Dr. Mark Hyman: To Live Longer You Need...
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Loneliness is as bigger killer as anything else. Some have said it's equivalent to smoking two packs of cigarets today, a huge biology to IT.

Why aren't doctors prescribe bing to spend more .

time with friends? I do.

We are what we eat, or so the adage goes. But IT turns out that statement is actually medically true. Doctor mark hymen is one of the leading voices in the field of functional medicine, which basically means that if we feed our body's the nutrient that need, not only does that help us prevent illness, but we can actually super charge armine systems to heal us when we get sick.

So I wanted to talk him about something we need in our lives as much as we need food. Friendship world leaders asked mark for health advice. He's the older of fifteen book's many of the new york times best sellers and the host of the podcast, the doctor's pharmacy y so I really wanted to get his take.

And IT turns out, if we give our friendships the same attention as we give our diet, IT benefits our minds, our spirits and our bodies. This is a bit of optimism. Mark thanked so much for coming today was such a treat to sit done with you. There's so much I want to talk to you about my big thing right now. I'm learning about friendship here, so mildly obsessed with IT.

And it's a good thing to be obsess.

the good thing to be set to. So I want to go down the path of the connection between health and community and health and friendship. You made a comment that you can be a .

good friend if you're not healthy, you feel like shit. You know, you can show up and be present and be gage and be there and yeah just even be present to have a conversation if you're foggy and you feel like crap and you do kinds of species is hard to really be present. And that's what you need to do.

To be a friend is a paradox, because you need meta health to be good friend, right? But if you don't have friends is hard to have good mental health, right? We have such a crisis of mental ones in this country, and part of its because of lonely isolation, disconnection, social media, all the things that you're thinking about and actually writing about, hopefully with your new book on friendship. yeah. But from my lens, when I look at people's mental health, I look at the length of biology, because we now understand that the brain is obviously connected to the body, which has not actually been part of medicine.

We think that the cover, the brain, is also part of the body.

The old joke in medicine is psychist pay no attention to the brain, and they're just pay no attention to the mind, right? But now psychos are paying attention to the brain, and they're finding that brain is function. Brain inflammation actually driving much of mental illness thing, from depression to anxiety, C.

D. By politics' hena to autism, all these things are connected to brain, this function, and yes, I can be caused by an external stressor, like a spouse dying or trauma, or things that are external. But IT also can be caused by nutritional deficiencies in your microbiome and environment, toxins and things that actually are treatable and measurable.

There is a very famous trial in australia called the smiles trial, and great for studies. But the smiles now essentially get the acronyms IT was essentially they swapped out. I did a of my control trial giving people healthy whole foods and then versus process food.

And there was a huge improvement in mental health by eating hole fits for on a depressed population. They've done studies, for example, in jua centers with there's a lot of mental illness. These kids, by swapping out the crap for healthy food, had a ninety seven percent reduction in violence in seventy five percent reduction use of restrains, one hundred percent reduction suicide rates, which is the third adding cause of death in teenage boys, profound in presence. The same thing. You get prisoners healthy food compared the .

crap you is like in you. They eat the food you give them. It's not like they are the fridge. And choosing no great is a great .

space for a control .

of the choice involved. And I like they have a mindset of health. No, they are .

eating whatever given percent goes under eighty percent. And with function help, we're finding a huge amount. Tuition efficiency said, just had friends of vegan, and he was severely and or make a three deficient, very depressed.

He piling on omega trees and his moods completely different. And we know that omega play huge role mood. We know that fully and be vital, pay huge al. And we know many people are efficient these nutrient, and we can measure those biomarkers with testing that wasn't available before for people now is successful.

Body know, I think, is really significant about insight, especially we're relating IT to friendship and and having the mental capacity to be there for someone having the the strength of mind to be present for someone else as they're dealing with happiness or sadness, whatever, are dealing with just being there to be a friend.

So often when we talk about nutrition, we talk about eating, right? We talk about you, we talk about so that you can be healthy, is that you can live longer, that you don't suffer from Chris disease. And most of us let beyonce is the same reason we don't save money.

You know, if IT doesn't have an immediate impact, there is a slow boiling frog yeah you know, you know, nobody plans to get diabetes. Just just shows up after years of being like, I deal with this tomorrow. Other words were crap.

Doing things for ourselves, even though the data is overwhelming. But if you just exercise, sleep and eat right, you'll be fine and healthier. But to think about eating well as .

an active service.

yes, that I choose to eat well, not for me, though I may get benefits from IT. You know, as an unintended by product, I choose eat well so that I can be a Better friend to you. I choose to eat wealth that I can be at a Better parent to my kids, unless grumpy and less. I and to think of that, I think as as an active service. Yeah.

yeah, that's right. right. This this starts with the I, well, this starts with the we.

