Optimize Your Blood Sugar To Improve Health & Live Longer - W/ Glucose Goddess (Jessie Inchauspé) | EP #86
15 Feb 2024 · 80 min
Jessie Inchauspé, the Glucose Goddess, talks with Peter Attia about how blood sugar swings affect your health, mood, and how long you live. She shares practical ways to stabilize glucose, from the order you eat foods to why sugar feels addictive.
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You're about to make a trade. Which u do you listen to? Is it get optioning those options or let's do a little research. Learn more@finra.org TradeSmart Back in the day, it was difficult to find something sweet. And so as soon as we did, it was important to eat as much as we could. But now, today, dopamine everywhere. It's cheap, it's at the corner store, it's on the airplane, it's at the train station. So it's really hard to fight that deep desire for the sweet stuff because the dopamine is so addictive.
Let's just state this up front. You know, glucose is addictive.
So what do we do? I was like, wait, what I'm eating has an impact on my mental health, on my anxiety, on my depersonalization. I was like, what the heck? So that opened very wide the gates of this world to me, and I became fascinated by it. And I helped myself. And then everything I had learned was just so big that I wanted to share it with the world. And that's why we're here. This should not be allowed. Okay, so this is 100% starches and sugars with some really unhealthy oils in there as well. The American Heart association says that people should not go over 25 grams of sugar a day. And just with one of these, you're getting 30 grams. You're creating the perfect situation for all of your artery Walls to become really calloused and to have all these particles lodged under it, and then all of a sudden, it makes a block or, you know, there's. There's a clot that is created, and then you have a heart attack. So, no bueno. You can turn everything around. Even if you're 85 and you've been eating sugar your whole life, changing today your habits is going to have a positive impact hugely quickly. It's never too late. You know.
Everybody, welcome to Moonshot. I'm about to interview Jesse Inchowspi, who is known as the glucose goddess. We're going to go into a deep dive in the topic of what you eat, why you eat it, and. And what you should do about your diet. We don't realize every day that we're being manipulated by the food industry and that sugar is a toxin that impacts your heart, your brain, inflammation, every part of your body. This is a fun conversation, and it's one where just a few of the tidbits, a few of the hacks we're gonna share could change your life. So please, dive in, enjoy this, and remember, sugar, it's not the worst thing in the world. I mean, arsenic is worse, but it really does have huge impacts in our lives. All right, Jesse Inchalsby, the glucose goddess. Let's jump in. Jesse.
Hi, Peter.
Good to have you here.
Thank you for having me.
Yeah, well, I want to just dive in because I've, for some reason, become religious about glucose, and meeting the glucose goddess is the perfect way for me to continue that religion. And I'm out there to everybody who will listen, saying, listen, glucose, you know, sugar is a poison, and you don't realize how much it ravages the body. And the way I think about it is that the human body never evolved to consume as much sugar as we were evolving in the savannahs of Africa hundreds of thousands of years ago. We didn't have all of this stuff, this Frosted Flakes and pop Tarts, and didn't have anything. I mean, sugarcane entered earlier. Do you think about the evolutionary origins of completely.
What I think about also is that from an evolutionary standpoint, every time we eat something sweet, we get a shot of dopamine in the brain, right? And so that is really our downfall today, because back in the day, it was difficult to find something sweet. And so as soon as we did, it was important to eat as much as we could. But now, today, dopamine everywhere. It's cheap, it's at the corner store, it's on the airplane, it's at the train station. So it's really hard to fight that deep desire for the sweet stuff because the dopamine is so addictive.
Everybody's looking for the magic pill. Everybody's looking for the cheat. Everybody's looking for, how do I get that stress relief, that pleasure, without having to worry about the downside effects? And it's tough. I think one of the things I want to talk through is not at this moment, but the hacks that you talk through in your book. Right. So the glucose revolution, which I've listened to, haven't read, but listened to, has got so many incredible recommendations on what you can do in everyday life. But before we get down that journey, how the heck did you sort of come to this? What's your origin story here? And I want to talk about this as a moonshot, because we're on moonshots. And I think if you were going to say you have a moonshot here, is it to educate the world about glucose?
Yeah, it's to help people become free from the pharma and the food industry that are, you know, trying to get a lot of money from you. Yeah, I think that's, that's what I'm really after. Giving people agency, freedom so they don't see processed food and think it's good for them. You know, people are being manipulated a lot.
All this food here says, you know, it says organic, you know, and look.
