two ways to approach the B2B.
[00:36:43.760 --> 00:36:49.120] I think, again, the insurance will change, but it's like, it's just not.
[00:36:49.160 --> 00:36:49.720] It's slow.
[00:36:49.720 --> 00:36:52.880] It's it's that we got to go for the low-hanging fruit first.
[00:36:52.880 --> 00:36:53.840] Yeah, no, I agree.
[00:36:53.840 --> 00:36:54.400] I think you're right.
[00:36:54.400 --> 00:37:01.560] And, you know, I think the, you know, the question is: can you kind of force people into collective change together?
[00:37:01.880 --> 00:37:04.280] I don't know the answer to that, but I know in America.
[00:37:04.360 --> 00:37:09.320] I know in Cleveland Clinic, we had a waiting list of 3,000 people for our Center for Functional Medicine.
[00:37:09.320 --> 00:37:09.960] Wow.
[00:37:09.960 --> 00:37:16.600] And so what we said was you can't get into a one-on-one appointment, but you get into a group visit.
[00:37:16.920 --> 00:37:24.440] And we were able to put people in group visits who, you know, necessarily maybe wanted to see someone privately, but they were willing to just get in.
[00:37:24.440 --> 00:37:35.160] And what we found was that the health outcomes were three times better for the same condition treated by the same doctors in the same clinic.
[00:37:35.160 --> 00:37:40.200] And we compared, you know, a doctor treating diabetes in a group versus a doctor one-on-one.
[00:37:40.200 --> 00:37:40.920] Same, same.
[00:37:40.920 --> 00:37:44.040] And it was three times better outcomes in the group.
[00:37:44.040 --> 00:37:46.760] And the savings were far more.
[00:37:46.760 --> 00:37:51.800] So better outcomes, lower costs is what healthcare is, is the holy grail, like value-based care.
[00:37:51.800 --> 00:37:55.560] So it was interesting because not everybody kind of really opted in.
[00:37:55.560 --> 00:38:00.200] I mean, I guess they sort of opted in because they couldn't get an appointment, but it wasn't like they were motivated to be in a group.
[00:38:00.440 --> 00:38:02.600] They actually were motivated to be seen.
[00:38:03.160 --> 00:38:05.000] And that just was what we found.
[00:38:05.000 --> 00:38:11.320] So I think if we can kind of encourage people to do that, and AA is a great example, Weight Watcher is a great example.
[00:38:11.320 --> 00:38:13.640] People change in a collective.
[00:38:13.640 --> 00:38:14.280] I totally agree.
[00:38:14.280 --> 00:38:27.720] And that's why in the B2B approach, if we can get a group of peers that are coming in from the same company and they're motivated to try to heal themselves, we have a much better chance if they come in as a group, you might say.
[00:38:27.720 --> 00:38:30.040] So, you know, you sort of, you know, you're sort of an unlikely character.
[00:38:30.040 --> 00:38:37.080] You're like a hippie from the 70s who started a health food store and now they currently have Whole Foods.
[00:38:37.880 --> 00:38:53.600] And then you helped build this movement around conscious capitalism, which is sort of, I'd love you to sort of talk a little bit about that because I think it's part of what you're doing with Love Life, which is a business, but it's also bringing more light into the world as opposed to darkness.
[00:38:53.600 --> 00:38:58.000] So Conscious Capitalism is a movement I co-founded.
[00:38:58.000 --> 00:39:04.080] And I wrote a book called Conscious Capitalism, co-authored that with my good friend Rog Sassodia.
[00:39:04.400 --> 00:39:19.360] And as I built Whole Foods, what I began to realize was that because I didn't have a business background, I hadn't worked for any corporations, I began to realize that Whole Foods was very different than most other businesses.
[00:39:19.360 --> 00:39:22.160] And that, and that, you know, we had this higher purpose.
[00:39:22.160 --> 00:39:24.720] We were really cared about all of our stakeholders.
[00:39:24.720 --> 00:39:28.080] We were trying to create these cultures where humans were flourishing.
[00:39:28.080 --> 00:39:29.920] We wanted to lead with love.
[00:39:29.920 --> 00:39:36.080] It was, and these were just, you know, I just thought we were sort of just kind of one weird, a weirdo company.
[00:39:36.080 --> 00:39:41.600] And then I read a book called Firms of Endearment by my co-author of Conscious Capitalism, Rog Sassodia.
[00:39:41.760 --> 00:39:42.880] Not terms, but firms.
[00:39:42.880 --> 00:39:43.360] Firms.
[00:39:43.360 --> 00:39:43.920] Firms.
[00:39:43.920 --> 00:39:44.160] Companies.
[00:39:44.400 --> 00:39:45.440] Firms of Endearment.
[00:39:45.440 --> 00:39:48.880] And what 30 that he identified, he and his co-author identified.
[00:39:48.880 --> 00:39:52.480] And the firm of endearment was one that all the stakeholders love the firm.
[00:39:52.480 --> 00:39:54.560] Not the shareholders, but the shareholders do too.
[00:39:54.800 --> 00:39:57.600] Shareholders love them too, because they all perform really well economically.
[00:39:57.600 --> 00:40:03.760] But the customers love them, their employees love them, their suppliers love them, and they're sort of universally loved.
[00:40:03.760 --> 00:40:06.960] And so Whole Foods was one of those 30 companies.
[00:40:06.960 --> 00:40:08.880] And you know what got me excited when I read the book?
[00:40:08.880 --> 00:40:10.400] I said, I'm not alone.
[00:40:10.400 --> 00:40:13.200] There are other weirdos out there too doing similar stuff.
[00:40:13.680 --> 00:40:20.240] And so I got together with the authors and said, listen, I want, can you put me in touch with some of these other people?
[00:40:20.280 --> 00:40:20.760] Yeah.
[00:40:20.800 --> 00:40:22.000] And so they did.
[00:40:22.000 --> 00:40:24.960] And I started to realize this is great.
[00:40:24.960 --> 00:40:25.680] This is great.
[00:40:25.680 --> 00:40:31.960] And I realized more people need to know about this because all of these people are financially very successful.
[00:40:29.840 --> 00:40:36.360] Being loved by all your stakeholders and having a higher purpose is good business.
[00:40:36.600 --> 00:40:38.280] It's a way to make more money.
[00:40:38.520 --> 00:40:44.280] It's not, it's it money comes from practicing those principles, in other words.
[00:40:44.280 --> 00:40:50.920] So people think there's this dichotomy between honestly, when you're not motivated by money, you make more money.
[00:40:50.920 --> 00:40:51.240] Yes.
[00:40:51.720 --> 00:40:53.240] There's a good metaphor for it.
[00:40:53.240 --> 00:40:57.640] If you pursue happiness, you probably won't find it.
[00:40:57.640 --> 00:41:03.480] Happy because you'll just, if people that pursue happiness the hardest oftentimes end up being narcissists.
[00:41:03.960 --> 00:41:07.560] Happiness comes from, it ensues.
[00:41:07.560 --> 00:41:15.560] It ensues from love, from goodness, from compassion, forgiveness, kindness, generosity.
[00:41:16.760 --> 00:41:28.520] You become happy because of, not because you're pursuing it directly, but because it's a byproduct of these other qualities: meaningful work, caring, loving, family.
[00:41:28.520 --> 00:41:30.440] These things lead to happiness.
[00:41:30.440 --> 00:41:33.000] So, anyway, it's the same way with money.
[00:41:33.000 --> 00:41:41.000] Ultimately, profits come from creating value for customers or members or patients or whoever you're working with.
[00:41:41.000 --> 00:41:44.440] That's the ultimate way profits come about.
[00:41:44.440 --> 00:41:47.800] They're indirectly come about from creating value in the world.
[00:41:47.800 --> 00:41:50.520] So, conscious capitalism has four basic principles to it, Mark.
[00:41:50.520 --> 00:41:53.320] First principle is higher purpose.
[00:41:53.480 --> 00:41:56.520] Every business has its potential for a higher purpose.
[00:41:57.160 --> 00:42:03.080] For example, my body has to produce red blood cells, or I'm going to be dead.
[00:42:03.080 --> 00:42:07.080] But it doesn't logically follow that my higher purpose is to produce red blood cells.
[00:42:07.080 --> 00:42:11.000] Similarly, businesses must make money or they will die.
[00:42:11.000 --> 00:42:12.520] That's not why they exist.
[00:42:13.240 --> 00:42:20.640] The purpose of creating value for their customers in Whole Foods' higher purpose was to nourish people in the planet.
[00:42:20.960 --> 00:42:25.280] Love life is helping people to become the healthiest version of themselves.
[00:42:25.280 --> 00:42:27.200] So every business has its higher purpose.
[00:42:27.200 --> 00:42:28.800] Then you have stakeholders.
[00:42:28.800 --> 00:42:30.320] They all are important.
[00:42:30.320 --> 00:42:31.360] They all matter.
[00:42:31.360 --> 00:42:32.400] Customers matter.
[00:42:32.400 --> 00:42:33.360] Employees matter.
[00:42:33.360 --> 00:42:34.160] Suppliers matter.
[00:42:34.240 --> 00:42:35.040] The investors matter.
[00:42:35.040 --> 00:42:35.840] The community matters.
[00:42:35.920 --> 00:42:37.040] The environment matters.
[00:42:37.040 --> 00:42:42.400] And business has to create strategies where they're all simultaneously winning.
[00:42:42.400 --> 00:42:44.160] Third is leadership.
[00:42:44.160 --> 00:42:46.720] Leaders can't be in it just to line their own pockets.
[00:42:46.720 --> 00:42:53.360] Leaders have got to be those who are purpose-driven, are serving the stakeholders, and they're ultimately servant leaders.
[00:42:53.360 --> 00:42:55.280] And finally, we create cultures.
[00:42:55.280 --> 00:43:06.960] A conscious business, a conscious leader creates cultures where human beings flourish, where they are happy, where they're fulfilled, where their work is meaningful, and they're part of a community that cares about them.
[00:43:06.960 --> 00:43:08.720] That's conscious capitalism in a nutshell.
[00:43:08.720 --> 00:43:09.600] Yeah, that's beautiful.
[00:43:09.600 --> 00:43:11.360] And has it taken off?
[00:43:11.360 --> 00:43:24.320] I mean, you heard, I think the guy who's, I think Larry Fink, who sort of writes this letter every year, one year, wrote a letter about how we need to think about our stakeholders, not only our shareholders.
[00:43:24.320 --> 00:43:29.120] But I wonder how much that's really filtered into the business world.
[00:43:29.120 --> 00:43:30.000] Well, you know, it's interesting.
[00:43:30.000 --> 00:43:31.120] It has filtered in.
[00:43:31.120 --> 00:43:42.240] So when they had that roundtable, business roundtable came out basically checking off the principles of conscious capitalism that got a lot of pushback, a lot of controversy in business circles.
[00:43:42.240 --> 00:43:51.360] I found out later that woman that had been the leader of that, conscious capitalism had been their framework, the book had been their framework for those principles.
[00:43:51.840 --> 00:43:52.960] They did not credit us.
[00:43:53.360 --> 00:43:59.760] But nevertheless, what any author wants to hear is that their ideas are having an impact and influencing things.
[00:43:59.960 --> 00:44:08.680] So, speaking of Larry Fink, so I'm going to, we're having a special conclave down in Cabo for CEOs of very large corporations.
[00:44:08.760 --> 00:44:13.000] There'll be about, I think, I don't know, 30, 30 or 40.
[00:44:13.000 --> 00:44:16.040] And Larry's hosting it down there.
[00:44:16.040 --> 00:44:20.440] And we're not calling it conscious capitalism as principles of responsible business or something like that.
[00:44:20.440 --> 00:44:21.480] Anyway, I got an invitation.
[00:44:22.120 --> 00:44:23.480] So I'm going to be going to that.
[00:44:23.480 --> 00:44:26.360] And I'm excited to talk to some of these other.
[00:44:27.480 --> 00:44:29.240] There's some big names going down there.
[00:44:29.240 --> 00:44:31.720] So I'm excited to be part of that.
[00:44:31.720 --> 00:44:36.520] Yeah, because we live in such an extractive world and we have extractive capitalism.
[00:44:36.520 --> 00:44:38.120] It's the opposite of conscious capitalism.
[00:44:38.280 --> 00:44:39.720] We have extractive agriculture.
[00:44:39.720 --> 00:44:41.080] We have extractive health care.
[00:44:41.720 --> 00:44:43.720] It's just they don't take a systems approach.
[00:44:43.880 --> 00:44:52.600] And really, what we're talking about with conscious capitalism is viewing things in a larger context, the larger system, that that actually leads to better business.
[00:44:52.600 --> 00:44:53.320] It's harder.
[00:44:53.320 --> 00:44:54.280] It's harder to do it.
[00:44:54.600 --> 00:44:58.600] Think about, it's like, you think about healthcare, because that's what we've been talking about.
[00:44:58.600 --> 00:45:03.480] As you say, that's like extractive health care because it's just dealing with symptoms.
[00:45:03.480 --> 00:45:05.560] It's not dealing with root causes, right?
[00:45:05.880 --> 00:45:11.880] I mean, functional medicine, you're probably the leader in functional medicine.
[00:45:11.880 --> 00:45:18.440] That's going to root causes and trying to root them out and help people to heal at the deepest levels.
[00:45:18.840 --> 00:45:21.320] That's revolutionary medicine.
[00:45:21.560 --> 00:45:22.840] It's a really, really big deal.
[00:45:22.840 --> 00:45:24.600] So you should be really proud of what you've done.
[00:45:24.600 --> 00:45:24.920] Thank you.
[00:45:24.920 --> 00:45:25.080] Yeah.
[00:45:25.080 --> 00:45:29.800] It's sort of what drives me is how do I end needless suffering for millions of people?
[00:45:29.800 --> 00:45:44.480] Because so many people don't have to suffer, like you're talking about before, when you would bring the team members of Whole Foods to these retreats and they would have this radical transformation in a week and they were suffering before, and then they ended up in a short period of a week not suffering.
[00:45:44.280 --> 00:45:51.280] You know, and I think that I created something called the 10-day detox diet, which essentially eliminates all the processed food and crap.
[00:45:51.360 --> 00:45:54.400] It adds in all the good foods, and it's so powerful.
[00:45:54.880 --> 00:45:59.360] 10 days, it's like the seven-day is even better because it's three days longer.
[00:45:59.360 --> 00:45:59.760] That's right.
[00:45:59.760 --> 00:46:01.040] 30 days is better than that.
[00:46:01.040 --> 00:46:03.680] I know, but if I call it a 30-day diet, no one would do it.
[00:46:03.920 --> 00:46:04.560] That's right.
[00:46:04.560 --> 00:46:08.080] People, you know, did you decide 10 days was kind of the sweet spot?
[00:46:10.000 --> 00:46:10.320] Yeah.
[00:46:10.560 --> 00:46:12.800] And it's amazing to see that.
[00:46:12.800 --> 00:46:21.360] And I think when people have the experience of what it's like to feel good, they actually can connect to something and come back to it.
[00:46:21.520 --> 00:46:22.400] Even if they kind of be around.
[00:46:22.720 --> 00:46:25.120] Those notes from God are a little more, you can hear them a little bit better.
[00:46:25.280 --> 00:46:25.680] Exactly.
[00:46:25.680 --> 00:46:26.160] Yeah.
[00:46:26.160 --> 00:46:46.000] And I think, you know, the work you've done around this conscious capitalism moving is so important because so much of the things that are happening in our world are all because of a lack of consciousness and a lack of awareness and a lack of understanding that value creation isn't just about the bottom line.
[00:46:46.000 --> 00:46:53.520] It's about multiple bottom lines where everybody wins, where the planet wins, where you win, where your community wins, you know, where win-win-win.
[00:46:53.520 --> 00:46:53.840] Yeah.
[00:46:53.840 --> 00:46:56.560] I just did a TED talk a few months ago on win-win-win.
[00:46:56.880 --> 00:46:58.080] What were you saying in there?
[00:46:58.080 --> 00:47:03.200] The win-win-win is seeking, and it's simplest, it's looking for everyone you interact with.
[00:47:03.200 --> 00:47:10.160] You're looking a win for them, a win for yourself, and a win for the larger whole that we're all part of.
[00:47:10.160 --> 00:47:13.360] If all three aren't winning, bad strategy.
[00:47:13.360 --> 00:47:13.920] Yeah.
[00:47:13.920 --> 00:47:19.680] So it's kind of giving your mind and your heart permission to go down that path.
[00:47:19.680 --> 00:47:25.040] And so, if you unleash your mind to look for the win-win-win, it will find it.
[00:47:25.040 --> 00:47:28.480] And we generally make trade-offs, and we generally approach it win-lose.
[00:47:28.480 --> 00:47:34.040] We're in a culture where sports and game metaphors are somebody wins, most people lose.
[00:47:34.040 --> 00:47:35.720] Hey, that's the way life is.
[00:47:36.360 --> 00:47:44.920] No, that's a particular approach to life, and it's not the best approach for your happiness or for the betterment of the world.
[00:47:45.080 --> 00:47:49.160] The win-win-win strategy, I argue, is a universal ethical system.
[00:47:49.160 --> 00:47:57.480] I challenge you to think of any ethical dilemma you're in where win-win-win isn't the best way to approach it.
[00:48:00.040 --> 00:48:04.680] What if you could nourish your immune system, metabolism, and longevity all from a single plant?
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[00:48:50.520 --> 00:48:57.080] I'm incredibly intentional about how I feel my brain because whether I'm with patients, writing, or leading a team, focus and clarity matter.
[00:48:57.080 --> 00:49:01.000] One of the most powerful tools I've added to my daily routine is Nanduka by Peak.
[00:49:01.000 --> 00:49:11.720] Nanduka is a clinically inspired nootropic adaptogen blend that delivers calm, sustained energy, and sharp mental focus without the crash of caffeine or the artificial buzz of typical productivity drinks.
[00:49:11.720 --> 00:49:23.680] It's made from 100% fruiting body mushrooms, lines made for performance, chaga and reishi for the nervous system, plus ceremonial cacao rich in ananamide, the bliss molecule, to support mood and cognition.
[00:49:23.680 --> 00:49:27.520] There are no grain fillers or fluff, just real potent ingredients.
[00:49:27.520 --> 00:49:31.840] When I start my day with Nanduka, I feel more grounded, focused, and clear-headed.
[00:49:31.840 --> 00:49:33.440] And yes, it tastes amazing.
[00:49:33.440 --> 00:49:39.600] Right now, Peak is offering up to 20% off for life, plus a free starter kit with a rechargeable frother and glass beaker.
[00:49:39.600 --> 00:49:41.760] Go to peaklife.com slash hymen.
[00:49:41.760 --> 00:49:45.120] That's p-i-q-u-elife.com slash hymen.
[00:49:49.920 --> 00:49:55.280] It's hard to get people out of the scarcity mindset and into it, this idea of abundance.
[00:49:55.280 --> 00:49:58.400] And, you know, I find that the more I give, the more I get.
[00:49:58.400 --> 00:50:04.640] The more I give money away, the more I give my time away, the more I give my love away, my energy away, the more it comes back.
[00:50:04.720 --> 00:50:08.480] Because the universe is a mirror that reflects exactly back what you're giving.
[00:50:08.640 --> 00:50:10.800] The more love you give, the more love you receive.
[00:50:10.800 --> 00:50:13.280] The kinder you are, the more kindness comes back.
[00:50:13.280 --> 00:50:22.640] If people could understand that we are all connected, we are all one, that when they attack someone else, they're attacking themselves.
[00:50:23.280 --> 00:50:30.640] If we can understand that love is the deeper reality and that we share love, it comes back to us.
[00:50:30.640 --> 00:50:31.920] We help light somebody.
[00:50:31.920 --> 00:50:35.680] Somebody lights the candle of love in us, and we send it and give it to somebody else.
[00:50:35.680 --> 00:50:37.360] And that's how this planet's going to heal.
[00:50:37.360 --> 00:50:46.320] It's going to heal ultimately through people waking up and being more conscious about how they show up in the world and how transformative love is.
[00:50:46.560 --> 00:50:49.440] I'm like, I'm a big apostle of love.
[00:50:49.440 --> 00:50:52.960] I think you're right on to something, but we live in such a divisive world now.
[00:50:52.960 --> 00:50:57.040] And I feel like we're less connected and more divided.
[00:50:57.040 --> 00:50:59.040] And so it starts with yourself.
[00:50:59.040 --> 00:50:59.440] Yeah.
[00:50:59.440 --> 00:51:02.280] Only you can transform the world.
[00:50:59.840 --> 00:51:04.440] I don't mean that in a narcissistic sense.
[00:51:04.680 --> 00:51:11.880] I mean, as we offer love and peace, it is offered back to us.
[00:51:11.880 --> 00:51:16.120] And right now, I can't worry about absolutely the whole world.
[00:51:16.120 --> 00:51:17.960] That just puts you into despair.
[00:51:17.960 --> 00:51:19.800] All I can do is show up every day.
[00:51:20.040 --> 00:51:21.960] My wife has a mantra that I try to follow.
[00:51:21.960 --> 00:51:25.560] It's just love everyone all the time.
[00:51:25.800 --> 00:51:26.680] No exceptions.
[00:51:26.680 --> 00:51:27.400] That's pretty good.
[00:51:28.360 --> 00:51:28.680] Exactly.
[00:51:28.920 --> 00:51:30.760] She says, John, it's so much simpler.
[00:51:30.760 --> 00:51:33.720] You don't have

Prompt 2: Key Takeaways

Now please extract the key takeaways from the transcript content I provided.