嗯， isn't that true? And so and so I think the correlation, and this is the thing that that drives me nuts when we think about things like innovation or health, is we make IT a very ee thing. You have to get healthy, you have to take a multivariate, you have to exercise, you have to sleep.

But we don't make IT about a wee right? And you know the data Better than I do that when you know there's a group of people who are awaiting, one of them decides to go on a diet. The disproportionate high number of decide to go to diet if this, a group of smokers and one of them says, I going to stop smoking. This proportionally high number.

Yeah.

getting is a team sport, getting healthy, a team sport. And we are absolutely influenced by our friends.

Yeah, is healthy firelock st.

friends. So raise so raise the question because clearly we're fAiling as a people as a nation are doing all the things you recommend because most of the things you recommend at the high level, what you recommend is a lot of work.

right? IT can be or not. It's just what you set .

up yourself at a functional level. A lot of the stuff that you recommend is not difficult, not expensive and pretty basic.

Yeah, it's kind of selling.

but is right. And yet for not any more money, I mean, you can buy broccoli is cheaper than you can buy. McDonald, you know, for not more money, a little bit effort, but not complicated things. We can all live much healthy lives in, yet or not. And so IT raises the question, you know, are we bang against our heads, against the wall? We repeating the same behavior, expecting a different result that maybe the the the drum beat from the health establishment of change the way you eat, get more, sleep more .

like .

we're all exotic. We all know that that is not like a lot of a snow IT.

but there's a whole subset of our population IT doesn't know what that means to eat well.

different problem. Yeah different problem. A completely .

agree on to me, but it's is true even in and it's because the food and you've been so good at manipulating the public to think that certain foods are healthy, that are not and they put health laim on labels of stuff that the worst possible for my basic rules if, but as the help laim on the label is bad for you don't need IT.

You know, if IT has a health clam .

on the law is trying to hide something, is trying to hide something like fat, low sugar, sugar free. What else is going on? right?

It's like like my favorite ones are new and improved form like what was in the old one 呀呀 h oh so so you you're .

kind of going to the table hall of we know what to do.

why we do IT. Why do i'm asking the question? Maybe we refocus our attention in a different place, let's call IT friendship, with the rising rates of anxiety and depression and mental fitness chAllenges and inability to cope with stress, and then the worst case, suicide, even the obsession with longevity.

I'll go a lot or throw that one as well. Friendship is the ultimate bio hack. Friendship literally fixed on all of those things.

We know the data. People who have close relationships live longer. People have close relationships are happier. And you look at damp, beautiful work yeah and the blue zoo and so much attention is put to them walking to the house and to the the and so much attention is put into what they're eating, how they are eating. But not enough attention is put into the fact that they're eating with their .

friends every single you're so right time. I actually, I spent on a time and a and a how you prince IT IT was just starting to see the level of community and connection, even if if someone, for example, like this woman, Julia, was one hundred, one hundred and three months, like, like five and three hundred or one hundred and three months.

I think when you're .

very Young and you're very .

old and now SHE didn't have kids.

but SHE live their needs. A and were no nursing homes, people just to care each other. And that was really remarkable, and was sky carmine, who basically had this huge farm.

And he had his whole life and his family had, he was eighty six tus old, he was raising animals, had fu trees and gardens, and he, you know, he was feeding his whole community and family had meaning a purpose, and he would live with his kids. And his wife had died. But IT was all this incredible sense of connection and community, and it's so essential.

And I I learned this lesson when I went to hate after the earthquake. And I was the first medical team on the ground at the main hospital, uh, the general hospital in porter prince. And I was, I was a disaster.

You can imagine the scope. IT was three thousand people injured and three thousand people dead. IT was an unbelieving massacre.

Re, that was a natural occurrence. But IT was. IT was horrible. And so we got there, and there were people helping everybody was helping was a sense of community and service and connection.

And I got to meet paul farmer, who was a hero mine. He was a doctor who went to hate and decided that even though the whole world had neglected this community of people who are suffering from T. B.

N. A, because they were poor, they don't have sanny ation. They are clean water. They don't have watches. They couldn't take the drugs.

It's complicated at that point to take the drug regiments from multiple sistani, drug resistance, T, B, or for AIDS. And he realized that wasn't a medical problem. IT was a social problem.

We call the structural violence for the social economics and political conditions of drive disease. And IT wasn't, we need a Better drug or surgery. We had to solve IT, but the entire public health giving up on them.

So he started to help by building A A network of community health workers, neighbors helping neighbors, friends helping friends. And he called that accompany me. And he was french.

I not pronouncing french something. Skip that company. Yeah, isn't like that.

