友谊对健康和幸福的影响：科学与实践

@Mark Hyman : 我坚信友谊对健康和长寿至关重要。它不仅能带来积极的情绪体验，更能从生理层面影响我们的健康，例如减少炎症，预防慢性疾病。我通过在海地和美国的工作经验，发现社区和人际联系对健康的影响甚至超过了基因。我们应该将友谊视为一种“生物黑客”，积极培养和维护健康的友谊关系。此外，我建议人们关注自身营养状况，通过饮食和补充剂改善身心健康，从而更好地成为朋友。 我与Simon的对话中，我们探讨了现代社会中人们面临的健康挑战，例如营养缺乏、精神疾病高发等。这些问题与孤独和社会隔离密切相关。我们还讨论了如何通过培养友谊来改善这些问题，以及如何将健康饮食和生活方式作为一种利他的行为，从而更好地服务他人。 在与朋友相处方面，我强调了平衡脆弱性的重要性，以及在分享个人信息时寻求许可的重要性。我们还讨论了如何处理友谊中的冲突和矛盾，以及如何结束不健康的友谊关系。 总而言之，我认为友谊是现代社会中被低估的宝贵资源，它对我们的身心健康和幸福至关重要。我们需要积极培养和维护健康的友谊关系，并将其视为一种重要的“生物黑客”手段。 @Simon Sinek : 我认为友谊是终极的生物黑客，它能解决许多现代社会中人们面临的健康问题，例如焦虑、抑郁、压力应对能力差等。友谊能从生理层面影响我们的健康，例如减少炎症，增强免疫力。 在与Mark的对话中，我们探讨了友谊与微生物群之间的关系，以及如何通过改善肠道健康来提升身心健康。我们还讨论了现代社会中人们面临的健康挑战，例如营养缺乏、加工食品摄入过多等，以及如何通过改变饮食习惯和生活方式来改善这些问题。 此外，我们还探讨了如何培养和维护健康的友谊关系，以及如何处理友谊中的冲突和矛盾。我分享了我的一些经验，例如如何通过表达爱意来增进友谊，以及如何通过“精神手术”来帮助朋友走出困境。 总而言之，我认为友谊是人类社会中不可或缺的组成部分，它对我们的身心健康和幸福至关重要。我们需要积极培养和维护健康的友谊关系，并将其视为一种重要的“生物黑客”手段。

分享图

我坚信友谊对健康和长寿至关重要，它远不止是一种带来愉悦感受的概念。 在最近一期《The Doctor’s Farmacy》播客中，我有幸与世界知名作家和领导力专家Simon Sinek进行了一场深入的对话，探讨了友谊的科学和心理学基础——我们为什么需要友谊，友谊如何影响我们的生物学机制，以及如何在日益疏离的世界中建立深厚而有意义的人际关系。

友谊与身心健康密不可分

我们讨论了友谊与生理健康之间令人惊讶的联系：孤独感会加剧炎症，引发慢性疾病，甚至导致早逝。 你的五个最亲密的朋友决定了你的习惯、健康状况和整体福祉。 这并非夸大其词，行为模式，例如饮食、锻炼，甚至情绪，都会在朋友群体中蔓延，这就是所谓的“社会传染效应”。 因此，单纯的饮食、健身和生活方式干预，如果不解决社会健康问题，往往会事倍功半。

我们还触及了长寿研究中被忽视的方面：友谊可能是最终的“生物黑客”。 许多人发现成年后交友变得异常困难，而这期播客正是为了解答这个疑问，并帮助大家建立更牢固的人际关系。

友谊的生物学基础

Simon和我深入探讨了现代社会中人们面临的健康挑战，例如营养缺乏、精神疾病高发等，这些都与孤独和社会隔离密切相关。 大量的研究数据表明，食用全食物而非加工食品能显著改善精神健康；在监狱中，提供健康食物能大幅降低暴力犯罪率。 这些都证明了营养对心理健康的重大影响。

我强调了将健康饮食和生活方式视为一种利他行为的重要性。 为了成为更好的朋友、父母，我选择吃得健康，这并非完全为了自身利益，而是为了更好地服务他人。 健康是一种团队运动，我们互相影响，互相支持。

培养和维护健康的友谊

在与朋友相处的过程中，我特别强调了平衡脆弱性的重要性。 健康的友谊关系需要双方都愿意敞开心扉，分享彼此的感受和经历。 然而，这并非意味着毫无保留地倾诉，在分享个人信息时，寻求许可至关重要。 这就像一场舞蹈，需要双方共同维护平衡，避免一方过度付出而另一方却无动于衷。

我们还讨论了如何处理友谊中的冲突和矛盾，以及如何结束不健康的友谊关系。 有时，我们需要进行“精神手术”，帮助朋友认清自身问题，并鼓励他们做出改变。 这需要勇气和智慧，但最终能帮助朋友们获得更健康、更幸福的生活。 友谊并非一成不变，我们需要根据自身成长和变化，适时调整和结束一些关系。

友谊：被低估的宝贵资源

总而言之，友谊是现代社会中被低估的宝贵资源，它对我们的身心健康和幸福至关重要。 我们需要积极培养和维护健康的友谊关系，并将其视为一种重要的“生物黑客”手段，从而获得更健康、更长寿、更幸福的人生。 这不仅仅是空洞的理念，更是有科学依据支撑的实践。 让我们一起，重新重视友谊的力量！

Edit:2025.03.01

00:00

- Coming up on this episode of The Dr. Hyman Show. - And I think that friendship is the ultimate bio hack. I think if you can master friendship, a lot of those other things correct themselves. Friendship in the microbiome. - Yeah. - You know, get the microbiome right, a lot of stuff just falls into place. Get friendship right, a lot of stuff just falls into place.

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03:19

Welcome to the Dr. Hyman Show. Today we have an amazing conversation with one of my close friends, hero, and brilliant thinker about the things that matter in life, Simon Sinek, who's got an incredible…

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vision of humanity that I love. He's a spark that ignites passion ideas. He envisions a world where people wake up inspired, feel safe, and end the day fulfilled. He's an unshakable optimist, much like myself, a pathological optimist, I call myself. He's a trained ethnographer. He's fascinated by people and organizations that make a lasting impact. And he's discovered remarkable patterns in how they think, act, and communicate, reveals how people perform at their

04:01

best and he's known for his TED talk on why in his viral video on millennials in the workplace I think his TED talk has gotten over 80 million views he's gotten many best-selling books start with why in his podcast a bit of optimism which is amazing you should listen to continues to inspire so many people he's the founder of the optimism company and optimism press and he shares a

04:20

kinds of innovative views on leadership which attract intention from all over the world. He recently had President Biden ask him to come to the White House to be on his podcast, to be on Simon's podcast. He works with the US government, with the military, Rand Corporation and he's just doing cool shit. So let's jump right into our conversation with Simon where we talk about friendship, which I think is one of the neglected topics of our time. The thing that matters most about how we live and feel and the other day if we aren't connected,

04:45

We can't be healthy. And so I think you're going to love this conversation about friendship, both from a humanitarian perspective and even a physiological perspective where we dive into the biology of friendship. So I think you're going to love it. Let's just jump right in. So Simon, it's great to have you back. I'm so excited about our topic today, which is friendship.

05:00

Thanks, Mark. Good to be back. It's such an important topic, so let's jump right in and get to it. So you are a world-renowned doctor on the cutting edge of functional medicine. You're one of the leaders of the functional medicine movement. You have a new company where you are helping people have easier access to those kinds of

05:21

tests and community, et cetera. My big thing right now is I'm writing about friendship. - Yeah. - And I'm sort of mildly obsessed with it. - It's a good thing to be obsessed with. - It's a good thing to be obsessed with it. So I'm sure people are asking, what do these two things have to do with each other? - Yeah. - Right? Now, they're a lot more closely related than I think, I mean, they're a lot more closely related, right?

05:46

And I want to go down that path. Yeah. 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't be a good friend if you're not healthy. If you feel like shit, you know, you can't show up and be present and…

06:01

- Be there for someone. - Engage and be there and yeah, just even be present to have a conversation if you're foggy and fatigued and you feel like crap and you're dealing with all kinds of issues, it's hard to really be present and that's what you need to do to be a friend. - I'll give you a perfect example of this. A friend of mine is going through serious depression. He's going through, I mean it's bad, bad, bad. Suicidal ideations, the whole thing, right?

06:25

And he, he, he did this exercise where he, um, kept a diary for, uh, 28 days and he only answered three questions every night. Um, uh,

06:37

What gave you energy? What sapped your energy? And what did you learn? And you're not allowed to read the entries until after 28 days. So for 28 days, he did this. And his career is up and down. And he thinks that it's this career stress that's causing his depression. Right? Right.

06:56

And so he went through this exercise and after 28 days he went back and he read all the entries. Entries. And what he discovered was career stress really accounted for like two days of sapping his energy. It really was a non-factor. Lack of sleep. Yeah. Poor diet. Yeah. Excessive cell phone. Excessive cell phone use. Excessive social media. It's a paradox because you need mental health to be a good friend. Right. But if you don't have friends, it's hard to have good mental health. Right. Right.

