Glucose Hacks That STOP Cravings, Fatigue & Hormone Chaos | Glucose Goddess (Jessie Inchauspé)

Today I'm joined by Jessie Enchauspe, founder of Glucose Goddess, French biochemist, New York Times and international bestselling author, and educator to more than 10 million online followers, reshaping the conversation around blood sugar. In today's episode, Jesse will share her science-backed glucose hacks to improve your insulin sensitivity, energy, and mood, pregnancy and nutrition with 4 key nutrients that influence your baby's brain development and risk of health challenges later in life, and information that really should be communicated to you and your doctor's office, but usually is not. Jesse, welcome to the Being Brigid Show.

Thank you so much for having me. I'm so happy to be here.

As I shared with you, I am such a fangirl and have been following your work since the very beginning, and I love how much you have pioneered this field of addressing the power of blood sugar regulation and communicating the importance even to people who don't have type 2 diabetes or prediabetes. Let's start off with just having you share why it's important for people to care about managing their glucose spikes and not being on the blood sugar roller coaster, even without prediabetes.

It's a little bit like asking, why is it important to brush your teeth even if you don't have cavities? Managing your glucose spikes is something we do to feel better every single day. And also to prevent long-term issues. So if you learn how to manage your glucose levels early on, you can help reduce the risk of getting prediabetes and type 2 diabetes, which by the way, you know, more than a billion people in the world now have either prediabetes or type 2 diabetes. So it's quite a big deal. And also glucose spikes on a daily basis affect us more than we think. So symptoms such as cravings, chronic fatigue, where you need a coffee mid-morning, mid-afternoon, brain fog, mental health issues, hormonal imbalances, such as a lot of testosterone in a female body, which might lead to PCOS, such as very difficult menopause symptoms, hot flashes, insomnia, skin conditions, acne, psoriasis, eczema, all inflammatory-based conditions. They all can be related to having dysregulated glucose levels even if you don't have diabetes. And there was one study that really reshaped our understanding of glucose for people who don't have diabetes. It came out of Stanford almost 10 years ago now, and it showed that in people without diabetes, eating some common foods such as breakfast cereal could send their glucose levels into such high ranges that are clearly damaging, that are clearly very inflammatory, ranges that previously we thought were only attainable if you had diabetes. So now we understand even without that medical condition, you can still be experiencing a very intense rollercoaster on a daily basis that affects how you feel. And so what I like to say, Brigid, is if you could feel better than you currently do, then you should learn to manage your glucose spikes because truly it'll help you feel better within an hour and also help whatever health issues you might be experiencing.

And this is so important for people who normalize feeling bad because I think like when you say it in that way of if you can feel better, why wouldn't you take the actions needed? Where some people think, oh, I'm, I'm doing fine. Like there's, there's nothing wrong with the way that I'm living until you start to feel better and you're like, wow, I just unlocked the most insane competitive advantage for every aspect of my life as a mother, as in work, in my relationships, the energy that I have to clean my house, like literally every single aspect.

Totally agree. I listen, I used to think that I was just somebody who had a lot of cravings. And I used to think I was just somebody who was tired. And I used to think I was just somebody who had irregular periods. And you kind of hear this narrative that it's normal to have all these symptoms, and it's normal to struggle. And of course, you know, to some extent it is, but it turns out that a lot of the symptoms that we feel on a daily basis might actually not be just symptoms to suppress or ignore or medicate, they might actually be messages. From our body telling us there's something that we need to look at within. And for a long time, I wasn't ready to look at those messages from my body, so I kind of ignored them and suppressed them. And then coinciding with my discovery of glucose, I felt finally ready to look at them. And by managing my blood sugar levels, I was able to create a sort of solid first step of the foundation of my health system, body and brain. And it's truly life-changing.

It's so unbelievably life-changing, and I'm just feeling so energized having this conversation with you, like visibly seeing this in myself, in you, in so many of the people that are in our communities where you see these results from people where they're like, I, I cannot believe how much of an impact this had. I'd love for you to take us back to your origin story of where this all started with the personal journey and your background as a biochemist in like the early days of wearing a CGM. How, how did all of this start for you?

So I trace back my story, my health journey, to when I was 19 years old. I had an accident, I jumped off a waterfall, and I broke my back. So one of my vertebrae exploded under the pressure of the water. I didn't hit a rock or anything. So I had very intense surgery. I've got lots of metal in my back. And then importantly, after that surgery, I started slowly but surely developing a lot of mental health issues. Depression, anxiety, panic attacks, depersonalization, which is a sort of horrible mental health problem where you feel like a stranger in your own body. Anyway, I was completely broken. My, my brain felt broken, my mental health was broken. So I went on a quest to try to feel better. I studied biochemistry, tried to understand the body. I worked in genetics to try to understand our DNA. Nothing really helped me. And about 10 years after my accident, 10 whole years, I had the random opportunity to try on a glucose monitor. Somebody in the company I was working at had set up this internal study where they had bought 5 glucose monitors and they said, "Hey, does anybody want to try one just for fun to see what we can learn?" And something inside me said that I needed to try it. So I raised my hand and I said, "I want to do it." And just after a couple days with the glucose monitor, I started noticing something quite interesting. I started noticing that the big spikes I was seeing on my phone, because it sends you in real time the glucose data from your body to your phone, I was starting to see that these spikes were correlating with different symptoms. And in particular, one morning I had a donut for breakfast. This is what I used to eat. And I started feeling this episode of depersonalization come on, which is this difficult mental health thing I was dealing with. And I could feel the brain fog, the anxiety. I started to feel dissociated. I hated that feeling. And so I looked at my phone at the glucose app, and I saw a massive, massive, massive, massive glucose spike happening at the exact same time. And Brigid, this was the first time in my life that I had found a clue of something that could possibly be related to my mental health. So it was a clue as to something I could potentially do to start feeling better. And so I dug into all the scientific studies I could find, and I started discovering that, A, I wasn't alone. A lot of people without diabetes can have big glucose spikes, as I explained. And B, there were easy things that I could do to keep my glucose spikes smaller. And as I put these in place, I started to feel significantly better. And then it became very clear. On days where my glucose level was nice and steady, my mental health was better. And days where I was on a roller coaster of glucose spikes and crashes, my mental health was worse. And so 10 years after this accident that completely broke me, I had a way forward. And I understood that managing my blood sugar levels, my glucose levels, was incredibly important to my health. So that's the whole story. And now here we are. And I wanted to share the science with everybody because it's just so, so life-changing, so easy, so important. So accessible, and truly we all feel better when we put in place the science that I discovered.

