Mark: I'm really glad to be here.

Chris: Now in your book, The Ultramind Solution, you say that your goal is to help people live a life of energy, vitality, pleasure, and happiness. How does your Ultramind Solution achieve that?

Mark: Well most of us walk around a little bit less healthy than we could be. We're just frankly not functioning very well. We have trouble focusing, memory problems, just sluggish energy, mood problems up and down, anxiety, depression, trouble sleeping, and most of us don't exactly know why. The Ultramind Solution is an attempt to help people understand in a practical step by step way how their brains break so to speak and how to fix them. The way to do it isn't through more therapy or psychiatric medication, which is the number two selling class of medication in the world but through understanding the causes of your broken brain, which is the basic underlying cause of all disease. It's nutrition and the quality of the food we eat, which is so poor. It's stress. It's toxins. It's infections and allergens. All these things are the underlying causes of all illness. They cause imbalances in the basic systems of the body, which I talk about in quite a lot of detail in The Ultramind Solution. Those seven systems, when they're out of balance, cause the broken brains. So whether it's nutritional imbalances or immune imbalances and inflammation, of digestive imbalances, or problems with detoxification, or with hormonal imbalances and so on, we experience that as dysfunction in our whole body. Guess what, our body is connected to our brain. Our brain is connected to our body. It's not through separate systems. It's one system. Of course the mind/body effect is well understood, but the body/mind effect, which is the effect of the body on your brain and your brain function is not well appreciated. That's why I wrote the book to highlight that and to help people understand that there is a way, a very practical way to help people really focus on that and address it. Well, that's why I call it broken brain because it's everything. It's everything from depression to dementia, from autism, to ADD, to just plain brain fog, and everything in between. It can help you improve your degenerative diseases like Alzheimer and Parkinson to help with even psychotic disorders like schizophrenia, can help with autism and ADD and all sorts of mood disorders. You know the problem is that these labels don't really mean anything if you think about it. Our diagnostic manual for psychiatry has 238 different conditions in it, and they're all categorized and separated according to their particular category, whether it’s a personality problem, a mood problem, or a memory issue. The reality is that there aren't 238 different problems. There's a few problems that cause all these different symptoms. So, if you have depression that's just a name that we give to a collection of symptoms, which are feeling sad, hopeless, helpless, having low energy, not being able to sleep well, having a problem with your appetite, being not motivated. That's depression, but that doesn't mean that depression causes those symptoms. It’s just the name we give to those symptoms. So then you have to ask the question what's the cause, and the cause is what's going on in the rest of your body. It could be a myriad of things from vitamin B12 deficiency, folic acid deficiency, vitamin D deficiency, or deficiency of omega-3 fats. Or it could be toxin like mercury poisoning. Or it could be an allergy. I've seen you people who have had depression for a decade of their life, a 23-year-old woman with depression since she was 13, on Zoloft, who had allergies to gluten and dairy. We got off those, her brain could function again, and her mood improved. She got off her medication and as a side effect she lost 40 pounds. So we have to understand that we can't just name problems and find the right pill to match the name, whether it's an anxiety medication for anxiety, or an antidepressant for depression, or a stimulant for ADD. We need to address the fundamental causes, and that's not that hard to do. Instead of 238 different problems, there's really only seven systems in the body you have to think about and there's only five causes of all disease. Toxins, infections, allergens, bad diet, and stress. It's really simple. The first thing that we have to look at, and I step back a little bit and ask two questions. One is before I even get into the system is I say what is it that's bugging you? In other words what's creating imbalance in your body. There's only as I said five causes of all imbalance. Toxins, infections, allergens, stress, and bad diet. The second question I ask is what are you missing that you need to thrive that makes these systems work in balance? There's again only a few raw materials that the body needs to thrive. You're a biological organism. Sometimes you may try to avoid it. It's going to come back and bite you. I mean if you have a house plant, would you water your plant with cola, with soda? No, it would die right. Well we put that in our bodies and we don't think twice about it. So we have to put in the right raw materials. High quality food, whole real food, not processed food, the right number of levels of nutrients, vitamins, and minerals. We need enough sleep, we need exercise, we need rest, we need relaxation. We need love, connection, and community. We