07:23

So they're kind of synergistic. And the depression is an interesting phenomenon because we have such a crisis of mental illness in this country. And part of it's because of loneliness, isolation, disconnection, social media, all the things that I think you're thinking about and actually writing about, hopefully with your new book on friendship. Yeah, yeah.

07:44

But, you know, from my lens, you know, when I look at people's mental health, I look at it through the lens of biology because we now understand that the brain is obviously connected to the body, which has not actually been part of medicine. Isn't that a weird thing that that's a discovery that the brain is actually a part of the body? The old joke in medicine is psychiatrists pay no attention to the brain and neurologists pay no attention to the mind.

08:09

But now psychiatrists are paying attention to the brain and they're finding that brain dysfunction, brain inflammation is actually driving much of mental illness, everything from depression to anxiety to OCD to bipolar to schizophrenia to autism. All these things are connected to brain dysfunction.

08:26

And yes, it 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 and your microbiome and environmental toxins and things that actually are treatable and measurable.

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And so I think, you know, I was just back, for example, here a few weeks ago in LA and I was at an event. This guy comes up to me, Dr. Hyman, I have to tell you, I had severe bipolar disease when I was a teenager. I was on a pile of medications. I was on antipsychotic drugs. And I started, you know, reading your book on the brain and the mind called Ultra Mind Solution. And I followed your directions. I changed my diet. I took the supplements. I did that. And now I'm good. And I got off of my medications and I'm a high functioning human at a, you know, at a… So do you have…

09:10

evidence, do you have data to show that in our modern world with excessive packaged goods and processed foods and unhealthy microbiomes and unhealthy gut and all the junk and excess sugar, can you show from data that the

09:32

the increased amount of shit that we're putting in our body in this modern day is directly contributing to the mental fitness challenges that so many people are struggling with. - Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, so much data on this, Simon. I mean, there's a very famous trial in Australia called the SMILES trial. They come up with all these great names for studies. - But it was Dr. Smiles? - No, they essentially, no, I forget the acronym, but it was essentially, they swapped out, you know, did a randomized controlled trial of giving people healthy whole foods versus processed food.

10:01

And there was a huge improvement in mental health by eating whole foods on a depressed population. They've done studies, for example, in juvenile detention centers where there's a lot of mental illness and

10:16

These kids, by swapping out the crap for healthy food, had a 97% reduction in violence, and 75% reduction in use of restraints, 100% reduction in suicide rates, which is the third leading cause of death in teenage boys. Profound, in prisons, the same thing. You get prisoners healthy food compared to the crap.

10:35

- 56% reduction in balance. - And it's not like you're putting them on, they eat the food you give them, it's not like they're going to the fridge and choosing. - No. - So it's a great space for a controlled study. - Yeah, it is, it is, right. - Because there's no choice involved. - Right, it is, yeah. - It's not like they have a mindset of health. - No. - They're just eating whatever they're given. - And then they violent crime goes down 56% in prisons, if you add a multivitamin it goes down to 80%. - Wow. - And with function health we're finding huge amounts of nutritional deficiencies. I just had a friend who's a vegan and he was severely omega-3 deficient, very depressed.

11:04

And he's piling on omega-3s and his mood is completely different. And we know that omega-3s play a huge role in mood. We know that folate and B vitamins play a huge role. And we know that many people are deficient in these nutrients. And we can measure those biomarkers with testing that wasn't available before for people. Now it's accessible to anybody. Do you know what I think is really significant about this little insight? Especially as we're relating it to friendship and

11:26

and having the mental capacity to be there for someone, to having the strength of mind to be present for someone else as they're dealing with happiness or sadness or whatever they're dealing with, or just being there to be a friend, is that 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, so that you can live longer, so that you don't suffer from chronic disease. And most of us, let's be honest, it's the same reason we don't save money. Eh, you know, if it doesn't have an immediate impact, you know, it's the slow-boiling frog, you know,

11:56

You know, nobody plans to get diabetes. It kind of just shows up after years of being like, I'll deal with this tomorrow. In other words, we're crap at doing things for ourselves, even though the data is overwhelming that if you just exercise, sleep, and eat right, you'll be fine and healthier. But to think about eating well as an act of service. Yeah, to others, yeah. That I choose to eat well, not for me, though I may get benefits from it, you know, as an unintended byproduct. Yeah.

12:26

I choose to eat well so that I can be a better friend to you. I choose to eat well so that I can be a better parent to my kids so I'm less grumpy and less agitated. And to think of that, I think, as an act of service. Because for me, I am perfectly comfortable disappointing myself.

12:45

You shouldn't be. No, I'm genuinely completely fine with it. Like if I wake up early, like before, you know, whatever my calendar says I have to do at the beginning of the day. And I was like, and I wake up, let's say I wake up two hours before my alarm. Yeah. Right. I'm like, oh, I could totally work out right now. I have excessive time to work out. Yeah. But I'd rather not. I'll just sit in bed and do the crossword puzzle. Right. And, uh,

13:11

And I'm fine with that. I suffer no guilt. I'm just like, ah, shit. And then I go about my day. But if I'm meeting someone early to work out before my day starts, I'll set the alarm, I'll be ready, and I will not disappoint them. Yeah, that's right. Well, illness starts with I. Wellness starts with we. Oh, yeah, yeah. Isn't that true? And so I think the correlation, and this is the thing that drives me nuts is

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when we think about things like innovation or we think about things like, or health, is we make it a very I thing. You have to get healthy. You have to take a multivitamin. You have to exercise. You have to sleep. But we don't make it about a we. And you know the data better than I do that when there's a group of people who are overweight and one of them decides to go on a diet,

13:59

The disproportionately high number of them will decide to go on a diet Yeah, if there's a group of smokers and one of them says I'm gonna stop smoking and just support disproportionately high number getting healthy as a team sport getting healthy as a team sport and and we are Absolutely influenced by our friends. Yeah, so it was healthy as your five closest friends So it raises right so it raises the question because clearly we're failing as a people as a nation And 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?

14:28

Right? It can be or not. It's just what you set up for yourself. But 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 silly, but it is. Right? And yet, for not any more money, I mean, you can buy broccoli cheaper than you can buy McDonald's, you know? For not more money, a little bit of effort, but not complicated things, you can live, we can all live much healthier lives, and yet, we're not. Right?

14:59

And so it raises the question, are we banging our heads against the wall? Are we repeating the same behavior, expecting a different result? That maybe the drumbeat from the health establishment of change the way you eat, get more sleep, work out. We all know that. It's not like you're… I think a lot of us know it, but there's a whole subset of our population that doesn't know what

15:28

It means to eat well. Different problem. Yeah. Different problem. Completely agree. It's shocking to me, but it's true even in the… And it's because the food industry has been so good at manipulating the public to think that certain foods are healthy that are not. And they put health claims on labels of stuff that's the worst possible food. All natural, which means nothing. My basic rule is if it has a health claim on the label, it's bad for you. Don't eat it.

15:52

you know if it has a health claim on the label because it happens if it's trying to hide something it's trying to hide something right it's like low fat low sugar sugar free and like what else is going on right it's like it's like my my like i love my fiber you know my favorite ones are you know uh you know new and improved formula like we what was in the old one yeah yeah like uh-oh so so you were you were kind of going to the trap hole of uh

16:16

You know, we know what to do. Why don't we do it? Why don't we do it? And I'm asking the question, maybe if we refocused our attention in a different place, let's call it friendship. You know, and I, look, the way I've been talking about it is 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 throw that one in as well. Friendship is the ultimate biohack.

16:42

It is. Friendship literally fixes all of those things. It is. We know the data that people who have close relationships live longer. People who have close relationships, you know, are happier. And you look at Dan Buettner's work. Yeah. And the Blue Zones. Yeah. And so much attention is put to them walking to the house and to the, and so much attention is put into what they're eating and how they're eating. Yeah.

17:05

But not enough attention is put into the fact that they're eating with their friends every single day. You're so right, Simon. I actually, I spent a lot of time in Sardinia and in Ikaria or Ikaria, however you pronounce it. And it was just stunning to see the level of community and connection. Even if someone, for example, like this woman, Julia, was 100, I'm 103 months. Like, you know, like I'm five and three quarters. I'm 103 months. I think when you're very young and you're very old. Every month. The half, the quarter count. Yeah.

17:32

And now she didn't have kids, but she lived with her niece and nephew and there were no nursing homes. People just took care of each other, you know, and it was really remarkable. And there was this guy, Carmine, who basically had this huge farm that he had his whole life and his family had. And he was 86 years old and he was raising animals and

17:49

had fruit trees and gardens. And he, you know, he was feeding his whole community and family had meaning and purpose and he would, you know, live with his kids and his wife had died, but it was all this incredible sense of connection and community. And it's, it's so essential. And I learned this lesson when I went to Haiti after the earthquake and I was

18:07

the first medical team on the ground at the main hospital, the general hospital in Port-au-Prince. And it was a disaster. I mean, you can't imagine the scope. It was 300,000 people injured and 300,000 people dead. Wow. It was an unbelievable massacre that was a natural occurrence, but it was…

18:26

It was horrible. And so we got there and there were people helping. Everybody was helping. There was a sense of community and service and connection. And I got to meet Paul Farmer, who was a hero of mine. He was a man doctor who went to Haiti and decided that even though the whole world had neglected

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This community of people who are suffering from TB and AIDS because they were poor. They didn't have sanitation. They didn't have clean water. They didn't have watches. They couldn't take the drugs. It's complicated at that point to take the drug regimens for multi-resistant, drug-resistant TB or for AIDS. And he realized it wasn't a medical problem. It was a social problem. And he called it structural violence. What are the social, economic, and political conditions that drive disease?