For example, so this fig bar made with real fruit. Right. And so people want to be healthy. So they see this and they think, oh, this is going to be good for me because it's real fruit. What they don't realize is that your body doesn't care if the fruit came from a fig or cane and is now in a fig bar in a Coca Cola. The molecules are the same. Right. So I just want to educate the world, I think. And so that it transforms into freedom and agency and understanding.
Yeah. I think one of the things you state in the book I remember is you've got to look at the back label. We'll do that. I want to go through these a little bit because the front label is all marketing.
Yeah.
It's unregulated marketing, healthy for you, organic, gluten free, you know, all of these things. And then you look at the vegan. Vegan, Vegan must mean it's sugar free or healthy for me, because. So. All right, going back to your origin story. So how did you start on this journey?
Well, I started by studying mathematics. Okay. And I didn't really Know what I was going to do? I thought I was going to work in finance or something like that. And then at 19, I had an accident that changed my life. I broke my back jumping off a waterfall. So my spine, one of my vertebrae exploded, and I had very intense surgery. Lots of physical problems, but most importantly, my mental health started going down the drain. It was terrible. Anxiety, depression, depersonalization. I was completely broken. And I was so young, you know, I had no idea what to do to feel better. I felt lost. I felt like, oh, my God, this is going to be my life now. My health was in shambles. And from that deep state of sort of despair, I thought, if I don't have my health, I don't have anything. It doesn't matter what I'm studying, what I'm doing, what I. What vacation I'm going on. If I don't have my health, I don't have anything.
I love the saying, the man or woman who has their health has a thousand dreams, and the man or woman who does not has but one.
Exactly, exactly. So I decided to go on this sort of quest to try to get my health back, and that led me to study biochemistry and then work in genetics. Those things were interesting, but they didn't really help me figure out what to do to fix my mental health. And then I came across kind of randomly. You know, sometimes the universe just pops something on you. Poof. And randomly or I thought it was random, but clearly there was some universal design here. I came across blood sugar, glucose. I put on a glucose monitor for the first time while working in Silicon Valley.
So this is when you were at 23andMe?
Exactly.
Yeah. I knew 23andMe. I was one of the very first spit tests on that.
Really?
Yeah. Anyway, so what brought you to a.
CGM, you know, at 23? Me. They were always testing new technologies in house. So it was just a pilot study. It was just. They were just asking for five volunteers inside the company to test CGMs. And I raised my hand because I thought it would be cool. And then I learned something incredible that changed my life. And now is the reason I do this work. I found that the days where my glucose levels were more unsteady, so more spikes and dips, the worse my mental health was. And the days where my glucose levels were steady, my mental health was better. And this may sound obvious to you, obviously, but to me it was. I was like, wait, what I'm eating has an impact on my mental health, on my anxiety, of my depersonalization? I Was like, what the heck? So that opened very wide the gates of this world to me, and I became fascinated by it, and I helped myself. And then everything I had learned was just so big that I wanted to share it with the world. And that's why we're here.
Wow. I. The concept of your glucose, your blood glucose levels. People sort of think of glucose as energy and more energy.
Glucose diabetes. Right. They say glucose diabetes. There's.
Yeah, yeah. And it's. And the realization. And we'll get into this, but it impacts everything.
Yeah.
I mean, just to come up with a quick list. Right. So cardiovascular disease. 100%. Right. Neurodegenerative disease. Alzheimer's. We just talked about your mental moods, how you feel. Obviously. Metabolic disease, Inflammation.
Yeah.
What else is on your list?
Aging, glycation, Hormones.
Yes.
Skin, insulin release. Diabetes. I mean, it's kind of everything. Even your personality or your mood, even if you don't have a mental health issue, you know, being hangry or having cravings for sweet foods. And the reason that impacts everything is because glucose is used by every single cell in your body. Right from your fingers, to your liver.
To your toes, to your heart, to your cancer cells.
Yes, Cancer.
Yeah. I mean, it is the food du jour of cancer. And let's just state this up front. You know, glucose is addictive. Well, in terms of your. Is it cognitively addictive, your desire for it. How do you think about this?
Well, I think we need to differentiate. Glucose that comes from starches. Right. So bread, pasta, rice, potatoes, and glucose that is in sweet foods. And real sucrose, sugar, hand in hand with fructose. And that tastes very sweet. So the sweetness of the. The sweet foods that contain glucose and fructose, that is completely addictive. I mean, that's the dopamine release.
It's a pleasure center.