Extract the most important key takeaways from this part of the conversation. Use a single sentence statement (the key takeaway) rather than milquetoast descriptions like "the hosts discuss...". 

Limit the key takeaways to a maximum of 3. The key takeaways should be insightful and knowledge-additive. 

IMPORTANT: Return ONLY valid JSON, no explanations or markdown. Ensure:
- All strings are properly quoted and escaped
- No trailing commas
- All braces and brackets are balanced
Format: {"key_takeaways": ["takeaway 1", "takeaway 2"]}

Prompt 3: Segments

Now identify 2-4 distinct topical segments from this part of the conversation.

For each segment, identify:
- Descriptive title (3-6 words)  
- START timestamp when this topic begins (HH:MM:SS format)
- Double check that the timestamp is accurate - a timestamp will NEVER be greater than the total length of the audio
- Most important Key takeaway from that segment. Key takeaway must be specific and knowledge-additive.
- Brief summary of the discussion

IMPORTANT: The timestamp should mark when the topic/segment STARTS, not a range. Look for topic transitions and conversation shifts.

Return ONLY valid JSON. Ensure all strings are properly quoted, no trailing commas:
{
  "segments": [
    {
      "segment_title": "Topic Discussion", 
      "timestamp": "01:15:30",
      "key_takeaway": "main point from this segment",
      "segment_summary": "brief description of what was discussed"
    }
  ]
}

Timestamp format: HH:MM:SS (e.g., 00:05:30, 01:22:45) marking the START of each segment.

Prompt 4: Media Mentions

Now scan the transcript content I provided for ACTUAL mentions of specific media titles:

Find explicit mentions of:
- Books (with specific titles)
- Movies (with specific titles)  
- TV Shows (with specific titles)
- Music/Songs (with specific titles)

DO NOT include:
- Websites, URLs, or web services
- Other podcasts or podcast names

IMPORTANT: 
- Only include items explicitly mentioned by name. Do not invent titles.
- Valid categories are: "Book", "Movie", "TV Show", "Music"
- Include the exact phrase where each item was mentioned
- Find the nearest proximate timestamp where it appears in the conversation
- THE TIMESTAMP OF THE MEDIA MENTION IS IMPORTANT - DO NOT INVENT TIMESTAMPS AND DO NOT MISATTRIBUTE TIMESTAMPS
- Double check that the timestamp is accurate - a timestamp will NEVER be greater than the total length of the audio
- Timestamps are given as ranges, e.g. 01:13:42.520 --> 01:13:46.720. Use the EARLIER of the 2 timestamps in the range.

Return ONLY valid JSON. Ensure all strings are properly quoted and escaped, no trailing commas:
{
  "media_mentions": [
    {
      "title": "Exact Title as Mentioned",
      "category": "Book",
      "author_artist": "N/A",
      "context": "Brief context of why it was mentioned",
      "context_phrase": "The exact sentence or phrase where it was mentioned",
      "timestamp": "estimated time like 01:15:30"
    }
  ]
}

If no media is mentioned, return: {"media_mentions": []}

Prompt 5: Context Setup

You are an expert data extractor tasked with analyzing a podcast transcript. 
I will provide you with part 2 of 2 from a podcast transcript. 
I will then ask you to extract different types of information from this content in subsequent messages. Please confirm you have received and understood the transcript content.

Transcript section:
ou are, the more kindness comes back.
[00:50:13.280 --> 00:50:22.640] If people could understand that we are all connected, we are all one, that when they attack someone else, they're attacking themselves.
[00:50:23.280 --> 00:50:30.640] If we can understand that love is the deeper reality and that we share love, it comes back to us.
[00:50:30.640 --> 00:50:31.920] We help light somebody.
[00:50:31.920 --> 00:50:35.680] Somebody lights the candle of love in us, and we send it and give it to somebody else.
[00:50:35.680 --> 00:50:37.360] And that's how this planet's going to heal.
[00:50:37.360 --> 00:50:46.320] It's going to heal ultimately through people waking up and being more conscious about how they show up in the world and how transformative love is.
[00:50:46.560 --> 00:50:49.440] I'm like, I'm a big apostle of love.
[00:50:49.440 --> 00:50:52.960] I think you're right on to something, but we live in such a divisive world now.
[00:50:52.960 --> 00:50:57.040] And I feel like we're less connected and more divided.
[00:50:57.040 --> 00:50:59.040] And so it starts with yourself.
[00:50:59.040 --> 00:50:59.440] Yeah.
[00:50:59.440 --> 00:51:02.280] Only you can transform the world.
[00:50:59.840 --> 00:51:04.440] I don't mean that in a narcissistic sense.
[00:51:04.680 --> 00:51:11.880] I mean, as we offer love and peace, it is offered back to us.
[00:51:11.880 --> 00:51:16.120] And right now, I can't worry about absolutely the whole world.
[00:51:16.120 --> 00:51:17.960] That just puts you into despair.
[00:51:17.960 --> 00:51:19.800] All I can do is show up every day.
[00:51:20.040 --> 00:51:21.960] My wife has a mantra that I try to follow.
[00:51:21.960 --> 00:51:25.560] It's just love everyone all the time.
[00:51:25.800 --> 00:51:26.680] No exceptions.
[00:51:26.680 --> 00:51:27.400] That's pretty good.
[00:51:28.360 --> 00:51:28.680] Exactly.
[00:51:28.920 --> 00:51:30.760] She says, John, it's so much simpler.
[00:51:30.760 --> 00:51:33.720] You don't have to worry about, well, I'm mad at him.
[00:51:33.720 --> 00:51:34.920] I like her.
[00:51:35.400 --> 00:51:36.840] I'm not so sure about this guy.
[00:51:36.840 --> 00:51:39.640] She says, no, don't have all those comparisons.
[00:51:39.640 --> 00:51:43.080] Just show up open-hearted and love everyone.
[00:51:43.800 --> 00:51:47.080] And yeah, she's my teacher.
[00:51:47.080 --> 00:51:50.360] That's actually an incredibly powerful way to live.
[00:51:50.360 --> 00:51:54.120] And, you know, I don't know if I do that all the time in my regular life.
[00:51:54.440 --> 00:51:55.160] But most of us don't.
[00:51:55.400 --> 00:51:57.400] But as a doctor, that's how you show up.
[00:51:57.400 --> 00:52:01.480] I sort of reflected on like, what is it that makes me good at what I do?
[00:52:01.480 --> 00:52:03.720] And why do people keep coming back?
[00:52:03.720 --> 00:52:16.760] And I think when I meet with someone, because when you're a doctor, you get into this sacred space with someone where they're sharing their vulnerabilities, their suffering, their fears, their relationship stuff, like whatever, their life story.
[00:52:16.760 --> 00:52:18.760] And I take a very deep life story.
[00:52:19.000 --> 00:52:20.760] I'm not the eight-minute doctor visit.
[00:52:20.760 --> 00:52:24.440] You know, I spend a couple hours with people initially and then I get to know them.
[00:52:24.840 --> 00:52:26.120] We can offer you a job at Love Life.
[00:52:26.120 --> 00:52:27.720] You're the kind of doctor we're looking for.
[00:52:29.160 --> 00:52:29.560] I know.
[00:52:29.560 --> 00:52:32.040] I wish I had more of me to go around.
[00:52:32.040 --> 00:52:37.000] What I let myself do is love every patient, is to see who they are as a human being.
[00:52:37.000 --> 00:52:39.880] And no matter who they are, where they're from.
[00:52:39.840 --> 00:52:51.920] I mean, I used to work in the Idaho State Penitentiary, you know, when I was and I mean, as a part-time gig when I was a doctor in Idaho, and I would walk in there with murderers and rapists and people who've done horrible things.
[00:52:51.920 --> 00:52:55.120] And I would just try to meet them and see who they were and love them.
[00:52:55.120 --> 00:53:01.200] And what was really actually shocking to me was most of them were just scared little kids that didn't grow ever grow up.
[00:53:01.680 --> 00:53:04.880] And they did these horrible things out of their own trauma.
[00:53:04.880 --> 00:53:11.760] And so to be able to sort of see that and you know, and if you just stop and spend enough time with somebody and talk to them, like the homeless guy on the street.
[00:53:12.080 --> 00:53:16.800] You were helping heal them because you were actually, you're being present like that and open is love.
[00:53:16.800 --> 00:53:17.360] Yeah.
[00:53:17.360 --> 00:53:20.800] You were radiating love to them, whether you were conscious of it or not.
[00:53:20.800 --> 00:53:22.400] That was probably helping to heal them.
[00:53:22.400 --> 00:53:22.640] Yeah.
[00:53:22.640 --> 00:53:23.840] Because that's what everybody wants.
[00:53:23.840 --> 00:53:24.320] I'm sure.
[00:53:24.320 --> 00:53:24.800] I'm sure.
[00:53:24.800 --> 00:53:29.200] And also, it also, yeah, helped them to feel safe.
[00:53:29.200 --> 00:53:35.600] And it helped me to actually, you know, care for them enough to really work hard to figure out what was going on.
[00:53:35.600 --> 00:53:40.080] And it's like, I don't know why I started out like that, but I just, I've always been like that.
[00:53:40.080 --> 00:53:48.240] And I remember being like three years old and seeing all these grown-ups who were just so unhappy and not nice and not acting out of love.
[00:53:48.240 --> 00:53:49.520] And I'm like, didn't I?
[00:53:49.600 --> 00:53:50.320] I didn't get it.
[00:53:50.320 --> 00:53:52.880] I literally remember my three-year-old self.
[00:53:52.960 --> 00:53:57.280] I'm like, I just was full of love all the time and I didn't get why everybody wasn't all full of love all the time.
[00:53:57.280 --> 00:53:59.360] You know, it's like, that's our natural state.
[00:53:59.360 --> 00:53:59.680] Yes.
[00:53:59.680 --> 00:54:00.640] You know, that's right.
[00:54:00.640 --> 00:54:03.600] Love is the essence of what we are, but it gets blocked.
[00:54:03.680 --> 00:54:16.880] It gets blocked by anger, fear, judgment, attack, envy, resentment, all those types of emotions clouded over so that the light doesn't shine through.
[00:54:17.200 --> 00:54:25.600] But if we practice forgiveness and we work at opening and being present, the light begins to shine through us again.
[00:54:25.600 --> 00:54:27.040] Here's an interesting thing that I've learned.
[00:54:27.040 --> 00:54:29.440] It's maybe one of the most important tips I will give.
[00:54:29.560 --> 00:54:33.800] If you love everyone all the time, don't we forget that every day at times?
[00:54:33.800 --> 00:54:35.000] We go back into judgment.
[00:54:35.000 --> 00:54:38.840] We judge, you're driving over here, somebody cuts me off, asshole.
[00:54:39.560 --> 00:54:42.440] I'm not very loving when I'm thinking that or saying that.
[00:54:42.440 --> 00:54:45.800] But what I've learned is that the past doesn't exist any longer.
[00:54:46.520 --> 00:54:50.040] All that's real is this moment.
[00:54:50.040 --> 00:54:55.560] And no matter how many times I forget, I can go back in the next moment and choose love.
[00:54:55.880 --> 00:54:57.000] I can choose to be present.
[00:54:57.000 --> 00:54:59.240] I can choose to let my heart open.
[00:54:59.240 --> 00:55:02.040] Even if I forget it, next moment I can choose it.
[00:55:02.040 --> 00:55:04.280] If I forget it, next moment I can choose it.
[00:55:04.280 --> 00:55:05.880] I can practice going back to it.
[00:55:05.880 --> 00:55:07.320] And it's kind of like meditating.
[00:55:07.720 --> 00:55:10.600] The more you practice it, the more skilled you get at it.
[00:55:10.760 --> 00:55:15.800] The more you practice being present and opening to love, the easier it gets.
[00:55:15.800 --> 00:55:16.920] It's such a simple idea.
[00:55:16.920 --> 00:55:18.280] Choose love over fear.
[00:55:18.280 --> 00:55:19.720] Yes, choose love over fear.
[00:55:19.880 --> 00:55:22.600] Kind of like that first LS, that massive LSD trip I took.
[00:55:22.600 --> 00:55:24.040] There's nothing really to be afraid of.
[00:55:24.440 --> 00:55:34.360] Because the things we're afraid of, like death or suffering or pain, in an ultimate senseless things, really aren't real in any ultimate sense.
[00:55:34.360 --> 00:55:39.640] We make them real through our own minds, believes, our beliefs, beliefs.
[00:55:41.480 --> 00:55:50.520] Anyway, I found that that's anyway, an important thing that I've learned is that no matter how many times I forget, I can always remember in the next moment.
[00:55:51.320 --> 00:55:52.920] I can be free in the next moment.
[00:55:52.920 --> 00:55:54.200] Isn't that the truth, John?
[00:55:54.200 --> 00:55:59.160] I mean, I thought a lot about death and life because I almost died recently.
[00:55:59.800 --> 00:56:07.160] And I realized that the real secret, the meaning of life, like the purpose of life, is to get free.
[00:56:07.160 --> 00:56:08.520] So you can be loved.
[00:56:09.000 --> 00:56:17.360] It's like most of us are in a self-made prison of our beliefs, of our thoughts, of our conceptions, of our ideology.
[00:56:18.000 --> 00:56:24.720] And we're always in this trap, but there's actually a way to get free.
[00:56:25.280 --> 00:56:27.920] And when you're free, all you want to do is love.
[00:56:28.320 --> 00:56:29.840] It's kind of like a magic trick.
[00:56:29.840 --> 00:56:32.720] You know, I felt that about you the first time I met you.
[00:56:32.800 --> 00:56:34.480] I felt like you were a very loving person.
[00:56:35.440 --> 00:56:38.160] You had a very open heart and you were very caring.
[00:56:38.160 --> 00:56:40.160] And I felt that vibe from you.
[00:56:40.400 --> 00:56:41.200] And you know what?
[00:56:41.200 --> 00:56:42.480] Here's the good news.
[00:56:42.480 --> 00:56:45.760] It's a lot stronger now than when I first met you.
[00:56:46.080 --> 00:56:46.320] Yeah.
[00:56:46.320 --> 00:56:47.520] Well, I've gotten more free.
[00:56:47.520 --> 00:56:50.880] I've gotten shed all the old stories, all the bullshit.
[00:56:51.440 --> 00:56:52.160] Oh, my God.
[00:56:52.160 --> 00:56:53.600] It's hard work, you know?
[00:56:53.600 --> 00:57:10.400] But I think, you know, this revolution in health and well-being that you're part of and this revolution in mental health, which in some ways, love life is really helping to solve because you're building community and loneliness is one of the biggest causes of illness.
[00:57:10.720 --> 00:57:15.360] And, you know, it's like the community aspect is such a big piece.
[00:57:15.360 --> 00:57:23.440] And for me, at the end of the day, it's just about how do we sort of always move into the space of love rather than fear.
[00:57:23.440 --> 00:57:26.160] We'll forget, but we can choose it the next moment.
[00:57:26.160 --> 00:57:32.160] Just remember, no matter how many times you forget, the past, you don't have to bring the past into the present.
[00:57:32.480 --> 00:57:36.640] You can be free of the past by just letting it go, realizing it's not real.
[00:57:36.640 --> 00:57:41.840] And in this moment, be present, be conscious, let love flow.
[00:57:42.320 --> 00:57:47.200] I think the psychedelic revolution, and it was your awakening and certainly it's part of mine.
[00:57:47.200 --> 00:57:50.720] And I think a lot of people's, to be honest with you, if you look at like Steve Jobs.
[00:57:50.880 --> 00:57:54.320] It's what knocked me off the path my parents had programmed into me.
[00:57:54.320 --> 00:57:54.720] Exactly.
[00:57:54.720 --> 00:58:02.280] And when you think about some of the big corporations that are going on, I think that people don't talk about it, but like Apple came out of psychedelics, right?
[00:58:02.600 --> 00:58:21.800] And I think for me, and I think increasingly like for the population at large, it's this sort of psychedelic revolution around psychedelic therapy is part of the answer to helping people to let go of the idea of separateness and let go of the idea that they have to meet life with fear or that they are stuck.
[00:58:21.800 --> 00:58:30.040] And I think I wish everybody could, I mean, I wish I could literally just take a giant bunch of mushrooms or LSD and put it in the water in contrast.
[00:58:30.360 --> 00:58:31.880] That would be scary to people.
[00:58:31.880 --> 00:58:43.960] So there, one way to think about it is: I read this book a long time ago, which it was a real simple little 50-page book, and it basically said The Lazy Man's Light Guide to Enlightenment.
[00:58:43.960 --> 00:58:45.160] Oh, yeah, I don't remember that book.
[00:58:45.160 --> 00:58:47.000] And it had one big idea in it.
[00:58:47.000 --> 00:58:51.240] And that big idea was you're either expanding or contracting.
[00:58:51.240 --> 00:58:56.840] So expanding opens our consciousness and opens our hearts for love.
[00:58:56.840 --> 00:58:59.160] Contracting closes it down.
[00:58:59.160 --> 00:58:59.720] That's right.
[00:58:59.720 --> 00:59:08.440] So fear, judgment, hatred, anger, these all contract the heart shut us down.
[00:59:08.760 --> 00:59:12.440] And then forgiveness, love, generosity.
[00:59:12.840 --> 00:59:14.520] I practice gratitudes every day.
[00:59:14.520 --> 00:59:16.840] Gratitude is a huge expansionary thing.
[00:59:16.840 --> 00:59:25.080] No matter how my little petty problems that might be there at work or whatever, practicing the gratitudes in the morning is always expansive.
[00:59:25.080 --> 00:59:28.360] It always reminds me, that's petty stuff.
[00:59:28.680 --> 00:59:29.800] This is what really matters.
[00:59:30.200 --> 00:59:36.200] I do think the daily practices are important for people if they want to help not get lost again.
[00:59:37.160 --> 00:59:41.320] Why don't we sort of close by having you share with us your practices?
[00:59:41.320 --> 00:59:46.640] How do you keep yourself mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually on track?
[00:59:46.880 --> 00:59:47.520] Sure.
[00:59:47.520 --> 00:59:50.960] I start out my day, pee, and then I weigh myself.
[00:59:52.000 --> 00:59:57.440] Then I do my spiritual practices, which involve reading some type of spiritual text.
[00:59:57.440 --> 00:59:59.840] I'm a longtime student of A Course in Miracles.
[00:59:59.840 --> 01:00:02.560] So frequently, that's what I'm reading.
[01:00:04.000 --> 01:00:08.080] Then I do gratitudes, the expansive gratitudes.
[01:00:08.640 --> 01:00:14.560] And I just let my mind go whatever I feel ungrateful for and let that go as long as it feels right.
[01:00:14.880 --> 01:00:21.200] Then I put forth what you can call them affirmations, you can call them prayers, intentionality.
[01:00:21.200 --> 01:00:24.880] I put out there things that I would really like to see manifest.
[01:00:24.880 --> 01:00:27.760] I put it out in a clear visualization of it.
[01:00:27.760 --> 01:00:29.680] And then I meditate.
[01:00:30.000 --> 01:00:33.920] After that, I'm going to go make a smoothie.
[01:00:33.920 --> 01:00:36.000] I start every day off with a smoothie.
[01:00:36.000 --> 01:00:38.560] It's 50% fruit, 50% vegetables.
[01:00:38.560 --> 01:00:42.480] It's got some protein in it, but it's extremely nutritious.
[01:00:42.800 --> 01:00:46.000] I make a whole two liters of that Vitamix.
[01:00:46.000 --> 01:00:47.680] And I'm going to have two glasses for breakfast.
[01:00:47.680 --> 01:00:53.200] And then the rest, my wife will have a glass and the other glass will get finished off sometime later in the day.
[01:00:53.200 --> 01:00:54.640] And then I exercise.
[01:00:54.640 --> 01:00:56.000] I'm usually going for a walk.
[01:00:56.000 --> 01:00:57.200] I'm playing pickleball.
[01:00:57.200 --> 01:00:58.240] I'm doing Pilates.
[01:00:58.240 --> 01:00:59.040] I'm doing yoga.
[01:00:59.040 --> 01:01:00.480] Or I'm doing a couple of those.
[01:01:00.800 --> 01:01:06.960] Then I will go, I might read or might go off to work, depending on what's going on, or I might have meetings.
[01:01:06.960 --> 01:01:10.240] I will try to do some other kind of exercise at the end of the day.
[01:01:10.240 --> 01:01:15.440] Now, for food for me, I am ethical vegan, so 100% plant-based.
[01:01:15.440 --> 01:01:24.400] So I try to eat a whole foods, plant-based diet, minimize salt, minimize oil, minimize processed foods of all kinds.
[01:01:24.560 --> 01:01:31.560] Not perfect in that regard, but, you know, probably compared to most people, I'm very high up the list there.
[01:01:29.840 --> 01:01:33.800] I really think fruits and vegetables are extremely healthy.
[01:01:34.040 --> 01:01:38.920] So I'm on, I would say I'm on a high complex carb diet.
[01:01:38.920 --> 01:01:44.120] I'm eating because I'm eating a lot of fruits, a lot of whole grains, a lot of beans.
[01:01:44.120 --> 01:01:49.960] I do get a lot of protein because I really do eat lots of foods that have a lot of protein in them.
[01:01:49.960 --> 01:01:51.800] Greens, I eat tons of greens.
[01:01:52.040 --> 01:01:54.280] I think my diet's healthy for me.
[01:01:54.280 --> 01:01:57.240] And I think work, I think having purpose, I read a lot.
[01:01:57.240 --> 01:02:03.320] I also have, I think having purposeful work, like love life, I'm on six boards.
[01:02:03.320 --> 01:02:05.640] So I've got other distractions that way.
[01:02:05.640 --> 01:02:08.200] And so, and I, then I spend a lot of time with my wife.
[01:02:08.200 --> 01:02:08.600] Yeah.
[01:02:09.000 --> 01:02:10.280] She's kind of my spiritual.
[01:02:10.840 --> 01:02:12.600] You guys have a remarkable relationship.
[01:02:12.600 --> 01:02:16.360] I mean, you've had Whole Foods for a long time, but you've also had this marriage.
[01:02:16.440 --> 01:02:18.360] I've been with Deborah for 35 years now.
[01:02:18.680 --> 01:02:25.640] And she's, you know, I tell the story in the book, The Woman in the Dream, when I met her, she was seven years younger than me.
[01:02:25.640 --> 01:02:30.760] And I considered myself, my ego being what it is, thought I was a pretty conscious dude.
[01:02:30.760 --> 01:02:33.080] But I was just blown away on the very first date.
[01:02:33.080 --> 01:02:34.280] Talk about the notes from God.
[01:02:34.280 --> 01:02:38.360] My whole soul was saying, this woman is the most awake person you've ever come across.
[01:02:38.360 --> 01:02:39.240] Don't blow it.
[01:02:39.240 --> 01:02:40.600] Don't screw it up, John.
[01:02:40.920 --> 01:02:42.920] I pretty much did because I was so nervous.
[01:02:43.000 --> 01:02:44.840] First thing I did when I picked, I was a blind eight.
[01:02:44.840 --> 01:02:45.720] I'd never met her before.
[01:02:45.800 --> 01:02:48.440] First, I pick her up, and first thing I do is I'm nervous.
[01:02:48.440 --> 01:02:50.520] She's the most beautiful person, woman I've ever seen.
[01:02:50.520 --> 01:02:55.480] And I said, Hey, mind if I look in your refrigerator?
[01:02:56.920 --> 01:02:58.600] She says, That's weird, but true.
[01:02:58.840 --> 01:03:00.200] Refrigerator, Biopsy.
[01:03:00.200 --> 01:03:02.800] Well, you can tell a lot about a person in your refrigerator.
[01:03:02.440 --> 01:03:03.440] Bookshelf in the refrigerator.
[01:03:04.040 --> 01:03:05.320] I went to the bookshelf second.
[01:03:05.320 --> 01:03:06.920] That was more socially acceptable.
[01:03:07.160 --> 01:03:09.320] She was, she ended up being the great love of my life.
[01:03:09.320 --> 01:03:12.280] And I will tell you a story that I tell in the book.
[01:03:12.600 --> 01:03:20.000] I call the chapter The Woman in the Dream because I had had a recurring dream in this dream that I'd had many times.
[01:03:20.320 --> 01:03:26.000] I'm going to this park, Peace Park in Austin, near where my house is, near central, in central Austin.
[01:03:26.000 --> 01:03:27.360] I'm going there and I'm there.
[01:03:27.360 --> 01:03:32.000] It's in the morning, and I'm looking, and this beautiful woman is walking to me.
[01:03:32.080 --> 01:03:34.160] She's naked and she's radiating.
[01:03:34.160 --> 01:03:35.680] She's shining.
[01:03:35.680 --> 01:03:40.320] And she, and I, I, I, she comes up to me and I break up a conversation.
[01:03:40.320 --> 01:03:41.280] I start a conversation with her.
[01:03:41.280 --> 01:03:46.560] I say, so, um, uh, uh, who are you?
[01:03:46.560 --> 01:03:48.960] And she says, you know who I am.
[01:03:49.040 --> 01:03:50.240] I said, okay.
[01:03:50.560 --> 01:03:52.480] Well, what do you, what are you doing?
[01:03:52.480 --> 01:03:55.040] She says, I've been waiting.
[01:03:55.200 --> 01:03:56.720] What have you been waiting for?
[01:03:56.720 --> 01:03:58.960] I've been waiting for you to catch up to me.
[01:03:58.960 --> 01:04:00.080] Oh, wow.
[01:04:00.080 --> 01:04:01.680] Well, why?
[01:04:01.680 --> 01:04:04.960] And she grabs my hand and she says, so we can run together.
[01:04:05.280 --> 01:04:07.840] And we take off running and then I wake up.
[01:04:07.840 --> 01:04:08.400] That's amazing.
[01:04:08.800 --> 01:04:09.520] Beautiful dream.
[01:04:09.520 --> 01:04:12.800] After I'd had the blind eight, I had the dream again.
[01:04:13.040 --> 01:04:16.800] And the first time I knew who she was, it was her, Deborah.
[01:04:16.800 --> 01:04:17.200] Wow.
[01:04:17.200 --> 01:04:18.640] That's an incredible woman in the dream.
[01:04:18.720 --> 01:04:19.840] I got chills from that story.
[01:04:20.080 --> 01:04:20.800] I know, incredible.
[01:04:20.960 --> 01:04:21.440] Beautiful.
[01:04:21.840 --> 01:04:29.840] You know, to end on, I'm just really honored to be able to know you and your wife and be in Austin with you and look forward to playing pickup ball and more things and more conversations.
[01:04:30.400 --> 01:04:32.320] I really, I really admire what you're doing.
[01:04:32.320 --> 01:04:33.760] You're making a big difference in the world.
[01:04:33.760 --> 01:04:34.960] I'm very appreciative.
[01:04:34.960 --> 01:04:38.080] And I wish just love and happiness to you and always.
[01:04:38.080 --> 01:04:39.120] Thank you so very much.
[01:04:39.120 --> 01:04:39.680] Thank you, John.
[01:04:39.680 --> 01:04:40.880] Thanks for being on the podcast.
[01:04:40.880 --> 01:04:41.520] Thank you.
[01:04:41.520 --> 01:04:45.600] If you love this podcast, please share it with someone else you think would also enjoy it.
[01:04:45.600 --> 01:04:47.920] You can find me on all social media channels at Dr.
[01:04:47.920 --> 01:04:48.640] Mark Hyman.
[01:04:48.640 --> 01:04:49.200] Please reach out.
[01:04:49.200 --> 01:04:51.200] I'd love to hear your comments and questions.
[01:04:51.200 --> 01:04:53.520] Don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe to the Dr.
[01:04:53.520 --> 01:04:55.680] Hyman Show wherever you get your podcasts.
[01:04:55.680 --> 01:04:57.920] And don't forget to check out my YouTube channel at Dr.
[01:04:57.920 --> 01:05:01.160] MarkHyman for video versions of this podcast and more.
[01:05:01.160 --> 01:05:03.000] Thank you so much again for tuning in.
[01:05:03.000 --> 01:05:04.440] We'll see you next time on The Dr.
[01:04:59.840 --> 01:05:05.080] Hyman Show.
[01:05:05.320 --> 01:05:12.440] This podcast is separate from my clinical practice at the Ultra Wellness Center, my work at Cleveland Clinic, and Function Health, where I am chief medical officer.
[01:05:12.440 --> 01:05:15.320] This podcast represents my opinions and my guests' opinions.
[01:05:15.320 --> 01:05:19.160] Neither myself nor the podcast endorses the views or statements of my guests.
[01:05:19.160 --> 01:05:26.200] This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional.
[01:05:26.200 --> 01:05:32.360] This podcast is provided with the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services.
[01:05:32.360 --> 01:05:36.760] If you're looking for help in your journey, please seek out a qualified medical practitioner.
[01:05:36.760 --> 01:05:45.160] And if you're looking for a functional medicine practitioner, visit my clinic, theultrawellnesscenter at ultrawellnesscenter.com, and request to become a patient.
[01:05:45.160 --> 01:05:53.080] It's important to have someone in your corner who is a trained, licensed healthcare practitioner and can help you make changes, especially when it comes to your health.
[01:05:53.080 --> 01:05:57.800] This podcast is free as part of my mission to bring practical ways of improving health to the public.
[01:05:57.800 --> 01:06:02.200] So I'd like to express gratitude to sponsors that made today's podcast possible.
[01:06:02.200 --> 01:06:03.960] Thanks so much again for listening.