19:10

And it wasn't that we needed better drugs or surgery, we knew how to solve it. But the entire public health community had given up on him. So he started to help by building a network of community health workers, neighbors helping neighbors, friends helping friends.

19:24

And I realized, and he called it accompaniment. It was French, but I'm not good at pronouncing French, so I'm gonna skip that. - Accompagnement. - Accompagnement, yeah, something like that. And he built this whole model and it scaled around the world. It was adapted by the Clinton Foundation, the Gates Foundation to help. He did this in Peru, he did this in prisons in Russia, he did this everywhere where people were struggling in Rwanda, built hospitals. And it was an incredible model. And I realized that most of the diseases we have now in the West are not infectious diseases.

19:53

They're chronic illnesses, which are called non-communicable. What's the difference? Well, infectious disease is like, you know,

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malaria, right? Or measles or TB, right? These are the things that were killing us a century ago. Now they're pretty much not except in certain parts of the world. But the disease we now have are what we call non-communicable diseases. But that's a fallacy because they are very communicable. They're not infectious, but they're contagious. And chronic diseases like heart disease, diabetes, cancer, dementia,

20:24

These are diseases that are driven through many things, including our diet, toxins, but also through our social networks. And I realized that our social networks were more important than our genes. The social threads that connect us are more important than the genetic threads. And the data is really clear on this. Chris Dockers' work out of Harvard outlined this very clearly.

20:48

He wrote a book called Connected about this. But he's published the research that showed, for example, if your friends are overweight, you're 170 times more likely to be overweight than if your family's overweight, where you're 40 times more likely to be overweight. That 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 a society, aren't supporting each other to do the right thing. And I realized that community was medicine.

21:16

just like food is medicine and that love is medicine. - I mean look, that's our anthropology, right? We grew up in, we're tribal animals that grew up historically in tribes about 150 people and that's how we lived. We lived in these relatively small,

21:32

We help each other communities, communes. I mean, that's the history of humankind. We've only started farming 10 or 12,000 years ago. But for most of human history, we lived in these small groups where we couldn't have populations larger than about 150. Yeah.

21:47

What's very interesting about the little statistic that you threw out, the thought that I had, which is when our family is overweight, we're 40 times more likely. 40%. Sorry, 40% more likely to be overweight. But when our friends are overweight, we're 170 times, percent, I mean, more likely to be overweight. And that's, you know, the immediate thing that popped into my head was when you think about children, right?

22:08

Children, all they want is their parents' approval. Hey, mom. Hey, dad. Watch me. Watch me. Watch me. Watch me. Right? And they have no inhibitions in the outside world. They don't care what the world thinks about them at all. I'm going to dress like a princess. I'm going to dress like Spider-Man. Yeah. You know, but I want mom and dad to watch me jump off the step. Right.

22:29

And I desperately want mom and dad's approval, right? And that's where all of the learning about what's appropriate and what's inappropriate comes from. Strictly from our parents, nothing else. Until they reach about adolescence. And adolescence, we convert to only needing our parents' approval to only needing our friends' approval.

22:52

frustrating for the parents but very very important for social animals because what we're doing is a culture rating outside of our families beyond our families into the into the broader tribe Yeah, and that lasts for the rest of our lives. We don't actually go back to the family It's all it's all friends, which is which is why I have to believe and I'm just sort of thinking about this out loud now I have to believe that's the reason so many of us go on Instagram and

23:16

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 all the pictures of my dad holding me when I was a baby, scroll through all those pictures and everybody likes that I'm a good son, and yet my dad's not on Instagram. And so I have to wonder if that same drive, that same weird need to want social approval for being a good son

23:46

is the same, it comes from the same root. - 100%, I mean 100%. If your friends are all drinking green juices and doing yoga– - Then you're gonna drink green juice. - Then you're gonna do the same thing if all your friends are– - The amount of shit that I take simply because a friend's like, “You should do it.” You know what it's equivalent to? Because you're in the industry, I'm gonna say something that's potentially insulting to you. - Please, I love that. - That's what I like to do. I like to talk to guests and then insult them. But this is potentially insulting to you. - Okay, we're friends, everybody. - So this is potentially insulting, so I need you to work this through me, with me, right? It feels like,

24:15

I can't say that it is, but it feels like that the complete explosion in the supplement industry where nothing is evaluated by the FDA and every influencer now has a vitamin or a supplement or powder or a drink with all kinds of nonsense claims. Maybe they're good, maybe they're bad. It feels like

24:46

We're living in the dot-com boom of supplements. Maybe, yeah. That, you know, in the dot-com boom, you were like, I'm investing in this tech company because my neighbor told me I had to. Yeah. And now that's been replaced with, I'm now taking these 87 pills per day because one friend told me to take these four. Another friend… And just like the dot-com boom…

25:11

You can't live in a bubble like that. It's going to have repercussions and it's going to be unexpected and it's going to be pretty violent. So riddle me this, is it time for the FDA to get involved? I can no longer tell the difference between a claim on a product you're selling or a claim on something that some… Literally, their only qualification is they have a following on Instagram. Yeah.

25:40

- Isn't that a job? - We're living in a– - Being an influencer? - Where was my course in college, Influencer 101? - We're living, I think we're living in a supplement boom. - Yeah, it could be. - And it's gonna, I don't know how it suddenly kicks back, but this can't last forever. - Can't be good. Yeah, I think there's gotta– - And it's counter to everything you're trying to do.

26:07

Yeah. What I want people to do is do the right thing. And I think, you know, it's what I've spent my whole life trying to do is help people understand how to create health. And part of the new company I co-founded, Function Health, is really empowering people with their own health data to make choices that are personalized, that aren't just random because somebody said do this or do that. Yeah.

26:25

And so that's what I love about the testing. I had, for example, a friend the other day who showed me her results from function and she was low in zinc, she was low in iron, she was low in vitamin D, she was low in omega-3 fats. I'm like, oh, 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 a way of navigating this sort of morass of products that have, again, no regulations in terms of quality or efficacy.

26:48

That was sort of a deliberate decision. It was sort of put forward by Orrin Hatch, who was from Utah, where there's a big supplement industry and it was called the D'Shea Act. It's got a lot of problems because people aren't protected in the sense that they don't know if the product they're taking has the exact ingredient it says, if the dose is what it says on the label, if there's any contaminants in it, if there's any fillers or products that kind of may be harmful to you. So it's kind of a shit show.

27:12

And so as a physician, I've spent a lot of time investigating which companies are using pharmaceutical manufacturing practices, which do testing before and after their product. So they know that the purity and potency is exactly right. And they throw the product out if it isn't. So there are good companies that are doing that. But it's like- I don't even know. You can't, unless you know what to ask. I did a thing a while ago where- There's a way to learn about it, Simon. Where they took my blood.

27:40

And they evaluated all of everything in my blood from, I mean, you name it, all the minerals and everything I'm supposed to get and have. And then they made… A personalized cocktail. A personalized smoothie that replaced all my things and I'm supposed to come back every six months. And it was really interesting. And then I talked to a doctor who walks me through my results. And then they give me my smoothie and the only choice I get is what flavor. And…

28:08

And it sounded good until I was like, I don't even know if this is bullshit. If they're just like, I don't actually… Well, that's the problem. If someone's selling you something off of something else, that can be a problem. It's not always a problem. But if you're saying… I've done all of the things for a little bit. Like I took AG1 for a few months and that was fine until I was like, I don't know, maybe just vegetables is better. Did you do the customized shake that they gave you or not? I just did the generic AG1 that they…

28:36

- No, no, but when you got your results of all the tests, they gave you the recommendation, did you try it? - Yeah, yeah, yeah, I did it for a while. I mean, I do all these things, I feel the same. Like, I've done AG1, I've done Clostrum, I've done, I mean, and again, all because somebody's like, “You should try it.” And there are people who I trust, that's why I did it. And you take these things, it boosts your immune system.

29:01

How do you measure that? Exactly. I got a cold. So does it work or does it not work? Well, it would have been worse if you'd… I mean, I don't know. Right, right, right. And I start… I get very cynical. Sometimes I'm all in and sometimes I'm very cynical. I'm in a very cynical mode right now. No, I hear that. I hear that. And I think it's fair and you're right to be cynical. And I think there's a lot of garbage out there and a lot of people pushing stuff. And there's a lot of companies, for example, doing tests and then selling you products on the back end. I think there's a problem with that.

29:26

For example, function health, we don't do that at all. We just say, okay, for example, you have these things that you found that you need to fix that are affecting your health and well-being.

29:34

and here's how to make a decision. For example, we have a 30-page guide on how to choose the right supplements. And you don't take kickbacks from the products that you recommend. No kickbacks. We're completely agnostic. Do whatever you want. You just need this. Yeah, but not only do whatever you want, but 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. Here's how to make a good decision. So we teach you how to fish, not giving you a fish.