And you come from a science background. You, you have your master's in biochemistry and you were working in as a biochemist at the time. Is that right?

Mm-hmm. I was working, so I have a master's in biochemistry. I come from mathematics, so I did undergrad in math and then grad school in biochemistry. And then I was working in a genetics company as a product manager. So I was in charge of translating essentially genetic science into features and experiences that the customers could understand. And so I understood— I understand both the research side, and now I do a lot of research on a daily basis, and also how to translate complicated information into something people can understand. So that was really the genesis of my work.

I love it. You really excel at it in so many ways.

Thank you.

You know, is, is seen by all the success that you have and the, the millions of people who are so captivated by being able to learn from you because of your ability to take that science and then, and then communicate it in an easy to understand way. One of those examples being the comparison graphs that you started posting on Instagram. Yeah. Many, what, what year did you start posting these?

Uh, 2019.

2019. So I remember in 2019, It was 2020, maybe. Um, yeah, that a friend of mine, Kayla Barnes, she and I had been wearing continuous glucose monitors and I had been using them when I worked for Dr. Hyman and all of the patients that we saw. And she had shared your Instagram account with me, like back in the day when you were very early on and was like, look at how amazing this is. She's comparing these different foods. So that was really a huge part of you communicating the science you created. A software to be able to take these graphs. Tell us, in posting comparison graphs where you take one food and show the glucose response, then you take another food and you show the glucose response, what were some of those eye-opening posts that you remember, like, going viral because people could not believe the glucose response from one food versus another?

Well, first of all, I will say at the beginning, nothing was going viral, girl. It was just me on my couch posting to my 10 followers. But the ones that garnered the most attention, I think, I think the one of the first ones was when I compared, um, a whole orange versus the juice of that orange. So basically a whole piece of fruit versus fruit juice. And you can see the fruit juice created a much bigger glucose spike than the regular piece of fruit. And this was really my first creation that when I showed it to my friends, my family, and my 10 Instagram followers, I got a real response. People saw visually The difference. And I thought, oh my God, this is such an incredible educational tool. So that was the first one, not the most viral one. I think in terms of the most surprising ones is probably the French fries versus vinegar and French fries. And the UK, they have this thing where they put white vinegar on French fries. And when you put vinegar on carbs, it reduces the glucose spike of those carbs because vinegar contains acetic acid, which is a really cool molecule that just simply slows down the digestion of the carbs. And so when you see this visually, it's very striking. It's really, really fun. What other ones do I like? I think the food order ones are also pretty cinematic in a way. And what I'm doing, Brigid, by the way, just to be clear, is that I'm looking at scientific studies, peer-reviewed studies that show that a specific habit nutritionally reduces the glucose spikes in healthy people. And then what I do with my graphs is I just illustrate that established science. So for example, the food order information. Amazing scientists have found that when we eat vegetables at the beginning of our meal, it reduces the glucose spike of that meal versus eating the veggies at the end after the carbs, for example. So easy swaps, for example, broccoli and then spaghetti versus spaghetti and then broccoli, create a wildly different glucose spike, even though it's the exact same food and the same amount of food that we're eating. So I think that's a really, really popular one. And then—

For that one, can you explain like how the fiber helps to slow down that glucose absorption?

Absolutely. So let's say you're faced with this meal, okay? Broccoli and spaghetti. And so if you eat the broccoli first and then the spaghetti, you're gonna get a much smaller spike than if you do the reverse. And the reason for that is broccoli, like all vegetables, contain fiber. And when you have fiber at the beginning of your meal, it has time to sort of create a protective mesh in your upper intestine and your lower stomach. And this mesh is almost like a little shield that stays in place for a few hours that slows down how quickly glucose molecules from the rest of your meal can go into your bloodstream. So it's slowing down the absorption of the glucose from the meal into your bloodstream. And the slowness is really the important piece here. What we're trying to do is we're trying to slow down the speed at which glucose arrives in our blood, because that is the way that we slow down the symptoms. That's the way that we create less of a shock and less of a stress in our bloodstream. That's how we create less inflammation. That's how we also create less of a crash because with the smaller spike, you get a smaller crash and that crash triggers cravings and hunger. So it's all about the velocity. You're kind of a, you know, you're a time master with your glucose spikes. It's all about, okay, I'm going to eat the carbs, but how slowly can I get them to arrive into my bloodstream? That's really what the glucose hacks that I share try to do. I love it.

And I think even with you talking about how you use the science and then create the graphs. I, I have seen pushback. We even get pushback sometimes because we will test recipes on a continuous glucose monitor and show the graph to our members, and we'll get pushback being like, that is not a science-backed way to understand since every per— you know, there's over 40 factors that impact glucose response, and every individual has their own unique response. What would you say to, to criticism like that that traditionally comes from conventionally trained doctors?

Oh, well, I think they're absolutely correct. We, you and I, Brigid, would never have the same glucose spike if we ate the same food. This is completely normal and everybody will have a different spike. But if you and I both did the same hack, for example, if we compared your cookie spike and my cookie spike, they would not be the same spike, right? One would be bigger, one would be smaller. But if we both had vinegar before that cookie, both of our spikes would be proportionally smaller. So your vinegar and cookie spike will be smaller than your cookie spike, and my vinegar and cookie spike will be smaller than my cookie spike. So as long as we're focusing on the habits that have been scientifically proven to work on everybody, that's all that matters. We're not here comparing spikes. We're here to give advice that's going to make everybody's spikes smaller, however big or small your original spike is. You see what I mean?

100%. Yes.

Yeah.

And I think that it's also important to, to discuss the fact that science is always evolving. And so sometimes it's, you know, there's always going to be opposition to newer studies that have come out that maybe doctors weren't trained on in medical school, which is why, you know, people are not getting this information in their doctor's office even when they have prediabetes or type 2 diabetes. Like we've had a ton of pushback even from clients that we work with, or in the early days when I was working with Levels and insurance companies. Interpreting CGM data from Levels users. You know, we got tons of pushback from people who were requesting CGMs initially from their doctor who were saying, you know, giving you a— prescribing a continuous glucose monitor for you with prediabetes would be like me telling you that you should get chemotherapy for a non-cancer tumor that you have. And it's like, no, those are not comparable scenarios at all.