And he built this whole model at this scale around the world that was adapted by the clinton foundation, the gates foundation, to help. He did improve. He did the prisons.

russia. He did everywhere where where people were struggling in rWanda, but hospitals. And IT was in an incredible model. And I realized that most of the diseases we have now in the west are not infective diseases. The chronic illnesses, which are called non community well infectious diseases, is like malaria, or musical, or T, B, right?

These are the things all we're killing us a century ago now there very much not accept in certain parts of the world, but the the disease we now have call non communicable diseases, but as a fallacy, because they're very communicable. They are not infectious, but they're contagious and chronic disease like hard to diabetes, cancer and entia diseases. These are diseases that are driven through are die toxins, but also through our social networks.

And I realized that our social networks were more important than our genes. The social thread c connectors are more important than the genetic. And that and the data is really clear on this Christos work out a harvard outline very clearly credible, called connected about this but yeah ah he's publicly research that showed you for all of your friends are overweight.

You're one hundred and seventy percent more likely to be aweigh and if your family overweight, we are forty percent to be overweight. Your social networks are driving your behavior for good or bad. So I realized that, yes, we have a society where the default is to do the wrong thing, and that we as society, aren't supporting each other to do the right thing. And I realized that community was medicine, just like food is medicine, and and that love is medicine.

yeah. And that's our anthropology, right? We're tribal animals, that group, historically, and tribes, about hundred and fifty people.

And that's how we lived. Yeah, we lived in these relatively small, we help each other communities. Yeah, mean, that's the history of of humankind. We've only started farming ten or twelve thousand years ago. But for most of human history we lived in in the small groups where we couldn't have populations larger than about one hundred and fifty.

Yeah, what's very interesting about the little statistics that you threw out and the thought that I had, which is when our family is overweight, we're forty percent more likely to be overweight, but when our friends are overweight, we're one hundred and seventy times percent, I mean, likely be away and that know the the immediate thing that popped into my head was when you think about children, right? Children, all they want is their parents approval. Hey mom, hey dadd, watch me, watch me, watch me, watch me, right? And they have no intentions in the outside world.

Don't care what the world thinks about them at all. And I going to dress like a princess, I going to dress like spiderman, but I want them and dad to watch me jump off the step. And I desperately want mom, dad approval, right? And that's where all of the learning about what's appropriate was inappropriate comes from strictly for my parents, nothing else, until they reach about adolescence.

And and adolescence, we convert to only needing our parents approval, to only needing our friends approval. Frustrating for the parents, but very, very important for social animals, because what we're doing is a cultural outside of our families, beyond their families, into the broader try and that last for the rest of our lives. We don't actually go back to the family. It's all friends, which is why I have to believe i'm just sort of thinking about this out loud now I have to believe that the reason so many of us going instagram and wish our parents happy birthday when our parents aren't on instagram, right, it's for the social approval that i'm a good kid and showing us the pictures .

of my dad .

holding me as a baby, like score through those pictures and everybody likes that I am a good sun and yet my dad not an instagram, right? And so I have to wonder if that same drive, that same weird need to one social approval for being .

a good sun is the same IT .

comes .

to person.

Friends are all drink like you should do you you because because you're in the industry, I can potentially insulting to you. And I I like to talk to guest and then inside them. This is potentially .

in our friends.

And so this is potentially insulting. I need you to work this to me. IT feels like I can say that IT is, but IT feels like that the complete explosion in the supplement industry where nothing is evaluated by the fda, every influencer now has a vitamin, a supplement powder or a drink with all kinds of nonsense claims.

Maybe they're good, maybe their bad. IT feels like we're living in the dot com boom of supplements really that you know in the dot com boom you were like i'm investing in this tech company yeah because my neighbor told me I had to. And now that's been replaced with are now taking these eighty seven pills per day because one friend told me to take these for another. Just like the dot com boom.

You can't live in .

a bubble like that. It's gonna have repercussions and it's going to be it's going to be unexpected and it's pretty violent, right? So rid me this.

Like is that time for the F, D, A to get involved? Like I can no longer tell the difference between a claim on a product you're selling, yes, or a claim on something that like literally their only qualification is they have a following. An instagram .

is not a job that is being an influencer. I, where was my course in college? Influencer.

one thing I think we're .

living in a .

supplement boom. And I don't how IT suddenly, you know, kicks back yeah but this is like, yes, I think .

there how do everything .

you're trying to do yeah.

I want I want people to do is do the right thing. It's what I I I hope I trying to do is help people understand how to create health. And part of the the new company I go found function health is really important.

People with own health data to make choices that are personalized. They aren't just random because somebody said, do this to do that. And so that's what I I love about that thing.

