Welcome to the Commune Podcast. My name is Jeff Krasno. As we enter into our sixth year of the Commune podcast, we are republishing some of our most popular interviews with teachers who now have full-length courses on the

Commune Course Platform. This interview with Dr. Mark Hyman is from 2022. Mark is a practicing

family physician and a leader in the field of functional medicine. He is the founder and director

of the Ultra Wellness Center Senior Advisor for the Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine,

and a 15-time New York Times best-selling author. Most recently, Mark also co-founded Function,

which allows people to get routine whole-body lab testing alongside insights from the world's top doctors.

This episode was recorded when Mark came and stayed with us at Commune-Tupanga for a couple of weeks,

and we went deep on the topic of longevity, and how we could not only increase our lifespan,

but also expand our health span and our ability to thrive into old age.

Given all of the knowledge and all of the technology at our disposal, it seems like we

should be living longer.

But life expectancy in the United States has actually gone down over the past few years,

even before COVID.

And this downward trend is primarily attributable to chronic diseases like heart disease, cancer,

diabetes, and neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's.

As a functional medicine doctor, Mark is always looking for root causes, not just treating

symptoms.

And in our conversation, Mark answers the question as to why chronic disease has become so prevalent

in our society. Do these diseases all share an underlying source? Mark and I also discussed

the hallmarks of aging, epigenetics, DNA methylation, inflammation, gut permeability,

and blood sugar levels. And Mark shares some of his experiences from Sardinia, Italy,

one of the five blue zones,

...