Oh, yeah, no, that's, that's not comparable. It's sort of like, if somebody told you, well, you can walk. So why are you exercising? It's like, well, yeah, I can do something. But what if I could, you know, live a more optimal life and be even more optimally healthy? It's sort of interesting, because it's this whole conversation about prevention. And often we get pushback from people who say, "Don't worry about preventing diabetes. We'll deal with it if you one day have it," when really it would be so much better for our healthcare system and for everybody in the world if prevention was something that people were also excited about. So what's the point of giving a glucose monitor to somebody who has prediabetes? The point is that's going to teach them how to not get diabetes.

And reverse their prediabetes, which is entirely possible.

Completely.

And a lot of people are told that it's not, but we see it every single day, as I know that you do as well.

Of course. Of course, yes, that's, that's a big myth also that diabetes is not reversible, that prediabetes is not reversible. But again, as you say, you know, it's the issue that we see between conventional medicine, but whose job it is to just prescribe medication, and the role of, I guess, other people to help with prevention and reversal. It's very different jobs. And I think sometimes we, we think doctors have a lot of expertise on everything, but truly they're really good at diagnosing and treating, and prevention is not something they spend a lot of time learning about, and reversal.

Yes, yes, yes, I completely agree. Um, okay, and then one other thing that I'd love to get into before then we switch gears and get into the new focus that you have with your new research findings is around glycation. Can you explain the role that blood sugar spikes have on glycation? Yes.

So glycation is what happens when you put a chicken in the oven. It goes from pink to brown. It basically cooks. And that process of cooking is called glycating. Now, here's where it gets really interesting. From the moment a human being is born, he slowly glycates. We slowly cook from the moment we're born until we die. And we know this because you can look at the cartilage of babies and it's white. And by the time you're 90 years old, your cartilage is brown. It has browned. It has cooked like a chicken in the oven. And this is happening every second of every day. And glycation is actually similar to aging. We cannot stop aging. We cannot stop glycation, but we can speed it up or slow it down. And so concretely, what does glycation do? It damages substances in your body. And this can show on your skin. For example, when your collagen gets glycated, you get more wrinkles. And internally, as your organs slowly glycate, they become more diseased and less healthy. And glycation and glucose kind of sound like the same root. And that is because they do have the same etymological root because it is glucose that does the glycating. So in your body, more glucose that you have, the faster you are glycating, the faster you are aging. And so very simply put, what does this mean? It means that when we learn to manage our glucose spikes and we reduce how much glucose we're eating, we are slowing down glycation. And this is really cool because it means we are slowing down aging. Now, I'm not saying that by using the glucose hacks, you're going to look 20 years younger in a week. That's not the point. But over decades and decades and decades, it adds up. And theoretically, if you had fewer glucose spikes than your neighbor, when you're 80 years old, you might have fewer wrinkles than your neighbor if everything else is the same. So that's glycation. It's very interesting.

It's so interesting. And I think that it helps when people understand. I remember working with a client many years ago and trying to help with reducing added sugar and wearing a continuous glucose monitor and sharing an episode that you did around glycation with trying to be like, these are the reasons that when you have the impulse to have, you know, the lots of snacks in the evening, late at night, and other things that you're trying to break the habit around, that having the information, the science to really understand the implications of those choices, um, and the impact that that can have in really changing your lifestyle and, and the things that you thought might be worth it, but really when you think about your long-term goals are not. So I love the way that you communicate that.

Okay.

Thank you. Tell us more about your second research findings that are around the experience that you've had through birthing your son into the world, which congratulations, and thank you. The focus that you have on spreading the awareness now for women who are pregnant.

So when I became pregnant, I did what I usually do when I become interested in a new topic. I read as much research as I possibly can. And so I was asking a simple question, which was, is there anything I can do during my pregnancy to help my baby have a good health setup for life? And the information I found in the scientific studies was honestly quite shocking, Brigid. I found decades of published evidence, incredible science-backed books, all this information about how different foods that I was eating during pregnancy could truly shape my baby's development in a long-term way. And I was comparing this to what I was hearing from my midwife and my doctor, which was essentially, Oh yeah, well, maybe take a folic acid supplement and, you know, don't drink alcohol. So there was a huge gap between what I was being told in the medical system and what the science was showing me in this, you know, huge field of research. And so I decided to put this all in a book because what I found is that when we're pregnant, we are not just an oven in which our baby is baking. You're not just there passively waiting for the next ultrasound. This is not true. It's way, way, way more interesting than that. Because it turns out that the moment of conception— so when you have sex and you make a baby— at this point, you might think, okay, my baby is predetermined. Everything is set in stone. I just have to wait for 9 months and then my baby's gonna come out. Turns out that's only part of the story. At conception, your baby's actually not set in stone. What you eat during the pregnancy is gonna matter as to what your baby is about to become. And you have way more power than you've been told. So to give you a very concrete example, The amount of fish that you eat during pregnancy is going to impact the development of your baby's neurons. So the brain cells of your baby that, that process information. The amount of eggs that you eat during pregnancy is also going to impact your baby's brain development to a point where scientists can measure years after birth differences in the baby's attention levels and the baby's IQ, depending on what kind of nutrients he had available in the womb. There's another really damaging myth, which is that your baby will get whatever he needs from you during pregnancy. Don't worry, just relax, you know, eat whatever you want. Your baby's gonna get what he needs. And that's not true. Your baby is going to get what is available. But if you don't eat enough of certain nutrients, your baby's not going to get the amount that he would ideally want. Now, most babies are going to be totally fine. And, you know, humans are very resilient and adaptable, and nature finds a way. But what I found was that it was a huge problem of lack of communication of these super established nutritional requirements of pregnancy, and nobody was telling moms. And in the data, I saw that fewer than 10% of moms have a diet that is high enough in choline, which is in egg yolks and meats, for example, that forms the baby's brain. About 20% of pregnant moms eat a diet that's high enough in omega-3s. Only, you know, it's very small percentages. And we see huge increase in the amount of sugar that's being eaten during pregnancy. Also because of popular, you know, old wives' tales, which are like, you're gonna eat for two, you know, you're gonna get fat anyway, so eat as much sugar as you want, when actually the amount of sugar that you eat during pregnancy is directly calibrating your baby's metabolism. So I was a little bit overwhelmed by all this information, but I knew I wanted to put together a little plan for myself about what to eat every day to help my baby have the most optimal setup. And then I turned this little plan into a book because I saw so many of my girlfriends who wanted me to send them the plan on WhatsApp. I was like, okay, we need to write a book, people. We need everybody to have access to it. So all I'm doing is just making a bit more accessible science that's been there for a very long time. You know, recommendations from the WHO, from the NIH, from huge agencies. I'm not inventing anything. I'm just trying at my small scale to make it a little bit more known because The health of a future generation is at stake and we can do way more than we've been told.