Prompt 6: Key Takeaways

Now please extract the key takeaways from the transcript content I provided.

Extract the most important key takeaways from this part of the conversation. Use a single sentence statement (the key takeaway) rather than milquetoast descriptions like "the hosts discuss...". 

Limit the key takeaways to a maximum of 3. The key takeaways should be insightful and knowledge-additive. 

IMPORTANT: Return ONLY valid JSON, no explanations or markdown. Ensure:
- All strings are properly quoted and escaped
- No trailing commas
- All braces and brackets are balanced
Format: {"key_takeaways": ["takeaway 1", "takeaway 2"]}

Prompt 7: Segments

Now identify 2-4 distinct topical segments from this part of the conversation.

For each segment, identify:
- Descriptive title (3-6 words)  
- START timestamp when this topic begins (HH:MM:SS format)
- Double check that the timestamp is accurate - a timestamp will NEVER be greater than the total length of the audio
- Most important Key takeaway from that segment. Key takeaway must be specific and knowledge-additive.
- Brief summary of the discussion

IMPORTANT: The timestamp should mark when the topic/segment STARTS, not a range. Look for topic transitions and conversation shifts.

Return ONLY valid JSON. Ensure all strings are properly quoted, no trailing commas:
{
  "segments": [
    {
      "segment_title": "Topic Discussion", 
      "timestamp": "01:15:30",
      "key_takeaway": "main point from this segment",
      "segment_summary": "brief description of what was discussed"
    }
  ]
}

Timestamp format: HH:MM:SS (e.g., 00:05:30, 01:22:45) marking the START of each segment.

Prompt 8: Media Mentions

Now scan the transcript content I provided for ACTUAL mentions of specific media titles:

Find explicit mentions of:
- Books (with specific titles)
- Movies (with specific titles)  
- TV Shows (with specific titles)
- Music/Songs (with specific titles)

DO NOT include:
- Websites, URLs, or web services
- Other podcasts or podcast names

IMPORTANT: 
- Only include items explicitly mentioned by name. Do not invent titles.
- Valid categories are: "Book", "Movie", "TV Show", "Music"
- Include the exact phrase where each item was mentioned
- Find the nearest proximate timestamp where it appears in the conversation
- THE TIMESTAMP OF THE MEDIA MENTION IS IMPORTANT - DO NOT INVENT TIMESTAMPS AND DO NOT MISATTRIBUTE TIMESTAMPS
- Double check that the timestamp is accurate - a timestamp will NEVER be greater than the total length of the audio
- Timestamps are given as ranges, e.g. 01:13:42.520 --> 01:13:46.720. Use the EARLIER of the 2 timestamps in the range.

Return ONLY valid JSON. Ensure all strings are properly quoted and escaped, no trailing commas:
{
  "media_mentions": [
    {
      "title": "Exact Title as Mentioned",
      "category": "Book",
      "author_artist": "N/A",
      "context": "Brief context of why it was mentioned",
      "context_phrase": "The exact sentence or phrase where it was mentioned",
      "timestamp": "estimated time like 01:15:30"
    }
  ]
}