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33:09

Which is when there's a good business model, even if it's 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 then we're back at square one, which is all of these companies are going to be funded by VC companies

33:26

And you and I know too well, unfortunately, the way VC and PE works, which is they all are wonderful. They're all fantastic in the beginning, and they are so behind you and your vision at the beginning. And just wait three to five to seven years, and all of a sudden the pressures start to show up. And the growth, we want growth because that's our business model, not your business model. And then all of a sudden, especially if you've given up controlling interests, you will have built up this beautiful brand. You

33:54

You get fired from your own company, and they're, I mean, the number of companies that have, like, the brand Aveda, Burt's Bees, Kashi, you know, Amy's. These were… Well, they got bought by Kraft. You know, they were all great brands that built their brands based on, like, Aveda or Burt's Bees, natural ingredients, Kashi, and we believed it because the founders were true, and then they sold to Kraft and…

34:21

L'Oreal and whoever buys these companies, they strip the beautiful things out, put the shit in because they can increase margin, but we're none the wiser. We don't know which CEOs got fired from beautiful companies. We don't know that these companies are owned by large conglomerates that are driven by shareholder value. 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 at square one. So I think we should just have friends and

34:48

Well, let's get back to the conversation about friendship because I think that the fundamental thing is… We should garden and farm with our friends. That's good. And then eat our own food. Well, we can't live… I mean, when you look at the problem… Subsistence farming. I think it's right. I mean, I think community gardens are amazing. I think they're a great service for people. And I think that what we're finding is that loneliness…

35:15

is as big a killer as anything else. Some have said it's equivalent to smoking two packs of cigarettes a day. And how many, especially men, don't have someone who's a good friend? How many people don't have somebody to call when shit goes down? Right? I've talked about this before where, you know, as I've been on this journey of understanding friendship and learning friendship, I was having a conversation with a friend of mine who's active duty military. And what people don't understand about active duty military…

35:45

and veterans, what people don't understand about military is that it's a highly emotional enterprise. It's a very, very human enterprise because life and death

35:53

is the thing. And higher calling and service are big, very human themes. And so I've hugged more people in uniform than I've ever hugged in suits. I've cried with more people in uniform than I've ever cried with in suits. I've sat around dinner tables with generals who were sort of telling stories at the dinner table and we're all crying. I've never done that with CEOs, ever.

36:18

And I remember he's a very close friend of mine and we were just catching up and at the end of our hour-long conversation, he was getting off the phone and he says, “I love you.” Not love ya, not love you, I love you. And to your point, I think men really struggle with saying those words to the people who they genuinely love. And so I did an experiment with my friends. I remember that feeling.

36:47

of what it gave to me when he said those words to me. It took me aback and it felt amazing. Yeah, it felt amazing. And so I started experimenting. I have a couple of friends who, if you met them, you wouldn't describe them as warm. They're wonderful people. They're generous and they're kind. They're not fuzzy. But they're not warm. If I told you this is one of my best friends, you'd be like,

37:09

He's a little distant is what your reaction would be. He has Asperger's. They don't have Asperger's. They're just, they're just a little, they're just a little cold. They're just a little guarded. Yeah. Guarded. Let's call them guarded. Yeah.

37:21

And one of them, I was leaving his house and as I was getting ready to leave, I said, I love you. And I watched him. Freak out? No, he didn't freak out. I could see the reaction. And since then, he has been much more emotionally open with me. And I don't even think he realizes it. Yeah. I don't think he realizes he wasn't before and that he's more now. And the other one I tried it with and I sort of said, I love you. And I gave him a kiss on the cheek as I was saying goodbye. And he did not know how to react.

37:48

I did it again the next time I saw him. And he hugged me the second time like I was his son. Yeah. Which he'd never done before. He's always nice to me. He's one of my best friends.

38:00

He's never hugged me like that before. And I realized that to take the risk to say I love you, if you mean it, it's got to mean something. It's hard, it's easy to say love ya. It's easy to say love you. It's very hard to say I love you. Right? Those three words together are brutally hard to say. Especially for men. And I, to your point, you know, I wonder, and this goes to this idea of service again, which is whose responsibility is it to say it? Right? Right.

38:29

And I go back to the work that I did some years ago when I was writing Leaders Eat Last with Alcoholics Anonymous. You know, if you want to overcome alcoholism as a 12-step program, most of us are familiar with the first step. You know, admit you have a problem. Yeah. Okay, let's say I'm depressed or I'm lonely. Let's admit that's the problem, right? But it's the 12th step that people don't talk about. Right. And Alcoholics Anonymous knows. Exactly. Alcoholics Anonymous knows that you can master 11 steps alone.

38:59

and not the 12th, and you will succumb to the disease. And it's the, exactly, to help another alcoholic, it's service. And so I think to find the courage to say, I love you, 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 suffering from the same problem. If you're an alcoholic, you help another alcoholic. If you're lonely, help a friend who's lonely. And I think that the

39:28

The therapeutic benefits of helping someone who's struggling with the same thing that you're struggling with rather than worrying about yourself goes right back to the gym. There's a huge biology to it too. I don't know if you know, but there's a whole field of sociogenomics, which is how our social interactions affect our gene expression. Say more. So if you're in a conflictual relationship with someone, your inflammatory genes are turned on. Literally, not just your emotions are inflamed, but your biology turns on

39:57

- Like fight or flight kind of stuff? - Not fight or flight, just if you're in a shitty relationship or if you're fighting with someone or you have a conflict, you turn on inflammatory genes that then increase expression of cytokines that cause inflammation and that cause disease. And all chronic disease from depression to heart disease to diabetes to obesity, Alzheimer's, are all inflammatory diseases.

40:20

Conversely, if you have a connected, loving relationship with somebody, it turns on anti-inflammatory genes. - And inflammation is the core of everything. - Yeah, and they did a study with entrainment, where if you sit with someone and you have an authentic connection that you can put EEG and EKGs on, basically brain waves and heart waves, you can see the heartbeat

40:47

of someone you're having a deep connected relationship with in your brain waves. It's wild.

40:53

So it's not just a feel-good thing on an emotional level. It's a physiological response that happens of being in connection. If you take animals and put them in cages and separate animals and feed them exactly the same thing and have everything else the same, the one that's isolated versus the ones that are connected will shrivel and die and get sick. And so humans are the same way. And we've gotten into a situation where friendship and connection is sort of like

41:21

Okay, so why aren't doctors prescribing to spend more time with friends?

41:26

- I do. - Like doctor, I'm suffering from X, Y, and Z. Okay, I'd like you to try and get an extra hour of sleep, go to bed a little earlier, I'd like you to stop eating before, don't eat past eight o'clock at night, and I want you to spend at least three hours a week with a friend. How come that's not on a prescription? - It should be, it should be. I prescribe it, in fact, I actually, based on this work that I did in Haiti, I met a pastor after Rick Warren,

41:53

wrote The Purpose Driven Life and had a church with 30,000 members. And I met him. He came to my office and we started talking. And I said, hey, Rick, tell me about your church because I'm a Jewish doctor from New York. I don't know much about evangelical Christian churches. He's like, yeah, we've got 30,000 people. I'm like, wow, that's a lot of megachurch. He's like, yeah, we've got 5,000 groups that meet every week, small groups in the church to help each other live better lives. I'm like, oh, this isn't a megachurch. This is thousands of mini churches. And I had that light bulb moment. I'm like,

42:22

I just come back from Haiti, I said, why don't we put a healthy living program into the

42:26

and see what happens. He said, “Great idea, ”'cause I was baptizing my church last week, “and after about the 800th person, “I'm like, man, we're a fat church, “and I'm fat, and we gotta do something about it.” And so we put a program together through the small groups where people were just helping each other. There was no doctor, nutritionist, health coach, nobody. There was just a curriculum. We had a big rally, sort of a big event where we talked about, and Rick talked about the biblical rationale for why God wants us to be healthy.

42:52

I gave a bunch of speeches and talked about how God lives in you. Why are you feeding him crap and things like that? I mean… If Jesus came to dinner, what would you feed him? Big Mac fries and a Coke? And they got it. Ain't that the truth. Ain't that the truth. If Jesus came to dinner, what would you feed him? Exactly. So they got it. I said, if you feel like crap, how are you going to serve God? How are you going to serve each other? You've got to take care of your body. And so they got it. And they did this together in community. It was jogging for Jesus and all these…

43:19

It's great. 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 applied it at Cleveland Clinic where we created small groups where people helped each other. And we did research on us and published it. There were three times better health outcomes on validated metrics of health outcomes compared to one-on-one visits for the same condition with the same doctors. Wow.

43:45

So the doctors in our clinic could see them in one-on-one or they support them in a group. The group was three times as good as seeing the doctor one-on-one in terms of health. - But why aren't these things then being implemented across the medical field? - I'm trying, I'm trying. - Why aren't we going to the doctor with our friends?

44:03

to dealing with similar issues. Why aren't we, like, everything's so siloed. Literally, it's in– - It is essential. I mean, I think the models of support, whether it's coaching, whether it's one-on-one coaching or support, whether it's group models, they have to be the thing that's gonna change because we get healthy together or we get sick together. So the quote from Benjamin Franklin is, “We must all hang together or surely we'll all hang separately.”

44:30

And I think that's kind of where we're at in society. That is kind of where we are, yeah. I'm very glad that we are talking about this because I have a lot of respect for your work.