need air, water, and light. These are just the raw materials that our bodies need to thrive. When you either are getting too much of something you don't need, like a toxin, allergen, infection, poor diet, or stress, or you're not getting enough of what you do need which is healthy level of good quality food, the right nutrients, and so forth then your body can't thrive. When you're body can't thrive you come down with imbalances in these basic systems in the body. So you become nutritionally deficient, and you have some major ones in the nutritional area like B12, foliate, B6, vitamin D, omega-3 fats, and magnesium, all of which have big impacts on the brain. You have immune problems where you get overactive inflammation which inflames your brain, and a depressed, demented, or autistic brain is an inflamed brain. That can be caused by allergens, toxins, infections, poor diet, and stress. You see how this goes on in each system, whether it's your hormonal system, your detoxification system, your energy production system in your body, your digestive system, your mind/body system. All these are influenced by those five causes of disease and those few ingredients you need for optimal thriving. Quite simple actually. In each area we have different ways to help get back in balance, and I described that in The Ultramind Solution. Step by step how do I identify if they have a problem in each area? Through an extensive quiz with questions I ask my patients in my practice and through very step by step instructions on how to one, create and ultramind that's basic for everybody and then how to specify and customize the plan for you depending on where your major imbalances are. Done through taking good medical history or just asking the questions that I outline in the quizzes. Then if you need to you can get tests, which we do through specialized testing, which I explain in the book and the companion guide that goes with the book that's free online. You can go to Ultramind.com and you can register and get that. But the key is that if you break it down into these simple things and you don't get all side tracked into naming and blaming, getting the name of the disease and then (inaudible) 07:10 to the problem, then treating the ill with a pill. You get just focused on creating balance in the body through getting rid of the things that are bugging you, giving the body the things it needs, and getting these systems into balance. All these diseases go away. I had a woman come in with 29 diseases the other day. I mean can you imagine 29 different diagnoses. She was on many different medications. She had chronic fatigue. She had migraine headaches. She had heavy menstrual bleeding and PMS. She had irritable bowel syndrome. She had depression. She had, oh gosh you name it she had it. Allergies, sinus problems, and chronic sinusitis. It's all in your body, that's the irony of it. Even things that we think are in your head like anxiety and depression are really all in your body. So what we found in this woman, and she has seen about a dozen doctors. Clearly was not getting any help, she was very overweight, just very sluggish, and couldn't function. It turned out that she had an autoimmune disease that was undiagnosed that was an autoimmune reaction, or an inflammatory reaction to gluten, which is the protein found in wheat, barley, rye, and oats. That caused her to have an autoimmune thyroid problem, like Oprah has, Hashimoto's thyroiditis; an autoimmune thyroid problem. Her thyroid shut down. Then her gut wasn't working because the gluten was inflaming her gut. She had massive nutritional deficiencies, particularly vitamin D. She lives in Canada, so she was living probably close to Alaska and had very little sun exposure. So all we did was get rid of the gluten, treat her thyroid, got her on some vitamin D, cleaned up her diet. I called her back six weeks later. I go into the list of 29 problems and goes how's this, how's this, how's this. I got to the end of the list every single thing was gone. Every single thing. And she lost 21 pounds in six weeks without even trying. So I didn't treat her depression or her brain fatigue that she had with chronic fatigue syndrome. All I did was get rid of the things that were bugging her and put back the things that she was missing. She was eating gluten, which was bugging her, and she was missing thyroid and vitamin D. Very simple actually. I was even shocked. I started doing this type of medicine years ago. I would apply the methods and concepts of functional medicine, which is the medicine I'm talking about. It's not my idea. It's not my invention. I've been talking about it and writing about it, but it's really an emerging model that's going to be the future of medicine. It's going to replace our current way of thinking about diseases and specialties. People would say "Gee you know I'm all better." I'd say "How are you doing? What's going on?" They'd say "Well my psoriatic arthritis went away." "My chronic migraines I've had for 30 years are gone since I stopped eating eggs." "I had such severe PMS I couldn't function for the last two weeks of my menstrual cycle, and now I don't have any symptoms." They would say "My dementia is better." You know what I mean. These things I just wouldn't see as a regular practicing doctor. At first I was like "Wow you got better?" The answer's yes, they did get better.

