Not all Calories are Created Equal

March 6th, 2018 by Debbie Martilotta

Calories are not the issue…where those calories come from IS!

For years we’ve been told that “a calorie is a calorie”. NOT SO! Eat lean protein (grass-fed, free-range, organic, wild-caught), good fat and complex carbs (from veggies) and you won’t have to worry about calories!

People who ate plenty of vegetables and whole foods lost significant amounts of weight over the course of the year without restricting the quantity of food that they consumed, according to a new study published in JAMA on Tuesday.

The study, led by Christopher D. Gardner, the director of nutrition studies at the Stanford Prevention Research Center, looked at 600 people who were split into two diet groups. One group ate low-carb food and the other followed a low-fat diet, The New York Times reports.

The original goal of the study was to compare how overweight and obese people handled each diet, but both groups were encouraged to choose better quality food over processed options. At the end of the year, both groups had lost a good deal of weight. The low-carb participants lost an average of 13 pounds, while the low-fat group lost an average of 11.7 pounds. Both groups also saw improvement in other health factors such as blood pressure and body fat.

The study suggests that health professionals should encourage people to avoid processed foods that have refined starches and added sugars such as white bread, bagels, and sugary snacks and instead focus on eating more high-quality food.

Researchers say that it’s not that calories don’t matter. Participants in both groups were eating less by the end of the study, but that calories shouldn’t be the main focus when it comes to weight loss.


Newsflash: Spot Training Does NOT Work

February 28th, 2018 by Debbie Martilotta

Image of woman lifting weight.

One of the most common misconceptions in the gym is that one can spot train.

Spot training is the (false) idea that you can cause weight loss or muscle definition in one area without affecting other parts of the body. There are no reliable studies that support the idea of spot training. There are, however, several that discredit it.

For example, eleven men and women did more than 1,000 repetitions of leg press with their non-dominant leg, three times a week, for 12 weeks, and made no dietary changes. At the end of the training program, the participants boasted a 10% drop in fat mass—in their arms. Participants in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research study also whittled their core area, losing an average of 7% of the fat mass in that spot. Remember: they did 1,000 repetitions with only ONE leg.

Although it’s not possible to tone just one specific area or muscle group, it is very possible to increase your overall muscle definition.

Doing so is simply a matter of decreasing the amount of fat on your body while increasing the amount of muscle. One extremely effective method for accomplishing this balance is a strength-training workout that incorporates all muscle groups, with little rest between exercises, along with a clean eating program consisting of lean protein, good carbs, and good fat.


Zucchini Enchiladas

February 19th, 2018 by Debbie Martilotta

Amp up your veggie intake by using thin slices of Zucchini instead of tortillas to wrap your enchiladas.

  • 1 tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil
  • 1 large onion, chopped
  • kosher salt
  • 2 cloves garlic, minced
  • 2 tsp. ground cumin
  • 2 tsp. chili powder
  • 3 c. Shredded chicken
  • 1 1/3 c. red enchilada sauce, divided
  • 4 large zucchini, halved lengthwise
  • 1 c. Shredded Monterey Jack
  • 1 c. shredded Cheddar
  • Sour cream, for drizzling
  • Fresh cilantro, for garnish

Directions

  1. Preheat oven to 350º. In a large skillet over medium heat, heat oil. Add onion and season with salt. Cook until soft, 5 minutes, then add garlic, cumin and chili powder and stir until combined. Add shredded chicken and 1 cup enchilada sauce and stir until saucy.
  2. On a cutting board, use a Y-shaped vegetable peeler to make thin slices of zucchini. Lay out three, slightly overlapping, and place a spoonful of chicken mixture on top. Roll up and transfer to a baking dish. Repeat with remaining zucchini and chicken mixture.
  3. Spoon remaining 1/3 cup enchilada sauce over zucchini enchiladas and sprinkle with both cheeses.
  4. Bake until melty, 20 minutes.
  5. Garnish with sour cream and cilantro and serve.

Eggs Don’t Cause Heart Attacks — Sugar Does

February 19th, 2018 by Debbie Martilotta

I have been saying this for a long time. It is time to admit that the doctors and experts have been wrong for years, and that good fat is VERY good for you and necessary for good health. I start every day with a three-egg breakfast!
Debbie Martilotta, DBM Strength Training

It’s over. The debate is settled.