Completely. It's the same molecule that gets released when you have sex, when you play video games, when you do. Drug. Sugar gives this pleasure to your brain that is very hard to resist. It gives you so much relief. You know, we've all been there, like a long day, breakup, whatever. You get the ice cream out. I mean, come on.
And then you add. You had some chocolate syrup on it.
Totally. And chocolate sprinkles. Yeah. I'm known to do this on a daily basis, but, you know, it makes you feel better. And today most of us feel awful, so no wonder we want to have something sweet to pick us up a little bit.
And it's so easy. It's just in the freezer. It's just on the upper shelf. It's cheap and it feels good. It's cheap, it's accessible, and there's no one there to stop you.
Totally, totally. So what do we do?
So what do we do? I mean, I want. Folks, I mean, I'm fully aligned with your mission and your vision. And thank you for having such a pure set of messages. And I think I've gotten to the point where I'm much more extreme, where I'm just say no. And it's sort of like I am challenging myself constantly to minimize sugar in my life.
Do you ever eat sugar?
I do, but I do it intentionally in small amounts. So it's that square of dark chocolate, right? It's that spoonful at a birthday party of the cake just to participate. And you know what? What's interesting for me is the anticipation is much greater than the actual pleasure.
Yeah.
Isn't that fascinating?
That's fascinating.
And so it's like when I take that spoonful of the cake, it wasn't actually as good as I remembered it would be. And so.
But the issue is that, you know, it would be great if most of us could just stop at that first spoonful. But what happens generally is that, for example, if you have one of these fig bars, that's going to create a glucose spike in your body and then a crash. And that crash activates the craving center in your brain. And so 90 minutes later, you want another sweet thing, and then you eat another carby sweet snack, and then it just goes on and on, and you're on this roller coaster, this addiction cycle. And that's one of the issues that I'm trying to help people solve. How can you eat that first chocolate, piece of chocolate, that first piece of cake, without creating the glucose roller coaster that is going to lead to more cravings and more addiction for the rest of the day? Because not everybody has the kind of mental strength that you have where you can just say no.
And I didn't always. I mean, how did you get to that point? It was interesting. It came to me. I run these longevity platinum trips, and next time we do this on the west coast, on the east coast, every other year, and I'd love to have you come and speak to the community. It's a beautiful group of people. So I had this gentleman, I'll speak about it later, Guillermo Navarrete, I don't know if you know him, he's in the nutrition business down in Miami. And I was talking about my highest risk for mortality is cardiovascular because my dad had atrial fibrillation and had some heart attacks. And so I'm constantly monitoring my cholesterol levels. And I had gone vegan to try and minimize that risk. And he said, peter, it is not the cholesterol. It's not the meat. It is sugar. It is sugar. It is sugar. I mean, like, literally, he sat down with me and he gave me this incredible case of how it is the impact of glucose in your bloodstream that is attaching itself to proteins and glycosylated proteins that are causing the cardiac disease that leads eventually to ischemia. And, you know, listen, I'm pretty good in science and medicine, and I listened to what he said and I was like, oh, my God, you're right. And after it was about 5 o' clock on the last day of the program, I sat down and had this incredible pork loin.
You're like bucket.
Yeah, exactly. I'm done. I'm done with my. But I set out and did something with him. We did a 22 day, no sugar fast.
Does that mean also no fruits?
It was no fruit, nothing. It was no high glycemic carbs. It was mostly keto. But for 22 days, it was a minimization of anything that would become sugar. And the only way I was able to do it and do it with a large group was we had a large WhatsApp group support and a support system. And we would take photos of the meals, we'd share it with each other. And, you know, the impact for me was the mental control that I can choose not to eat this and I can eat and over time. And you can speak about this, Bren. Probably I can. Is your cravings go down, your dependency comes down, and I now love my broccoli savory stuff.
And then you have like a cherry and you're like, oh, it's so sweet.
Yes, exactly.
Yeah.
So that was the first time. And it was more just the realization that I could control these cravings and that it was the benefits to the community. Doing this was huge. I mean, in terms of weight loss, I did notice my blood pressure. So I have elevated blood pressure, which is controlled with a small amount of medication. But I didn't need the medication anymore. And it was, you know, I got my percent body fat and everything into the zone I wanted. And I was like, okay, this works really well. So how about you? How do you think about eating sweets? Because you don't go cold turkey. You.