If no media is mentioned, return: {"media_mentions": []}

Full Transcript

[00:00:00.320 --> 00:00:02.000] Coming up on this episode of the Dr.
[00:00:02.000 --> 00:00:04.000] Hyman Show, you founded Whole Foods.
[00:00:04.000 --> 00:00:06.720] It's changed the face of food in America for the better.
[00:00:06.880 --> 00:00:10.640] First store was called Safer Way, changed the name of the Whole Foods Market, and it took off.
[00:00:10.640 --> 00:00:14.160] It became the highest volume of natural food store in the United States six months after it opened.
[00:00:14.160 --> 00:00:18.480] Why have you sort of turned your attention from groceries and food to healthcare?
[00:00:18.480 --> 00:00:23.600] I had a tab of LSD, and it was incredibly powerful, the strongest dose of any psychedelic I've ever taken.
[00:00:23.600 --> 00:00:25.680] And I basically was swept away.
[00:00:25.680 --> 00:00:36.560] John Mackey, co-founder of Whole Foods Market, grew one store into a $22 billion natural foods empire and champions conscious capitalism to elevate humanity.
[00:00:36.560 --> 00:00:40.720] Today, chronic diseases, not infectious diseases, are what are killing us.
[00:00:40.720 --> 00:00:42.560] Chronic disease can be contagious.
[00:00:42.560 --> 00:00:46.480] You're more likely to be obese if your friends are overweight than even if your family's overweight.
[00:00:46.480 --> 00:00:48.800] We spend almost 18% of our GDP.
[00:00:48.800 --> 00:00:50.880] But where are we in terms of longevity?
[00:00:50.880 --> 00:00:53.440] When I checked it out today, we were 48.
[00:00:53.440 --> 00:00:56.160] You started basically a movement called Conscious Capitalism.
[00:00:56.160 --> 00:00:58.880] We had some shareholder activists that were trying to take over the company.
[00:00:58.880 --> 00:01:04.400] Basically, Amazon was the best solution for us in a very situation where we didn't have a lot of good solutions.
[00:01:04.400 --> 00:01:06.880] Conscious capitalism has four basic principles to the mark.
[00:01:06.960 --> 00:01:14.080] First principle is in functional medicine.
[00:01:14.080 --> 00:01:15.280] We always start with the gut.
[00:01:15.280 --> 00:01:20.480] It's at the core of nearly every aspect of health, from digestion and immune function to brain and skin health.
[00:01:20.480 --> 00:01:25.920] Your gut microbiome regulates inflammation, absorbs nutrients, and maintains the integrity of your gut barrier.
[00:01:25.920 --> 00:01:32.160] That's why I take and recommend SEADS DSO1 Daily Symbiotic, a next-level probiotic designed to go beyond digestion.
[00:01:32.160 --> 00:01:42.320] With 24 clinically studied probiotic strains and a pomegranate-based prebiotic, DSO1, supports gut immune function, gut barrier integrity, and even heart health through the gut-liver axis.
[00:01:42.320 --> 00:01:44.160] But here's what's really exciting.
[00:01:44.160 --> 00:01:49.040] Research now shows that gut health directly impacts skin health through the gut-skin axis.
[00:01:49.040 --> 00:01:54.160] DSO1 contains targeted strains clinically validated to support clear, hydrated skin from within.
[00:01:54.160 --> 00:02:05.320] As a member of SEAD's clinical board, I've seen the science behind their formulations, and new research shows DSO1 supports short-chain fatty acid production, which is key for gut barrier function, immune health, and healthy aging.
[00:02:05.480 --> 00:02:10.360] If you're ready to optimize your gut health, SEED is offering my community 25% off your first month.
[00:02:10.360 --> 00:02:14.200] Just head to seed.com/slash hymen and use code 25-hyman at checkout.
[00:02:14.200 --> 00:02:18.440] That's seed.com hymen with code 25-hymen for 25% off your first month.
[00:02:18.440 --> 00:02:22.600] There's a big misconception about protein, and it's one that can hold you back from real results.
[00:02:22.600 --> 00:02:30.920] You see, our bodies don't use whole protein directly, instead, they break it down into amino acids, the true building blocks your body uses to create muscle, skin, bone, and more.
[00:02:30.920 --> 00:02:32.920] But not all amino acids are used equally.
[00:02:32.920 --> 00:02:40.040] Some go toward rebuilding tissue, while others, especially if they're in excess, may be converted into energy or stored, adding to your overall calorie load.
[00:02:40.040 --> 00:02:41.720] That's why I'm a fan of Perfect Amino.
[00:02:41.720 --> 00:02:49.080] It delivers only the essential amino acids your body actually needs and in the exact ratio that supports efficient protein synthesis with minimal waste.
[00:02:49.080 --> 00:02:56.200] It's a clean, targeted way to support lean muscle recovery and tissue repair without the added calories or digestive burden of whole proteins.
[00:02:56.200 --> 00:02:57.640] Try PerfectAmino today.
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[00:03:03.960 --> 00:03:05.800] Okay, John, welcome to my podcast.
[00:03:05.800 --> 00:03:07.240] We've known each other a long time.
[00:03:07.240 --> 00:03:08.680] It's great to see you here.
[00:03:08.680 --> 00:03:09.240] We're in LA.
[00:03:09.240 --> 00:03:14.360] Actually, we both live in Austin, so I don't know how we ended up in LA doing a podcast because we both had some business here.
[00:03:15.240 --> 00:03:19.480] You founded Whole Foods, which everybody now knows.
[00:03:19.640 --> 00:03:22.680] It's changed the face of food in America for the better.
[00:03:22.680 --> 00:03:27.720] You know, you sold food, but now you're kind of focused on healthcare, which is really interesting.
[00:03:27.720 --> 00:03:31.720] And, you know, if you understand that food is medicine, it's not such a big leap, right?
[00:03:31.720 --> 00:03:32.480] But it's interesting.
[00:03:32.720 --> 00:03:37.400] Why have you sort of turned your attention from groceries and food to healthcare?
[00:03:37.400 --> 00:03:39.720] Well, I do think it's a continuum.
[00:03:39.720 --> 00:03:45.040] They're both about helping people to become healthier, to be the healthiest version of themselves.
[00:03:45.040 --> 00:03:47.840] And I mean, I did, I co-founded Whole Foods.
[00:03:47.840 --> 00:03:50.240] I led it as CEO for 44 years.
[00:03:44.440 --> 00:03:50.720] 44 years.
[00:03:51.040 --> 00:03:52.400] 44 years, exactly.
[00:03:52.400 --> 00:03:55.840] We sold it to Amazon, not because we wanted to sell out.
[00:03:55.840 --> 00:03:59.280] We were independent, publicly traded company for 25 years.
[00:03:59.840 --> 00:04:03.520] Well, for a long time, in 25 years as a public company.
[00:04:03.520 --> 00:04:07.520] So, but we had some shareholder activists that were trying to take over the company.
[00:04:07.520 --> 00:04:11.840] And Amazon, it's a long story, which I detail in my book, The Whole Story.
[00:04:11.840 --> 00:04:20.160] The short version of that is basically that Amazon was the best solution for us in a very situation where we didn't have a lot of good solutions.
[00:04:20.560 --> 00:04:32.640] So I signed on for five years with Amazon to help integrate Whole Foods into Amazon, make sure that the culture, the values of Whole Foods were protected as best I could protect it.
[00:04:32.640 --> 00:04:36.000] And then those five years were up and I retired from Whole Foods.
[00:04:36.320 --> 00:04:39.200] And also, I didn't want to work as hard, to be honest.
[00:04:39.440 --> 00:04:44.240] I mean, I was getting older and I wanted to play more pickleball.
[00:04:44.240 --> 00:04:46.400] I want to play more pickleball, exactly.
[00:04:46.400 --> 00:04:51.520] And read and travel and spend time with my wife and friends and family, et cetera.
[00:04:51.520 --> 00:04:53.120] That's how I got out of Whole Foods.
[00:04:53.120 --> 00:05:04.640] But here's the thing: it's like I really felt like I knew how to help thousands of people and maybe in the long term, millions of people be healthier, to live a healthier, more vital life.
[00:05:04.880 --> 00:05:06.160] How could I not do that?
[00:05:06.560 --> 00:05:08.480] Would I get to the end of my life with the regret?
[00:05:08.480 --> 00:05:12.000] Yeah, sure, I could lay on a beach and read and do whatever I wanted.
[00:05:12.000 --> 00:05:13.600] I'd made enough money.
[00:05:13.600 --> 00:05:16.160] But I don't think that would be fulfilling for me.
[00:05:16.160 --> 00:05:18.240] I'm a very purpose-driven human being.
[00:05:18.560 --> 00:05:23.280] I feel like I needed to be contributing in some way to helping.
[00:05:23.280 --> 00:05:37.240] So, you start out your career basically working in a co-op, sweeping the floors, moved to create one of the most iconic brands in America that has really improved the health for so many people who shop there.
[00:05:37.400 --> 00:05:40.920] And now you're 72 and you're still at it.
[00:05:40.920 --> 00:05:43.880] Hey, I've got three weeks perform 72.
[00:05:44.440 --> 00:05:47.320] You're biologically 60, but I'm going to enjoy them as well as I can.
[00:05:47.720 --> 00:05:52.120] But you're really now focused on a new venture, which is very ambitious.
[00:05:52.120 --> 00:06:02.840] And I'm just curious: what was your early experience in your life that shifted you to think this way, to have this philosophy around food and health and consciousness?
[00:06:02.840 --> 00:06:11.400] And because you've not only done the work you've done around creating a business like Whole Foods, but you started basically a movement called Conscious Capitalism.
[00:06:12.280 --> 00:06:12.680] I'm in a game.
[00:06:13.160 --> 00:06:16.520] I'm going to give you like a three to five minute history there.
[00:06:16.520 --> 00:06:17.000] Really?
[00:06:17.160 --> 00:06:18.360] In my book, The Prologue.
[00:06:18.680 --> 00:06:19.320] The whole story.
[00:06:19.320 --> 00:06:20.120] The whole story.
[00:06:20.200 --> 00:06:20.520] Exactly.
[00:06:20.840 --> 00:06:21.800] You got to get a copy.
[00:06:21.800 --> 00:06:24.360] Adventures in Love, Life, and Capitalism.
[00:06:24.680 --> 00:06:26.840] And starts out, the prologue.
[00:06:26.840 --> 00:06:31.880] I've just turned 22 years old, and I'm living by myself, not in a very good space.
[00:06:31.880 --> 00:06:35.800] I'm an atheist studying philosophy, existentialism.
[00:06:35.800 --> 00:06:36.680] That'll make me depressed.
[00:06:36.760 --> 00:06:42.360] I took a very, I didn't know it because back in that day, you didn't know what you were getting in terms of dosage.
[00:06:42.360 --> 00:06:44.280] But I had a tab of LSD.
[00:06:44.280 --> 00:06:50.360] I took it by myself, and it was incredibly powerful, the strongest dose of any psychedelic I've ever taken.
[00:06:50.520 --> 00:06:53.160] And I basically was swept away.
[00:06:53.320 --> 00:06:59.240] I use the metaphor, it's like, imagine Niagara Falls and you're hanging onto a rock with one hand.
[00:06:59.240 --> 00:07:00.440] How long can you do that?
[00:07:00.440 --> 00:07:01.240] Not that long.
[00:07:01.240 --> 00:07:03.400] And so I got swept away.
[00:07:03.400 --> 00:07:06.760] And then I found my ego dissolving.
[00:07:06.760 --> 00:07:09.080] Basically, that separateness.
[00:07:09.080 --> 00:07:09.800] You're Mark.
[00:07:09.800 --> 00:07:10.760] I'm John.
[00:07:11.080 --> 00:07:11.880] It's water.
[00:07:11.840 --> 00:07:13.160] Right, it all disappeared.
[00:07:13.120 --> 00:07:15.200] Yeah, I was, there was really no thoughts.
[00:07:14.440 --> 00:07:20.400] I'm now reflecting back on that state of consciousness when there was no thoughts, really.
[00:07:14.840 --> 00:07:21.440] There's no separation.
[00:07:21.920 --> 00:07:33.840] And what I realized, I realized that I was a manifestation of the one being as are you, as is everything, because that's all there is, is the one being.
[00:07:33.840 --> 00:07:35.840] I realized I'd always existed.
[00:07:36.160 --> 00:07:38.400] There was no beginning and there's no end.
[00:07:38.960 --> 00:07:41.520] And I realized that life's this adventure.
[00:07:41.920 --> 00:07:45.520] And it's like, I can make it whatever I want it to be.
[00:07:45.520 --> 00:07:48.240] I can create whatever I want to create.
[00:07:48.240 --> 00:07:50.640] And so that was so life-changing.
[00:07:50.640 --> 00:07:51.760] That changed my life.
[00:07:51.760 --> 00:07:53.760] So there's a funny story about this.
[00:07:53.760 --> 00:07:59.040] So I'm coming, I'm coming down on the trip and I'm walking around this neighborhood now.
[00:07:59.040 --> 00:08:02.240] And I run into my East Coast somewhere?
[00:08:02.240 --> 00:08:03.520] No, no, I'm in Austin, Texas.
[00:08:03.520 --> 00:08:04.400] Oh, in Austin, yeah.
[00:08:04.400 --> 00:08:04.960] Yeah.
[00:08:04.960 --> 00:08:09.280] I'm walking around and I run into my philosophy professor that I idolized.
[00:08:09.280 --> 00:08:12.800] He was my intellectual hero, a guy named Bob Solomon, Robert C.
[00:08:12.800 --> 00:08:13.360] Solomon.
[00:08:13.360 --> 00:08:16.880] He's written 40 or 50 books on philosophy.
[00:08:16.880 --> 00:08:18.400] And he was an existentialist.
[00:08:18.400 --> 00:08:23.520] And he was at that time very influenced by Sartre and Camus and Nietzsche and Kierkegaard.
[00:08:23.920 --> 00:08:28.720] And he believed life was absurd, that there was no purpose and meaning to life at all.
[00:08:28.720 --> 00:08:30.240] And so I ran into him.
[00:08:30.240 --> 00:08:32.960] And I mean, I think I ran into him.
[00:08:32.960 --> 00:08:34.320] I think he was there.
[00:08:34.320 --> 00:08:36.800] I had a conversation with him.
[00:08:36.800 --> 00:08:39.600] And I asked him, I said, Professor Solomon, it's John Mackey.
[00:08:39.600 --> 00:08:40.480] I'm one of your students.
[00:08:40.480 --> 00:08:42.240] I've been taking a few courses from you.
[00:08:42.240 --> 00:08:45.680] And he kind of vaguely recognized me, but he didn't know my name.
[00:08:45.680 --> 00:08:47.840] And I said, so, Professor Solomon, I have two questions.
[00:08:47.840 --> 00:08:56.240] First question is, you know, you teach that life's absurd, that there's absolutely no meaning whatsoever to life, that we're just sort of thrown into here.
[00:08:56.240 --> 00:09:00.360] It's all been random chance, and we're going to die, and that's it.
[00:09:00.360 --> 00:09:02.120] Our consciousness is extinguished.
[00:09:02.200 --> 00:09:03.480] There's just really no purpose.
[00:08:59.520 --> 00:09:05.720] But you take sort of a romantic stance to that.
[00:09:05.880 --> 00:09:12.200] You said there's no real objective meaning, but we can make something up so we can be romantic.
[00:09:12.200 --> 00:09:18.440] We can sort of throw our fist against a cruel reality and make our life into an adventure.
[00:09:18.440 --> 00:09:19.960] And I said, Is that what you believe, sir?
[00:09:19.960 --> 00:09:21.800] And he said, Yes, that's what I believe.
[00:09:21.800 --> 00:09:22.680] And I said, I thought so.
[00:09:23.000 --> 00:09:24.920] But let me ask you a second question.
[00:09:24.920 --> 00:09:26.760] Are you very happy?
[00:09:27.400 --> 00:09:31.080] And he looked at me and he said, No, I'm not very happy.
[00:09:31.560 --> 00:09:32.280] And he looked at me.
[00:09:33.080 --> 00:09:33.400] Yeah.
[00:09:33.400 --> 00:09:35.960] He looked at me and I looked at him and we went our separate ways.
[00:09:36.520 --> 00:09:42.360] And what I realized after that point is I just had this, I was still having actually this incredible meaning you were in the trip.
[00:09:42.520 --> 00:09:52.360] Well, I was coming down, but what I don't know for sure, was he still part of that trip or had I come down enough where he was actually, you know, what's the difference?
[00:09:52.360 --> 00:09:53.960] I mean, it's all a dream anyway.
[00:09:53.960 --> 00:09:55.480] It's all my anyway.
[00:09:55.480 --> 00:09:57.000] He's, I'm having this conversation.
[00:09:57.320 --> 00:09:58.760] I think I was down enough.
[00:09:58.920 --> 00:10:00.440] Point is that changed my life.
[00:10:00.680 --> 00:10:05.240] And you know what I started doing after I had, I stuck out my thumb and I started hitchhiking.
[00:10:05.240 --> 00:10:06.120] Across America?
[00:10:06.120 --> 00:10:07.000] Not across America.
[00:10:07.000 --> 00:10:09.000] I just, I was open for adventure.
[00:10:09.000 --> 00:10:13.480] A guy picks me up and he says, he says, son, where do you want to go?
[00:10:13.480 --> 00:10:15.560] And I said, wherever you're going.
[00:10:15.560 --> 00:10:16.360] I don't really care.
[00:10:16.360 --> 00:10:17.880] So he says, well, I'm going home.
[00:10:18.440 --> 00:10:19.160] Great.
[00:10:19.800 --> 00:10:23.240] He drives a couple of miles up the road and says, this is home.
[00:10:23.240 --> 00:10:23.960] I'm getting out.
[00:10:24.120 --> 00:10:24.760] I'm looking around.
[00:10:24.760 --> 00:10:26.120] I'm thinking, okay.
[00:10:26.120 --> 00:10:27.800] So then I start walking back.
[00:10:27.960 --> 00:10:30.840] And that's actually when I ran into Professor Solomon.
[00:10:30.840 --> 00:10:38.120] Anyhow, after that, Mark, pretty soon after that, I moved into this vegetarian commune co-op.
[00:10:38.360 --> 00:10:40.840] And I wasn't vegetarian at that time.
[00:10:40.840 --> 00:10:43.000] I really didn't know much about food at all.
[00:10:43.000 --> 00:10:46.320] I didn't eat vegetables or I really ate the standard American diet.
[00:10:46.320 --> 00:10:47.760] I was a junk food eater.
[00:10:47.760 --> 00:10:50.400] I moved in and I had my food consciousness awakened.
[00:10:44.840 --> 00:10:51.280] I'm almost to put it.
[00:10:51.840 --> 00:10:53.360] I started to cook.
[00:10:53.360 --> 00:10:55.760] I learned about natural and organic foods.
[00:10:56.080 --> 00:11:02.880] For the first time, I began to realize, my gosh, I'm not just a machine that needs fuel, driving to McDonald's and fuel up.
[00:11:02.880 --> 00:11:04.080] I'm a living being.
[00:11:04.080 --> 00:11:08.160] I need to nourish my cells with nourishing food.
[00:11:08.160 --> 00:11:10.800] And that was when it began.
[00:11:10.960 --> 00:11:13.600] I went to work for a small natural food store.
[00:11:14.240 --> 00:11:15.280] I worked there for a few months.
[00:11:15.280 --> 00:11:17.840] And I came back home to the co-op.
[00:11:17.840 --> 00:11:25.680] My girlfriend, Renee, I went to Renee and I said, Hey, Renee, what do you think if we opened up our own natural food store?
[00:11:25.680 --> 00:11:27.120] What do you think about that?
[00:11:27.120 --> 00:11:29.920] And she said, I think that'd be cool.
[00:11:30.960 --> 00:11:32.160] So we did it.
[00:11:32.160 --> 00:11:35.200] I was 23 and she was 19 at the time.
[00:11:35.360 --> 00:11:36.240] That's incredible.
[00:11:36.240 --> 00:11:38.000] So we didn't know what we were doing.
[00:11:38.160 --> 00:11:41.920] But let's just say we made a lot of mistakes and I was a fast learner.
[00:11:41.920 --> 00:11:43.840] First store was called Safer Way.
[00:11:43.840 --> 00:11:47.040] And Mark, it was so idealistically pure.
[00:11:47.040 --> 00:11:48.560] It was a vegetarian store.
[00:11:48.560 --> 00:11:49.680] We didn't sell alcohol.
[00:11:49.680 --> 00:11:50.960] We didn't sell coffee.
[00:11:50.960 --> 00:11:52.960] We didn't sell sugar.
[00:11:52.960 --> 00:11:54.960] We didn't sell white flour.
[00:11:54.960 --> 00:11:56.880] We were very, very pure.
[00:11:56.880 --> 00:11:57.680] Love that.
[00:11:57.680 --> 00:11:59.760] We didn't do much business.
[00:12:00.400 --> 00:12:02.080] Safer Way really struggled.
[00:12:02.080 --> 00:12:15.840] And then we relocated it, merged with another small natural food store, changed the name to Whole Foods Market, started selling meat, seafood, beer and wine, coffee, tea, sugar, and some products with white flour.
[00:12:16.160 --> 00:12:18.480] But then natural organic focus.
[00:12:18.480 --> 00:12:19.600] And it took off.
[00:12:19.600 --> 00:12:23.200] It became the highest volume natural food store in the United States six months after it opened.
[00:12:23.200 --> 00:12:24.240] It was a huge success.