Honestly, I would even say the health of multi-generations because, you know, research shows that you can impact not only the offspring, but it's actually two generations that we can impact. Yes. Through the choices that we make in pregnancy, which is so, I mean, it's obviously can feel overwhelming as such a large responsibility, but I'd say another myth that is very pervasive is that giving women this information is fearmongering because as you said, the data exists. Most women are not given this information in their doctor's office. I was always trying to like ask my doctors questions without fully disclosing, you know, like my agenda, basically what I do and trying to see like quiz them on, on what kind of information they were gonna give. But the number, like you're talking about, eat whatever you want, your baby, you know, will get what they need from you. Such a common myth. The fact that more information for women around the science is fearmongering, that, um, all prenatals are created equal, that you only need a prenatal as a supplement and that you don't need to worry about things like fish oil and, and other supplements outside of that. Um, that movement, you know, like moving around your house or around your neighborhood is enough and that women don't need to overexert themselves. Like the list of myths that women are given in their doctor's office is is really long. And like you said, the information that you're sharing is so important because it is so incredibly science-based, yet most doctors aren't talking about it.

And on the fearmongering part, I think that's such a good point that you've raised, because what we're talking about is just sharing established nutritional requirements of pregnancy. It's a bit like saying, oh, telling people they need to drink, you know, 2 liters of water per day is fearmongering. It's like, no, it's, it's just scientific evidence about how bodies function.

Exactly.

That's not at all— we're not at all talking about the same thing here. So, but because I think people have a strong reaction to this information, and they might be upset at the person sharing the information, but what they're really upset at is the fact that they didn't know, and that this has not been communicated. And that's what we have to be upset about.

Or maybe that they did slightly know, but they didn't take it seriously enough that they like learned about it for a little bit in medical school or in a textbook somewhere, but they didn't take it upon themselves to talk about it at every single appointment that they had with patients. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I mean, when you're talking about better brain development, um, healthy birth weights, reduced risk of pregnancy complications, sending those genetic messages like you talked about that are passed down for multiple generations, improving lifelong metabolic risk. Reducing risk of diabetes. I mean, the list really goes on and on that really creates such a strong case for why this message that you are sharing is so important. What are the key nutrients that you feel are the most important for helping the baby develop and also decreasing their risk of disease?

So let's talk first about glucose because that's really, you know, I, I, I know a thing or two about this molecule. So, During pregnancy, during pregnancy, you are in charge of giving glucose to your baby as he's developing in your womb. And glucose is the energy of the body. So a baby developing also needs glucose for energy, but he needs less glucose than you think. So at the very end of the third trimester, when your baby's as big as he's gonna get before birth, he only needs 70 grams of glucose per day. That's like a cup and a half of rice per day. That's very little. And earlier trimesters, it's even less. So you don't need to eat for two. You don't need to increase your carbs by two. You don't need to do that. And in a perfect world, a baby in the womb would only get the amount of glucose that he needs, nothing more, nothing less, because too much glucose is not good. Just like in a human adult body, in a baby's body, too much glucose isn't great. But that's actually not the case. So your body kind of trusts that however much glucose is in your bloodstream also belongs in your baby's bloodstream. So your glucose levels are controlling your baby's glucose levels. And at birth, we have studies that show that some babies, you know, have much higher levels of glucose in their blood than other babies, depending on the glucose levels that were in the mom's blood. So you might think like, okay, well, What's the big deal? The big deal is that when a baby is exposed to a lot of glucose in the womb, he needs to adapt. And what he does is he starts to put on fat on his body. He turns the glucose into fat to protect himself from the high glucose levels. And then we see that when a baby was exposed to very high glucose levels in the womb, he also has a higher risk of obesity as a child, a teenager, and an adult, and is 8 times more likely to develop type 2 diabetes by age 22. So the amount of glucose exposure in the womb is calibrating your baby's metabolism and making him more vulnerable to diseases as he's an adult. So this is a pretty shocking statement because there's something about the glucose environment during pregnancy that is calibrating this vulnerability. So that's really important. So what do we do about this? We don't have to, you know, reduce our carb intake significantly. That's not the point. I think the main takeaway here is that we should strive to follow this very basic WHO recommendation, World Health Organization, of staying below 25 grams of added sugar per day. This is a pretty conservative recommendation, and we should try to do this also during pregnancy. But surveys show that most pregnant moms today actually eats about 80 or 90 grams of added sugar per day. So if you can try to reduce that even—

yeah.

And that's— they eat more when they're pregnant than when they're not pregnant because of these myths of like, oh, this is a good time to eat whatever you want because you're going to get fat anyway. So if we reduce our sugar intake just by a little bit, we can see an impact on the baby's long-term health. And I want to give you an amazing example about this. From 1940 to 1953 in the UK, because of the war, there was a rationing. Everybody in the country for 13 years only, quote unquote, had access to 40 grams of sugar per day, 40 grams of added sugar. It was 10 sugar cubes. Before and after these 13 years, people were eating on average 80 grams. So for 13 years, the whole population in the UK cut their sugar intake by half. Years later, in the early 2000s, scientists reached out to babies, well, to adults now, but who were born during this sugar rationing or just after, and they compared their health. And they saw that the people who were born when everybody was eating less sugar, aka when pregnant moms were also eating less sugar, had 15% less likelihood of having developed diabetes in their lifetime. So just by cutting added sugar in half, these adults had a long-term protection against diabetes that was measurable decades, almost 60 years later. So even if just for a few days in your pregnancy, instead of having 2 cookies, you have 1 cookie, that can be helping your baby's long-term health. Even small tweaks have a measurable impact because these 9 months are a window outsized importance. What is happening during these 9 months is calibrating your baby's body and brain for life. And to give you a personal example, Brigid, in my mid-20s, I was on the cusp of prediabetes. My fasting glucose was 98 milligrams when I was 23. And I was eating, you know, pretty similarly to other friends my age, so not very well, but like nothing Nothing striking really bad. And I, when I was looking at this research, I called my mom and I asked her what she was eating when she was pregnant with me in the '90s. And she said that she was eating a lot of sugar. So a lot of fruit juice, a lot of table sugar on her morning cereal, et cetera. And so I'll never know for sure, but I wonder, you know, maybe the fact that I was in such a high sugar environment during pregnancy made me a bit more vulnerable to prediabetes and diabetes. So anyway, that's for glucose. The amount of sugar you eat during pregnancy is important.