No, I'm way too weak for that. I could never. I try to help people who, you know, just want to improve and get to a state where their glucose is steadier, their health is better. So the way I see it is psychologically it's probably better to not cut out these foods entirely and to say they're off limits because that can often lead to binging afterwards, you know. So what I recommend is a few key things that help you reduce those cravings so that naturally you're not going to want to eat the chocolate ice cream anymore. And the four key things I recommend generally are savory breakfast. So starting the day with savory foods.
So define that. What would be an example?
So a savory breakfast is built around protein and it can be, you know, whatever. Tofu, eggs, dairy, nuts, leftover fish from last night, anything you want, any kind of protein. Because that's really satiating and it keeps your blood sugar really low.
Yeah.
There's this hypothesis that I love that I just learned about. It's called the protein leverage hypothesis. Have you heard of it?
I have not.
Okay, so tell me. It states that your body has a need for a certain amount of protein and it will keep you hungry until you give it enough protein. But your body cannot tell you, you know, peter, give me a steak. It's just going to make you feel hungry. So until you've given your body enough protein to satisfy its needs, you're going to keep feeling hungry. So that's why the savory breakfast and having protein in the morning really helps for the rest of the day. So example, I don't know, you can make an omelette with some cherry tomatoes and some feta. You could do. I love this new recipe, the avocado accident. Avocado, tuna, hummus, lemon. You know, just bring some protein, put some healthy fats.
That's funny.
You know why I called it that? Is because I was standing in front of my fridge one day and I was just looking. I had an avocado, I had tuna, and I had hummus. So I was like, meh, might as well try. And it turned out really good.
That's funny. Yeah, that's hilarious.
So savory breakfast, not sweet foods in the morning. Because if you have any of like the frosted Flakes, the cereal, I mean.
Honestly, you know, I have two 12 year old boys.
Yeah. And they love this.
They don't eat that one in particular. But you know, the one that they eat are no better. And I try to, you know, instead have eggs or whatever it might be instead. But I grew up on Frosted Flakes.
I grew up on Nutella crepes.
Nutella crepes, yes. That sounds beautiful. So, you know, and for me it was Apple Jacks and Captain Crunch. And it's ridiculous, the amount of sugar. It's like we're poisoning our kids every morning.
Totally. Absolutely. It's wild. And then at 11am you're exhausted. And I remember being in school at 11 and just feeling these hunger pangs, you know, this just pain in my stomach. I couldn't concentrate in class. I wanted food so badly. And that was my glucose dropping from The Nutella crepe.
130 calories.
You know what this is to me? This is dessert.
It is dessert.
And so we have.
It's sugar with sugar.
And the problem is recently, over the past 50 years, we started thinking and believing the food industry that we should have dessert for breakfast. And that's a really good way to start the day.
You say this in your book again, which I commend. Everybody look at the ingredients. They are in percent order. And of course, the very first thing is milled corn, which turns immediately to glucose. And number two is sugar, which is.
At least they're upfront about it.
Yeah. But they put over here eight essential vitamins and minerals.
And another thing that I think needs to be regulated is the use of these cartoon characters because this is very appealing to kids. This should not be allowed because this is very, very enticing for children. Yeah. Marketing to children. These ultra processed sugar foods is just.
I mean, they really should have instead the skull and crossbones like they have in cigarettes.
Yeah. I hope we'll get there one day.
Yeah.
Wouldn't that be cool?
That would.
So total amount of sugars for 130 for one cup. And who has one cup of this? 12 grams of sugar. Right. And 33 grams of total carb. I mean, and it's funny because they add here a column that says with some milk to make the sweets look better. So listen, first, first things first. No sugar at breakfast. Like that is just the base of having steady diet.
That's the worst way to start your day.
Yeah. Because then you get a big spike, you get a big drop, and then you have cravings, your mitochondria get exhausted and you just feel awful.
I don't even want to look at Pop Tarts, but I have to look at the Pop Tarts here.
You know, I've never had a Pop Tart.
I unfortunately have not recently.
How does this work? What is this?
It's sugar encased in Sugar that you heat up in a toaster.
You heat it up?
Oh, yes. You heat it up. You make it that much more yummier.
And so the inside gets warm.
Warm and gushy.
And the outside is, like, crispy.
Kind of crispy. Yeah.
Interesting.
Who invented this, by the way? You could have the box if you wanted to take it with me.
I'll have to just test it with my glucose monitor.
Read what it says on the side over there.
Okay. It says, let's see which side.
I don't know.
Frosted strawberry, proudly baked in the usa. It says straight from the foil, toasted.