[00:12:24.400 --> 00:12:26.880] I've driven by there and it's downtown Austin, right?
[00:12:26.880 --> 00:12:27.280] Yeah.
[00:12:27.440 --> 00:12:27.680] Yeah.
[00:12:27.680 --> 00:12:28.400] Amazing.
[00:12:28.400 --> 00:12:29.440] I had a similar experience.
[00:12:29.440 --> 00:12:34.760] I actually had a psychedelic experience in college, very similar to that.
[00:12:34.760 --> 00:12:38.680] And then I moved into a house with eight vegetarians.
[00:12:38.680 --> 00:12:38.920] Really?
[00:12:38.920 --> 00:12:39.320] You're kidding?
[00:12:39.480 --> 00:12:40.360] In Ithaca, yeah.
[00:12:40.760 --> 00:12:42.440] And that was where Moosewood Cookbook.
[00:12:42.680 --> 00:12:43.720] Moosewood Cookbook.
[00:12:44.600 --> 00:12:45.480] That was one of my cookbooks.
[00:12:45.480 --> 00:12:45.800] That's right.
[00:12:45.800 --> 00:12:47.720] Well, Moosewood Restaurant was in Ithaca.
[00:12:47.720 --> 00:12:48.520] That's right.
[00:12:48.520 --> 00:12:50.040] And so we used to go there.
[00:12:50.040 --> 00:12:51.880] And then every night we had to cook.
[00:12:51.880 --> 00:12:55.560] And we took our backyard, which was we rented a house in town.
[00:12:55.560 --> 00:12:57.000] And I had a room for $100.
[00:12:57.640 --> 00:12:58.280] How old are you?
[00:12:58.440 --> 00:13:00.760] I was 19, you know.
[00:13:00.760 --> 00:13:05.640] And we took the backyard, we tore up the grass and we planted a whole garden.
[00:13:05.640 --> 00:13:08.520] One of the guys, we had these maple trees on the street in front of us.
[00:13:08.520 --> 00:13:12.360] He was tapping the maple trees and we made like a pint of maple syrup.
[00:13:12.360 --> 00:13:13.160] Oh my gosh.
[00:13:13.160 --> 00:13:14.520] And we had to cook every night.
[00:13:14.520 --> 00:13:15.640] And so we rotated.
[00:13:15.640 --> 00:13:18.040] So every night we had basically a family dinner.
[00:13:18.040 --> 00:13:21.640] And one of us was a chief chef and then one of us was like the helper chef.
[00:13:21.640 --> 00:13:22.120] Right.
[00:13:22.120 --> 00:13:27.000] And then we got fresh, delicious vegetarian food every night.
[00:13:27.640 --> 00:13:29.160] How long did you stay in that community?
[00:13:29.160 --> 00:13:30.840] We lived together for a couple of years.
[00:13:30.840 --> 00:13:31.320] Yeah.
[00:13:31.320 --> 00:13:37.800] And then I ended up moving on to an abandoned commune in Ithaca and lived in a yurt with no electricity or running water.
[00:13:37.960 --> 00:13:39.080] We were both were hippies.
[00:13:39.720 --> 00:13:40.760] That's right.
[00:13:41.080 --> 00:13:43.160] No, like there's a no running water.
[00:13:43.560 --> 00:13:48.040] I had to take my water from a well like a quarter mile away with these two five-gallon buckets.
[00:13:48.040 --> 00:13:50.120] What motivated you to become a doctor?
[00:13:50.280 --> 00:13:54.120] Well, I don't know if you know this john, but I was a student of Buddhism.
[00:13:54.120 --> 00:13:55.400] So you had that first?
[00:13:55.400 --> 00:13:55.720] Yeah.
[00:13:55.720 --> 00:13:57.400] So I was studying Buddhism and I did.
[00:13:57.480 --> 00:13:58.200] Do you still practice?
[00:13:58.200 --> 00:13:59.720] Do you do vipassana still?
[00:13:59.720 --> 00:14:05.760] I do meditate, and I still, a lot of the principles are kind of ingrained in me as sort of just my way of doing it.
[00:14:05.840 --> 00:14:07.960] You've got a more eclectic approach now.
[00:14:08.120 --> 00:14:08.520] Yeah.
[00:14:08.520 --> 00:14:17.600] And uh, I was ended up uh taking a course called the Medicine Buddha and about, you know, the kind of the healing framework of Buddhism, which is really healing of the mind.
[00:14:17.840 --> 00:14:21.760] Yes, and and I was like, Well, I don't really want to become a monk, so what are we going to do?
[00:14:21.760 --> 00:14:39.920] So, I graduated, you know, basically with what am I going to do with a degree in Buddhism, you know, and I ended up my degree in philosophy, but yeah, taking a hike for a week in the Shenandoah Mountains, and I took Moby Dick and just me and myself and I and ended up realizing maybe I should try to go to medical school and see if I liked it.
[00:14:39.920 --> 00:14:42.720] And if I didn't like it, I would quit, you know, but so far, so good.
[00:14:43.440 --> 00:14:46.560] You have a doctor, either a parent's doctor?
[00:14:46.640 --> 00:14:47.760] No, no, nobody.
[00:14:48.320 --> 00:14:57.520] The story was that my great, my grandfather's grandfather from Russia was the doctor to the czar last czar, but I think it's probably made up.
[00:14:57.520 --> 00:14:58.640] I don't believe it.
[00:14:58.960 --> 00:15:02.000] So, so you were you were not pushed into no, no, no.
[00:15:02.720 --> 00:15:08.240] You will say you were led by your heart or your soul, your deeper spirits.
[00:15:08.320 --> 00:15:13.680] Yeah, and I was studying all these ancient healing systems, and I learned Chinese and studied Chinese medicine.
[00:15:13.680 --> 00:15:16.560] And so I was very much thinking differently from the beginning.
[00:15:16.720 --> 00:15:18.400] Mark, you have to write your story.
[00:15:18.400 --> 00:15:18.960] I know, I will.
[00:15:19.840 --> 00:15:20.960] You've got a lot of books out there.
[00:15:21.200 --> 00:15:24.080] You know, I always tell people everybody should write a memoir.
[00:15:24.320 --> 00:15:32.240] Because in some ways, only looking retrospectively, a lot of patterns and threads came together in writing the book.
[00:15:32.240 --> 00:15:34.880] It's like, wow, I never quite thought of it that way before.
[00:15:34.880 --> 00:15:37.600] You know, as you know, when you write, it's a discovery process.
[00:15:38.480 --> 00:15:42.320] You're creative and you're discovering things.
[00:15:42.560 --> 00:15:46.880] It's hard, but you are discovering things that you didn't necessarily put together before.
[00:15:46.880 --> 00:15:50.240] And a memoir is also a gift to your family, your children, your descendants.
[00:15:50.800 --> 00:15:51.680] Yeah, it's true.
[00:15:51.680 --> 00:15:53.200] I think, you know, you're right, John.
[00:15:53.360 --> 00:16:03.240] You can't always tell going forward where things are connecting, but looking back, you can see all the threads and all the choices and all the decisions that led you to the moment that you're doing what you're doing.
[00:16:03.560 --> 00:16:11.320] It helps you actually, I think, moving forward as well, because when you're clear about those patterns, then you have less sort of uncertainty.
[00:16:11.320 --> 00:16:12.680] I think people live a lot in fear.
[00:16:12.680 --> 00:16:14.040] I think it's one of the challenges.
[00:16:14.280 --> 00:16:16.840] Fear is what keeps people from following their hero's journey.
[00:16:17.160 --> 00:16:20.840] I think we're all called to a hero's journey and all in our own unique ways.
[00:16:21.240 --> 00:16:22.920] But, you know, we're too scared.
[00:16:22.920 --> 00:16:28.600] It's scared we might fail, scared of ridicule, scared our parents won't improve, blah, blah, blah, blah.
[00:16:28.600 --> 00:16:29.800] I just did it anyway.
[00:16:29.800 --> 00:16:30.200] Yeah.
[00:16:30.200 --> 00:16:31.240] And so did you.
[00:16:31.240 --> 00:16:31.480] Yeah.
[00:16:31.480 --> 00:16:33.640] I don't know what makes some people like that and others not.
[00:16:33.800 --> 00:16:34.680] I was always like that.
[00:16:35.000 --> 00:16:44.360] I actually have a title for my memoir, which I started, but I haven't really finished yet, which is called Notes from God and Stumbling Toward the Truth.
[00:16:44.360 --> 00:16:45.160] And it's basically.
[00:16:45.640 --> 00:16:46.280] You shouldn't tell that.
[00:16:46.280 --> 00:16:47.800] Don't that's such a great title.
[00:16:47.800 --> 00:16:49.400] Keep that title to yourself.
[00:16:49.400 --> 00:16:50.120] That's okay.
[00:16:50.520 --> 00:16:52.520] You can actually, you can write Moby Dick.
[00:16:53.080 --> 00:16:54.280] Nobody can copyright a title.
[00:16:54.280 --> 00:16:54.840] So it's okay.
[00:16:54.840 --> 00:17:03.320] But the idea is basically that, you know, when you're moving through life, there's these little doors that open, these little post-it notes from God, let's call them.
[00:17:03.800 --> 00:17:05.640] And you can choose to go through or not.
[00:17:06.120 --> 00:17:09.000] Somebody gave you a tab of acid and you're like, I'm going to try this.
[00:17:09.000 --> 00:17:10.520] And look what happened.
[00:17:10.520 --> 00:17:12.440] And then, you know, you needed a job.
[00:17:12.440 --> 00:17:19.880] So you went, you know, you worked in a natural food store and just one thing connected the next, but you chose to actually do those things.
[00:17:19.880 --> 00:17:26.920] And I think people live less from fear and more from love, which is why I love the title of your new company, the name Love, Life.
[00:17:27.240 --> 00:17:28.840] It's like an accident.
[00:17:28.840 --> 00:17:29.800] No, it's not an accident.
[00:17:29.800 --> 00:17:34.920] And those moments we often don't pay attention to in our life, those little notes from God.
[00:17:34.920 --> 00:17:40.440] But I think the more you pay attention to those and listen to those things, the better your life's going to be.
[00:17:40.440 --> 00:17:49.520] And I think what's happening around chronic disease in America is that people are not listening to their bodies or not listening to their conversation that they should be having with their soul.
[00:17:49.520 --> 00:17:58.560] And so they end up in this narcotized, polluted self that's sick and unable to think clearly and feel right.
[00:17:58.960 --> 00:17:59.280] 100%.
[00:17:59.360 --> 00:18:03.120] You know what I think about the notes from God is that they're always being written.
[00:18:03.120 --> 00:18:07.120] And you can, even if you haven't been listening to them before, you can start listening to it.
[00:18:07.440 --> 00:18:09.760] You just have to, it's always so you just have to quiet.
[00:18:09.760 --> 00:18:12.080] You have to be still, be quiet.
[00:18:12.080 --> 00:18:13.600] And it's always speaking.
[00:18:13.600 --> 00:18:16.640] And even if we make bad decisions, there's new notes.
[00:18:16.640 --> 00:18:22.640] It's like that's always waiting for us to listen to it and follow it.
[00:18:22.640 --> 00:18:26.560] I had been thinking about Love Life or something like that for a long time.
[00:18:27.440 --> 00:18:28.720] Just for people listening, what is Love Life?
[00:18:29.040 --> 00:18:34.880] Love Life is a holistic health center, a one-stop holistic health wellness center.
[00:18:34.880 --> 00:18:35.440] It's big.
[00:18:36.080 --> 00:18:39.360] Our first flagship location here is in the LA area.
[00:18:39.360 --> 00:18:42.480] It's down in El Segundo, Manhattan Beach.
[00:18:42.720 --> 00:18:45.920] It's got, it's an old Best Buy, so it's big.
[00:18:45.920 --> 00:18:48.400] So we have 45,000 square feet in there.
[00:18:48.400 --> 00:18:52.240] So just real quickly, you go in and, of course, I want to get you there.
[00:18:52.240 --> 00:18:56.000] I'd love to give you a tour and see what you're doing.
[00:18:56.160 --> 00:18:58.320] You go in, first, we have a healthy cafe.
[00:18:58.320 --> 00:19:04.080] So healthy food is one of the foundations for people to be as healthy as possible.
[00:19:04.080 --> 00:19:06.000] So starting with food.
[00:19:06.240 --> 00:19:14.000] Then we have sort of this whole community space, co-working space, but also a big gather room, community room where we can do lectures.
[00:19:14.000 --> 00:19:28.000] So let's say you were to come do a talk on functional medicine, then we would invite members and the outside community and we can we can get in that expanding it in the cafe, we probably get 75 people in there pretty comfortably.
[00:19:28.000 --> 00:21:08.560] Then you go into a fitness center so we've got like the category most people try to fit us into is like a gym because we have a really nice gym yeah but of course that's just one little small part of what we're doing and then in that fitness center we're sort of state-of-the-art like i think equinox in a way sort of upscale lots of the most recent cool technologies in there we have a physical therapy room we have a physical therapist on staff we really think physical therapy for many people that have injuries is very very efficacious for your pickleball injury well uh yes i we have lots of uh sort of biohacking stuff which i'll get to in a sec uh speaking of pickleball we have three pickleball courts there so i did hurt myself on the court one of the one of the biohacks we have there's a pymph machine so i went i did that a couple times and i think that's helped that's pulse electromagnetic frequency which exactly helps to sort of reduce inflammation yes yes it does and get i think it helps a little bit of the circulation and starts to move some of the the inflammation out of the out of the injured injured injured my in my case my calf so then we've got a yoga studio we've got a uh pilates studio in that yoga studio we do breath work besides yoga we do breath work we can do we do sound baths we do meditation classes we're we're about all things to help people be the healthiest version of themselves physically emotionally and spiritually those are all part of the love life vision we have a really nice spa so for you can do things you'd do in any really nice spa with lots of different kinds of massages, facials, wraps.
[00:21:09.520 --> 00:21:11.360] It's not a medical spa per se.
[00:21:11.360 --> 00:21:17.600] We're not doing botox or other other type of medical injunctions in that way.
[00:21:17.600 --> 00:21:21.280] We have all this recovery stuff in all these sort of biohacks.
[00:21:21.280 --> 00:21:23.280] So we've got our pimp machines.
[00:21:23.280 --> 00:21:26.880] We've got two hyperbaric oxygen chambers.
[00:21:26.880 --> 00:21:28.640] We've got cryotherapy.
[00:21:28.640 --> 00:21:31.040] We've got four red light beds.
[00:21:31.040 --> 00:21:33.520] We've got four infrared sauna rooms.
[00:21:33.520 --> 00:21:35.040] We have a huge steam room.
[00:21:35.040 --> 00:21:37.920] We have six cold plunges.
[00:21:37.920 --> 00:21:40.000] And we have the biggest sauna you've probably ever seen.
[00:21:40.000 --> 00:21:42.960] And jam like 40 people without sauna if we had to.
[00:21:42.960 --> 00:21:44.400] So those are for the recovery things.
[00:21:44.400 --> 00:21:50.080] And then, of course, what the real thing that sets us apart is that we have, you know, we have primary health care.
[00:21:50.080 --> 00:21:51.200] We have a center.
[00:21:51.760 --> 00:21:55.520] We do very comprehensive testing like function health blood tests.
[00:21:55.520 --> 00:21:57.360] We do a comprehensive blood test.
[00:21:57.360 --> 00:22:00.880] We add a gut test because we work with partnering with Viome.
[00:22:00.880 --> 00:22:02.240] So we do a gut test.
[00:22:02.240 --> 00:22:03.840] We do oral tests.
[00:22:05.040 --> 00:22:06.320] We're doing checking the feces.
[00:22:06.320 --> 00:22:07.840] We're doing a VO2 max.
[00:22:07.840 --> 00:22:08.880] That's your fitness level.
[00:22:08.880 --> 00:22:09.200] Yes.
[00:22:09.200 --> 00:22:10.560] Trying the grip strength.
[00:22:12.080 --> 00:22:13.200] We're doing lots of stuff.
[00:22:13.200 --> 00:22:13.920] Body composition.
[00:22:13.920 --> 00:22:14.800] Yes, body composition.
[00:22:14.800 --> 00:22:15.760] We have a DEXA scan.
[00:22:15.920 --> 00:22:17.120] That's really one-stop shopping.
[00:22:17.360 --> 00:22:17.600] It is.
[00:22:17.760 --> 00:22:18.800] The whole thing is health and wellness.
[00:22:19.040 --> 00:22:27.920] One thing we don't have, although we have access to MRI because we have a deal with Prinova on that one, like functions, bought a company there.
[00:22:28.320 --> 00:22:38.000] But I think in our next center, which we plan on that being in Austin, although we don't have the location yet, we will put the MRI in because we really want to have that executive health.
[00:22:38.000 --> 00:22:47.840] So you can come and do everything there, bring a dermatologist in, maybe do a colonoscopy, and just so people can get a complete report card in depth.
[00:22:47.800 --> 00:22:52.160] So, but after you get the testing, now we sort of know where you're at.
[00:22:52.480 --> 00:22:54.520] You get your, you know, your baseline.
[00:22:54.520 --> 00:22:56.000] But that's a starting point.
[00:22:56.000 --> 00:23:01.640] I mean, unfortunately, I've learned kind of the hard way: knowledge is not enough to get many.
[00:22:59.840 --> 00:23:05.160] Some people get the knowledge, that's all they need, they never look back.
[00:23:05.400 --> 00:23:10.760] Yeah, others, that's that's interesting, you know, but they don't really want to change anything they're doing.
[00:23:10.760 --> 00:23:12.600] I want to eat my ice cream, that's right.
[00:23:12.600 --> 00:23:16.920] I want to eat my ice cream, it tastes good, I like it, and I feel okay.
[00:23:16.920 --> 00:23:29.880] Yeah, if you're feeling anxious or down or mentally foggy, it's easy to blame stress, but sometimes the root cause runs much deeper all the way to your DNA.
[00:23:29.880 --> 00:23:37.400] There's a gene called MTHFR that plays a huge role in how your body processes folate.
[00:23:37.400 --> 00:23:41.560] It's a key nutrient for making neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine.
[00:23:41.560 --> 00:23:46.920] And if you carry a specific variant for this gene, your brain may struggle to stay balanced.
[00:23:46.920 --> 00:23:55.960] It also affects a key process in your body called methylation, which has many, many things it does in your body, including detoxification and neurotransmitter function.
[00:23:55.960 --> 00:24:06.840] And if you have this problem with methylation, it leads to a buildup of something called homocysteine in your blood, a compound linked to inflammation, to mood disorders, even cognitive decline like dementia.
[00:24:06.840 --> 00:24:13.400] And I see it all the time in my patients: low energy, anxiety, brain fog, and it's often tied to this one gene.
[00:24:13.400 --> 00:24:19.640] But the good news is you can test for it and then you can support the function of this gene with the right nutrients.
[00:24:19.640 --> 00:24:21.480] And that's why we built function health.
[00:24:21.480 --> 00:24:28.680] It gives you access to over 160 advanced lab tests, including genetic testing for the MTHRFR gene and many others.
[00:24:28.680 --> 00:24:32.840] I use it myself, and I use it with every patient who wants real answers.
[00:24:32.840 --> 00:24:38.440] Go to functionhealth.com/slash mark and use the code hymen100 to get $100 off.
[00:24:38.440 --> 00:24:41.240] And this only works for the first thousand people to get it this week.
[00:24:41.240 --> 00:24:42.520] So sign up right away.
[00:24:42.520 --> 00:24:44.320] Your mood isn't random.
[00:24:44.320 --> 00:24:46.080] Your genes are talking.
[00:24:46.080 --> 00:24:48.160] Function helps you listen.
[00:24:44.760 --> 00:24:52.240] After my recent back surgery, I was looking for ways to gently support my body's recovery.
[00:24:52.480 --> 00:24:56.720] And one of the most helpful tools I found is the infrared PEMF mat from Bond Charge.
[00:24:56.720 --> 00:25:04.320] It uses low-level infrared heat combined with pulsed electromagnetic fields to support circulation, ease tension, and encourage the body's natural repair processes.
[00:25:04.320 --> 00:25:12.560] I've incorporated it into my routine after physical therapy and long days on my feet, and I found it to be a helpful part of managing post-surgical discomfort and promoting relaxation.
[00:25:12.560 --> 00:25:17.120] It's simple to use, just lie down, breathe, and let the warmth and pulses do their work.
[00:25:17.120 --> 00:25:21.360] I've noticed it helps me wind down and feel more at ease, especially in my lower back.