And I would also extend that because in the rationing study, they also looked at kids up to the age of 2. And this is, you know, a lot of, because I feel so strongly, you know, the American Academy of Pediatrics also recommends no added sugar until the age of 2. And I get so much opposition about this with my kids being 1 and 2. And of course I did it much better with my daughter than I have with my son, with him just being, you know, 12 months younger than him, younger than her, but that also showed the reduction in, in added sugar up to the age of 2 being so incredibly important as well. Is that right?

It was 35% less likelihood of diabetes if the rationing went up to age of— so if the baby was rationed until he was 2. Yeah.

So significant.

I know. And they were still eating sugar. They were still eating 40 grams a day. So it's not like they were eating no sugar. But the difference between 40 and 80 grams had a significant impact. So imagine if you're able to get that even lower. Imagine if you're able to go to 20 grams of added sugar or 0 grams of added sugar, for example. We don't have that data, but we can only imagine that it would be even more positive.

Yes, 100%. Okay, nutrient number 2.

Okay, should we look at choline?

Let's do choline.

Okay, so important information. By the time your baby is born, The vast majority of his 100 billion neurons that he will have for life are formed. So the neurons that you have today, Brigid, they're the same neurons that were formed the day you were born. This is important. The brain we build in the womb stays our baby's brain for life. And so choline is a nutrient that is important in building the parts of the brain that have to do with attention, memory, and learning. And when you're pregnant, you are responsible for giving your baby the choline that he needs. He's going to pull some from your body, but not to a point where he can get the optimal amount if you're not eating the optimal amount. So how much do we need? About 450 milligrams per day of choline during pregnancy. If you eat 4 eggs a day, you're covered. If you don't eat eggs, you can also do some fish, some chicken, some meat. In my book, I have a whole table about choline concentration per food, but it's mostly found in animal foods. So if you don't eat any animal foods, you might need to supplement to get enough. And there are incredible clinical trials that show really quite striking results. So there was a study at Cornell that supplemented moms with different levels of choline. And then when the babies were born, they came into the lab in their first year of life, and the scientists measured how quickly the babies reacted to images on the screen. And the reason that they use this test is because it correlates to adult IQ. And they saw that the babies who had the most choline in the womb had a 10% faster reaction time. So something about the amount of choline in the womb is forming the brain to be better able to react quickly on this test, which is really, really interesting. And we have a ton of these studies. And today, only 10% of pregnant moms are eating the bare minimum amount of choline per day during pregnancy. So we really have to talk about this more.

So I'm obsessed. In reading your book, I had seen the mention of this study, and I'm obsessed with how much women need choline. And in developing a prenatal that I had worked on the formulation for with Dr. Hyman and Kelly Levesque, it's called Weenatal, and it has above 400 milligrams of choline, and There's also a follow-up study to what you're talking about that is in, I think, kids that are like 6 or 7 years old that shows that the— they took that same group, right? And then at 7 years old still showed significant improvements compared to even just 1 year old. Is that right?

Yes, that's right. And this is also another study from the University of Colorado looking at 900 milligrams per day of choline in the second and third trimester, plus 50 milligrams per day in the baby formula for the first 3 months of life. And they looked at emotional regulation at 3 years old. And they saw that the kids that had the most choline were better emotionally regulated. So we have a ton of these studies showing the choline levels during early stages of development, and then these attributes that are measurable. And here's what's interesting. This is only the measurable stuff. What about the stuff that we didn't measure in that test? Like, is it possible that I would feel better in my brain today if my mom had had more choline when she was pregnant with me? I don't know, maybe, you know, so there's the stuff we can measure and the stuff we cannot measure, but we know from very clear scientific studies and from a lot of animal studies that babies need a lot of choline and that most moms are not having enough.

90% of moms aren't meeting what is considered to be adequate, which is the 450 milligrams. But given that up to 900 can be really effective for potential additional benefits, I feel that this recommendation will change in the future, that we'll see a higher recommendation for pregnant women, which means that if that is the case, of course that's just my own theory, but I, I think the case is building in the research. That means that an even higher percentage of women are not getting enough in their diet today. So I love the fact that you have in your book, The 9 Months That Count Forever, which I was reading with my kids this morning. We were sitting on the couch together and going through every recipe and talking about the different foods in it cuz they love looking at food. But the fact that you have not calories, not macro breakdowns of the recipes that are in your book, but you have these vital nutrients. You, you share the amount of choline, you share the amount of protein, you share the amount of DHA in these recipes to show that food is our medicine. And we have to think beyond the traditional way of calories in versus calories out because certain nutrients like you're talking about, choline, are like a lifeline to building that baby's brain.

Yes, absolutely. Another one that's really important is DHA. So fish oil, omega-3s, as you know, of course. And today, the studies say that about 20% of moms are having enough DHA during pregnancy. And DHA helps connect the baby's neurons in, in the womb. So it's really, really important. And in animal studies, if you remove the DHA from the mom's diet, brain development stops earlier than it should. And so the consensus from health agencies is 300 milligrams per day of DHA, additional DHA when you're pregnant. And so for this, you know, you have to eat fish. So mackerel, herring, anchovies, sardines, or take a fish oil supplement. And in terms of the trials, a bit similar to choline, we can see an interesting impact between amount of omega-3 DHA during pregnancy and then the baby's brain development later on when he's a kid. For example, There's one study that looked at 1.2 grams of DHA per day during pregnancy led to a 4-point measured increase in the baby's IQ at 4 years old.

Wow.

A significant increase in the baby's measured IQ by just having 1.2 grams of DHA per day. Another one, I think it was 2.2 grams of DHA per day during pregnancy. They looked at kids when they were 2.5 years old and they saw a 6% increase in hand-eye coordination. In the kids that had more DHA in the womb. So, you know, we're talking about small increases, like 4.6%. It's not like a 10x increase, but this should make us pause for one second because, as I said, these are the measurable things. But what about the non-measurable things? There's a lot of stuff going on. We know that kids need these molecules when they're being formed in the womb, and we need to give moms more information about this so they can make better informed choices And I want to say one thing because I think it's important, and I know you agree with this, to explain to moms that if they're not hitting enough choline and DHA, etc., it's not their fault. Okay, it's not their fault at all. It's the fault of the food system around us that has created very nutrient-poor foods. And that means that most of the food that we buy today in supermarkets doesn't contain essential things that babies need. So I can't change the food system. I would love to have a magic wand and just change everything, but I can't. I think the best I can do is just give this information to expecting parents so they can learn how to navigate that.

