Mark Hyman

Clayton’s unstable mood, sleep disturbance, and ADHD were clues to a B6 deficiency.

THE SEVEN KEYS: STAYING IN BALANCE

high-quality whole foods, nutrients, water, oxygen, light, movement, sleep, relaxation, community, connection, love, meaning, and purpose

Both promote a plant-rich whole foods diet; a diet low in starch and sugar, processed food, additives, hormones, antibiotics, GMOs; and, except for a small group of extreme low-fat vegan fans, a diet rich in good fats. They both even eschew dairy. And all the other dietary approaches—vegetarian, keto, time-restricted eating, lectin-free diets, Mediterranean, low-carb, low-fat, gluten-free, and more—mostly adhere to a whole foods approach and remove harmful ultra-processed foods and include protective foods.

Perhaps the real focus should be on shifting people from an obesogenic, disease-causing, nutrient-depleted diet to one rich in whole foods and protective foods that promote weight loss, health, and well-being. That, my friends, is the goal of the Pegan Diet.

modern industrial diet is currently the biggest killer on the planet, exceeding smoking and every other cause. Conservatively our modern diet, rich in processed foods made from wheat (white flour), corn (high-fructose corn syrup and many industrial food additives), and soy (soybean oil), and lacking in protective, healing whole foods (fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, whole grains, beans, seafood, etc.), kills 11 million people a year. I believe that is a gross underestimate. Each year about 57 million people die around the world. Three-quarters of those deaths (or 42 million) are due to chronic diseases such as heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and dementia, mostly caused by poor diet. Even infectious diseases, like COVID-19, are more likely to sicken and kill those who are overweight or suffer from chronic disease.

TREATS FOOD AS MEDICINE

The first foundation is this: Food is medicine, with both the power to heal and the power to harm. The best strategy for a long and healthy life is to eat your medicine—get your drugs at the farmacy, not the pharmacy!

Remarkable discoveries over the last few decades now enable us to use food not just for pleasure, joy, connection, and nourishment but also for rejuvenation, thriving, and even reversing disease.

When we think of food, we think of protein, carbohydrates, fats, fiber, vitamins, and minerals. But the most important parts of food may be the tens of thousands of medicinal compounds embedded in plants and even animal foods that regulate, modulate, and influence nearly all of the 37 billion billion chemical reactions that occur in our bodies every second. I call this process symbiotic-phytoadaptation. It means our bodies use chemicals found in food to beneficially influence each of our biological systems.

Through evolution, we have borrowed the molecular magic embedded in foods to optimize and supercharge our biology. For example, we can’t synthesize vitamin C or omega-3 fats; we have to get these from nature. And it’s not just the obvious essential fatty acids, amino acids, and vitamins and minerals we get from our food; we also get important molecules called phytochemicals.

There are 25,000-plus phytochemicals in the plant kingdom identified to date, and they’ve only recently been deemed critical for health. Surprisingly they are also found in animals, such as in grass-fed cows, who consume a wide array of nutrient-dense plant foods. While deficiency of these phytochemicals may not result in an acute disease like scurvy or rickets or in protein malnutrition, it can lead to long-latency deficiency diseases such as heart disease, diabetes, hypertension, obesity, dementia, depression, and more.