[00:25:21.360 --> 00:25:27.120] If you're navigating pain, stiffness, or just want to support your recovery at home, it's a thoughtful tool to explore.
[00:25:27.120 --> 00:25:31.520] Head to bondcharge.com and use code DRMARC for 15% off your order.
[00:25:31.520 --> 00:25:36.080] That's B-O-N-C-H-A-R-G-E.com, code D-R-Mark.
[00:25:41.120 --> 00:25:47.280] Most people, actually, I found, actually, don't want to get tested because they don't want to know because they don't want to change.
[00:25:47.280 --> 00:25:50.640] Anyway, so once we've got that, we now have a welcare team.
[00:25:50.640 --> 00:25:54.880] We have a medical doctor that is function medicine trained.
[00:25:54.880 --> 00:25:57.280] We have a nurse practitioner.
[00:25:57.280 --> 00:25:58.720] She can do IVs.
[00:25:59.120 --> 00:26:00.000] Well, she can do everything.
[00:26:00.000 --> 00:26:03.120] The doctor can really just, we don't have to pay quite as much.
[00:26:03.840 --> 00:26:09.440] We've got a registered dietitian, nutritionist who really knows her stuff.
[00:26:09.440 --> 00:26:11.840] We've got medical assistants.
[00:26:11.840 --> 00:26:14.320] We also have DEXA scan operators.
[00:26:14.320 --> 00:26:15.760] We've got a whole welcare team.
[00:26:15.760 --> 00:26:23.840] And so then the whole idea is: first, we test, then we create a plan, and then we track.
[00:26:23.840 --> 00:26:34.760] We track through additional testing, but also we can download into our app their Auroring results, their Apple watch results, Garmin.
[00:26:34.840 --> 00:26:38.440] We've got like, I don't know, 10 different devices we can put in.
[00:26:38.520 --> 00:26:41.320] Continuous glucose monitor, you can put that data in there.
[00:26:41.320 --> 00:26:45.320] That's another thing we test, by the way, is we have people wear that for a couple of weeks.
[00:26:45.320 --> 00:26:49.400] So we get all that information out, but mostly it's about the care team.
[00:26:49.560 --> 00:26:52.280] Problem you know, Mark, what's wrong with our medical system?
[00:26:52.280 --> 00:26:54.680] Is basically, I call it, it's a plumber's model.
[00:26:54.680 --> 00:26:55.160] Yeah.
[00:26:55.160 --> 00:26:58.280] It's when you get a plumber, when the sink's broken.
[00:27:00.520 --> 00:27:01.080] Exactly.
[00:27:01.080 --> 00:27:04.200] Most people don't go to a doctor until something breaks.
[00:27:04.680 --> 00:27:07.880] And that might have been fine 150 years ago.
[00:27:07.880 --> 00:27:12.440] But today, chronic diseases, not infectious diseases, are what are killing us.
[00:27:12.920 --> 00:27:15.240] And so we know heart disease is our number one killer.
[00:27:15.240 --> 00:27:16.680] Then we got cancer.
[00:27:16.680 --> 00:27:25.160] We know medical care itself is one of the leading causes for death for too many prescription drugs, mistakes made, infections they get in hospitals, et cetera, et cetera.
[00:27:25.240 --> 00:27:25.640] That's true.
[00:27:25.640 --> 00:27:28.280] People don't realize that, but I think it's the third or fourth leading cause of death.
[00:27:28.760 --> 00:27:30.040] Third leading cause of death.
[00:27:30.040 --> 00:27:39.080] And obesity, Americans, I'm sad to say, is that 73% of Americans are overweight, 73% and 43% are obese.
[00:27:40.280 --> 00:27:41.800] And the trend lines are continuing.
[00:27:41.800 --> 00:27:43.400] It's not like we've peaked.
[00:27:43.400 --> 00:27:44.600] It's still going up.
[00:27:44.600 --> 00:27:47.240] The standard American diet is killing people.
[00:27:47.240 --> 00:27:52.440] Yeah, I mean, when I graduated from medical school in 1987, there wasn't a single state that had an obesity rate over 20%.
[00:27:52.440 --> 00:27:55.080] Now there's not one under 30 and most are over 40.
[00:27:55.080 --> 00:27:56.680] Is Colorado and Utah over 30?
[00:27:58.120 --> 00:27:59.160] They were the two best.
[00:27:59.960 --> 00:28:00.920] Last time I looked at it, yeah.
[00:28:01.080 --> 00:28:02.840] Yeah, I think they're popping over 30 now.
[00:28:02.840 --> 00:28:05.480] Well, those trend lines keep going up.
[00:28:05.480 --> 00:28:13.000] And basically, America, the United States, as you know, spends far more than any other country on healthcare.
[00:28:13.000 --> 00:28:15.840] We spend almost 18% of our GDP.
[00:28:16.000 --> 00:28:17.280] That's $5 trillion.
[00:28:17.280 --> 00:28:18.080] Yes, exactly.
[00:28:18.080 --> 00:28:21.520] But where are we in terms of longevity?
[00:28:21.920 --> 00:28:24.640] When I checked it out today, we were 48th.
[00:28:24.640 --> 00:28:24.880] Yeah.
[00:28:25.360 --> 00:28:29.200] So most money on health care, we have terrible results.
[00:28:29.200 --> 00:28:30.240] I think we're worse than two guys.
[00:28:30.320 --> 00:28:31.920] I think we spend $184 a year.
[00:28:32.080 --> 00:28:36.240] So I'm saying all that because Love Life, we think, is one of the solutions.
[00:28:36.640 --> 00:28:39.280] We want people to join Love Life.
[00:28:39.280 --> 00:28:41.600] We want them to enter into our medical programs.
[00:28:41.600 --> 00:28:42.800] We do primary health care.
[00:28:42.800 --> 00:28:43.760] We'll see them.
[00:28:43.760 --> 00:28:56.080] It's not a coincierage program, but besides the doctor times to go over your test results and work on your plans, we have 10 acute visits a year you can use that are part of your membership as part of the membership.
[00:28:56.080 --> 00:28:56.640] Exactly.
[00:28:57.360 --> 00:28:58.560] I'll tell you one other story.
[00:28:58.560 --> 00:28:59.840] So how I got to this thing.
[00:28:59.840 --> 00:29:03.680] So at Whole Foods, we were self-insured.
[00:29:03.680 --> 00:29:12.400] So we paid, means we had United Healthcare might have been the administrator and they might have had a network, but we were actually paying all the cost of it.
[00:29:12.400 --> 00:29:20.320] What we discovered was, as we tracked it, was that 10% of our employees, team members, were spending 90% of our health care dollars.
[00:29:20.400 --> 00:29:20.800] That's right.
[00:29:20.800 --> 00:29:24.000] So we began to think, how can we take these 10%?
[00:29:24.000 --> 00:29:26.720] If we can get them healthier, that's going to be a win-win-win, right?
[00:29:26.720 --> 00:29:29.600] It'd be good for them, and it'll be good for Whole Foods.
[00:29:29.600 --> 00:29:29.920] That's right.
[00:29:29.920 --> 00:29:34.400] And it'll be good for everyone else as well, their families and everyone else connected to it.
[00:29:34.400 --> 00:29:38.000] So we began to create what we call a total health immersion.
[00:29:38.000 --> 00:29:44.720] And we worked with four different sets of four doctors, and we worked four different times a year.
[00:29:44.720 --> 00:29:48.240] And we would invite any team member to apply for it.
[00:29:48.240 --> 00:29:50.160] We'd cover all the costs.
[00:29:50.160 --> 00:29:54.000] And of course, we favored those who we knew were in our magic 10%.
[00:29:54.160 --> 00:29:56.480] What ended up happening was pretty extraordinary.
[00:29:56.880 --> 00:29:59.200] We'd go in a retreat setting for a week.
[00:29:59.200 --> 00:30:03.240] And my biggest takeaway from the retreats was: did you know?
[00:29:59.920 --> 00:30:06.920] I mean, you know this, the human body is far more resilient than I realized.
[00:30:07.240 --> 00:30:07.880] 100%.
[00:30:07.880 --> 00:30:11.320] If we just stop poisoning it, it starts to heal.
[00:30:11.320 --> 00:30:11.880] Bingo.
[00:30:11.880 --> 00:30:12.680] It's incredible.
[00:30:13.560 --> 00:30:18.280] I had not known that personally because I'd sort of been on this gradual health journey for decades, right?
[00:30:18.600 --> 00:30:20.760] So I never had any radical improvements.
[00:30:20.760 --> 00:30:28.200] But what we saw in those weeks were people that, if they were obese, they generally lose seven to 10 pounds in that week.
[00:30:28.200 --> 00:30:35.080] We saw type 2 diabetics that could actually, in even just a week, normalize and get off their meds.
[00:30:35.800 --> 00:30:42.600] We saw people's cholesterol drop 30 to 40 points in that week, and we saw blood pressure and sometimes drop 30 to 40 points.
[00:30:42.760 --> 00:30:47.160] That's what people don't realize, John, is that people are just a few days away from feeling better.
[00:30:47.160 --> 00:30:47.640] They are.
[00:30:47.640 --> 00:30:48.440] And they don't know it.
[00:30:48.440 --> 00:30:48.920] They don't know it.
[00:30:49.080 --> 00:30:50.760] It's like Dorothy in the ruby red slippers.
[00:30:51.080 --> 00:30:51.400] That's right.
[00:30:51.400 --> 00:30:55.000] That's what's so powerful about a type of retreat-like setting.
[00:30:55.000 --> 00:30:57.240] Because now, here's another takeaway, though.
[00:30:57.240 --> 00:31:00.760] Again, like knowledge, we taught people the principles.
[00:31:00.760 --> 00:31:02.760] We showed them what to do.
[00:31:02.760 --> 00:31:06.040] Some took that knowledge mark and they never looked back.
[00:31:06.040 --> 00:31:07.160] Their life was transformed.
[00:31:07.160 --> 00:31:11.080] I'd travel around and visit our stores and they'd come up and hug me and say, thank you, thank you, thank you, Mr.
[00:31:11.080 --> 00:31:11.560] Mackey.
[00:31:11.640 --> 00:31:12.280] You changed my life.
[00:31:12.280 --> 00:31:15.560] You know, I'm going to see my grandchildren now and I'm playing with my kids.
[00:31:15.560 --> 00:31:16.120] It's so great.
[00:31:16.120 --> 00:31:16.840] Thank you so much.
[00:31:16.840 --> 00:31:24.120] And others who were apologizing because they lost weight and then they gained it back because they went back to their diets.
[00:31:24.120 --> 00:31:31.880] And the takeaway was when you look a little further was for people to really make lasting change, some people can do it on their own.
[00:31:31.880 --> 00:31:33.880] Most people need a community of support.
[00:31:33.880 --> 00:31:34.520] 100%.
[00:31:34.520 --> 00:31:41.000] And so Love Life aims to be that community of support for people who really want to become the healthiest version of themselves.
[00:31:41.160 --> 00:31:50.400] If just like I say, like, let's say you're an alcoholic and we send you to rehab for 90 days and you come back sober, you don't crave alcohol any longer.
[00:31:50.400 --> 00:31:54.880] But if you go back into the same social network, all your friends are alcoholics, right?
[00:31:55.920 --> 00:31:58.720] And you're going to be back off, you're going to fall off the wagon pretty quickly.
[00:31:58.720 --> 00:32:00.800] So you need a new set of friends, basically.
[00:32:00.800 --> 00:32:05.200] We found that out, and it's like, that's my takeaway from the total health emergence.
[00:32:05.200 --> 00:32:05.920] You need community of support.
[00:32:06.000 --> 00:32:08.640] And how did you apply that at Whole Foods after that?
[00:32:08.640 --> 00:32:17.360] Because I think that you're hitting on something that's very important: we call chronic illness non-communicable disease, but that's completely wrong.
[00:32:17.360 --> 00:32:19.600] It's not infectious, but it's contagious.
[00:32:19.600 --> 00:32:20.160] Yes.
[00:32:20.160 --> 00:32:30.800] And just as chronic disease can be contagious, you're more likely to be obese if your friends are overweight than even if your family's overweight because you're basically as healthy as your five closest friends.
[00:32:30.800 --> 00:32:38.480] You know, if all your friends are drinking green juices and going to yoga, as opposed to drinking beer and having burgers and fries, you're going to be healthier, right?
[00:32:38.480 --> 00:32:45.200] Yeah, that's why they, you know, it's like if you were a teenager that hanged around kids that smoked, you more likely become a smoker.
[00:32:45.200 --> 00:32:46.400] Yeah, and community is medicine.
[00:32:46.400 --> 00:32:48.640] And we did this at the Saddleback Church with Rick Warren.
[00:32:48.640 --> 00:32:52.320] We got 15,000 people to lose a quarter million pounds by doing it in community.
[00:32:52.640 --> 00:32:53.440] And it was powerful.
[00:32:53.440 --> 00:32:56.720] And I'm curious how at Whole Foods you did the community paces.
[00:32:57.280 --> 00:32:58.880] This was the flaw in the program.
[00:32:58.880 --> 00:33:00.160] We're still doing the program.
[00:33:00.160 --> 00:33:02.720] We still have follow-up with people afterwards.
[00:33:02.720 --> 00:33:03.680] Here's the problem.
[00:33:03.680 --> 00:33:11.360] We've, you know, got over 100,000 team members, and they're from all over the country and in Canada and the UK for that matter, too.
[00:33:11.360 --> 00:33:19.040] So they might go back, but the people they met, the community of people that they were with, they are scattering.
[00:33:19.360 --> 00:33:22.160] So that community is not together.
[00:33:22.160 --> 00:33:26.320] Now, if some of them came from the same store, then they have a little bit of community support.
[00:33:26.720 --> 00:33:29.720] We could put them in touch with others that were on the journey.
[00:33:29.720 --> 00:33:32.040] But again, they're so spread out.
[00:33:32.040 --> 00:33:33.320] We didn't solve for it.
[00:33:33.320 --> 00:33:34.200] It's still a problem.
[00:33:29.360 --> 00:33:35.000] It's still a challenge.
[00:33:35.320 --> 00:33:45.480] I really do think these, what Love Life's doing and what other wellness centers, holistic health centers will create will be also social places for people to go and hang out.
[00:33:45.800 --> 00:33:47.560] We've designed it in that way.
[00:33:47.960 --> 00:34:02.600] When you see our space, you'll see the co-working space, the community areas, the cafe, the couches, the comfortable chairs are all set up for people to hang out, work, network with their friends that are there.
[00:34:02.600 --> 00:34:08.680] You know, most health clubs' formula is to get people to become members and just keep paying, but hopefully never come.
[00:34:09.480 --> 00:34:11.160] We have the opposite philosophy.
[00:34:11.160 --> 00:34:15.400] We'd really like people to spend a couple hours or more every day at Love Life.
[00:34:15.880 --> 00:34:25.320] Come in after work, do some of the recovery modalities or do a workout, do some recovery, have a meal, meet some people, play some pickleball, take a class.
[00:34:25.320 --> 00:34:27.640] We have all kinds of different classes there.
[00:34:27.960 --> 00:34:32.360] There's so many, stay around for one of our talks or one of our events that are happening.
[00:34:32.360 --> 00:34:34.600] We really want to nurture community.
[00:34:34.600 --> 00:34:36.760] And how do you see this intersecting with healthcare?
[00:34:36.760 --> 00:34:44.120] Because, you know, people have their health insurance and people aren't very motivated usually to pay out of pocket for healthcare, which they think this should be.
[00:34:44.600 --> 00:34:46.360] That's the biggest challenge, to be honest.
[00:34:46.840 --> 00:34:48.360] Of course, everybody asks about that.
[00:34:48.360 --> 00:34:50.280] We do create super bills for people.
[00:34:51.560 --> 00:34:56.120] But most of our docs, our doctors are out of network, most likely for them.
[00:34:56.120 --> 00:35:02.200] For a lot of the testing that we're doing, you can also use your 125, your HSA, your HRA.
[00:35:03.000 --> 00:35:04.360] Those can all go towards this.
[00:35:05.080 --> 00:35:08.120] I was talking to somebody about it recently, and I just said, you know what?
[00:35:08.120 --> 00:35:11.160] Insurance will be one of the last dominoes to fall.
[00:35:12.280 --> 00:35:23.440] It won't change until the market demands that it change, until people are complaining, and then until the government maybe steps in and starts saying, You need to cover this stuff, too.
[00:35:23.440 --> 00:35:29.200] But also, if you track your data at Love Life, you can see longitudinally how people do.
[00:35:29.200 --> 00:35:29.920] Oh, we do.
[00:35:29.920 --> 00:35:34.560] And that way you can actually show payers how this is actually saving them money.
[00:35:34.560 --> 00:35:35.840] And that's going to change reimbursement.
[00:35:36.160 --> 00:35:45.200] I really do think before we get the insurance companies to change, now we have, we're, this is a, we think a B2B potential is big there.
[00:35:45.280 --> 00:35:48.240] Like, remember, I told you about how Whole Foods was self-insured?
[00:35:48.240 --> 00:35:52.480] We think we can go to big employers in the area and do two things.
[00:35:52.480 --> 00:36:01.760] We can say, look, give us your sick people because we know if you're self-insured that like Whole Foods, 10% are spending 90% of your money.
[00:36:02.320 --> 00:36:08.960] Give us those people that are motivated, only the ones that want to come, because we can't do anything if people don't want to heal themselves.
[00:36:08.960 --> 00:36:14.560] And we can help them heal and we can help them heal pretty quickly and do that on a fee per person basis.
[00:36:14.800 --> 00:36:27.600] And also, but also, we'd like to go to those same corporations and say, now give us your up-and-comers, your executives, and get them an optimized member, optimize gold membership at Love Life as a perk, as a benefit.
[00:36:27.600 --> 00:36:31.440] These are the people you're counting on to make the most important decisions in your business.
[00:36:31.760 --> 00:36:36.160] The healthier they are, the more vital they are, the better their decision-making they're going to be.
[00:36:36.160 --> 00:36:41.280] And the less likely they're going to leave because this is one of your perks that the competitors are not offering.
[00:36:41.600 --> 00:36:43.760] So there's two ways to approach the B2B.
[00:36:43.760 --> 00:36:49.120] I think, again, the insurance will change, but it's like, it's just not.
[00:36:49.160 --> 00:36:49.720] It's slow.
[00:36:49.720 --> 00:36:52.880] It's it's that we got to go for the low-hanging fruit first.
[00:36:52.880 --> 00:36:53.840] Yeah, no, I agree.
[00:36:53.840 --> 00:36:54.400] I think you're right.
[00:36:54.400 --> 00:37:01.560] And, you know, I think the, you know, the question is: can you kind of force people into collective change together?
[00:37:01.880 --> 00:37:04.280] I don't know the answer to that, but I know in America.
[00:37:04.360 --> 00:37:09.320] I know in Cleveland Clinic, we had a waiting list of 3,000 people for our Center for Functional Medicine.
[00:37:09.320 --> 00:37:09.960] Wow.
[00:37:09.960 --> 00:37:16.600] And so what we said was you can't get into a one-on-one appointment, but you get into a group visit.
[00:37:16.920 --> 00:37:24.440] And we were able to put people in group visits who, you know, necessarily maybe wanted to see someone privately, but they were willing to just get in.
[00:37:24.440 --> 00:37:35.160] And what we found was that the health outcomes were three times better for the same condition treated by the same doctors in the same clinic.
[00:37:35.160 --> 00:37:40.200] And we compared, you know, a doctor treating diabetes in a group versus a doctor one-on-one.
[00:37:40.200 --> 00:37:40.920] Same, same.
[00:37:40.920 --> 00:37:44.040] And it was three times better outcomes in the group.
[00:37:44.040 --> 00:37:46.760] And the savings were far more.
[00:37:46.760 --> 00:37:51.800] So better outcomes, lower costs is what healthcare is, is the holy grail, like value-based care.
[00:37:51.800 --> 00:37:55.560] So it was interesting because not everybody kind of really opted in.
[00:37:55.560 --> 00:38:00.200] I mean, I guess they sort of opted in because they couldn't get an appointment, but it wasn't like they were motivated to be in a group.
[00:38:00.440 --> 00:38:02.600] They actually were motivated to be seen.
[00:38:03.160 --> 00:38:05.000] And that just was what we found.
[00:38:05.000 --> 00:38:11.320] So I think if we can kind of encourage people to do that, and AA is a great example, Weight Watcher is a great example.
[00:38:11.320 --> 00:38:13.640] People change in a collective.