And what I love about you is that you also do it in a way that is so much about consistency over perfection and taking the information and doing the best that you can because you share how you struggled with nausea in your first 4 months and you weren't able to focus on your DHA counts in the first part of your pregnancy when you weren't able to stomach some of these foods.

Yeah, absolutely. Listen, I knew all the best things to do, but for the first trimester, I could only eat pastries and pasta. So that's also an important point. I think I did my best. I tried to have a little bit of protein, a little fish, but I was so nauseous. It was just impossible to think about anything that wasn't carbs. And so when the nausea lifted around 4 months, then I went back to the plan. But we do what we can when we can. We do what we can. We do what we can. Did you have nausea? What was your experience?

With my daughter, I had horrible nausea. Actually, my first pregnancy that I miscarried had horrible nausea. My second pregnancy with my daughter, Horrible nausea. And then with my son, um, who was born, um, he was born one day short of my daughter's first birthday. So I got pregnant 3 months postpartum with him and I was so worried about like not having the nutrient reserves and other things. But surprisingly, that pregnancy, his pregnancy was fine. It was hers that I was like eating. I remember going to Costco with my grandpa and him being like, you need to just get these Costco mashed potatoes. These are gonna be your cure. And I did buy them and I did eat them, but in, in combination, I was able to at least stomach eggs as a protein source. That was like one of the only, um, between that and cottage cheese. But yes, I struggled with nausea as well in the first trimester, um, with my daughter.

That's hard. It's super hard. And I think a few things that helped me was actually trying to have protein first thing in the morning as I was waking up. So I would leave some almonds or a little piece of like a hard cheese by my bed. And then first thing when I woke up in the morning, I would shove it in my mouth. That helped a little bit. But it's just tough. It's a tough situation that we have to manage.

I would do the same thing. I would do that with Simple Mills crackers that I would keep at my bedside.

Nice.

So in regard to DHA, can you share about your experience with trying to eat 3 servings and then testing your levels and the findings that you had?

Yeah, absolutely. So there is this thing called the omega-3 index. And it's basically measuring how many omega-3s are in the membranes of your cells compared to all the other omegas. So it's essentially just a nice measure of how much omega-3s you have stored in your body. And so the recommendation is to keep this index above 8%. Now, the thing is, in most studies, Basically, no moms have an 8% omega-3 index. The data is that fewer than 5% of moms reach this optimal level. And this optimal level is optimal when you're an adult and also when you're pregnant. It's a really good indicator of if you have enough omega-3s in your body. And so you might think, oh, well, the recommendation from the health agencies of eating 300 milligrams of extra DHA per day during pregnancy if you do that, then surely you're going to be above 8%, right? Turns out, not at all. The studies show that you actually need 2 grams, so 2,000 milligrams of EPA and DHA combined for 3 months to get from a 4% index to an 8% index. So this is almost 10 times the recommendation. So we probably need way more omega-3s than the recommendations are actually calling for. So what I did is I measured my omega-3 index pre-pregnancy, after my miscarriage, in the early time of my pregnancy with my son, and then later on. And I was eating fish 3 times a week. I was supplementing with 2 grams per day of EPA plus DHA combo. And even with all of that, during my pregnancy, you know, my index dropped significantly. So I think I got up to 11%, which was like an amazing achievement from 11 to Around 8%.

Yeah.

So we don't talk about this. No, nobody knows to test this. It's not standard medical practice to test the omega-3 index. It should be. And if you look at this wild number of 2 grams needed per day to increase your omega-3 index, 0% of moms are reaching that level. And this could have potentially an impact on brain development. So I'm just baffled by this data and this information, Brigid. And honestly, I don't even know, like, where we're going with this and how we can change this. I know information and education is the way forward, but it's just shocking how, how little this is communicated.

And I think of it as something like, I, I think of a lot of medical norms today that in 25 years from now will seem absolutely insane. And this is one of them where in 25 years from now, this will seem insane that all moms weren't getting tested for their omega-3 levels in the same way that they prioritize looking at iron because of the role, like you're talking about, that omega-3 plays and how hard it can be for some women, even if you are meeting those 2 to 3 servings per week, especially knowing that everyone's absorption is different. And some people have genetic mutations, like I, I'm an APOE4 carrier, so my absorption of omega-3s is actually lower than you who may not have that gene mutation who's, you know, consuming the same amount as me. So I think that individual variability plays such an important role, which is the case for testing.

Wait, I didn't know that. Is that one of the, one of the reasons that APOE4 carriers have a higher risk of dementia?

It, it theoretically could be, yes. Oh wow.

Fascinating.

The main, the main mechanism that they've identified for increased risk of dementia is issues with— because when you're an APOE4 carrier, you also have an increased risk of cardiovascular disease. And a lot of it is because of the processing of fats that's impaired with APOE4 mutation, meaning like people that have an E4 mutation also can't clear saturated fats as easily, which can lead to issues cardiovascularly and also from a brain health standpoint. Um, so yes, there's— there is also a role from an omega-3 standpoint, but the saturated fats is, I think, the one that's more established.

Well, that's fascinating. And there's also all this stuff about inflammation, right? So for example, the studies show that, um, the rates of preterm birth have increased significantly over the past few decades. And if you have very low omega-3, um, index in your body, you have higher inflammation because omega-3s are anti-inflammatory. And that's why consistently we see that in trials when you supplement moms with omega-3s during pregnancy, you reduce the risk of, um, preterm birth because birth is an inflammatory mechanism, and with higher inflammation in the body, it can be triggered too early. Nobody talks about this either when honestly it is just wild. So in the studies, it cuts the rate of preterm birth before 34 weeks by half by taking omega-3s during pregnancy, and this has successfully been shown. It's a Cochrane review Like, we know this works, and yet it's not standard medical care. Like, what?

Yes, it's not standard, and it's not discussed. Or when you ask questions about it, it's like, you could do that if you want. Mm-hmm. It's wild. It's so wild. Okay, key nutrient number 4. Tell us about it.