44:39

And the fact that you're validating all this friendship stuff that I'm doing from a physician standpoint. Not a kumbaya, isn't it nice? No, no, no. There's so much science on this. We wrote a book about this work called The Daniel Plan after Daniel from the Bible who resisted the king's temptation of rich food and was better for it. And we talked about the five Fs. Food, fitness, focus, which is your mental fitness, faith, and friends.

45:07

Why aren't friends number one? Well, they were maybe in there somewhere. I don't know the order, but it was like food, probably friends. But the whole point is friends are such a key part of our well-being, whether it's understanding the blue zones or whether it's AA or Weight Watchers. It's how we change. I mean, AA, all of these things, Weight Watchers, they're all community-based things. 100%. And one of the problems we have in our society is community things. Bowling leagues don't exist anymore. Church attendance is down. And church attendance and faith are not the same thing.

45:36

You can have faith and not go to church, and you can go to church and not have faith. That's right. The church would rather that they're overlapping. But the idea of doing things in commune, in community, this is why I love things like Comic-Con or Burning Man or whatever you're… You've never been to Burning Man. I have been to Burning Man. You have? Yeah. Or Sturgis. Is that what it's called?

46:03

Yeah, it's called the motorcycle thing. Hells Angels? Like all of these things. Like politics aside, like I don't care what it is, going to church, you know, doing things in community with people who have common interests. And, you know, one of the questions I'm getting since I've started talking about friendship, it's amazing how many people are coming up to me who are of all ages, of all income levels, who are saying to me,

46:32

I'm, I don't know how to make friends. I struggle to make friends. Because we're afraid to be authentic. I mean, that's the hard part, right? Have you ever struggled to make friends? When I was a kid, I didn't have any. I was a weird kid. I just was in my head, read a lot of books. It was a little weird. And, uh,

46:48

You know, kind of a nerd. And I just didn't… And you had a lot of health issues when you were younger. Not really. They came later, right? When I was in my 30s. Okay. And I was living in Toronto in the 70s. It was a spiritual wasteland. And I did not kind of relate to anybody. And it wasn't until I left and went to college and went to Cornell that I found other people who were like, oh, wow, you actually…

47:15

Think like me and you read the same books you do the same things and in fact I actually my first real friend I met on the top of a mountain in the Canadian Rockies We were backpacking and it was a week out in the middle of nowhere by myself and he was a week out and we crossed over on Badger Pass in Alberta in Banff National Park and

47:37

Um, we just had this kind of moment of connection and we both found out we're going to be at Cornell in the fall. He was in Ithaca college. I was at Cornell. We climbed this mountain the first night called Brachiapod mountain, like 11,000 feet. It was like this kind of,

47:52

kind of prototypical pointy top mountain. We sat on the ridge and watched the sunset at 11 o'clock at night and then ran down the scree. And we just had this extraordinary experience. And we got back and we got together. And we didn't know if we were going to be friends or not. But we became like brothers. Still friends today? He's my best friend. No kidding. 46 years later. Wow. Yeah, 46 years later. We do mountain bike trips all over. We…

48:18

We're very close. And we help each other. And when one's down, the other picks one up. When I'm down, he picks me up. When he's down, I pick him up. And we've had this really sustained, deep, authentic, intimate relationship for 45 years. That's amazing. And we love each other. We hug each other. We cry together. We laugh together.

48:38

And it, you know, it was a place where, where I could say and be and do anything. And it was, it 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. They didn't have to love you. That was like, and that friendship for me has been like an anchor in my life. Um, throughout all the troubles and tribulations and successes and diseases. And, uh,

49:05

You know his wife committed suicide. I went through three divorces. I got very sick. He's such an overachiever. Yeah I'm an expert at relationships. I Mean what a WC field say quitting smoking is the easiest thing I've ever done. I've done it hundreds of times. That's right Marriage is the easy thing I've ever done. I've done it four times. I

49:23

I got it right though. 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're in need, when you need help, the person you can cry with, the person when you're in pain. And I actually think that's true. That's a level of close friendship that you can call that person in a time of struggle or need. But I think there's even a closer level

49:50

Level of friendship, which is when you can call somebody when something amazing happened and they're not jealous and there's no jealousy 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 were told anybody else they'd be like

50:10

They think you were bragging. Yeah, yeah. But to that friend, they have unbridled joy with you and for you. And what 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 bad news. That's interesting. But you can call me with good news. Oh, thank you. I'll celebrate you. But you know what I mean? Yeah. It's like to, you know, and like a friend of mine called me recently about something amazing that happened in his life.

50:37

And I was the first person he called. And I had no jealousy. And I was like, I was quelling like a parent. You know, I was so proud of him for what he did. And…

50:51

And you realize that that was actually more intimate than being there in pain. And so I started making lists of who are the people I would call for the insanely good things. And it's a smaller number. Well, it is. It's important to take an inventory of your life and your friends. And if you don't have good friends, it's really important to cultivate them, to invest in them, to find them. And there's ways to do that. I mean, there's ways to put yourself in environments and situations. And part of it's like who you are, right? For me…

51:20

you know, I wear my heart on my sleeve and I'm just who I am. Like when we met, uh,

51:25

Oh, I remember. It was a weekend and I just got through this very intense emotional process. I worked a lot of this trauma that I had experienced as a kid and I was just kind of like in this altered state and then I met you. Oh, I remember. I think that's why we became friends. You put it on your sleeve. Because I just shared authentically and we just had this connection. That's kind of

51:53

What I'm talking about is in order to actually create friendship, you have to be open. You have to open your heart. Do you know what I think? I think people sometimes treat… And not be afraid of being judged. I think people sometimes treat friendships like bad food, right? So… I don't get that. But here's what I mean. Like, you know, I just had this conversation with a friend of mine just very recently. She's in a relationship and she's…

52:24

She's afraid of being alone. She knows the relationship is imperfect. She knows that if she were in a different place in her life, she wouldn't be with this person. But that partner fills a space for her for where she's at. She's more afraid of the loneliness than being in an imperfect relationship. Yeah, do not. And…

52:52

And I don't know how healthy that is. The devil you know is better than the devil you don't. And she can rationalize it. Like they go on adventures together and they laugh a lot together, which is all true. But then now as I'm talking to you, it kind of sounds like cake, which is, I know I shouldn't eat this.

53:10

But it's so tasty and so chocolatey and just so good. And I'll worry about it later. You know, what's another little piece? I'm just having a little piece of cake. And I enjoy the goodness so much that I can ignore the badness. We tolerate a lot. We tolerate a lot.

53:33

And this is one of the downsides of human beings, which is we're incredibly adaptable people. We're incredibly adaptable. Oh, I did that for so many years in relationships. I was like, oh, it's good enough. Oh, this bad stuff, I just rationalize away. So how do we, okay, you're a doctor. One of the things that I'm exploring in this friendship book is how to make friends, how to foster friendship. That's the thing I think most of us fall down on.

53:59

how to navigate tension in friendships and how to end friendships. How to recognize that I really like this chocolate cake, but I think I need to not be in friendship or in relationship with this chocolate cake. And maybe we'll just hang out now and then. Because I do have fun with you and I do like you.

54:19

But this is not healthy. At a certain dose. At a certain… There's a certain dosage. And I've adopted wholeheartedly, by the way, just as a quick aside, you know, something you say regularly, which is treat sugar like a recreational drug. That's right. You know? That's right. I enjoy sugar, but I know to do it just occasionally. It's all right. You know, it's okay. I don't… I read once, and you can affirm whether this is correct or not, that…

54:44

when people stress about eating dessert, the cortisol released from the stress about eating the cake is actually worse for you than the chocolate cake. - It might be, yeah. It might be. - So if you're gonna have a little piece of chocolate, just enjoy it. - Well, you're right, Simon. The greatest pharmacy is the one between your ears. And it can actually kill you or it can heal you, literally. I mean, that's how voodoo works. It's not like they just kind of put a hex on you and you die. I mean, people, that actually happens. - Yeah.

55:14

- I think how we think about things matters. So if you want to eat a cookie, eat that cookie and love the cookie. - And just enjoy it. - And chew every bite. - And treat it like a recreational drug. Just have one, two at the most. You know one of my tricks? If there's like a bowl of M&Ms, if you take a handful of M&Ms and throw them in your mouth, that counts as one. That's one mouthful. - Oh no, no. - And then you take another handful and put it in your mouth, that's two.

55:36

But if I have one M&M, that's also one. And if I have another M&M, that's… Because you count mouthfuls, not M&Ms. And so if you just go from handful to one or two, you would drastically reduce the sugar intake. Anyway, but we digress. How… Have you ever… I want to understand the health…

55:56

issues of staying in unhealthy friendships or unhealthy relationships where we know where we know and when we're in in the The dark parts of the night we'll admit to our admit to ourselves are out loud This is not a good relationship and I shouldn't be in this but I fear the alone more than than the thing that I'm in Yeah, talk talk about

56:17

The physiological impact of being in an unhealthy relationship. Yeah, well, we sort of touched on it before, but when you're in a conflictual relationship, your physiology changes to a state of disease. Cortisol goes up, your inflammatory cytokines go up.

56:35

Your microbiome can change. I mean, a whole series of things happen in your body that make you more sick. And we see this happening. We see people who are in bad relationships just do poorly and get sick more often. And so I think the data is there. It's just really the question is how do we navigate a world where friendship is not of value?