[00:38:13.640 --> 00:38:14.280] I totally agree.
[00:38:14.280 --> 00:38:27.720] And that's why in the B2B approach, if we can get a group of peers that are coming in from the same company and they're motivated to try to heal themselves, we have a much better chance if they come in as a group, you might say.
[00:38:27.720 --> 00:38:30.040] So, you know, you sort of, you know, you're sort of an unlikely character.
[00:38:30.040 --> 00:38:37.080] You're like a hippie from the 70s who started a health food store and now they currently have Whole Foods.
[00:38:37.880 --> 00:38:53.600] And then you helped build this movement around conscious capitalism, which is sort of, I'd love you to sort of talk a little bit about that because I think it's part of what you're doing with Love Life, which is a business, but it's also bringing more light into the world as opposed to darkness.
[00:38:53.600 --> 00:38:58.000] So Conscious Capitalism is a movement I co-founded.
[00:38:58.000 --> 00:39:04.080] And I wrote a book called Conscious Capitalism, co-authored that with my good friend Rog Sassodia.
[00:39:04.400 --> 00:39:19.360] And as I built Whole Foods, what I began to realize was that because I didn't have a business background, I hadn't worked for any corporations, I began to realize that Whole Foods was very different than most other businesses.
[00:39:19.360 --> 00:39:22.160] And that, and that, you know, we had this higher purpose.
[00:39:22.160 --> 00:39:24.720] We were really cared about all of our stakeholders.
[00:39:24.720 --> 00:39:28.080] We were trying to create these cultures where humans were flourishing.
[00:39:28.080 --> 00:39:29.920] We wanted to lead with love.
[00:39:29.920 --> 00:39:36.080] It was, and these were just, you know, I just thought we were sort of just kind of one weird, a weirdo company.
[00:39:36.080 --> 00:39:41.600] And then I read a book called Firms of Endearment by my co-author of Conscious Capitalism, Rog Sassodia.
[00:39:41.760 --> 00:39:42.880] Not terms, but firms.
[00:39:42.880 --> 00:39:43.360] Firms.
[00:39:43.360 --> 00:39:43.920] Firms.
[00:39:43.920 --> 00:39:44.160] Companies.
[00:39:44.400 --> 00:39:45.440] Firms of Endearment.
[00:39:45.440 --> 00:39:48.880] And what 30 that he identified, he and his co-author identified.
[00:39:48.880 --> 00:39:52.480] And the firm of endearment was one that all the stakeholders love the firm.
[00:39:52.480 --> 00:39:54.560] Not the shareholders, but the shareholders do too.
[00:39:54.800 --> 00:39:57.600] Shareholders love them too, because they all perform really well economically.
[00:39:57.600 --> 00:40:03.760] But the customers love them, their employees love them, their suppliers love them, and they're sort of universally loved.
[00:40:03.760 --> 00:40:06.960] And so Whole Foods was one of those 30 companies.
[00:40:06.960 --> 00:40:08.880] And you know what got me excited when I read the book?
[00:40:08.880 --> 00:40:10.400] I said, I'm not alone.
[00:40:10.400 --> 00:40:13.200] There are other weirdos out there too doing similar stuff.
[00:40:13.680 --> 00:40:20.240] And so I got together with the authors and said, listen, I want, can you put me in touch with some of these other people?
[00:40:20.280 --> 00:40:20.760] Yeah.
[00:40:20.800 --> 00:40:22.000] And so they did.
[00:40:22.000 --> 00:40:24.960] And I started to realize this is great.
[00:40:24.960 --> 00:40:25.680] This is great.
[00:40:25.680 --> 00:40:31.960] And I realized more people need to know about this because all of these people are financially very successful.
[00:40:29.840 --> 00:40:36.360] Being loved by all your stakeholders and having a higher purpose is good business.
[00:40:36.600 --> 00:40:38.280] It's a way to make more money.
[00:40:38.520 --> 00:40:44.280] It's not, it's it money comes from practicing those principles, in other words.
[00:40:44.280 --> 00:40:50.920] So people think there's this dichotomy between honestly, when you're not motivated by money, you make more money.
[00:40:50.920 --> 00:40:51.240] Yes.
[00:40:51.720 --> 00:40:53.240] There's a good metaphor for it.
[00:40:53.240 --> 00:40:57.640] If you pursue happiness, you probably won't find it.
[00:40:57.640 --> 00:41:03.480] Happy because you'll just, if people that pursue happiness the hardest oftentimes end up being narcissists.
[00:41:03.960 --> 00:41:07.560] Happiness comes from, it ensues.
[00:41:07.560 --> 00:41:15.560] It ensues from love, from goodness, from compassion, forgiveness, kindness, generosity.
[00:41:16.760 --> 00:41:28.520] You become happy because of, not because you're pursuing it directly, but because it's a byproduct of these other qualities: meaningful work, caring, loving, family.
[00:41:28.520 --> 00:41:30.440] These things lead to happiness.
[00:41:30.440 --> 00:41:33.000] So, anyway, it's the same way with money.
[00:41:33.000 --> 00:41:41.000] Ultimately, profits come from creating value for customers or members or patients or whoever you're working with.
[00:41:41.000 --> 00:41:44.440] That's the ultimate way profits come about.
[00:41:44.440 --> 00:41:47.800] They're indirectly come about from creating value in the world.
[00:41:47.800 --> 00:41:50.520] So, conscious capitalism has four basic principles to it, Mark.
[00:41:50.520 --> 00:41:53.320] First principle is higher purpose.
[00:41:53.480 --> 00:41:56.520] Every business has its potential for a higher purpose.
[00:41:57.160 --> 00:42:03.080] For example, my body has to produce red blood cells, or I'm going to be dead.
[00:42:03.080 --> 00:42:07.080] But it doesn't logically follow that my higher purpose is to produce red blood cells.
[00:42:07.080 --> 00:42:11.000] Similarly, businesses must make money or they will die.
[00:42:11.000 --> 00:42:12.520] That's not why they exist.
[00:42:13.240 --> 00:42:20.640] The purpose of creating value for their customers in Whole Foods' higher purpose was to nourish people in the planet.
[00:42:20.960 --> 00:42:25.280] Love life is helping people to become the healthiest version of themselves.
[00:42:25.280 --> 00:42:27.200] So every business has its higher purpose.
[00:42:27.200 --> 00:42:28.800] Then you have stakeholders.
[00:42:28.800 --> 00:42:30.320] They all are important.
[00:42:30.320 --> 00:42:31.360] They all matter.
[00:42:31.360 --> 00:42:32.400] Customers matter.
[00:42:32.400 --> 00:42:33.360] Employees matter.
[00:42:33.360 --> 00:42:34.160] Suppliers matter.
[00:42:34.240 --> 00:42:35.040] The investors matter.
[00:42:35.040 --> 00:42:35.840] The community matters.
[00:42:35.920 --> 00:42:37.040] The environment matters.
[00:42:37.040 --> 00:42:42.400] And business has to create strategies where they're all simultaneously winning.
[00:42:42.400 --> 00:42:44.160] Third is leadership.
[00:42:44.160 --> 00:42:46.720] Leaders can't be in it just to line their own pockets.
[00:42:46.720 --> 00:42:53.360] Leaders have got to be those who are purpose-driven, are serving the stakeholders, and they're ultimately servant leaders.
[00:42:53.360 --> 00:42:55.280] And finally, we create cultures.
[00:42:55.280 --> 00:43:06.960] A conscious business, a conscious leader creates cultures where human beings flourish, where they are happy, where they're fulfilled, where their work is meaningful, and they're part of a community that cares about them.
[00:43:06.960 --> 00:43:08.720] That's conscious capitalism in a nutshell.
[00:43:08.720 --> 00:43:09.600] Yeah, that's beautiful.
[00:43:09.600 --> 00:43:11.360] And has it taken off?
[00:43:11.360 --> 00:43:24.320] I mean, you heard, I think the guy who's, I think Larry Fink, who sort of writes this letter every year, one year, wrote a letter about how we need to think about our stakeholders, not only our shareholders.
[00:43:24.320 --> 00:43:29.120] But I wonder how much that's really filtered into the business world.
[00:43:29.120 --> 00:43:30.000] Well, you know, it's interesting.
[00:43:30.000 --> 00:43:31.120] It has filtered in.
[00:43:31.120 --> 00:43:42.240] So when they had that roundtable, business roundtable came out basically checking off the principles of conscious capitalism that got a lot of pushback, a lot of controversy in business circles.
[00:43:42.240 --> 00:43:51.360] I found out later that woman that had been the leader of that, conscious capitalism had been their framework, the book had been their framework for those principles.
[00:43:51.840 --> 00:43:52.960] They did not credit us.
[00:43:53.360 --> 00:43:59.760] But nevertheless, what any author wants to hear is that their ideas are having an impact and influencing things.
[00:43:59.960 --> 00:44:08.680] So, speaking of Larry Fink, so I'm going to, we're having a special conclave down in Cabo for CEOs of very large corporations.
[00:44:08.760 --> 00:44:13.000] There'll be about, I think, I don't know, 30, 30 or 40.
[00:44:13.000 --> 00:44:16.040] And Larry's hosting it down there.
[00:44:16.040 --> 00:44:20.440] And we're not calling it conscious capitalism as principles of responsible business or something like that.
[00:44:20.440 --> 00:44:21.480] Anyway, I got an invitation.
[00:44:22.120 --> 00:44:23.480] So I'm going to be going to that.
[00:44:23.480 --> 00:44:26.360] And I'm excited to talk to some of these other.
[00:44:27.480 --> 00:44:29.240] There's some big names going down there.
[00:44:29.240 --> 00:44:31.720] So I'm excited to be part of that.
[00:44:31.720 --> 00:44:36.520] Yeah, because we live in such an extractive world and we have extractive capitalism.
[00:44:36.520 --> 00:44:38.120] It's the opposite of conscious capitalism.
[00:44:38.280 --> 00:44:39.720] We have extractive agriculture.
[00:44:39.720 --> 00:44:41.080] We have extractive health care.
[00:44:41.720 --> 00:44:43.720] It's just they don't take a systems approach.
[00:44:43.880 --> 00:44:52.600] And really, what we're talking about with conscious capitalism is viewing things in a larger context, the larger system, that that actually leads to better business.
[00:44:52.600 --> 00:44:53.320] It's harder.
[00:44:53.320 --> 00:44:54.280] It's harder to do it.
[00:44:54.600 --> 00:44:58.600] Think about, it's like, you think about healthcare, because that's what we've been talking about.
[00:44:58.600 --> 00:45:03.480] As you say, that's like extractive health care because it's just dealing with symptoms.
[00:45:03.480 --> 00:45:05.560] It's not dealing with root causes, right?
[00:45:05.880 --> 00:45:11.880] I mean, functional medicine, you're probably the leader in functional medicine.
[00:45:11.880 --> 00:45:18.440] That's going to root causes and trying to root them out and help people to heal at the deepest levels.
[00:45:18.840 --> 00:45:21.320] That's revolutionary medicine.
[00:45:21.560 --> 00:45:22.840] It's a really, really big deal.
[00:45:22.840 --> 00:45:24.600] So you should be really proud of what you've done.
[00:45:24.600 --> 00:45:24.920] Thank you.
[00:45:24.920 --> 00:45:25.080] Yeah.
[00:45:25.080 --> 00:45:29.800] It's sort of what drives me is how do I end needless suffering for millions of people?
[00:45:29.800 --> 00:45:44.480] Because so many people don't have to suffer, like you're talking about before, when you would bring the team members of Whole Foods to these retreats and they would have this radical transformation in a week and they were suffering before, and then they ended up in a short period of a week not suffering.
[00:45:44.280 --> 00:45:51.280] You know, and I think that I created something called the 10-day detox diet, which essentially eliminates all the processed food and crap.
[00:45:51.360 --> 00:45:54.400] It adds in all the good foods, and it's so powerful.
[00:45:54.880 --> 00:45:59.360] 10 days, it's like the seven-day is even better because it's three days longer.
[00:45:59.360 --> 00:45:59.760] That's right.
[00:45:59.760 --> 00:46:01.040] 30 days is better than that.
[00:46:01.040 --> 00:46:03.680] I know, but if I call it a 30-day diet, no one would do it.
[00:46:03.920 --> 00:46:04.560] That's right.
[00:46:04.560 --> 00:46:08.080] People, you know, did you decide 10 days was kind of the sweet spot?
[00:46:10.000 --> 00:46:10.320] Yeah.
[00:46:10.560 --> 00:46:12.800] And it's amazing to see that.
[00:46:12.800 --> 00:46:21.360] And I think when people have the experience of what it's like to feel good, they actually can connect to something and come back to it.
[00:46:21.520 --> 00:46:22.400] Even if they kind of be around.
[00:46:22.720 --> 00:46:25.120] Those notes from God are a little more, you can hear them a little bit better.
[00:46:25.280 --> 00:46:25.680] Exactly.
[00:46:25.680 --> 00:46:26.160] Yeah.
[00:46:26.160 --> 00:46:46.000] And I think, you know, the work you've done around this conscious capitalism moving is so important because so much of the things that are happening in our world are all because of a lack of consciousness and a lack of awareness and a lack of understanding that value creation isn't just about the bottom line.
[00:46:46.000 --> 00:46:53.520] It's about multiple bottom lines where everybody wins, where the planet wins, where you win, where your community wins, you know, where win-win-win.
[00:46:53.520 --> 00:46:53.840] Yeah.
[00:46:53.840 --> 00:46:56.560] I just did a TED talk a few months ago on win-win-win.
[00:46:56.880 --> 00:46:58.080] What were you saying in there?
[00:46:58.080 --> 00:47:03.200] The win-win-win is seeking, and it's simplest, it's looking for everyone you interact with.
[00:47:03.200 --> 00:47:10.160] You're looking a win for them, a win for yourself, and a win for the larger whole that we're all part of.
[00:47:10.160 --> 00:47:13.360] If all three aren't winning, bad strategy.
[00:47:13.360 --> 00:47:13.920] Yeah.
[00:47:13.920 --> 00:47:19.680] So it's kind of giving your mind and your heart permission to go down that path.
[00:47:19.680 --> 00:47:25.040] And so, if you unleash your mind to look for the win-win-win, it will find it.
[00:47:25.040 --> 00:47:28.480] And we generally make trade-offs, and we generally approach it win-lose.
[00:47:28.480 --> 00:47:34.040] We're in a culture where sports and game metaphors are somebody wins, most people lose.
[00:47:34.040 --> 00:47:35.720] Hey, that's the way life is.
[00:47:36.360 --> 00:47:44.920] No, that's a particular approach to life, and it's not the best approach for your happiness or for the betterment of the world.
[00:47:45.080 --> 00:47:49.160] The win-win-win strategy, I argue, is a universal ethical system.
[00:47:49.160 --> 00:47:57.480] I challenge you to think of any ethical dilemma you're in where win-win-win isn't the best way to approach it.
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[00:49:49.920 --> 00:49:55.280] It's hard to get people out of the scarcity mindset and into it, this idea of abundance.
[00:49:55.280 --> 00:49:58.400] And, you know, I find that the more I give, the more I get.
[00:49:58.400 --> 00:50:04.640] The more I give money away, the more I give my time away, the more I give my love away, my energy away, the more it comes back.
[00:50:04.720 --> 00:50:08.480] Because the universe is a mirror that reflects exactly back what you're giving.
[00:50:08.640 --> 00:50:10.800] The more love you give, the more love you receive.
[00:50:10.800 --> 00:50:13.280] The kinder you are, the more kindness comes back.
[00:50:13.280 --> 00:50:22.640] If people could understand that we are all connected, we are all one, that when they attack someone else, they're attacking themselves.
[00:50:23.280 --> 00:50:30.640] If we can understand that love is the deeper reality and that we share love, it comes back to us.
[00:50:30.640 --> 00:50:31.920] We help light somebody.
[00:50:31.920 --> 00:50:35.680] Somebody lights the candle of love in us, and we send it and give it to somebody else.
[00:50:35.680 --> 00:50:37.360] And that's how this planet's going to heal.
[00:50:37.360 --> 00:50:46.320] It's going to heal ultimately through people waking up and being more conscious about how they show up in the world and how transformative love is.
[00:50:46.560 --> 00:50:49.440] I'm like, I'm a big apostle of love.
[00:50:49.440 --> 00:50:52.960] I think you're right on to something, but we live in such a divisive world now.
[00:50:52.960 --> 00:50:57.040] And I feel like we're less connected and more divided.
[00:50:57.040 --> 00:50:59.040] And so it starts with yourself.
[00:50:59.040 --> 00:50:59.440] Yeah.
[00:50:59.440 --> 00:51:02.280] Only you can transform the world.
[00:50:59.840 --> 00:51:04.440] I don't mean that in a narcissistic sense.
[00:51:04.680 --> 00:51:11.880] I mean, as we offer love and peace, it is offered back to us.
[00:51:11.880 --> 00:51:16.120] And right now, I can't worry about absolutely the whole world.
[00:51:16.120 --> 00:51:17.960] That just puts you into despair.
[00:51:17.960 --> 00:51:19.800] All I can do is show up every day.
[00:51:20.040 --> 00:51:21.960] My wife has a mantra that I try to follow.
[00:51:21.960 --> 00:51:25.560] It's just love everyone all the time.
[00:51:25.800 --> 00:51:26.680] No exceptions.
[00:51:26.680 --> 00:51:27.400] That's pretty good.
[00:51:28.360 --> 00:51:28.680] Exactly.
[00:51:28.920 --> 00:51:30.760] She says, John, it's so much simpler.
[00:51:30.760 --> 00:51:33.720] You don't have to worry about, well, I'm mad at him.
[00:51:33.720 --> 00:51:34.920] I like her.
[00:51:35.400 --> 00:51:36.840] I'm not so sure about this guy.
[00:51:36.840 --> 00:51:39.640] She says, no, don't have all those comparisons.
[00:51:39.640 --> 00:51:43.080] Just show up open-hearted and love everyone.
[00:51:43.800 --> 00:51:47.080] And yeah, she's my teacher.
[00:51:47.080 --> 00:51:50.360] That's actually an incredibly powerful way to live.
[00:51:50.360 --> 00:51:54.120] And, you know, I don't know if I do that all the time in my regular life.
[00:51:54.440 --> 00:51:55.160] But most of us don't.
[00:51:55.400 --> 00:51:57.400] But as a doctor, that's how you show up.
[00:51:57.400 --> 00:52:01.480] I sort of reflected on like, what is it that makes me good at what I do?
[00:52:01.480 --> 00:52:03.720] And why do people keep coming back?
[00:52:03.720 --> 00:52:16.760] And I think when I meet with someone, because when you're a doctor, you get into this sacred space with someone where they're sharing their vulnerabilities, their suffering, their fears, their relationship stuff, like whatever, their life story.
[00:52:16.760 --> 00:52:18.760] And I take a very deep life story.
[00:52:19.000 --> 00:52:20.760] I'm not the eight-minute doctor visit.
[00:52:20.760 --> 00:52:24.440] You know, I spend a couple hours with people initially and then I get to know them.
[00:52:24.840 --> 00:52:26.120] We can offer you a job at Love Life.
[00:52:26.120 --> 00:52:27.720] You're the kind of doctor we're looking for.
[00:52:29.160 --> 00:52:29.560] I know.
[00:52:29.560 --> 00:52:32.040] I wish I had more of me to go around.
[00:52:32.040 --> 00:52:37.000] What I let myself do is love every patient, is to see who they are as a human being.
[00:52:37.000 --> 00:52:39.880] And no matter who they are, where they're from.
[00:52:39.840 --> 00:52:51.920] I mean, I used to work in the Idaho State Penitentiary, you know, when I was and I mean, as a part-time gig when I was a doctor in Idaho, and I would walk in there with murderers and rapists and people who've done horrible things.
[00:52:51.920 --> 00:52:55.120] And I would just try to meet them and see who they were and love them.
[00:52:55.120 --> 00:53:01.200] And what was really actually shocking to me was most of them were just scared little kids that didn't grow ever grow up.
[00:53:01.680 --> 00:53:04.880] And they did these horrible things out of their own trauma.
[00:53:04.880 --> 00:53:11.760] And so to be able to sort of see that and you know, and if you just stop and spend enough time with somebody and talk to them, like the homeless guy on the street.
[00:53:12.080 --> 00:53:16.800] You were helping heal them because you were actually, you're being present like that and open is love.