I had example of friend day showing her results from function and SHE was long and zing SHE was on iron SHE was long by mond SHE was to make a three fast. And like, that's why you feel like crap. You know you need to take these things and here's what to choose. But most people don't have that.

We have navigating ing the sort of morasses ve products that have, again, no regulations in terms of quality or advocacy now because people aren't protected in the sense that they don't know the product you're taking has the, uh, exact ingredient ents says if the do is what he says on the label, if there any contaminants in, if there is any fillers or products that kind of may be harmful to you. So it's kind of a ship show. And so as a physical and I ve spent a lot of time investigating which companies are using pharmacy ticals manufacturing practices, which do testing before after their products.

So they know that the purity, importantly, y is exactly right. And IT, though they may throw the product out of IT isn't. So there are good companies that are doing that. But it's it's like, no, you you can what I did a thing .

a while ago where there's a .

way to learn about .

where they took my blood and they evaluated all of everything in my blood from a new name IT, all the minerals and everything supposed to get and have yeah and then they .

made a personalized C.

A personalized smoothly that replaced all my things. And I am opposed to come back every six months. Yeah and IT was really interesting. And they introduce that. I talk to a doctor who walked me through my results, and then they give you my smooth, the only choice I get what flavor and and IT sounded good until I was like, I don't even know if this is bulls .

shit yeah. If selling you else, that the problem, always problem. But if you think I do all of the things from that.

like I took A G one for a few months and I I mean, I do all these things, I feel the same like like I i've done A G one i've done classroom, i've done, I mean, I, you know and again, all because something like you to try and there are people who are trust, is, why do that now? And you know, like you take these things like IT boost your immune system exactly. I I got a cold.

So does that work? IT doesn't not work. Well, you would have been worse if I mean, like, I don't know. And then I started I get very cynical. Sometimes i'm all in and sometimes i'm very sync a very cynical mode.

I think it's fair and you're right to be cynical. And I think there's a lot of garbage out there and lot of people pushing yourself. And there's a lot of companies, for example, doing test and then selling your products on the back.

And I think is a problem with that. okay. For example, function help. We don't do that all. We just for example, you have these things that you found that you need to fix that are affecting your health and well being. And here's how to make a decision for.

For example, we have a thirty .

page guide on how to choose the right. Don't take, we don't have any.

do you want? You just need this? No.

but now I don't. But if you are going to, if you need something, here's how to choose the right product, here's how to investigate the company, here's the questions to ask. Here's what to look for. And here's how to make a good decision. So we teaching .

that a fish not giving a fish. I like that you're doing this.

but I remember i'm in a cynical mode. What else is?

Which is when there is when there's a good business model, even if it's for for the greater good because money is fuel and that's totally fine. That means you'll have competition and other people will start doing similar things. And they were back at square one, which is all of these companies are going to be funded by V C.

And you I know too well, unfortunately, the way V, C and P, E works, which is they all are wonder return. They're all fantastic in the beginning. And they're so behind unior vision at the beginning and just wait three to five to seven years and also sudden the pressures start to show up.

And the growth we want growth because that's our business model, not you're business model. And then all of a sudden, especially if you're given up controlling the interest, you will have build up this beautiful brand, you get fired from your own company. I mean, the number of companies that are like the brand of vada, birds, bees, cai amies.

these were craft great .

brand that built their brands based on natural ingredients. And we believed IT because the founders were true. And then they sold yeah to craft and lowell.

And whoever buys these companies, they stripped the beautiful things out, put the shit in because they can increase margin. But we're none the wiser. We don't know which CEO been fired from beautiful companies.

We don't know that these companies are owned by large conglomerate driven by shareholder ue. And then we end up suffering for these products that we were told were good and they were good until they weren't good. And we're back square one. yes. So I think we should just have friends.

Well, let's get back to the current, our friendship, because I think, I think the fundamental thing is we .

should garden and farm with our friends that s eat own food.

We can look, know, I mean, you look, you look at the house.

finding that I think is right.

I mean, I think, you know, community gardens are amazing. I think they're great service for people. And I I think that what we're finding is that loneliness is as bigger killer as anything else.

Some have said it's equipment of smoking, two packs of secrets today. And how many, especially men, don't have someone who's a good friend? yeah? How many people don't have somebody to call? Yeah, when he goes down?

I go back to the work that I did some years ago when I was writing leaders at last, with alcoholics anonymous. If you want to overcome alcoholism as a twelve step program, most of us are familiar with the first step. Know if you have a problem yeah okay, let's say i'm depressed or i'm lonely.

Let's let's admit that the problem, right? But it's the twelve step that people don't talk about, right? And alcoholics anoma knows exactly, alcoholics anonymous knows that you can master eleven steps and not the twelve and also come to the disease and it's the exactly to help another alcohol service yeah and so I think the people who are the most lonely are the ones who have to go first, because the way to solve your problem is to help your friend who's suffer from the same problem.