56:59

It just seems like the last thing on the totem pole. And after work, after…

57:05

success, after social media, after whatever else we're doing, exercise, food, it's not something we invest in. And it's a crisis. It's a severe crisis. I mean, you probably saw those articles in the New York Times about men and friendships, and it was just so heartbreaking. And for me, it's been a value I've had my whole life, and I've intentionally invested in friendships. And when COVID happened, we're all isolated, we're all alone. And

57:33

September 2020, my wife and I split up. I had just had back surgery. I was alone. It was COVID. And what did I do? I sent an email to my closest men friends, six other men who I've done men's work with, done men's retreats with, done medicine journeys with,

57:53

And I said, hey, guys, like, can we start a little Zoom once a week for an hour maybe? And they're like, how about we do two hours every week? And we've been going for it's plus four years now. And it's remarkable to have this container. And what's been interesting to watch is that even though these were all my close friends for 40 years, 30 years, they're

58:17

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 in our life doesn't matter. There's always something with one of us. And it's, to me, it's like an anchor. And most of us don't have that. And in Okinawa, one of the blue zones,

58:45

There's a thing called a Moai, which is when you are born, you're stuck together with like three or four other kids, babies. And that's your basically group for your life. Isn't that amazing? Yeah. And you're there throughout everything. You don't even pick the friends. I mean, this happens with like the Marine Corps or any boot camp for that matter. You know, these become lifelong friendships because you go through hardship together.

59:07

Or in the Israeli army, one of the reasons they're historically been very successful is when you go through boot camp, that's your unit for the rest of your military career. You don't get split up. So what I think is really interesting is these friend groups aren't chosen. They're kind of like arranged marriages. You're just thrown together by zip code or in the case of babies, you're born on the same day, you're friends. And I think what's really interesting about that, which is

59:37

you know, sometimes just like I think sometimes we overanalyze, you know, who should be a friend and

59:45

Is that right? - Well, I mean, listen, we have to– - I'm trying to think, maybe I disagree with myself as I'm saying the words, I'm thinking I'm full of shit. - It depends on the situation. If you go through shit with somebody, even if you don't have all the same background, you can get close, right? And I mean, I was in Haiti, I was thrown together with all these people. - Yeah, yeah, because we know that shared hardship produces cortisol, I mean, shared hardship produces oxytocin. So when you go through shared hardship with someone, it creates a bond of, it creates bonds. But now that I think about it, I'm gonna go back on what I said, which is I also know friendships,

01:00:14

And have had friendships where time is the only bond where we really don't that's not enough We like we used to grow together, but now you know, it's sort of grown apart and you know, we have fun I guess you know Sometimes being a friend is actually calling people out But in other words when you see like if you're growing but I think we stay in friendships unnecessarily simply because oh But we've been friends for 30 years like so what?

01:00:42

So what? If it's no longer… It's like, you wouldn't stay in a marriage that is dysfunctional just because you've been married. That's right. And yet we seem to have a different standard for… Like, nobody says… When you say, you know, I've been married to my wife for 25 years, but…

01:00:59

You know, we've struggled for a lot of years. And quite frankly, I think we've just decided mutually, you know, it's amicable, but we've decided to call it quits. Nobody says, I think you should stay in the marriage. You've been married for 25 years. Like, I think you should try and go another 25. Nobody says that. But part of the friendship…

01:01:13

But we say that in friendship. We're like, how can you end the friendship? You've been friends for 25 years. Well, you can. But I'm saying people, it's a different standard. Time becomes the only bond. It's true. But sometimes when you drift apart or some people change, like if you're changing and you're growing or I was changing and growing and your friend isn't and you see this sort of split happening, you have one of two choices. You can either go, okay, well, we're just moving apart and it was a nice while it lasted. Or you can actually kind of go in for…

01:01:40

kind of a surgical, spiritual surgery. And sometimes it's painful, but I've done this with friends where I've seen them be in bad relationships or be in a job they didn't like or doing things that were contracting their life and becoming smaller when they were expansive, open beings when I knew them earlier.

01:01:57

And I had a choice where I was gonna just kind of let this happen or was I gonna go in for a surgery? And was I gonna do a spiritual surgery on this person? And some of those people are open to it, some of them are not. But I had to drug him. Literally, I had to give him MDMA. I had to literally spend hours acid and basically get him to really see

01:02:21

how his life was contracted. And he needed that. And he needed to kind of break the cycle of his pattern of thinking. And now, he's lost 40 pounds. He's out of the relationship. He's free. He's got out of his job. He's kind of having the time of his life. He's experienced.

01:02:38

pouring his own development. He's growing. He's let go of his fears around money and this and that. I mean, it's amazing to see a transformation, but it wouldn't have happened if I hadn't leaned in. Yeah, yeah. I have a friend who sat down with me to give me some life advice. Yeah. And the conversation started like this. I need to tell you something and you need to hear this. And I need you to know that you're not going to like what I have to tell you. But I love you. He didn't say that. He said, you're not going to like what I have to tell you. And I recognize that

01:03:08

that you may be so angry with me for telling you this, that you might end the friendship with me. And I want you to know that I'm willing to risk our friendship to tell you this because you need to hear it. Wow. And how did that land for you? I mean, he picked the right person because I'm like, yeah, I mean, you're not going to lose the friendship, but bang, you know, game on. And he gave me something that was very hard to hear that needed to be said.

01:03:33

And I love him even more for risking the whole friendship out of love. Like he was willing to throw away the friendship because he cared about me so much to tell me this. And that's a high bar. I mean, I think that speaks to, I think what defines friendship in my mind. What defines friendship is the ability to be authentically who you are and to be authentic and transparent with your friend. Mm-hmm.

01:04:00

Just like your friend was, right? I mean, he gave me the whole preamble. Yeah. And that's a very scary thing for people to actually let down their guard, right? To be open and to risk. And it's fearful. But that's what creates real friendships. Yeah, I think so. That's what creates real friendships. Another friend of mine is struggling. I'm so attuned to friends these days. Another friend of mine is struggling with one of her friends.

01:04:28

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 counseling. And so she went to her friend and said, this attention has been going on for too long. We're going to go to therapy together. Friends therapy. Yeah.

01:04:51

And again, why do we instinctively understand that if 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.

01:05:08

When we have tension with friendships, we're quicker to end the friendship or sit in weird tension or avoid the person than to go to the therapy with the person to try and work through the struggles. We may still end up breaking up. Yeah. But let's at least put in the effort to rescue this friendship that we claim we care about. Yeah. I love the idea of friendship counseling.

01:05:31

Yeah, I mean, and it speaks to that same point about not just co-living in a sense of just doing things together. Existing together. Yeah. Going to movies together and having fun together, but rather… Yeah, just superficial dinners. And by the way, I will stress that I don't believe all friendships need to be at this level. It is perfectly fine to have friends… You need at least a couple. Two or three. You need at least a handful. Some have more, some have fewer. But having friends where they're not deep…

01:05:58

you know, bonds of vulnerability. You just have fun together. Totally fine. You know, you have adventure partners or activity partners. Totally fine.

01:06:08

I don't mean, and I think that's one of the problems we have in our country, if not the world. I don't know about other languages, I only know about English. But like, you know, one of the problems I think is language. So for example, if you have stage four liver cancer, or you have a mild melanoma, the problem is both of those things are called cancer. But they're clearly not the same thing. But we use the same word. Right, I have a skin cancer. Right, exactly. I was like, you're fine. You know? What did Larry David say? It's the good cancer. Yeah.

01:06:35

And I think we do that. I think we have very few taxonomies. We have very few words for friends You know, and so I've started using best friend friend, you know, that's pretty much it And even then best friend is sometimes a little overused, you know So I've started really trying to add more language when somebody says hey, aren't you friends with them? I go I'm friendly with them. Hmm where somebody says Aren't you close with them? I'm like no they're an acquaintance or they're a work friend. Yeah, I

01:07:05

And so I've actually started to use the language for my own clarity and for other people's clarity that everybody that I know is not my friend. I know them. Sometimes I like them. Or I'll say, it's a new friendship. Or we're friendly. And I've become really good about sort of categorizing people because some I want to invest in and some I'm okay with them being at that level. But I want…

01:07:33

both myself and everyone around me to make no mistake not everybody I know is my friend that I'm gonna like I can't have an infinite number I can't have an infinite number because it takes it takes time it takes time investment is a real thing yeah and that's the thing I think we neglect right is making a deliberate effort to spend time with friends to do special things to kind of

01:07:55

Take the time to slow down and stop. I think so. And actually have conversations that matter. And it's kind of the last thing we tend to think about. Yeah. But as we talked about earlier on, this is a central part of happiness, of joy, of longevity, of health. By the way, go back to that longevity thing. You're in that space and you're…

01:08:19

You know more of them, but I know some of the folks who are sort of like the longevity folks. Yeah. And I find a lot of them are very unhappy people. Yeah. Joy, right? Where's the joy? These guys, mostly men, who are obsessed with longevity and they're taking all of the measurements and they're taking all the vitamins and supplements and they're doing all the exercises and they're doing all the things and everything's scheduled and highlighted. And I find them not very happy people. No.