Okay, well, this one is pretty simple. It's protein. So protein is not just about muscles. Protein builds all all of our organs, our tissues is very, very important. And by the time a baby is born, he is, if you exclude water, 50% protein. So you need a lot of protein when you're pregnant to build your baby in your uterus from scratch. And the recommendations are slightly outdated. We now have better scientific methods that are pointing to the requirements being the following: 1.2 grams of protein per kilo of body weight per day in the first trimester, 1.5 in the second and third trimester, and 1.9 if you're breastfeeding per day, because breastfeeding requires even more protein than pregnancy alone. And I found this to be really fascinating. I had never thought about that. I never thought that breastfeeding would be even more demanding on, on the body and on your nutritional requirements than pregnancy itself. And so what happens if you eat very little protein during pregnancy? We know that very low protein intake is one of the many reasons for a very low birth weight. And in animal studies, scientists find that there's potentially an epigenetic mechanism here. So if you— if a pregnant animal mom eats very low protein diet, scientists find that in her own muscles, there's an epigenetic switch that's activated that is telling the muscles to break down, essentially to give uh, the amino acids to the developing baby. So the mother sacrifices her own muscles to build her baby. And that's not great because muscle mass is really important. And scientists also find that in the baby's own cells, there are also epigenetic switches that tell the baby to stay a little bit smaller and to keep their muscles more tiny and to grow less. And in the animal studies, you see pretty clearly that the babies are not only born smaller, they stay smaller for life. Even if they're then given a diet that's adequate in protein. So what does this mean if this applies to humans? It means that as an adult, your ability to put on muscle mass could be related to how much protein was available when your mom was pregnant with you. And if she wasn't eating enough protein, your body might have gotten the message that, hey, you're gonna be born into her world with very little protein, so prioritize your essential organs, keep your muscles small, like, Don't think you're gonna be a bodybuilder. That's just not gonna happen. So another really interesting study that could be something at play as an adult when you're trying to build your muscle mass and whether it's easier or harder for you than, than a friend.

I also think about bone density and how like when we see losses in muscle mass, we also see losses in bone density. And while I haven't seen a lot of research, I'm not sure if you have, but it makes me think, you know, all of these women that are, you know, in their 50s and 60s who had several pregnancies but didn't have this information, we're not only losing so much of their muscle mass that then increased the risk of, you know, all the perimenopausal symptoms and other things that are so much worse if we're not prioritizing nutrient repletion in addition to muscle mass and bone density, but also potentially accelerating the rate of osteopenia and osteoporosis that we're seeing at such high levels right now. Have you seen that? And have you come across that in your research?

So I had heard some things about, for example, also calcium and protein during pregnancy and loss of bone density. But in the studies that I was able to find, I always saw that bone density goes back to a normal level once you stop breastfeeding. So I— and maybe I didn't find the right studies, but I really looked for a very long time because it was a conversation I was hearing online and I was looking for the evidence. I did not see evidence that bone density stays low after you wean. But please send me something if you, if you see it, because I know it's a conversation.

It's just a theory of mine. I haven't actually looked into the research, but just thinking about the combination of muscle mass and, and how when women are aging, it typically coincides with, with bone loss. But that's promising.

What's certain is that You know, muscle mass is important and we know that. So anything we can do to keep our muscle mass healthy and not reducing significantly is helpful. So for sure, you know, you can think about the fact that if you eat very low protein during your first pregnancy, you end the pregnancy with less muscle mass. And then if you do that again and you're pregnant again, like after your pregnancies, and also when you're a mom, like who has time to go to the gym, right? So it's a time in your life where you might be losing a lot of muscle mass and then it can become very difficult to rebuild. So just by eating a little bit more protein than usual, you can help potentially prevent a lot of muscle loss during pregnancy.

And what are your favorite protein sources that you recommend?

Eggs. I love eggs. I love eggs. I love meat. I love fish. Chicken, amazing. During pregnancy, I was having this snack every day. It's in my recipes if you were looking at the recipes in the book. So I love skyr yogurt, very high protein yogurt. And in it, I would add 2 scoops of super pure whey protein isolate. And during pregnancy, you have to be extra careful about all the additives and what kind of protein powder you're using. But so I would make this little skyr and whey snack, 40 grams of protein just in there. And then I would add on top of it, you know, some fruits, some nuts, some tahini, some sea salt, like whatever float my boat that day. And it was a way that I knew I was getting 40 grams of protein every afternoon without having to think about it. And that was a lot of the thinking and philosophy behind my book. Like, I wanted to make this information very simple to use. So that's why I focused on these 4 key nutrients and these simple hacks you can do every single day that are going to set your baby up for success without you needing to do complicated grocery shopping every day and like cooking something different every day. That's not the idea. The idea is that it, it's simple to use and simple to do.

And what I love is that in the book, like, it looks like an actual book where you have all of the science and your glucose graphs, and so it makes it super digestible. But then you also are kind of like a cookbook in the back where I haven't seen this format within an actual, you know, style of a traditional book. It's, you know, a mini cookbook in the back with all these beautiful pictures of each of the recipes that look just just so delicious.

Thank you, Brigid Titgemeier. Yeah, it was really important for me because it's, it's not a cookbook, but it's also a very practical book. So I put all of my favorite go-to recipes in the back so that you had a way to, to quickly get started.

I love it. How do you feel about this idea that women can get the nutrients that they need on a vegan diet during pregnancy?

What would—

what do you recommend to friends of yours who are vegan or aren't eating animal proteins and fish during their pregnancy?

I will say the following: as I was learning about the science of pregnancy nutrition and the requirements of pregnancy, it became abundantly clear to me that a vegan diet is, is not appropriate for pregnancy. And if you're vegan and pregnant, you need a lot of money and a lot of education to make sure you're hitting these requirements. So you need a lot of money to buy supplements and you need a lot of education to know what to buy. It's more complicated. Eating animal protein, eating eggs, eating meats, eating fish makes it so much easier to give your baby what he requires during pregnancy. So if you're vegan and this is something that, um, you're not going to change, then as I say, you have to be educated. So read my book because in every chapter I explain how to get the things that you need if you don't eat any animal products. And, uh, take your credit card out. You gotta buy some supplements, girl.

Right? And I'd say that—

Very simply put.

When you're pregnant, it's that much harder to swallow that many pills. So it creates an additional obstacle when you have to rely on supplements to get, you know, that synthetic form of those nutrients. Um, how much more challenging that can be when you, you know, that's kind of the last thing that you want to do. But yeah, I completely agree. I think that it is something that I am constantly advocating to women to prioritize those nutrient-dense sources because there's so much demonization around animal products and most people don't realize that animal proteins have the highest bioavailability of not only the, you know, eggs from choline and the DHA that you're getting from mackerel and salmon, wild salmon and other low mercury sources of fish, but also thinking about B vitamins and other nutrients that are the most bioavailable in chicken and grass-fed beef and other forms of animal proteins.

Absolutely. Yeah, it makes your life much easier if you eat animal protein during pregnancy, that's for sure.