It’s sugar, not fat, that causes heart attacks.

Oops. Fifty years of doctors’ advice and government eating guidelines have been wrong. We’ve been told to swap eggs for cereal. But that recommendation is dead wrong. In fact, it’s very likely that this bad advice has killed millions of Americans.

A rigorously done new study shows that those with the highest sugar intake had a four-fold increase in their risk of heart attacks compared to those with the lowest intakes. That’s 400 percent! Just one 20-ounce soda increases your risk of a heart attack by about 30 percent.

This study of more than 40,000 people, published in JAMA Internal Medicine, accounted for all other potential risk factors including total calories, overall diet quality, smoking, cholesterol, high blood pressure, obesity, and alcohol.

This follows on the heels of decades of research that has been mostly ignored by the medical establishment and policy makers. In fact, the Institute of Medicine recommends getting no more than 25 percent of your total calories from added sugar. Really? This study showed that your risk of heart attacks doubles if sugar makes up 20 percent of your calories.

Yet more than 70 percent of Americans consume 10 percent of their daily calories from sugar. And about 10 percent of Americans consume one in every four of their calories from sugar.

Failed Dietary Guidelines

U.S. Dietary Guidelines provide no limit for added sugar, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) still lists sugar as a “generally regarded as safe” (GRAS) substance. That classification lets the food industry add unlimited amounts of sugar to our food. At least the American Heart Association recommends that our daily diet contain no more than 5 percent to 7.5 percent added sugar. Yet most of us are eating a lot more. Most of us don’t know that a serving of tomato sauce has more sugar than a serving of Oreo cookies, or that fruit yogurt has more sugar than a Coke, or that most breakfast cereals — even those made with whole grain — are 75 percent sugar. That’s not breakfast, it’s dessert!

This is a major paradigm shift. For years, we’ve been brainwashed into thinking that fat causes heart attacks and raises cholesterol, and that sugar is harmless except as a source of empty calories. They are not empty calories. As it turns out, sugar calories are deadly calories. Sugar causes heart attacks, obesity, Type 2 diabetes, cancer and dementia, and is the leading cause of liver failure in America.

The biggest culprit is sugar-sweetened beverages, including sodas, juices, sports drinks, teas, and coffees. They are by far the single biggest source of sugar calories in our diet. In fact, more than 37 percent of our sugar calories come from soda. The average teenage boy consumes 34 teaspoons of sugar a day, or about 544 calories from sugar. Even more troubling, this isn’t just putting kids at risk for heart attacks at some remote later date in their lives. It’s killing them before their 20th birthday.

This new research syncs with decades of data on how sugar causes insulin resistance, high triglycerides, lower HDL (good) cholesterol and dangerous small LDL (bad) cholesterol. It also triggers the inflammation we now know is at the root of heart disease.

And fats, including saturated fats, have been unfairly blamed. With the exception of trans fats, fats are actually protective. This includes omega-3 fats, nuts and olive oil, which was proven to reduce heart attack risk by more than 30 percent in a recent large randomized controlled study.

Here’s a simple fact: Sugar calories are worse than other calories. All calories are not created equal. A recent study of more than 175 countries found that increasing overall calories didn’t increase the risk of Type 2 diabetes, but increasing sugar calories did — dramatically.

How to Cure Our Sugar Addiction

America lags far behind the rest of the world in addressing this problem. Mexico, for example, responded after learning that when soda consumption increased to 20 percent of calories for the average citizen, their rates of obesity and Type 2 diabetes skyrocketed. Public health officials there researched effective solutions to combat obesity and diabetes from around the world.

The key interventions they implemented included taxing soda, banning junk food television advertising, and eliminating processed foods, junk food and sugar-sweetened beverages from schools. More than 15 countries have targeted sugar-sweetened beverages by taxing them — a strategy that’s proven successful.

Another effective strategy is revamping food labeling to make it clear if a food is good, should be consumed with caution, or is bad for you. In the United States, even someone with a Ph.D. in nutrition has trouble deciphering food labels. How can the average person be expected to know?

Recent and mounting scientific evidence clearly proves that sugar — and flour, which raises blood sugar even more than table sugar — is biologically addictive. In fact, it’s as much as eight times more addictive than cocaine.