01:08:45

You know? Find the joy. Like where, like maybe work out a little less. Don't worry about if you miss the supplement and maybe just hang with friends, I bet. I mean, the data will prove it out. Like we have to wait a bunch of years because the longevity obsessives, the only way we'll know if it works or not is when they die. Yeah. Yeah.

01:09:06

And if they will be happy and healthy in old age. Because nobody wants to live a long time and be decrepit. No. You know? And so we have to- That's why I like, I- We'll have to wait it out. Most of my friends are in their 30s and 40s now because a lot of my older friends have just sort of checked out. But we have to redo this podcast in 40 years and see if all the longevity obsessives, if they're still around or if they're dead-

01:09:32

I'm going to do a Vegas betting pool here, which is I would bet that the people who are healthy-ish, like they're not unhealthy, but they're not obsessively healthy. Right? Like, yes, they get enough sleep. Yes, they eat mostly well. They do the basics. They do the basics. You know, sometimes a little better, sometimes a little worse. Like on vacation, they're terrible. You know?

01:09:55

Like they're not obsessive, but they're they're they're not unhealthy. Yeah is the way I would define them But they're spend a ton of time with friends and they have a fantastic sense of humor. Mm-hmm And they love to laugh. I will bet money that

01:10:09

That those people will live longer than all of the folks who are measuring and powdering. I mean, it's evolutionary. I mean, I don't know if you know, Ian Wilson wrote a book called The Social Conquest of the Earth about from ants to humans, how we have to work together to survive. And in fact, altruism is a built-in phenomena and that it activates the same neural circuits as heroin or cocaine or sugar in terms of the nucleus accumbens and the pleasure.

01:10:36

And I remember this. It sounds kind of weird to say, but when I was in Haiti and I was sleeping four hours a night and I was working…

01:10:43

helping people all day, barely eating anything, probably dehydrated in the hot sun. I felt like this sense of happiness and joy like I'd never felt. And it was weird because I was in the middle of this disaster with people with limbs amputated and dead people everywhere. The stench was amazing. But something was happening in me where I was in service of others. I wasn't thinking about myself.

01:11:07

And it's sort of why do what I do. I mean, I'm always in service of others and I always am happiest when I'm serving others. You know, like before this podcast, I came because I was helping somebody and I was late because this person who's in my kid needs help and he's sick and he's got this issue. Could you also help him? And I'm like, okay, I get it. And you know, because I can, I do. There's a book called Survival of the Friendliest. That's good. And it makes an argument that we've completely misunderstood Darwin.

01:11:34

that the idea of survival of the fittest, we have always attributed to brute strength. And so if you can overpower someone, you're more likely to survive. And they make an argument for social animals and mammals that that's actually completely incorrect. That what he meant by fittest was most fit to create community and take care of each other. And survival of the fittest is actually nothing to do with brute strength. But it's actually to do with the ones who are better at taking care of each other. So as you start to think about this book, Simon,

01:12:03

And I can't wait to read it even though you haven't written it yet. That's a good sign. I should put it up on Amazon. Drive those pre-sales before. I'm going to order it. I'm going to pre-order it. Cover to come. Title to come. Yet untitled book. Yeah.

01:12:18

As I think about it, I can't think of a lot of books on friendship. Well, this is the reason my friend Will and I decided, my friend Will Gader and I decided to write this because it seems to make sense that you should write a book about friendship with a friend. Writing a book about friendship by yourself doesn't make sense. So Will and I decided to write it together. And we came to the realization that there's an entire industry

01:12:41

to help us be better leaders, an entire industry to help us be better parents, an entire industry to help us thrive in our relationships, how to eat better, how to exercise better, how to live longer, and yet precious little. - I've written many of those books. - You've written all those books, and yet precious little, yet precious little on how to be a friend. - That's right. - And when you look at all the challenges, as we said, in the world of depression and anxiety and all these epidemics that

01:13:07

doctors and well-intended folks are talking about. No one is talking about friendship as the antidote. And I think that friendship is the ultimate biohack. I think if you can master friendship, a lot of those other things correct themselves. So let's talk about that. Friendship and the microbiome. Get the microbiome right, a lot of stuff just falls into place. Get friendship right, a lot of stuff just falls into place.

01:13:31

It's true. It's true. So as you're thinking about this book… The reason I said that is because that's your thing. The microbiome? The microbiome. You like a microbiome. I do. Well, if your bugs aren't friendly… You love a gut health. If your bugs aren't friendly, you're not happy. Can I just…

01:13:45

- I have to interrupt here. Can you talk to me about probiotic sodas if they're a pile of shit or not? - Well, if there's sugar in them and there's artificial sweeteners in them, they definitely aren't good for your gut. - Okay, so just that they put, okay. - That's what I said, if it has a health claim on the label, I avoid it. - Got it. What about kombucha?

01:14:06

- Again, it's like a lot of sugar. - Depends on the kombucha. - It's a lot of sugar. - I was surprised, one of my favorite kombucha brands, I looked at it the other day. - A lot of sugar. - 22 grams of sugar in the bottle. I was like, that's ridiculous. - That's four and a half teaspoons of sugar, or five and a half teaspoons of sugar. - You would never put five and a half teaspoons of sugar in your coffee, and why are you putting five and a half teaspoons of sugar in your quote unquote healthy drink?

01:14:25

Yep. My rest, my case. If it has a health claim, don't eat it. If it has a health claim, don't eat it. High fiber, low fat, low sugar. No, it's just, if it, you know, an egg doesn't have a label on it. You know, broccoli and apple doesn't have a label or a barcode or an ingredient list. Stick with that.

01:14:44

So speaking of friends, let's go back to friends. I think this is really important. We're talking about the importance of friendship. We're talking about how critical it is for your health. We're talking about how critical it is for your overall mental health and well-being. But a lot of people listening are isolated and disconnected, you know, and don't know how to make friends. Clearly they're listening to a podcast.

01:15:04

Maybe. I listen to podcasts. With your friends? Nobody listens to podcasts with their friends. My wife and I do. It's a lonely experience. My wife and I listen to podcasts together quite a bit, actually. Podcast listenership should be going down if we want the world to be healthy. There's a great book I read once called Refrigerator Rights, which is how many people in your life do you have the right to go in their house and open their fridge and eat whatever you want? Love that. And that's a measure of the quality of your friendships and the health of your life.

01:15:30

Yes, I love that. I have one friend that makes fun of me. Their family makes fun of me that I just go into their pantry. That's right. That's good. You want that. I'm staying at a friend's house and I went in their fridge this morning and I took out some food because I had to go and I was busy today. Yeah, you didn't ask permission. No, I just took out the… Or you politely go…

01:15:46

Can I keep… I'm going to tell them after, but there were these Maui Nui venison sticks and I knew I had a long day and I didn't have time to eat. That's so funny. Yeah. So I had refrigerator rights in that house. That's very good. The New York version of that is you go into a friend's house that you have refrigerator rights, an apartment, there's no houses. You open up their fridge and you see there's nothing in there except…

01:16:10

half a carton of milk and a box of Chinese takeout. And you say to your friend, can I eat this Chinese? You scream out and they scream back, I wouldn't, it's been there for two weeks. You go, okay. And you just close the fridge and you leave the Chinese food in there. That's refrigerates in New York City. So if it's so important, people listening, I imagine are thinking, oh, this is great. I feel this. I know this is how important. And I feel the disconnection. Yeah.

01:16:35

But I don't know how to make friends. I don't know where to start. I don't know how to take the friends I have and make them better or find new friends. I don't know how to make friendship the medicine that I need in my life. Where does a drugstore for friendship? How are you thinking about this? And as you start to think about this book, how are you thinking about supporting, coaching, imagining how to build that network of

01:16:56

So the good news is there's new organizations that are starting that are encouraging people to come have a dinner, you know, fight with five strangers and stuff like that. So there's these new businesses that are trying to replace the bowling leagues and stuff like that. Because you used to sign up for the bowling league and you'd be put on a team. That's your team. Maybe one of them was your friend, maybe not. But that was your team. We're going to church. So I think starting with common interests. Sign up for a ceramics class and go by yourself.

01:17:24

Or if you're too nervous to go by yourself, go with a friend. But talk to the person you're sitting next to. First time? Because the great thing about doing a thing with common interests is the icebreaker is really, really easy. You just have to say, is this your first time here? Have you done this before? And it pretty much starts the conversation. And if you don't, you don't have to form a deep, meaningful relationship out of it. But I think starting to do hobby things

01:17:50

And I think having hobbies, and we've seen the decline in hobbies even, you know, and doing hobbies with people. That's why I said… Join a club. Yeah. That's why I said, go play chess, you know, in a park, you know. That's why I've said, I think things like Comic-Con and things like that are spectacular. Because when you find a group of people who, you know,

01:18:10

When people laugh at your hobby and you find a group of people who we've all been laughed at but now we're the we're the norm here It's in it's incredibly easy to make friends and like the thing that's so I've been to comic-con many many times and And you know, it's it's nerdvana What is comic-con? You don't know what comic-con is? No, vaguely. It's it's uh, well, it's changed over the years but basically

01:18:35

It's a comic book convention. That's what I thought it was. That's the history. But these days, comic books are only a part of it. It's also science fiction and hero movies, Marvel stories and Star Wars and DC and all of that. And it's all that nerdy kind of pop culture-y stuff. And there's a lot of cosplay that happens.