[00:53:16.800 --> 00:53:17.360] Yeah.
[00:53:17.360 --> 00:53:20.800] You were radiating love to them, whether you were conscious of it or not.
[00:53:20.800 --> 00:53:22.400] That was probably helping to heal them.
[00:53:22.400 --> 00:53:22.640] Yeah.
[00:53:22.640 --> 00:53:23.840] Because that's what everybody wants.
[00:53:23.840 --> 00:53:24.320] I'm sure.
[00:53:24.320 --> 00:53:24.800] I'm sure.
[00:53:24.800 --> 00:53:29.200] And also, it also, yeah, helped them to feel safe.
[00:53:29.200 --> 00:53:35.600] And it helped me to actually, you know, care for them enough to really work hard to figure out what was going on.
[00:53:35.600 --> 00:53:40.080] And it's like, I don't know why I started out like that, but I just, I've always been like that.
[00:53:40.080 --> 00:53:48.240] And I remember being like three years old and seeing all these grown-ups who were just so unhappy and not nice and not acting out of love.
[00:53:48.240 --> 00:53:49.520] And I'm like, didn't I?
[00:53:49.600 --> 00:53:50.320] I didn't get it.
[00:53:50.320 --> 00:53:52.880] I literally remember my three-year-old self.
[00:53:52.960 --> 00:53:57.280] I'm like, I just was full of love all the time and I didn't get why everybody wasn't all full of love all the time.
[00:53:57.280 --> 00:53:59.360] You know, it's like, that's our natural state.
[00:53:59.360 --> 00:53:59.680] Yes.
[00:53:59.680 --> 00:54:00.640] You know, that's right.
[00:54:00.640 --> 00:54:03.600] Love is the essence of what we are, but it gets blocked.
[00:54:03.680 --> 00:54:16.880] It gets blocked by anger, fear, judgment, attack, envy, resentment, all those types of emotions clouded over so that the light doesn't shine through.
[00:54:17.200 --> 00:54:25.600] But if we practice forgiveness and we work at opening and being present, the light begins to shine through us again.
[00:54:25.600 --> 00:54:27.040] Here's an interesting thing that I've learned.
[00:54:27.040 --> 00:54:29.440] It's maybe one of the most important tips I will give.
[00:54:29.560 --> 00:54:33.800] If you love everyone all the time, don't we forget that every day at times?
[00:54:33.800 --> 00:54:35.000] We go back into judgment.
[00:54:35.000 --> 00:54:38.840] We judge, you're driving over here, somebody cuts me off, asshole.
[00:54:39.560 --> 00:54:42.440] I'm not very loving when I'm thinking that or saying that.
[00:54:42.440 --> 00:54:45.800] But what I've learned is that the past doesn't exist any longer.
[00:54:46.520 --> 00:54:50.040] All that's real is this moment.
[00:54:50.040 --> 00:54:55.560] And no matter how many times I forget, I can go back in the next moment and choose love.
[00:54:55.880 --> 00:54:57.000] I can choose to be present.
[00:54:57.000 --> 00:54:59.240] I can choose to let my heart open.
[00:54:59.240 --> 00:55:02.040] Even if I forget it, next moment I can choose it.
[00:55:02.040 --> 00:55:04.280] If I forget it, next moment I can choose it.
[00:55:04.280 --> 00:55:05.880] I can practice going back to it.
[00:55:05.880 --> 00:55:07.320] And it's kind of like meditating.
[00:55:07.720 --> 00:55:10.600] The more you practice it, the more skilled you get at it.
[00:55:10.760 --> 00:55:15.800] The more you practice being present and opening to love, the easier it gets.
[00:55:15.800 --> 00:55:16.920] It's such a simple idea.
[00:55:16.920 --> 00:55:18.280] Choose love over fear.
[00:55:18.280 --> 00:55:19.720] Yes, choose love over fear.
[00:55:19.880 --> 00:55:22.600] Kind of like that first LS, that massive LSD trip I took.
[00:55:22.600 --> 00:55:24.040] There's nothing really to be afraid of.
[00:55:24.440 --> 00:55:34.360] Because the things we're afraid of, like death or suffering or pain, in an ultimate senseless things, really aren't real in any ultimate sense.
[00:55:34.360 --> 00:55:39.640] We make them real through our own minds, believes, our beliefs, beliefs.
[00:55:41.480 --> 00:55:50.520] Anyway, I found that that's anyway, an important thing that I've learned is that no matter how many times I forget, I can always remember in the next moment.
[00:55:51.320 --> 00:55:52.920] I can be free in the next moment.
[00:55:52.920 --> 00:55:54.200] Isn't that the truth, John?
[00:55:54.200 --> 00:55:59.160] I mean, I thought a lot about death and life because I almost died recently.
[00:55:59.800 --> 00:56:07.160] And I realized that the real secret, the meaning of life, like the purpose of life, is to get free.
[00:56:07.160 --> 00:56:08.520] So you can be loved.
[00:56:09.000 --> 00:56:17.360] It's like most of us are in a self-made prison of our beliefs, of our thoughts, of our conceptions, of our ideology.
[00:56:18.000 --> 00:56:24.720] And we're always in this trap, but there's actually a way to get free.
[00:56:25.280 --> 00:56:27.920] And when you're free, all you want to do is love.
[00:56:28.320 --> 00:56:29.840] It's kind of like a magic trick.
[00:56:29.840 --> 00:56:32.720] You know, I felt that about you the first time I met you.
[00:56:32.800 --> 00:56:34.480] I felt like you were a very loving person.
[00:56:35.440 --> 00:56:38.160] You had a very open heart and you were very caring.
[00:56:38.160 --> 00:56:40.160] And I felt that vibe from you.
[00:56:40.400 --> 00:56:41.200] And you know what?
[00:56:41.200 --> 00:56:42.480] Here's the good news.
[00:56:42.480 --> 00:56:45.760] It's a lot stronger now than when I first met you.
[00:56:46.080 --> 00:56:46.320] Yeah.
[00:56:46.320 --> 00:56:47.520] Well, I've gotten more free.
[00:56:47.520 --> 00:56:50.880] I've gotten shed all the old stories, all the bullshit.
[00:56:51.440 --> 00:56:52.160] Oh, my God.
[00:56:52.160 --> 00:56:53.600] It's hard work, you know?
[00:56:53.600 --> 00:57:10.400] But I think, you know, this revolution in health and well-being that you're part of and this revolution in mental health, which in some ways, love life is really helping to solve because you're building community and loneliness is one of the biggest causes of illness.
[00:57:10.720 --> 00:57:15.360] And, you know, it's like the community aspect is such a big piece.
[00:57:15.360 --> 00:57:23.440] And for me, at the end of the day, it's just about how do we sort of always move into the space of love rather than fear.
[00:57:23.440 --> 00:57:26.160] We'll forget, but we can choose it the next moment.
[00:57:26.160 --> 00:57:32.160] Just remember, no matter how many times you forget, the past, you don't have to bring the past into the present.
[00:57:32.480 --> 00:57:36.640] You can be free of the past by just letting it go, realizing it's not real.
[00:57:36.640 --> 00:57:41.840] And in this moment, be present, be conscious, let love flow.
[00:57:42.320 --> 00:57:47.200] I think the psychedelic revolution, and it was your awakening and certainly it's part of mine.
[00:57:47.200 --> 00:57:50.720] And I think a lot of people's, to be honest with you, if you look at like Steve Jobs.
[00:57:50.880 --> 00:57:54.320] It's what knocked me off the path my parents had programmed into me.
[00:57:54.320 --> 00:57:54.720] Exactly.
[00:57:54.720 --> 00:58:02.280] And when you think about some of the big corporations that are going on, I think that people don't talk about it, but like Apple came out of psychedelics, right?
[00:58:02.600 --> 00:58:21.800] And I think for me, and I think increasingly like for the population at large, it's this sort of psychedelic revolution around psychedelic therapy is part of the answer to helping people to let go of the idea of separateness and let go of the idea that they have to meet life with fear or that they are stuck.
[00:58:21.800 --> 00:58:30.040] And I think I wish everybody could, I mean, I wish I could literally just take a giant bunch of mushrooms or LSD and put it in the water in contrast.
[00:58:30.360 --> 00:58:31.880] That would be scary to people.
[00:58:31.880 --> 00:58:43.960] So there, one way to think about it is: I read this book a long time ago, which it was a real simple little 50-page book, and it basically said The Lazy Man's Light Guide to Enlightenment.
[00:58:43.960 --> 00:58:45.160] Oh, yeah, I don't remember that book.
[00:58:45.160 --> 00:58:47.000] And it had one big idea in it.
[00:58:47.000 --> 00:58:51.240] And that big idea was you're either expanding or contracting.
[00:58:51.240 --> 00:58:56.840] So expanding opens our consciousness and opens our hearts for love.
[00:58:56.840 --> 00:58:59.160] Contracting closes it down.
[00:58:59.160 --> 00:58:59.720] That's right.
[00:58:59.720 --> 00:59:08.440] So fear, judgment, hatred, anger, these all contract the heart shut us down.
[00:59:08.760 --> 00:59:12.440] And then forgiveness, love, generosity.
[00:59:12.840 --> 00:59:14.520] I practice gratitudes every day.
[00:59:14.520 --> 00:59:16.840] Gratitude is a huge expansionary thing.
[00:59:16.840 --> 00:59:25.080] No matter how my little petty problems that might be there at work or whatever, practicing the gratitudes in the morning is always expansive.
[00:59:25.080 --> 00:59:28.360] It always reminds me, that's petty stuff.
[00:59:28.680 --> 00:59:29.800] This is what really matters.
[00:59:30.200 --> 00:59:36.200] I do think the daily practices are important for people if they want to help not get lost again.
[00:59:37.160 --> 00:59:41.320] Why don't we sort of close by having you share with us your practices?
[00:59:41.320 --> 00:59:46.640] How do you keep yourself mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually on track?
[00:59:46.880 --> 00:59:47.520] Sure.
[00:59:47.520 --> 00:59:50.960] I start out my day, pee, and then I weigh myself.
[00:59:52.000 --> 00:59:57.440] Then I do my spiritual practices, which involve reading some type of spiritual text.
[00:59:57.440 --> 00:59:59.840] I'm a longtime student of A Course in Miracles.
[00:59:59.840 --> 01:00:02.560] So frequently, that's what I'm reading.
[01:00:04.000 --> 01:00:08.080] Then I do gratitudes, the expansive gratitudes.
[01:00:08.640 --> 01:00:14.560] And I just let my mind go whatever I feel ungrateful for and let that go as long as it feels right.
[01:00:14.880 --> 01:00:21.200] Then I put forth what you can call them affirmations, you can call them prayers, intentionality.
[01:00:21.200 --> 01:00:24.880] I put out there things that I would really like to see manifest.
[01:00:24.880 --> 01:00:27.760] I put it out in a clear visualization of it.
[01:00:27.760 --> 01:00:29.680] And then I meditate.
[01:00:30.000 --> 01:00:33.920] After that, I'm going to go make a smoothie.
[01:00:33.920 --> 01:00:36.000] I start every day off with a smoothie.
[01:00:36.000 --> 01:00:38.560] It's 50% fruit, 50% vegetables.
[01:00:38.560 --> 01:00:42.480] It's got some protein in it, but it's extremely nutritious.
[01:00:42.800 --> 01:00:46.000] I make a whole two liters of that Vitamix.
[01:00:46.000 --> 01:00:47.680] And I'm going to have two glasses for breakfast.
[01:00:47.680 --> 01:00:53.200] And then the rest, my wife will have a glass and the other glass will get finished off sometime later in the day.
[01:00:53.200 --> 01:00:54.640] And then I exercise.
[01:00:54.640 --> 01:00:56.000] I'm usually going for a walk.
[01:00:56.000 --> 01:00:57.200] I'm playing pickleball.
[01:00:57.200 --> 01:00:58.240] I'm doing Pilates.
[01:00:58.240 --> 01:00:59.040] I'm doing yoga.
[01:00:59.040 --> 01:01:00.480] Or I'm doing a couple of those.
[01:01:00.800 --> 01:01:06.960] Then I will go, I might read or might go off to work, depending on what's going on, or I might have meetings.
[01:01:06.960 --> 01:01:10.240] I will try to do some other kind of exercise at the end of the day.
[01:01:10.240 --> 01:01:15.440] Now, for food for me, I am ethical vegan, so 100% plant-based.
[01:01:15.440 --> 01:01:24.400] So I try to eat a whole foods, plant-based diet, minimize salt, minimize oil, minimize processed foods of all kinds.
[01:01:24.560 --> 01:01:31.560] Not perfect in that regard, but, you know, probably compared to most people, I'm very high up the list there.
[01:01:29.840 --> 01:01:33.800] I really think fruits and vegetables are extremely healthy.
[01:01:34.040 --> 01:01:38.920] So I'm on, I would say I'm on a high complex carb diet.
[01:01:38.920 --> 01:01:44.120] I'm eating because I'm eating a lot of fruits, a lot of whole grains, a lot of beans.
[01:01:44.120 --> 01:01:49.960] I do get a lot of protein because I really do eat lots of foods that have a lot of protein in them.
[01:01:49.960 --> 01:01:51.800] Greens, I eat tons of greens.
[01:01:52.040 --> 01:01:54.280] I think my diet's healthy for me.
[01:01:54.280 --> 01:01:57.240] And I think work, I think having purpose, I read a lot.
[01:01:57.240 --> 01:02:03.320] I also have, I think having purposeful work, like love life, I'm on six boards.
[01:02:03.320 --> 01:02:05.640] So I've got other distractions that way.
[01:02:05.640 --> 01:02:08.200] And so, and I, then I spend a lot of time with my wife.
[01:02:08.200 --> 01:02:08.600] Yeah.
[01:02:09.000 --> 01:02:10.280] She's kind of my spiritual.
[01:02:10.840 --> 01:02:12.600] You guys have a remarkable relationship.
[01:02:12.600 --> 01:02:16.360] I mean, you've had Whole Foods for a long time, but you've also had this marriage.
[01:02:16.440 --> 01:02:18.360] I've been with Deborah for 35 years now.
[01:02:18.680 --> 01:02:25.640] And she's, you know, I tell the story in the book, The Woman in the Dream, when I met her, she was seven years younger than me.
[01:02:25.640 --> 01:02:30.760] And I considered myself, my ego being what it is, thought I was a pretty conscious dude.
[01:02:30.760 --> 01:02:33.080] But I was just blown away on the very first date.
[01:02:33.080 --> 01:02:34.280] Talk about the notes from God.
[01:02:34.280 --> 01:02:38.360] My whole soul was saying, this woman is the most awake person you've ever come across.
[01:02:38.360 --> 01:02:39.240] Don't blow it.
[01:02:39.240 --> 01:02:40.600] Don't screw it up, John.
[01:02:40.920 --> 01:02:42.920] I pretty much did because I was so nervous.
[01:02:43.000 --> 01:02:44.840] First thing I did when I picked, I was a blind eight.
[01:02:44.840 --> 01:02:45.720] I'd never met her before.
[01:02:45.800 --> 01:02:48.440] First, I pick her up, and first thing I do is I'm nervous.
[01:02:48.440 --> 01:02:50.520] She's the most beautiful person, woman I've ever seen.
[01:02:50.520 --> 01:02:55.480] And I said, Hey, mind if I look in your refrigerator?
[01:02:56.920 --> 01:02:58.600] She says, That's weird, but true.
[01:02:58.840 --> 01:03:00.200] Refrigerator, Biopsy.
[01:03:00.200 --> 01:03:02.800] Well, you can tell a lot about a person in your refrigerator.
[01:03:02.440 --> 01:03:03.440] Bookshelf in the refrigerator.
[01:03:04.040 --> 01:03:05.320] I went to the bookshelf second.
[01:03:05.320 --> 01:03:06.920] That was more socially acceptable.
[01:03:07.160 --> 01:03:09.320] She was, she ended up being the great love of my life.
[01:03:09.320 --> 01:03:12.280] And I will tell you a story that I tell in the book.
[01:03:12.600 --> 01:03:20.000] I call the chapter The Woman in the Dream because I had had a recurring dream in this dream that I'd had many times.
[01:03:20.320 --> 01:03:26.000] I'm going to this park, Peace Park in Austin, near where my house is, near central, in central Austin.
[01:03:26.000 --> 01:03:27.360] I'm going there and I'm there.
[01:03:27.360 --> 01:03:32.000] It's in the morning, and I'm looking, and this beautiful woman is walking to me.
[01:03:32.080 --> 01:03:34.160] She's naked and she's radiating.
[01:03:34.160 --> 01:03:35.680] She's shining.
[01:03:35.680 --> 01:03:40.320] And she, and I, I, I, she comes up to me and I break up a conversation.
[01:03:40.320 --> 01:03:41.280] I start a conversation with her.
[01:03:41.280 --> 01:03:46.560] I say, so, um, uh, uh, who are you?
[01:03:46.560 --> 01:03:48.960] And she says, you know who I am.
[01:03:49.040 --> 01:03:50.240] I said, okay.
[01:03:50.560 --> 01:03:52.480] Well, what do you, what are you doing?
[01:03:52.480 --> 01:03:55.040] She says, I've been waiting.
[01:03:55.200 --> 01:03:56.720] What have you been waiting for?
[01:03:56.720 --> 01:03:58.960] I've been waiting for you to catch up to me.
[01:03:58.960 --> 01:04:00.080] Oh, wow.
[01:04:00.080 --> 01:04:01.680] Well, why?
[01:04:01.680 --> 01:04:04.960] And she grabs my hand and she says, so we can run together.
[01:04:05.280 --> 01:04:07.840] And we take off running and then I wake up.
[01:04:07.840 --> 01:04:08.400] That's amazing.
[01:04:08.800 --> 01:04:09.520] Beautiful dream.
[01:04:09.520 --> 01:04:12.800] After I'd had the blind eight, I had the dream again.
[01:04:13.040 --> 01:04:16.800] And the first time I knew who she was, it was her, Deborah.
[01:04:16.800 --> 01:04:17.200] Wow.
[01:04:17.200 --> 01:04:18.640] That's an incredible woman in the dream.
[01:04:18.720 --> 01:04:19.840] I got chills from that story.
[01:04:20.080 --> 01:04:20.800] I know, incredible.
[01:04:20.960 --> 01:04:21.440] Beautiful.
[01:04:21.840 --> 01:04:29.840] You know, to end on, I'm just really honored to be able to know you and your wife and be in Austin with you and look forward to playing pickup ball and more things and more conversations.
[01:04:30.400 --> 01:04:32.320] I really, I really admire what you're doing.
[01:04:32.320 --> 01:04:33.760] You're making a big difference in the world.
[01:04:33.760 --> 01:04:34.960] I'm very appreciative.
[01:04:34.960 --> 01:04:38.080] And I wish just love and happiness to you and always.
[01:04:38.080 --> 01:04:39.120] Thank you so very much.
[01:04:39.120 --> 01:04:39.680] Thank you, John.
[01:04:39.680 --> 01:04:40.880] Thanks for being on the podcast.
[01:04:40.880 --> 01:04:41.520] Thank you.
[01:04:41.520 --> 01:04:45.600] If you love this podcast, please share it with someone else you think would also enjoy it.
[01:04:45.600 --> 01:04:47.920] You can find me on all social media channels at Dr.
[01:04:47.920 --> 01:04:48.640] Mark Hyman.
[01:04:48.640 --> 01:04:49.200] Please reach out.
[01:04:49.200 --> 01:04:51.200] I'd love to hear your comments and questions.
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[01:04:53.520 --> 01:04:55.680] Hyman Show wherever you get your podcasts.
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[01:04:57.920 --> 01:05:01.160] MarkHyman for video versions of this podcast and more.
[01:05:01.160 --> 01:05:03.000] Thank you so much again for tuning in.
[01:05:03.000 --> 01:05:04.440] We'll see you next time on The Dr.
[01:04:59.840 --> 01:05:05.080] Hyman Show.
[01:05:05.320 --> 01:05:12.440] This podcast is separate from my clinical practice at the Ultra Wellness Center, my work at Cleveland Clinic, and Function Health, where I am chief medical officer.
[01:05:12.440 --> 01:05:15.320] This podcast represents my opinions and my guests' opinions.
[01:05:15.320 --> 01:05:19.160] Neither myself nor the podcast endorses the views or statements of my guests.
[01:05:19.160 --> 01:05:26.200] This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional.
[01:05:26.200 --> 01:05:32.360] This podcast is provided with the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services.
[01:05:32.360 --> 01:05:36.760] If you're looking for help in your journey, please seek out a qualified medical practitioner.
[01:05:36.760 --> 01:05:45.160] And if you're looking for a functional medicine practitioner, visit my clinic, theultrawellnesscenter at ultrawellnesscenter.com, and request to become a patient.
[01:05:45.160 --> 01:05:53.080] It's important to have someone in your corner who is a trained, licensed healthcare practitioner and can help you make changes, especially when it comes to your health.
[01:05:53.080 --> 01:05:57.800] This podcast is free as part of my mission to bring practical ways of improving health to the public.
[01:05:57.800 --> 01:06:02.200] So I'd like to express gratitude to sponsors that made today's podcast possible.
[01:06:02.200 --> 01:06:03.960] Thanks so much again for listening.