The average American consumes about 152 pounds of sugar and 146 pounds of flour a year. It’s imperative that we revamp our outdated and dangerous national dietary guidelines. And we need clear strategies and medical programs to help people understand and address the health risks and addictive nature of sugar and refined carbohydrates.

That’s how we can reverse this tsunami of obesity and chronic disease that is robbing us of our health and crippling our economy.

Shared with permission by Mark Hyman, MD


The Reasons Why I Offer Farm Fresh Eggs in DBM Studio

February 19th, 2018 by Debbie Martilotta

Eggs are one of the healthiest foods you can eat. Full of essential vitamins and proteins, they provide us with many nutritional benefits, but is there really a difference between farm-fresh eggs and the ones you find in the supermarket?

Differences In Flavor

Ask any farmer and they’ll tell you that their homegrown eggs are richer and better-tasting than the supermarket variety. In blind taste tests, store-bought eggs and farm-fresh eggs are barely distinguishable by flavor.

Nutritional Value Comparisons

The real benefits of free-range eggs are in their nutritional value. Studies show several advantages to farm-fresh eggs, including:

  • less cholesterol
  • less saturated fat
  • increased vitamins A, E, and D
  • more omega-3 fatty acids
  • more beta-carotene

Omega-3 fatty acids are essential to our body’s day to day functions and help to prevent several chronic diseases. The nutrients that increase the amount of fatty acids in eggs come from chickens eating things like bugs, leafy greens, corn, and flowers—ingredients completely vacant from a caged hen’s diet.

The vitamins in eggs are all extremely beneficial to your diet. Many people have a vitamin-D deficiency. Pasture-raised eggs are widely regarded as one of the best food sources of vitamin D.

While both farm-fresh and store-bought eggs have cholesterol, backyard eggs contain lower amounts, and most of the cholesterol in eggs is considered “good” cholesterol that will not have the same detrimental health effects as “bad” cholesterol. Cholesterol is actually a very important part of our diet and helps us maintain calcium and phosphorous levels in our bloodstreams.

Treatment Of The Chickens That Lay Your Eggs

If you raise your own chickens or know a local farmer with a small flock, you can rest assured that your eggs were humanely produced. Even commercial eggs you find that are labeled “cage-free” are usually produced in a warehouse with hundreds of chickens crammed together and little natural light or fresh feed. According to the Humane Society of the United States, only egg cartons marked “free range,” “pasture raised” and/or “USDA Certified Organic” can actually be guaranteed to come from birds with outdoor access and the space to walk around in their enclosures.

Chickens are more naturally inclined and proven to be healthier when able to forage for themselves and participate in normal chicken activities, such as dust bathing and nightly roosting. If you want to know more about how your farm-fresh eggs were raised, talk to the farmer who raised them for more information about their husbandry practices.

Storage And Shelf Life Of Eggs

Something you can be certain of if you keep a flock and collect your own eggs is you’ll know how long the eggs sat on your counter before you cooked them. Supermarket eggs take between one and three days to reach the store and can sit on the shelf for up to 30 days before being purchased. The USDA recommends consuming eggs within five weeks if refrigerated, so a supermarket egg may only have a week of optimum freshness when you purchase it. It can be much easier to distinguish the difference in flavor between fresh eggs and ones that are weeks old, and buying older eggs may lead to the belief that store-bought eggs do not taste as good.

If you raise your own chickens and don’t wash your eggs before storing, they can stay on the countertop at room temperature until you’re ready to use them because the protective bloom hasn’t been removed. If you do wash your eggs before storage, however, be sure to refrigerate them before using. Also be sure to label your eggs as you collect them, so you know which are the freshest.

Overall Food Safety

The advantage of knowing the history of farm fresh eggs comes into play again in their overall food safety. One of the main things consumers worry about with eggs is the possibility of a salmonella infection. Salmonella occurs in eggs laid by an infected hen, and unfortunately, a hen may not present any symptoms of the disease while still being a carrier.

Scientists agree that the living conditions of caged hens greatly increases their risk of contracting salmonella, making backyard eggs much safer to eat than their store-bought counterparts. If you are concerned about salmonella in your home flock, you can also make the decision to have a veterinarian test them and know for certain that the flock is disease-free.

Cooking Comparisons

While there may not be a discernible flavor difference in eggs from your farm or your grocery store, there are some noticeable effects when you use those eggs in your cooking and baking. The increased nutritional value of homegrown eggs also means that their yolks are fuller in color and that their whites are stiffer and hold together better. While your finished cake or tortilla may not have a taste difference, the experience of cooking with farm fresh eggs is different and usually preferable.