Chris: This is Chris Costello reporting for Michael Senoff's hardtofindseminars.com. I know traditional medical doctors; many of them will say "You know I can't get my patients to do this. You know they need to change their diet, but they won't comply." Have you experienced that?

Mark: If you tell your patient eat less and exercise more and they don't comply and you wonder why, you know it's not very complicated. People need more information than just eat healthy. You know have three healthy meals a day. What does that mean to most people? People don't understand anything about nutrition. Doctors don't understand much about nutrition. We don't get very much education about it, maybe an hour if we're lucky in medical school. The average person who reads Oprah Magazine knows more about nutrition than the average doctor. So I think we have to recognize that you can't motivate or engage someone to do something if you don't really understand it yourself. When you have the right methods, the tools, and the educational materials people can change. I am a practicing doctor. I have a practice in Lennox, Massachusetts, the Ultra Wellness Center. I have another doctor, Dr. (inaudible) 10:36 who works with me. We have a policy in our office. You cannot see the doctor without seeing the nutritionist because I believe you cannot practice medicine without nutrition. So I basically absolutely refuse to see any patients if they don't see the nutritionist as well because they guide them in looking at the quality of their diet, how they do. When they do that, they have enormous success. They have enormous success in helping people change their diets. If they're given the right information, if they're taught what to do, if they understand the connection between what they eat and how they feel. Most doctors don't even understand the connection between what their patients eat and their disease states. They don't believe there's a connection. I saw a neurologist from Harvard who had a 30-year history of migraines. He's a headache specialist, and he couldn't get rid of his headaches. Within 3 days after seeing me, he has never had another headache. Now he knew something was up, but he didn't have the map. It's like here I'm going to send you to the middle if Cairo and I want you to find your way around. You're going to be completely lost. So doctors don't have the map to navigate this model yet. We have it. They just don't learn about it. We have an educational institute where we're teaching practitioners about this, called the institute for functional medicine. The beauty of this was all he needed to do was get rid of something he was eating, gluten, improve his diet, and a few other simple things, and all of his symptoms went away. It's very simple. People can take back their healthcare from the medical system and leave the medical system to take care of very serious illnesses, trauma, or things that it's good at. But healing chronic diseases certainly isn't one of those things. First of all, I want to say that what you don't eat it is important, but also what you do eat is equally important if not more important. So eating real whole food is key. But the things that cause the most brain damage are process and junk food, which has Trans fats and high fructose corn syrup, both of which cause brain inflammation and damage to the brain. Can cause depression, dementia, and many other problems. Toxins in our food by eating food that, you know, is full of pesticides, heavy metals. Try (inaudible) 12:27 organic when they can. To avoid large big fish like swordfish, tile fish, shark, and most tuna fish. I also encourage people to try an experiment for six weeks just to see if they actually can feel any different by getting rid of gluten and dairy. Those are two things which are common food allergens for a lot of reasons. Those things have an enormous impact for so many people. That's why I recommend it as a basic plan because it will help people identify whether it's a problem for them or not simply by getting rid of it. Then when you eat it again, if you feel badly, you'll know that what it was. Obvious things like processed food, artificial sweeteners, chemicals, and additives. I mean there's 3,500 different additives put in our food every year. The average person eats a gallon of pesticides every year on their food. So we have to kind of look at the impact of these things over time and understand that we have to be more willing to sort of just take a serious look at the quality of our food.

Chris: Is dairy a problem for a lot of people?

Mark: It is for a lot of different reasons. You know in this country all of our dairy cows are all sort of hybridized, basically all the same, and have genetically different casein, which is the protein in it. Cows for example in Europe or if there's heirloom breeds, that can actually have a significant impact on the immune system. A lot of people have congestion, post nasal drip, irritable bowel syndrome, and all sorts of things as a result of having problems with the dairy. There's no way to know unless you just stop it. I mean there are allergy tests, but the best test is actually just taking a break.

Chris: When people stop eating gluten, do you recommend they just look for gluten-free products, or they start learning to cook? How do they do that process?