If you are alcoholic, you help another alcoholic. If you're lonely, help a friend who's lonely. And I think that the the therapeutic benefits of helping someone who struggling with the same thing that you are strugling with, rather than wear ring about yourself, because right back to the gym.

the huge biology to IT, do I know, you know, but there's a whole field of social genomics, which is how our social interactions affect our gene expression.

Same.

more so if you're in a conflict, will relationship with someone, your inflammatory genes are turned on little and not just your emotions claimed, but your biology turns on the information.

Is fighter flight kind .

of stuff not fighter flight just if you're like in a shiny relationship or of your fighting with someone, or you have a conflict, you would turn on and flimsy genes, and then concrete expression kinds that cause information and then cause disease. And all chronic disease, from depression are hard disease to diabetes, to obesity. Elms are all in flamm diseases. Conversely, if you have a connected, loving relationship with somebody that turns on antil climate origins and an information .

is the core of like everything yeah .

and and and there is something treatment, you know where you have, where if you sit with someone and you have a an authentic connection that you can put E E G and E K G on basic, brainless and hard waves, you can see the hard beat of someone you're having a deep connected relation with in your brain with, well, it's wild. So it's not just a few good thing on an emotional level is a physiological response that happens of being in connection.

You take animals and put them in cages and separate animals and feed them exactly the same thing and have everything else the same year. The one is isolated. This is the ones that are connected, will travel and dying a right. And so humans in the same way, and we ve we've gotten in the situation where friendship and connection is is sort of like.

okay, so why on doctors? Why aren't doctors prescribing to spend more time with friends? I do like doctor. I am suffer from X, Y and z. Okay, i'd like to try and get an extra area of sleep, go to bed and a little early like you to stop eating before, you know, don't need past eight o'clock at at night and I want you to spend the at least three hours a week with with a friend .

and how that not? But I should be, I mean, I I prescribe IT. In fact, based on this worth, I am hate I. I met a pastor after record who read the purpose driven life and had a church with thirty thousand members. And I made him.

He came to, we start talking and I said, hey, you know, really tell me about your church because I really i'm a jewish doctor from new york. I don't know much about Christian church. Like, yeah, we got thirty thousand people. Like, wow, a lot of make a church.

She's like, we got five thousand groups that mean every week small groups in the church i'll be a little Better lives oh my go this is an a mega churches this is thousands of mini churches ah and I had that the light moment like, but I just come back from, he does why we put a healthy living program into the GPS see what happens. He is a great idea because I was baptized my church last weekend after about eight hundred person. I like, man, where a fed church and i'm fat.

We got to do something about IT. And so we put a program together through this small group for people were just helping each other. There was no doctor, nutritionally held coach, nobody.

There was just a curriculum. We had a big rally. So a big event where we talked about, we talked about the biblical rational for why god wants us to be healthy. I gave with bunches speeches and talked about how, you know, god lives in new wife feeding him crap. And like, I mean, you know, jews came to dinner, motion freedom, you know, big mac rising a coke, and they .

got truth. Jesus came to do, what would your fears?

So they got that. I think, you know, if you feel like crap, how are you going to serve god? How are you going to serve each other? You're going to take care of your body.

And I got IT and they, together in community, was jogging for jesus. And not, they are incredible. IT was incredible. And they lost together a quarter million pounds in the first year. And they did IT together.

And then I took that same model, and I provided clean clinic where we created small groups where people to help each other. We did research on us, publish that there were three times Better health outcomes on validated metrics of health outcomes compared to one or one visits for the same condition with the same doctors. So the doctors in our clinic could see in one on one and support them in a group, right? The group was three times as good as seeing the doctor one on one in terms of.

but aren't these things then being implemented across the medical field? Air aren't. Why aren't we going to the doctor with our friends to dealing with similar issues? Why aren't we like everything? So yeah, silos, essie.

I know the models of support. There's coaching. Where's one on one coaching or support, whether it's group models that they have to be the thing that is going to change because are are we get healthy together or we get sick together? What did many people say? We, we, us all thing together, or surely we will all hang separately. I mean, and I think that's kind of war.

right? Where we are. You one of the problems we have in our society as community things, bowling leagues don't exist anymore. Church attendance down in church attendance and faith are not the same thing. You know, you can have faith and not go to church, and you can go to church and not have faith.

The church would rather that they're overlapping, but the idea of doing things in common, in community, this is why I love things like common or burning man or whatever. You, then you never been burning man. I have been in gist that the motorcycle thing is Angels, like all of these things, doing things in community with people who have common interest.