It is true that homegrown eggs and supermarket eggs might not have a noticeable difference in taste, but the satisfaction in collecting your own eggs gives them a certain zest, and although the flavors may be the same, an egg fresh from the farm will always be more nutritional and healthy for the consumer.

by Kirsten Lie-Nielsen


DBM Approved Chicken Tenders

February 19th, 2018 by Debbie Martilotta


7 Reasons to Squat Ass-to-Grass

February 12th, 2018 by Debbie Martilotta

THIS is how you take it to the next level!
Don’t fear for your knees, one more PLEASE!

There’s a golden rule in squatting: break parallel. But do you strive to hit full depth? I’m talking full range of motion (ROM), ass-to-grass position.

There’s no doubt some people may have mobility issues that prevent them from exercising their full range of motion, but squatting to full depth is far more effective—and safe—than squatting to just below parallel.

Full squats are better for knee health. It might seem counter-intuitive, but the deeper you go in a squat, the increased knee stability you’ll experience. This is because there is increased contact between the back of the thigh and the calf, reducing the shearing forces on the ligaments within the knee. In fact, a 2013 study from Sports Medicine found that the highest compressive forces are placed on the knee when it is at a 90-degree flexion angle. Essentially, allowing the knee to move freely in a full range of motion helps to build tissue strength around the knee joint—not to mention decreasing the amount of stress (and therefore reducing the risk of injury) on the knee itself.

As world-renowned strength coach Charles Poliquin states, “Not only do full squats keep you honest and encourage you to achieve functional mobility, they allow you to train for better structural balance throughout the body.”

When you squat to full depth, your muscles are stretched further and are better activated than if you were to just perform a parallel squat. With all that tension in your muscles, you can generate more power when coming out of the bottom position. Furthermore, when you squat deep, your hips take more of the load than your knees and ankles, and hip extension torque is increased.

The squat is renowned as the best compound movement in the world of fitness. During the squat, the hip, knee and even the ankle joints (plantar flexion occurs at the joint when you press into the ground during the concentric phase of the squat) are all involved in the movement. As a result, your soleus (the calf), hamstrings, quadriceps, glutes, abdominals (core stability), hip adductors and erector spinae are all engaged during the back squat.

When more muscles are being worked, the body secretes more HGH (human growth hormone) and testosterone, two hormones that are vital for building muscle. In addition, the more tension that is placed on a muscle, the more muscle fiber is recruited, which increases muscular hypertrophy and strength.

Under my guidance, clients should have no fear of improper form. Want a trainer that will get you there, contact Debbie at 616-901-6247.

Read entire article here; http://bit.ly/2BUiXQ2


Homemade multi-seed crackers

February 9th, 2018 by Debbie Martilotta

Ingredients

  • 1 cup water
  • 1/2 cup Flax seeds whole, raw
  • 1/2 cup Chia seeds whole
  • 1/2 cup Sunflower seeds raw
  • 1/2 cup Pumpkin seeds raw
  • 1/2 teaspoon Maldon sea salt
  • Your choice of seasonings such as black pepper, chili, onion or garlic powder, oregano, rosemary, or thyme

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 350°F.

In a large bowl, mix all the ingredients together plus whatever additional seasonings you might want and stir until combined.

Let sit 10 minutes to allow the flax and chia seeds to become somewhat gelatinous.

Line a baking sheet with a piece of parchment and spray with cooking spray. Spread mixture out, pressing until the sheet is less than 1/4 inch thick.

Bake for 30 minutes. Remove from oven and slice into crackers (a pizza cutter is super-handy).

Carefully turn the crackers over and put them back in the oven for an additional 20-30 minutes.

Stored in an air-tight container they will stay fresh for a week.


REVERSE PYRAMID TRAINING

February 9th, 2018 by Debbie Martilotta

I’m often asked why, in my classes, I have my clients start with a heavy weight set and reduce the weight in subsequent sets. There’s a good reason for doing this. The method of going from heavier to lighter weights is called Reverse Pyramid Training (RPT).