Mark: Thankfully there's so much more information out there now about how to be gluten free. There's cookbooks, there's web sites, there's all sorts of in many, many stores gluten free products. There's also restaurants that actually have gluten free menu lists. So there's an increasing awareness of this problems. It effects one in a hundred people, but it may be much more than that in terms of just low-grade problem. Maybe up to 10% of the population, one in ten people. So I think if you have a problem, and if you feel great, you feel wonderful, everything is great, don't worry about. But if you're sick or if you have any health issues, you want to be more focused on exactly what's going on. You have to do that by giving yourself an elimination diet, which identifies the problem by getting rid of it for a little while and then adding it back in.

Chris: Now, once people do recover or feel better, do they reintroduce these foods back into their diet?

Mark: Absolutely. I have the people do the six-week plan. Then after six weeks I explain exactly in my book, The Ultramind Solution, how to do that, and I basically guide them through the process of identifying whether or not there is a problem or not. I have people take a food log. It's very straight forward. Then if they've been avoiding it for a period of time and they start eating it again, they'll know there is a problem because they'll feel very sick.

Chris: For our listeners, can you kind of give an overview of what the six- week program entails?

Mark: Sure. It's very simple actually. There's four major steps. First is eating right for your brain. Second is tuning up your brain chemistry with supplements and the right supplements. Three is the ultramind lifestyle, which involves adequate exercise, stress management, relaxation, sleep, training your brain, doing things to help your brain, getting engaged and focused, and lastly living clean and green. So those are four simple things that people do, and I explain them very clearly in the book. First is eating right for your brain, which is becoming a fat head. You want to eat omega-3 fats from wild salmon, sardines, and flax seeds because most of your brain is made up of fat and you need to have fat to be happy and healthy. The second is you have to eat protein for brain power because amino acids are the building blocks of neurotransmitters that make your brain work and that actually make you happy, be able to focus, and pay attention. So if you know eat a bagel and a muffin for breakfast and a glass of orange juice and expect to be able to focus, you're not going to have any protein to make the amino acids you need for dopamine for example. So you won't be able to focus. You need to eat the right crabs. Whole fresh foods, beans, nuts, whole grains, vegetables, fruits. Those are the right healthy crabs. We need to eat phytonutrients. Colorful plant foods with lots of antioxidants and compounds that help protect our brain. We need to tune up our brain chemistry with supplements. I recommend the basic supplement plan for everybody, which is a multivitamin, fish- oil, B complex, which has B6, foliate, and B12, vitamin D, calcium and magnesium, and some probiotics, which are healthy bacteria that help you gut stay healthy and protect your brain.

Chris: There's some camps that feel that you know supplementation can create imbalances, things like that.

Mark: Well you know you can die from drinking too much water. People have seizures, who are marathon runners or who do races because they over hydrate, their blood gets diluted with water, they have seizures and they die. Does that mean you shouldn't drink water? No. We have to look at what our bodies need, what they require, what they're missing, and what our bodies uniquely need on an individual basis to get what they have to have in order to function properly. Everybody's different. So part of it is customizing it. But the reality is that 92% of Americans, according to government health surveys and tests are deficient in one of more nutrients at the minimum level needed not to stay optimally healthy, but to prevent deficiency diseases like scurvy or rickets. So that's 92% of us. We eat food that's highly processed. It's grown in depleted soils with petrochemical fertilizers. That’s transported across vast distances, that has very low levels of nutrients, and we're seeing obese kids for example severe nutritional deficiencies. These kids are overfed and undernourished. So we're seeing rickets in little children again. We're seeing scurvy in children again because their diets are so depleted. Even if you eat a great diet, it's very difficult to get in the 21st century the adequate amount of nutrients you need. I think if you look at the literature as a whole, you look at the research collectively, and understand the flaws in a lot of those studies that show that they don't work, then it becomes very obvious that we all do need nutrients at the basic minimum levels. If you for example lived in a world where you hunt and gather your own food, where you're not exposed to any pesticides, where you drink pure clean water, where you have no stress, you sleep 9 hours a night, and you exercise two hours a day, of course you don't need vitamins, but I don't know anybody who fits that description, which is basically how we all used to live.

Chris: That's the end of our interview, and I hope you've enjoyed it. For more great health related interviews, go to Michael Senoff's hardtofindseminars.com.