And one of the questions i've getting since I started talking about friendship is amazing. How many people are coming up to me, who are of all ages, of all income levels, who were saying to me, I don't know how to make friends? Yeah, I struggle to make friends because .

we are RAID to be authentic. And that's the hard part, right?

Have you ever struggled to make friends?

When was a kid? I would have any. I was a weird kid. I just was in my head.

Read a lot of books was a little weird and, you know, kind of a nerd. I I was living in toronto in the seventies. He was a spiritual wasteland.

And in fact, I actually my first real friend I met on the top of mountain in the canadian rockies. We were backpacking, and I was a week out in the middle, nowhere on myself. He was a week out, and we cross over on badger pass in the financial park.

And we just had this kind of moment of connection. And we both find out we're going to be at cornell. He was in thick logy. I was a corneal. We got back and we got together and you know, we didn't know we're going to be friends or not, but we became like brothers and and .

we give this.

he's my best friend. Yeah, forty six tus later. Yeah, forty six years later. We do mount my trips all over. We we are very close and you know we help each other.

And when once down and they picks on one up and i'm down, he picks me up and he's down, I pick him up. And we've had this really sustained, deep, authentic, intimate relationship for forty five. amazing.

And we love each other, we hugged each other, we cry together, and we laugh together. And IT was a place where where I could say and be and do anything. And he was IT was a remarkable experience for me to actually feel seen and loved. IT was like the first person who loved me who didn't actually have to love me, like my parents.

Here's something I discovered about close friendships, right? Which is we always talk about close friends as the person you would call when you in need, when you need help, the person you can cry with the person when you're in pain yeah and I actually think that's true. That's the level of close friendship that you can call that person. Time is strugling you need but I think there's even a closer level of friendship, which is when you can call somebody, when something amazing .

are not jealous and there's .

no jealous y and you can call them and what you're doing is bragging, but not really. You just need to tell someone about this amazing thing that you accomplished, or that was given to you, or that you won, or that, you know, whatever IT is and if you would told anybody else that would be like they think you are bragging yeah but to that friend, they have unbridled joy with you and for you. And i've learned is the number of people I would call with good news is actually smaller .

than the number of people I would call with.

But you know, I mean.

ah well, that is an important take an inventory, your life and your friends and and if you don't have good friends, it's really important to cultivate them, to investing them, to find them. And there's ways to do that. I mean there's ways to put yourself in environments and situations.

And I don't preach Prices articles in your times about man and friendships and IT IT was just a heart breaking. And when coit happened were isolated. We're along.

And september twenty, twenty, my wife and I split up. I had just had back surgery. I was alone. IT was coated. And what I do, I sent an email to my closest man friends, six other men who I know don't men's work with the Mandatory with medicine journeys with anisa. Hey guys like can we start a little zoom once a week for an hour maybe and they like, how about we do two hours every you know and we've been going for its plus four years now um and it's it's remarkable to have this container.

And what's been interesting to watch is that even though this is all my close friends for forty years, thirty years, that the depth of our friendship has gotten more profound, the more vulnerable we ve gotten, the more we open our hearts, the more we share our fears, the more we share our successes, the more we share whatever is going on. Our life doesn't matter. There's always something with one of us. And to me, as I can anchor.

another friend of mine is struggling with one of her friends. And SHE asked herself if I was in a marriage or just a romantic relationship, a long term romantic relationship, and the relationship was struggling, we wouldn't just break up. We would get help.

We would seek therapy couples council here. And so SHE went to her friend and said, this attention has been going over too long. We're going to go to theri together, fresh therapy here.

And again, why? Why do we instinctively understand that a marriage or a relationship is struggling, that we expect people to at least try to at least try the couples therapy before you call the whole thing quits. And yet we don't do that with friendships.

When we have tension with friendships, we're quicker to end the friendship or sit and we attention to avoid the person, then to go to the therapy with the person, to try and work through the struggles we may still in that breaking up yeah, but let's at least put in the effort, no, to rescue the friendship that we claim we care about. yeah. I love the idea of a friendship counselling.

And IT speaks at the same point about, like not just co living, a sense of doing .

things together.

together and superior.

I will stress that I don't believe all friends, friendships need to be at this level. Like IT is perfectly .

fine to have a couple.

at least a handful. Some have more, some have fewer. You need but having friends where they're not deep bonds of vulnerability, you just have fun together, totally fine, adventure partners or activity partners totally find.

And I think that's one of the problems we have in our country, if not the world. I don't know about other language, I only know about english. But like one of the problems, I think, is language. So if, for example, if you have staged for a liver cancer or you have a mild mellon oma, the problem is both of those things are called cancer, but they're arly not the same thing, but the we use the same word or right?

exactly.

It's like you're fine. What a glaring David said. It's a good cancer a and I think we do that.