Okay, but what. In terms of its ingredients.
Yeah. Okay, let's have a look. You ready?
Yeah.
First ingredient, flour. Second ingredient, corn syrup. But wait, there's more. Third ingredient, high fructose corn syrup.
Ah.
Fourth ingredient, dextrose. Then we got some soybean and palm oil. And then more sugar. Sugar and bleached flour. Okay, so this is 100% starches and sugars with some really unhealthy oils in there as well. So this for your glucose levels. This whole thing just breaks down into glucose molecules and creates a massive, massive glucose spike. There are 30 grams of sugar in one serving. The American Heart association says that people should not go over 25 grams of sugar a day. And just with one of these, you're getting 30 grams.
So it's like if you feed this to your child or yourself, it's like, here's a plate of poison.
Yeah. But it's going to make the kid have dopamine release, so the kid is going to feel a bit awake. People often mistake that dopamine release, that, like, feeling with energy. It's not actually energy. Right. It's the pleasure molecule in your brain. But on the inside, when you give your body something like this, your mitochondria are getting tired and stressed and are not able to make energy effectively anymore. So you feel chronically fatigued. You know, playing with your kids is exhausting. Grocery shopping is exhausting. Doing anything is exhausting because your mitochondria are broken. So we need to get back to a place where we're feeding stuff that is good for our mitochondria, good for our brain, good for our body.
It's not. It's not this.
No.
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Nice.
And I did that by working out and lifting weights. Lifting, yeah. So I'm lifting A minimum of three, hopefully four times a week, and then protein.
Yeah.
So for me, I'm shooting for 150 grams a day of protein. How do you think about protein?
I completely agree. I think it's one gram per pound of body weight. So that sounds like a lot to most people. So I'm 70 kilos, which I think is 140 pounds, I don't know. But basically that means that I need 140 grams of protein per day. And in one egg there's eight grams of protein. Right. So I need like almost 20 eggs a day. And people cannot believe that it sounds like so much, but I think we're chronically under proteins. And I also lift, you know, and women will think, oh, if I lift weights, I'm going to become super bulky. Listen, I have tried to make this bicep 20% bigger for a year and a half. Let me tell you, it is hard, hard. And I live three times a week. Right. So don't be scared. Yeah, I completely agree. And also your muscles are incredible reservoirs for extra glucose. So if you have a chocolate cake and you have more muscle mass, your muscles are going to soak it up so you can have less of a spike.
Yeah.
So muscles are amazing.
Muscles are amazing. And you know, there's a huge, there's a direct correlation between longevity and muscle mass. And part of that comes from its ability to store stem cells, its ability to, to absorb glucose and not get you into metabolic disorders. But the other thing is when you hit your 80s and 90s, one of the exit plans is fall break a hip, pneumonia and die. So great, I'm glad you agree. And my protein, I try. And one of the things I know to be true is you can't absorb that much protein in one sitting. And so it's spreading it out through the day. In fact, I used, I'm curious about this. I used to do a significant amount of vitamin fasting. Like I would eat, Finnish dinner by 6:37 and then go through 1 o' clock the next day. And so that I would have 18 hours off and six hours on. And when I looked at the studies, it looked like intermittent fasting, if you're in, in reasonably good health, didn't actually help and was difficult to get as much protein as I needed if I did that. So I gave it up. How do you think about it?
You know, I think it was such a big trend and I think now we're realizing that we went a bit overboard with the intermittent fasting, especially in women. So a Lot of these studies have been done in men showing that it has a positive impact. But for a woman, fasting for that long is a stressor on the body. And so if you add, okay, let's say you have kids, you have a stressful job, you drink coffee, you do cardio, you do cold plunges, you do saunas, and then you're going to do fasting. That's so much stress for your hormonal system. And so no wonder, you know, we see women who are trying to do all this stuff and then their body is breaking down, their period stops. Like, we have to understand that fasting is a stressor. So I fast on vacation. That's, that's what I do. The rest of the time if I'm working, I always have something in the morning. For example, this morning I went to the gym and before I went I had some salmon, some green beans and some rice. I would never work out fasted. It's just too much for the body. Then I feel like it's eating itself.
Yeah, I end up with protein drinks. I do cachava, which is. Do you like kajaba?
I've never tried it actually, but I've heard of it.
Yeah. It's a plant based protein drink. It's got about 25 grams of protein. And this. I'll take a look at this. I love this product and I have no relationship other than my friend produces it. But it has 11 grams of protein and 0 grams of sugars and 1 gram of dietary fat of dietary fiber. So I don't know what you think about something like this, but it's collagen based protein.