Agreed. And then I also wanted to talk about— we have a very similar— well, we have many similar stories in adopting CGMs early and then getting very into prenatal nutrition and, and so many other ways. Um, but as far as our pregnancy journey, starting out with miscarriage into the first pregnancy, how did having a miscarriage before having your son impact your experience during your pregnancy with him?

I was a nervous wreck the whole time. I was so anxious. I was crying all the time for days before ultrasounds. I was always Googling the craziest things to find out if they were miscarriage symptoms. So I had a silent miscarriage, meaning I had no symptoms. And I found out at the 3-month ultrasound that the pregnancy had stopped. And man, that second pregnancy was just tough. I think I stopped being anxious once he was born and he was in my arms. Truly, it was so hard. And so, you know, I could kind of control what I was eating. I could not control the anxiety. And then my doctor said, Don't be stressed, it's bad for the baby. I was like, don't say that. So I did what I could. But it was extremely challenging, very hard, a real trial of the heart. And just overall, I felt like my experience around the miscarriage showed me how ill-equipped we are as a society to talk about miscarriage and how it's not treated, I think, with the emotional maturity that it needs to be treated with, and how much of a taboo it is.

Yeah.

And that's why in my book, I talk about it. I have a little chapter about it. Because when I had that experience, all I was doing, Brigid, was looking online, like, celebrities who have had a miscarriage. I wanted to hear other stories. I wanted to hear stories of Beyoncé having a miscarriage, and then she had a baby, of so-and-so. It really helped me to hear that this was something common that many people people had gone through. And so at my small scale, I also wanted to share it with whoever wanted to hear about it.

Yeah, it's so important. I'm so sorry for your loss. I mean, at 3 months, I, I feel like the further into the pregnancy that it goes, the harder that it is, because it's that many more days that you've conditioned yourself to believe that you're going to one day meet, meet that baby. It's just, for me, it happened at our 9-week ultrasounds that I went in and like just just didn't even— I had heard a podcast from a friend of mine, Jenna Kutcher, who had, had also missed miscarriage. And it was only because of listening to that podcast at some point that I knew that that was a thing. And but still was like not thinking that that would necessarily be the case for us. But had I not even known that that was, you know, there was a small like percentage chance in my brain knowing, um, but still walked into the ultrasound being like, okay, this is gonna be so great. And then, you know, that feeling of just like I'm sorry, we don't have— I, I need to go get the doctor. I had a PA at the time that was looking and it's like, um, I have to go get the doctor. I'm not seeing a heartbeat, so we're gonna, you know, look further. Um, it's something that so many women experience. And I think that what you're talking about is that you want a proof of concept after the fact that like it is, that there isn't something broken within you, that it is possible for you to, to have a healthy pregnancy, but it's very difficult in that journey once you become pregnant again to believe that that's possible for you. At least that was the case for me, which created so much of the anxiety and made it so hard to share that we were pregnant because every week I'd be like, okay, we're like one week closer to potentially making it through 12 weeks.

And then I would look at the statistics, like miscarriage risk by week of pregnancy, and I would see the decreasing percentage go down and down. But still that it was, yeah, I feel feel, I feel similarly to what you're saying.

Or even for me, it was like, what is the earliest that you could potentially deliver? And you know, like once then I reached the 24 weeks mark where it's like, oh, well maybe there's safety here because we could potentially, you know, like if something does go wrong, deliver. But it, it definitely takes the joy out of, um, pregnancy when that is your first experience because of the anxiety that that is associated with it. So I just appreciate you being vulnerable and sharing that because I do think that that makes a huge impact and also takes it from this place of— you talk about in the book the extraordinary power that, that mothers hold during their pregnancy, which is sometimes the opposite experience that you have when you're going into, you know, your conventional medicine appointments and you're kind of like being fearmongered about, you know, for us we had like a choroid plexus cyst. My daughter had a choroid plexus cyst, and she had a thick nuchal fold that's associated with Down syndrome, and, um, the placenta marginal cord insertion with the placenta. So it was like all these things. They're like, I'm sure it'll be fine. And like, the, the crippling anxiety that I had from— I'm like, I just wish I wouldn't have known that information because it wouldn't have changed anything that we did. And I, I wish that I focus on like the extraordinary power that women have in their pregnancies.

It's almost like we have a lot of information about stuff that we can't do anything about, but no information about the stuff we can actually do that has a real impact.

Wow. That is such a good way of explaining it. Yes. So Jesse, this just highlights the importance of the work that you are doing. Please share with everyone how they can benefit from the work that you're putting in the world.

Thank you, Brigid Titgemeier. So my new book is out. It's called 9 Months That Count Forever: How Your Pregnancy Diet Shapes Your Baby's Future. And it's all the latest science about pregnancy nutrition, what I did, simple things you can do, science-backed to help your baby's long-term health, and with a lot of heart and humor and fun and amazing recipes. And during my pregnancy, I also was relying heavily on protein powders. And so I was looking for really, really clean one from pasture-raised cows with native protein molecules that is processed without heat and without chemicals with a process called cold microfiltering. And so that's something that I've put together. It's also available. It's called Protein Prodigy. And it is, in my opinion, the best protein powder on the planet. And it's so good that now I put it in my coffee every morning and I froth it into my coffee. And it doesn't have any aftertaste or any weirdness. And I'm going to send you some so you can try it.

I can't wait to try it. I, I truly feel like the market with whey protein, like, there's so many whey proteins because of the research on all the benefits from whey, but there's no one that's really doing it, checking all the boxes of what we'd look for with not having gums and additives and artificial sweeteners and added sugars and sugar. Uh-huh.

And like you're talking about, antibiotics and hormones in the cows.

It's true. And the non-denatured aspect of it as well. I'm very, very excited to, to try it. And I know that my community will be as well.

Yay. Thank you so much, Brigid Titgemeier.

And then tell everyone where they can find you in case they happen to not be following you, which I'm sure those chances are very low.

The best place is on Instagram. So my account name is Glucose Goddess, 'cause I'm a very humble person. And my website is glucosegoddess.com.

And you have a YouTube channel.

Yes, that one is called Glucose Revolution, which is the name of my first book. I got lots of glucose content, you guys. Like every platform you want it, I got it. Whatever condition you have, whatever information you want, I've got it somewhere. But I think Instagram is really the best place. Instagram and YouTube are the best places to start.

Perfect. That's where they will start if they haven't already. Jesse, thank you so much for being part of the Being Brigid Show. Thank you for tuning in and listening, and I'll see you next time.