We we have very few taxonomy. We have very few words for friends. And so i've started using best friend friend yeah that's pretty much IT.

And even then, best friend is sometimes a little overuse ah somebody says, hey, aren't you friends with them? I go and friendly with them where somebody says, on't, you close with them, know they're in an acquaintance or there are workflow yeah, you know and so i'd actually started to use the language for my own clarity and for other people's clarity. And not everybody .

I know is my friend that i'm gonna a, have an. I IT investment .

is a real thing.

This is a central part of happiness, of joy, of longing, many of health.

By the way, go back to that lunch, everything you're in that space and you you know more than but I know some of the folks are sort of like the longevity folks. And I find a lot of happy people yeah joy. These guys, muslim men who are obsess longevity, and they're taken all of the measurements and they're taken all the advice, amin and supplements and the doing all the exercises and are doing all the things and everything is scheduled and highlighted. And I find them not very happy people.

No, no, you know.

find the joy I like where like maybe work out a little less. Don't worry about if you miss the supplement. Maybe just hang with friends I bit. I mean, the data will prove IT out like we have to wait a bunch years because the longevity obsessives, the only way you will know that works on that is when they die yeah .

and .

if they will be happy and healthy in old age because nobody wants to live a long time and be deported, you know and so that's why.

like I most most of my friends were there three and four years now because, like you know, a lot of my older friends, i've just .

kind of checked out, we have to redo this podcast in forty years and see if all the larger, all the longevity obsessives, they still around their dead. I'm going to do a vegas bedding pool here, which is I would bet that the people who are healthy ish, like they don't they not unhealthy, but they are not obsessively healthy, right? Like, yes, they get enough sleep. Yes, they mostly well.

you know like good do the best.

they do the basics. They're not unhealthy is the way I define them. But they're spend a ton of time with friends and they have a fantastic sense of humor and they they love to laugh. I will bet money that those people who live longer than all of the folks were measuring and powdering.

And I think it's evolutionary. I mean, I don't know, you know, Wilson, about, call the social conquest of the earth about from ants to humans, how we have to work together to survive, and the fact altruism is built in phenomenon. And that IT activates the same neural circuits as harvin or cocaine or sugar in terms of the nuclear oculus and the pleasure.

And I I remember this, that sounds kind of weird to say. But I when I was in hate, and I was sleeping four hours a night and I was working, helping people all day, you are early, eating anything, probably dehydrated in the hot sun, I felt like the sense of happiness, enjoy, like i'd never felt. And I was weird because I was little of the disaster with people with limbs and amputation and d people everywhere.

But something was happening in me where I was in service of others. I wasn't thinking about myself. And it's sort of, why do what I do? I mean, I am happy as when i'm serving .

others is a book called survival of the friendliness that's good. And IT makes IT makes an argument that we've completely misunderstood Darwin, that the idea of survival of the fittest st. We have always attributed to brute strength.

yeah. And so if you can overpower someone, you're more likely to survive. And they make an argument for social animals and mamas that that's actually completely incorrect, that what he meant by fittis was most fit to create community and take care of each other and survival of the fittest. St is actually nothing to do with brute strength, but it's actually to do with the ones who are Better taking care each other.

So as you started to think about this books, Simon and I can't wait, read that even though you have writing.

that's a good sign. I should put IT up .

an amazon, drive those .

three sales before yet untitled book.

And you know, as I think about that, I know I know I can't think of a lot of books on friendship.

Well, this this is the reason my friend will and I decided, my family will, and I decided to write this because IT seems to make sense that you should write a book about friendship with the friend. Yeah, right? A book for about friendship by yourself doesn't make sense. So um willin, I decided right together and we came to the realization that there's an entire industry to help us be Better leaders, an entire industry to help us be Better parents, an entire industry to help us, you know thrive in our relationships, how to eat Better, how to exercise Better.

how to live longer.

And you you ve in all those books and yet precious little, yet precious little on on how to be a friend. And when you look at all the chAllenges, as we said, in the world of depression, anxiety and all of the all these epidemics that doctors and and well intended folks are talking about, no one is talking about friendship as the antidote. And I think that friendship is the ultimate bio hack. I think if you can mass your friendship, a lot of those other things correct themselves.

It's true. Um it's true. People listening, I I imagine, are thinking of this is great.

I feel this. I know this same point and I feel the. The disconnection, yes, but I don't know how to make friends.

I don't know how to where to start. I don't know how to take their friends. I have to make them Better or find new friends. I don't know how to make friendship. The medicine that I need my life yes.

I think starting with common interests, sign up for ceramics class and go by yourself. Or if you too nervous to go by yourself, go with a friend, but talk to the person you're sitting next to. Because the great thing about doing the thing with common interest is the ice break er is really, really easy. You just have to say, is this your first time here? If you done this before and that pretty much starts the conversation, you don't have to form a deep meaningful relationship out of IT.

