Dr. Mark Hyman on Function Health & GLP-1 microdosing | E2334

Mark Hyman (0:00)

Most doctors don't use any kind of tech to make decisions.

Jason Calacanis (0:03)

One in three Americans are like skipping going to talk to a doctor when they have an issue because they can't afford it.

Mark Hyman (0:10)

Six out of ten with chronic illness, 93% with metabolic dysfunction, you know, we have 75% are obese or overweight. I mean, this is just we have a staggering problem that is not being addressed by our system. And we spend more and more money. We're getting sicker and sicker. Sixty five percent with high insulin levels, which never get checked.

Jason Calacanis (0:26)

A Harvard study, the Chachupetes and the large language models basically were as accurate or more accurate than doctors. The preference of the patient in the bedside manner, the results from the LLM are better.

Mark Hyman (0:41)

It's gone from terrible to actually good.

SPEAKER_3 (0:44)

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Jason Calacanis (1:27)

All right, everybody. Welcome back to the program. Super excited to have podcaster, entrepreneur, doctor, an all-around great guy, Dr. Mark Hyman is here.

How are you doing, Dr. Mark?

Mark Hyman (1:41)

Great, I'm feeling great.

Jason Calacanis (1:43)

Awesome, awesome.

Mark Hyman (1:44)

Life is good.

Jason Calacanis (1:45)

How do you, you do have a great life. How do you split your time? I mean, you got this great podcast. I tune in once in a while, I look at the topic and then I jump in. Sometimes it's for ladies, sometimes it's for guys.

But it's great because you're so candid and honest during it. You obviously have function health is surging. We're going to talk a lot about the entrepreneurial journey there. Then are you a doctor as well?

Mark Hyman (2:12)

Yeah, I'm a real doctor. I have a practice up in Massachusetts where I'm now and I see patients. I have a limited patient roster compared to how I used to, which was just full-time all the time.

I know after tens of thousands of patients, I'm like slow down a little bit. I actually function is my main focus because it's really a way to scale what I'm doing to millions if not billions of people. I think I could sit and see patients all day every day and I'd never be able to sort of bridge the gap that's happening in healthcare right now, which is really to get people to understand their biology and using technology to help accelerate their ability to create healthier lives.

Jason Calacanis (2:49)

Yeah, and you were very early to this, which I describe, and I don't know if I'm using the right descriptor, as self-directed healthcare, people taking ownership of it. I think, you know, my friend Tim Ferris, maybe they call it biohacking.

Mark Hyman (3:02)

Yeah.

Jason Calacanis (3:03)

You know, the Joe Rogans of the world have their own view on it. But what is Function Health, and how should we look at this movement of, hey, I'm not just going to be a passive participant in my healthcare.

What is the proper term here? And more importantly, what is the philosophy that we as patients should have in the age of AI and all these amazing services available to us?

Mark Hyman (3:27)

Function is really about giving people agency, democratizing healthcare, and allowing people access to their own biology. Because up until very recently, you know, I'm a doctor and I'm an health care system, you had to go to the doctor, you had to ask for what you want, if you even knew what to ask for, you had to hope they would, he or she would agree to do it. You have to hope your insurance would pay for it. And if they did, you know, it usually was quite a bit of money. And people didn't have a real understanding of what's happening under the hood. And so function health is really an attempt to bring your biology online to help people have access to their data, to own their own health data, and to use that information to understand where they are in the trajectory of their health and how to either identify current problems and issues, which we do very often with function, or just see where you're headed in the trajectory and get on the off-ramp if you're heading down toward a serious disease like diabetes or Alzheimer's or something terrible. So function is really about empowering people with their own data and using technology and AI to help understand that data and make sense of it. Because we're complex beings and we have so much going on all the time and the human mind can only comprehend so much. And that's why we have super sub-specialization, but the body is not a bunch of different parts of the organ. It's one system.