Here are 3 benefits of RPT:

BENEFIT #1 – YOU DO YOUR HEAVIEST SET WITHOUT FATIGUE

In an RPT workout, you’ll be doing your heaviest set first while you’re completely fresh. This means being able to handle heavy weights with more ease and power than ever before. No other training style allows you to lift as close to your limits as RPT. You do your heavy set first when you have the greatest strength potential and get full muscle fiber recruitment from the beginning. The fatigue created by that heavy set may actually make the lighter sets more effective because you’ll be lifting closer to failure.

BENEFIT #2 – YOU DO JUST ONE HEAVY SET WITH MAXIMUM EFFORT

With RPT you’re only performing your heaviest set once.

That’s it! One heavy set is all she wrote, baby. If you take that set to the absolute brink of your capabilities, you will not be able to replicate that set again for the rest of your workout.

What’s amazing is that there is a great wave of relief when you know that you only have to do that heavy weight for one set!

Mentally this is a huge advantage; it puts you in the winning mindset and ensures maximum effort. This will lead to consistent personal milestones like you’ve never experienced before.

BENEFIT #3 – YOU DO TWO EASIER SETS AFTER THE HARD SET

The beautiful thing about your maximum effort set is that it will SUPERCHARGE your body! You see, lifting a heavy weight requires near maximal muscle fiber stimulation from the very first rep. This is unlike light weights, in which you only recruit all of your muscle fibers on those last few really tough reps.

By performing your heavy set first, you shift your body into a temporary state of heightened muscle fiber activation. This means that all of the lighter sets you do afterward will promote more muscle growth than if you did them beforehand.You can see this for yourself when you go to do your lighter sets; the first few reps will feel extremely easy. This is because you’ll be using more muscle fibers than you’d normally use for that weight.

Not every personal trainer uses the RPT method. There are as many ways to strength train as there are to cross a room. Which one is best? The one that WORKS! The RPT method has been very successful for me and for my clients. I believe in the results.


The Last Diet You Will Ever Need

February 9th, 2018 by Debbie Martilotta

With permission by Mark Hyman, MD

Why is it that we believe we can feed our bodies industrial nutrient depleted food-like substances empty of life and be healthy? How did we come to believe that food industry chemicals and processing could replace nature made foods?

A hundred years ago all food was organic, local, seasonal, fresh or naturally preserved by ancient methods. All food was food. Now less than 3% of our agricultural land is used to grow fruits and vegetables, which should make up 80% of our diet.

Today there are not even enough fruits and vegetables in this country to allow all Americans to follow the government guidelines to eat 5 to 9 servings a day.

What most of us are left with is industrial food. And who knows what lurks in the average boxed, packaged, or canned factory-made science project.

When a French fry has more than 20 ingredients and almost all of them are not potato, or when a fast food hamburger contains very little meat, or when the average teenager consumes 34 teaspoons of sugar a day, we are living in a food nightmare, a sci-fi horror show.

The very fact that we are having a national conversation about what we should eat, that we are struggling with the question about what the best diet is, is symptomatic of how far we have strayed from the natural conditions that gave rise to our species, from the simple act of eating real, whole, fresh food. When it becomes a revolutionary act to eat real food, we are in trouble.

The food industry, which is the second biggest employer in America after the Federal government, heavily influences the media and government agencies that regulate it (US Department of Agriculture, Food and Drug Administration and Congress) and intentionally confuses and confounds us.

Low-fat is good – so anything with a “low-fat” on the label must be healthy. But Coke is 100% fat-free and that doesn’t make it a health food. Now we are told to eat more whole grains, so a few flecks of whole grains are sprinkled on sugary cereals. That doesn’t make them a health food either.

The best advice is to avoid foods with health claims on the label, or better yet avoid foods with labels in the first place.

In the 21st century our tastes buds, our brain chemistry, our biochemistry, our hormones and our kitchens have been hijacked by the food industry. The food-like substances proffered by the industrial food system food trick our taste buds into momentary pleasure, but not our biology which reacts, rejects and reviles the junk plied on our genes and our hormonal and biochemical pathways. We need to unjunk our biology.

Industrial processing has given rise to an array of addictive, fattening, metabolism- jamming chemicals and compounds including aspartame, MSG (monosodium glutamate), high-fructose corn syrup and trans-fats, to name the biggest offenders.