But I think starting to do hobby things and I think having hoby we've been to decline and hobby even yeah you know and doing hobbies with people that's why yeah that's why I said um a goopy chess you know in in a park you know um that's why I said I think things like come icon and things like that are spectacular because when you find a group of people who when people laugh at your hobby and you find a group people who we've all been lifted up but now we're the we're the norm here. It's incredibly easy to make friends. I've been to come up on many, many times and you know it's it's a nerd vana.

What is common? You don't know what common is. So very well.

It's changed over the years, but basically it's a comic book convention, the history. But but these days, comic books are only a part of IT. It's also science fiction and hero movies, marvel stories and star wars dc and all of that. And it's all that nurse kind of pop cultural stuff. People will dress up as their favorite cartoon character or superhero or, you know, some of your character and some of them were super creative and some and it's and you know some people are there for the the content of the convention and some people they are just to walk around and costume and have. And what's so wonderful about IT is is an incredibly polite group of people.

So if you are in a great question where you see someone who's a great costume and you want have a picture with them, or they want to a picture with everybody, ask everybody, can I have a picture with you, please? Hey, may I have a picture with you, please? And so there's a lot of interaction you can go to.

Somebody said, I D love your costume and they will be friendly back. There's not a lot of cynical. M, I met one of my best friends there.

I literally went up and said, you look amazing, can have a picture with you. And SHE goes, absolutely. We took a picture together because I just loved her costume. I don't remember how the conversation started, but we ended up talking a little bit for just a few minutes. I don't know how we got to IT, but we ended up trading phone numbers and then we ended up having sort of a really great relationship.

And the best part about that is I still have the photograph, not from our first date at the photograph from the moment we met, which doesn't happen in relationship. You don't say nice to meet, you take a self just in case no, but I have the photograph of the time that we the minute we met. And ah I think when you go to places where people like the things you like, it's going to increase the odds and not increase your odds that you will find a deep meaningful relationships. But IT makes IT .

easier to break the ice to get started, to get start. So what's what's your what's your goal with your book? What's set of a your targeting?

You know i'm somebody who has had very few long term relationships in my life, and the world criticizes me for that. I am seen as unhealthy or i've been judged as having commitment.

Love relationship are just friendship love relationship.

You know, i've never been married. I don't have a ten year romantic relationship, but I haven't had IT and even some of the women i've dated like what's wrong with you?

What's wrong .

with you is what I hear a lot. And I have A, I have a friend who was in a sixteen year relationship and unhealthy relationship for sixteen years. SHE freely admits that he should have stayed in that relationship for one year.

No, yeah. And yet society looked at her and said, he got IT right and I got IT wrong, which is twisted. And if you look at the quality of my friendships, like I have a lot of really, really good friends, yeah, and I am fulfilled in almost every aspect of my life, but just not necessarily all from one person.

And look, I like relationship, and I love being in a relationship, and I love being a partner to someone. And you know, people say, why? Why would you? Why have you been married? And like, is is obvious I ve been at the right person yeah, that's such a stupid question.

But I found comfort in recognizing that by Fostering friendship, I don't have to feel guilty or bad or explain myself. I haven't had a marriage or a ten year romantic relationships and friendships at last. And friendships are and friendships are there to help you through relationships.

And if you don't have good friendships, you'll struggle in your relationship because you have to have somebody to ask adviser event to you can always go to one person that will work. And so I think we don't give enough credit to friendship. We don't give enough credit to friendship, and we don't give credit to people who are a good at friendship.

We give credit people who stay in relationships, even if those relationships aren't healthy. And I think we just need to reevaluate how are managing relationship in general in our lives. I want to be a part of the friendship movement.

I love that me, that one of the chapters of our book around how to be healthy is friends. Five eth.

Yeah exactly. And then mark, I so appreciate you coming in to get a physicians perspective, especially the work that you do because your work is so different than traditional medicine, where we treat illness, where your work is really about staying healthy, living a healthy and you'll never get ill, or your body will know how to fix itself, that friendship is a core part of staying healthy in helping the body fix itself and prevent itself from .

getting ill friendship.

And on that, my friend, thank you so much for having this conversation with me.

If you enjoy this podcast, would would like to hear more, please subscribe wherever you like to listen to podcast. And if you'd like even more optimism, check out my website, Simon sonic dotcom, for classes, videos and more. Until then, take care of yourself.

Take care of each other. A bit of optimism is a production of the optimism company. It's produced and edited by lynsey gardenias, David joh and devon Johnson. Our executive producers are hindi conrad and greg rooter ship.