01:18:56

so people will dress up as their favorite cartoon character or superhero or some obscure character and some of them are super creative and some people are there for the

01:19:06

the content of the convention and some people there just to walk around in costume and have fun and What's so wonderful about it is it's an incredibly polite group of people So if you are in a great costume where you see want to see someone who's in a see someone who's in a great costume and you want to have a picture with them or they want a picture with you everybody asks everybody goes can I have a picture with you please or hey may I have a picture with you please and so there's a lot of interaction you can go up to somebody say I love your costume and

01:19:32

And they will be friendly back. There's not a lot of cynicism. And the, you know, I met one of my ex-girlfriends there. I literally went up to her and said, you look amazing. Can I 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 and

01:19:55

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. I have the photograph from the moment we met, which doesn't happen in relationships. You don't say, nice to meet you. Let's take a selfie just in case. Right. But I have the photograph of the time that we, the minute we met. Yeah.

01:20:18

And it's just, again, I think when you go to places where people like the things you like, it's going to increase the odds.

01:20:27

And it's not that you increase the odds that you'll find deep, meaningful relationships, but it makes it easier to break the ice. To just get started. To get started. And that's, I think, where people struggle. They struggle on how to start. One of the things I'm curious about, I'd love your opinion on this, is my experience is two things really help foster deep friendships. One is curiosity. So being deeply curious about who that person is and asking questions about what are they afraid of, what makes them laugh.

01:20:52

What makes them most excited in life? What brings them joy? You know, what are they struggling with? What's going on? Just getting curious about somebody and then letting them talk. Most people don't get that chance to have someone really be present and listen. And the second is to be vulnerable yourself.

01:21:08

So to let down your guard and to share what's in your heart, because it all of a sudden gives permission for the other person to start to do that. And then once you get past that kind of first layer of soil, you get down into the mother load of authentic human relationship. It's a seesaw, right?

01:21:25

Which is you kind of expect someone to be vulnerable if you're not willing to be vulnerable back because it creates it creates imbalance Yeah, and I actually had this I actually met some new friends just very recently. They're friends of friends I went up to seattle for work and one of my friends who's from seattle said oh you need to meet my friends They live up there. You guys will get along. So we all showed up as strangers The three of us showed up as strangers. I mean they know each other um, uh, they're married um

01:21:50

But I went out with them just because our mutual friends said you guys should meet. That's we all took time to meet. Yeah, and I can't remember who started but there was a lot of vulnerability happening and You know, you could feel that one side had opened up more than the other it was lopsided right and I think was me who opened up a lot and then they said

01:22:16

Here, let us balance this out. Yeah. And they were keenly aware of the balance of vulnerability. They started opening up an offering to make me feel safer. Yeah. Right? Because it was lopsided, which is… Yeah, yeah. You feel safe for a while until you start to feel insecure because it's so lopsided. Yeah.

01:22:33

And they were so aware of that seesaw that they literally said, let me balance this out for you. Yeah. Or do you want us to go first so that you're comfortable to speak? You know, and we were, it was amazing. And we talked about it. We actually, that became one of the topics of conversation is how we were managing vulnerability as we were getting to know each other for the first time that we were, we were keeping the balance. We were both taking turns to manage the balance. And I thought it was incredibly interesting and sophisticated. And by the way, amazing.

01:23:01

Amazing people. Yeah, like now they're like I'm like mad about them. Yeah, you know, yeah like genuine friends Yeah, and I think I think it's hard for people to do that though And how do you how do you invite people to you can't do with everyone? I think that's where people get it wrong It's not a prescription right you can't say here are the five things you need to do because if somebody's not willing to match you or go with you it will feel unbalanced or insecure and

01:23:24

Or you might open up so much and the other person doesn't want to, and then you'll make yourself feel uncomfortable, but you make them feel uncomfortable too. And so this is why I say it's a dance, which is you give a little bit, and do you get a little bit back? And if you don't get anything back… I'll show you mine if you show me yours. Yeah, exactly. And if you give a little bit and you get nothing back, you can take another risk and give a little bit more, but at some point you're going to have to stop.

01:23:45

And it's not that they're bad people or that they won't make friends. It's some people are a little slower at opening up. And some people are a little quicker. And we have to allow these things to go at their own pace. But I think you have to manage the balance. Or you can say it out loud. Hey, usually I come out and sort of share everything. But, you know, I'm going to be a little more measured today because I don't want to, you know, I feel a little insecure today, if I'm honest. Yeah.

01:24:09

You know, I don't really know you, you know, and I think that's okay. Yeah. Um, but I think it's, I think that's where people get it wrong, which is there's no prescription and everybody's different and you kind of have to read the room. Yeah. You know, I think that's where people make the mistakes. And I've definitely made that mistake. I've projected safety where it didn't exist. Yeah. Or I started opening up cause I wanted them to make me feel safe. Yeah. And then, and then did you feel like you, you, you, um,

01:24:36

Suffered because of that or was it because it was it just kind of like I created uncomfortable situations by accident either for myself or for them Yeah, I overshared. I shared. Yeah, that's it always it's an interesting question like this Oh is is oversharing depends on the person a problem depends on the person who's listening Yeah for some people if you overshare and they are able and have the skill set to hold that space without judgment There's no problem at all. But if somebody is ill-equipped to hold space for an oversharer, then

01:25:04

it's going to be uncomfortable. - Not even just asking, “Hey, I'd like to share this.” - Yeah, I think asking permission. I think asking permission. Yeah, I think that's great. It's like when you have a– - That kind of resets their barometer. - 'Cause that's the technique for having difficult conversations, right? You're like, “I need to have a difficult conversation with you. “Can I have that with you now?”

01:25:21

And people be like, can we do it later? You know? Like, I think asking permission is like, I need to give you some difficult feedback. Can I give that to you? Go ahead. You know, like my friend. Like your friend, right? My friend said, I got to tell you something. You know, this may risk the whole friendship. And you're like, okay. You know, like that little preamble that lets you sort of take the breath. And I think that's very wise counsel, which is to say, can I share something personal with you? And they may say, honestly, no.

01:25:46

I don't think I'm comfortable. But if they say yes, then I think they're co-conspirators. - So what's your goal with your book? What's the sort of aim you're targeting? - It's everything we said before, which is there's so much advice on how to succeed as a leader, as a parent, as a, you know,

01:26:03

in a romantic relationship and I want people to succeed in friendship. And you're, you know, I'm somebody who has had very few long-term relationships in my life and the world criticizes me for that. I'm seen as unhealthy or I've been judged as having commitment issues. You mean love relationships or just friendships? Love relationships. You know, I've never been married. I don't have a 10-year romantic relationship. I haven't had it.

01:26:25

And even some of the women I've dated, they're like, what's wrong with you? - Me neither, I've been divorced four, five, three times. - What's wrong with you is what I hear a lot. And I have a friend who was in a 16 year relationship, an unhealthy relationship for 16 years. She freely admits that she should have stayed in that relationship for one year.

01:26:44

- Oh yeah. - And yet society looks at her and says she 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 and I am fulfilled in almost every aspect of my life.

01:26:59

But just not necessarily all from one person. That's right. And look, I like relationships and I love being in a relationship and I love being a partner to someone. And, you know, people say, well, why haven't you been married? I'm like, is it obvious? I haven't met the right person yet. 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 why I haven't had a marriage or a 10-year romantic relationship.

01:27:29

And friendships outlast relationships. And friendships outlast, and friendships are there to help you through relationships. And if you don't have good friendships, you'll struggle in your relationships because you have to have somebody to ask advice or event to. You can't always go to one person. It won't work. And so I think we don't give enough credit to friendship, clearly, because nothing's written about it.

01:27:49

Or so little is written about it. We don't give enough credit to friendship and we don't give credit to people who are good at friendship. We give credit to people who stay in relationships, even if those relationships are unhealthy.

01:27:59

And I think we just need to reevaluate how we're managing relationship in general in our lives. And I want to be a part of the friendship movement. I love that. I mean, it's interesting that one of the chapters of our book around how to get healthy is friends. Yeah. Five Fs. Yeah, exactly. Amen. And on that note, my friend.

01:28:20

Thank you so much. So yes, Simon, thanks for talking about friendship and your vision and your incredible like kaleidoscopic mind focusing on this topic because it's, I think, one of the most existential topics of our time. The disconnection, the isolation, the loneliness, and that investing in friendships, understanding what they are, how to cultivate them, how to create them, how to foster them, nurture them, how to be a good friend. It's the best medicine.

01:28:47

If you love this podcast, please share it with someone else you think would also enjoy it. You can find me on all social media channels at Dr. Mark Hyman. Please reach out. I'd love to hear your comments and questions. Don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe to The Dr. Hyman Show wherever you get your podcasts. And don't forget to check out my YouTube channel at Dr. Mark Hyman for video versions of this podcast and more. Thank you so much again for tuning in. We'll see you next time on The Dr. Hyman Show.

01:29:11

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. This podcast represents my opinions and my guests' opinions. Neither myself nor the podcast endorses the views or statements of my guests. This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional. This podcast is provided with the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services.

01:29:38

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01:29:59

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01:30:12

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Edit:2025.03.01

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