MSG is used to create fat mice so researchers can study obesity. MSG is an excitotoxin that stimulates your brain to eat uncontrollably. When fed to mice, they pig out and get fat. It is in 80% of processed foods mostly disguised as “natural flavorings”.

And trans-fat, for example, is derived from a real food – vegetable oil – chemically altered to resist degradation by bacteria, which is why modern cookies last on the shelf for years.

But the ancient energy system of your cells is descended from bacteria and those energy factories, or mitochondria, cannot process these trans-fats either. Your metabolism is blocked and weight gain and type 2 diabetes ensue.

Your tongue can be fooled and your brain can become addicted to the slick combinations of fat, sugar, and salt pumped into factory-made foods, but your biochemistry cannot and the result is the disaster of obesity and chronic disease we have in America today.

No wonder 68% of Americans are overweight, no wonder that from 1960 to today obesity rates have risen from 13% to 36% and soon will reach 42%. Over the last decade, the rate of pre-diabetes or diabetes in teenagers has risen from 9% to 23%.

Really? Almost one in four of our kids now has pre-diabetes or type 2 diabetes? And 37% of normal weight kids have one or more cardiovascular risk factors such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol or high blood sugar because even though factory food doesn’t make them fat, it makes them sick!

It is time to take our kitchens and our homes back. Transforming the food industry seems monumental, a gigantic undertaking. But it is not. It is a small problem. In the small places in our lives, our shopping carts, the fridge, the cupboard, the kitchen and on our dining room table – is where all the power is.

It is the hundreds of little choices, the small actions you make every day that will topple the monolithic food industry. This century is littered with the bodies and institutions of fallen despots and despotic regimes – from the fall of the Berlin wall to the Arab spring. There is no force more powerful than a small group of individuals with a desire to end injustice and abuse.

A very simple idea can break through the confusion and plant the seeds of a revolution. Our bodies were designed to run on real food. Our natural default state is health. We need to simplify our way of eating.

Unjunk our diet, detoxify our bodies and our minds and we heal. Simply choose foods such as – vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, healthy oils (olive oil, fish oil, avocado and coconut oil), small amounts of whole grains and beans and lean animal protein including small wild fish, grass-fed meat, and farm eggs.

There are no diets, no calorie counting, and no measuring fats, carbs or protein grams. None of that matters if you choose real, whole, fresh, live foods. If you choose quality, the rest takes care of itself.

When you eat empty industrial food with addictive chemicals and sugar, your body craves more looking for nutrients in a dead food where none are to be found. Yet after eating nutrient-dense fresh food for a few days the biological addiction to industrial food is broken, and in a few more days your cells begin to rejuvenate and you heal from the inside out.

And the side effects are all good ones – effortless weight loss, reversal of high blood pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol, clearing of brain fog, lifting of depression and fatigue and even better skin, hair and nails.

What is more important than what you take out of your diet is what you put in. Add in the good stuff and there won’t be room for the bad. Mother Nature is the best pharmacist and food is the most powerful drug on the planet. It works faster, better and cheaper than any other pharmaceutical.

Whole real food spiced up with a few super foods such as chia, hemp, parsley, cilantro, coconut and green juicing can beneficially affect thousands of genes, regulate dozens of hormones, and enhance the function of tens of thousands of protein networks.

Dinner is a date with the doctor. What you put at the end of your fork is more powerful than anything you will ever find at the bottom of a prescription bottle.

The roadmap to health is simple, eat real food, practice self-love rather than self-loathing, imagine yourself well, get sufficient sleep, and incorporate movement into your life. The solution to our health crisis and obesity epidemic is not complicated.

Health and happiness are often just a few days away. Each of us has the capacity to make the small changes in our lives that will create big changes in our food landscape, our agriculture, and even our government policies.

I hope you will use the power of your fork to be part of the start of a true food revolution.

Have you changed your eating habits to include more real food?

What have you done to create a healthier diet for your family?

Have you eliminated MSG from your diet?

Think about it!

To your good health,

Mark Hyman, MD

 

Mark Hyman, MD is an American physician, scholar, and New York Times best-selling author. He is the founder and medical director of the UltraWellness Center and a columnist for The Huffington Post.

Hyman is a proponent of functional medicine, a discredited set of pseudoscientific beliefs; he is the chairman of the Institute for Functional Medicine. He was the editor-in-chief and is a contributing editor to Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine, a peer-reviewed medical journal focused on functional medicine.