Yeah, I think it's fine. I think you can also get protein from whole foods, you know.
Yeah, I mean for me it's eggs.
Yeah, exactly.
My favorite is onions, feta and, and three or four eggs.
Like scrambled.
Scrambled.
O. That's nice. That's very nice. Yeah. So I'm, I mean, I'm getting hungry. Okay, let's go eat now. No, I think it's great if you want to supplement with this, but. And some people just don't like cooking. They'd rather just mix something. I love cooking. I'm not a big like shake person. So I'd rather heat up some salmon or some eggs or cheese, you know. But yeah, this looks fine. I mean the ingredients are fine. Collagen, MCT oil powder, coconut oil powder, cacao powder, natural dark chocolate flavor. Careful with the flavorings. Sometimes they're not super clean. And monk fruit extract. So this means it's a little bit sweet, but monk fruit is fine.
Yeah. So monk fruit, because it's. It flavors this, and I actually, you know, this is my guilty pleasure in the morning.
Oh, my God. That's your guilty pleasure? Give me a break.
Oh, it is so good. It's my guilty pleasure. And I've actually used it to substitute coffee.
Oh, yeah. You don't drink coffee.
I listen. Through medical school and graduate school, I would do four to eight cups a day.
Yeah, you had enough coffee for a lifetime.
For a lifetime. And I was like, I can drink a cup and go to sleep. And now I find out I'm a slow metabolizer. So I have a team of physicians, and they're like, maximum a half a cup a day. Oh, man. But I love a hot flavored drink, so that becomes a hot flavored drink.
What about tea? Do you drink tea?
You know, I like mint tea, but not as much as the others. What do you drink?
So yesterday and the day before, I was off coffee because I realized I love coffee. So I'm trying to do these little moments in the year where I sort of cut down on it so you.
Can appreciate it more later.
Yeah, so this is morning. I had a coffee. It was amazing. I was like sweet nectar. So listen, coffee with whole milk is kind of what I go for. It has some proteins, some healthy fats in it, and then green tea. But one thing I would never drink is orange juice or any kind of fruit juice.
It is just. It is so bad. It just spikes everything.
I know. I mean, I would rather drink a diet Coke than a glass of orange juice.
Yeah, I agree with you. I. But I've given up all sodas as well. That's not true. When I go to a movie, which I go like once or twice a year to a theater, I'll have a Coke Zero and some popcorn. And I'll steal some popcorn from the kids. I would get my own bag. But let's talk about coffee one second. It has a lot of health benefits. And so if you're. If you know your genetics and you're a fast metabolizer, that's great. I mean, the rule is, you know, no coffee after a certain point after lunch for sleep benefits. But putting what you put into coffee, very important. So let's talk about that. You talk about whole milk in order to get the benefit of the fats and the protein.
One thing I hate is oat milk.
So, okay, oat milk, almond milk. What other milks are there?
Coconut milk, pistachio milk.
Okay. So let's talk about each of those.
Okay, so the first one first oat milk.
Yeah.
And I know people are going to hate me for this, but. But oat milk is like making pasta juice. So imagine you cook. Imagine you cook some pasta, some spaghetti, then you put it in your blender with some water and then you blend it until it's liquid. You just made pasta milk. Oat milk is the same, right? It's liquid starch. And so that's a big glucose spike. And also in most oat milks, there's also some unhealthy oils that are added in. So not my favorite by any means. When it comes to nut milks, if they're unsweetened, they're great because nuts are high in protein, high in fat.
So almond milk is.
Yeah, almond milk is great. Pistachio milk, macadamia milk, whatever you want. I would go for those. But unsweetened or some just regular dairy.
Yeah, yeah, okay, fair enough.
Do you drink oat milk?
I don't. I mean, I've had an oat milk in a matcha or something like that on, you know, a year ago. But I was just curious about that. I didn't think about.
Another cool thing about coffee that you might want to know for the coffee drinkers listening to us.
Sure.
Is that there's a study that came out that showed that if you are tired, if you had a poor night's sleep, it's better for your glucose levels to drink your coffee after breakfast rather than before your breakfast. It creates a smaller glucose spike in your body.
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Thank you.
The one I love the most is the order in which you eat your food. Really big deal. And I spread your gospel every place.
Thank you.
And it's just so people don't realize that. Right. It's like you got a plate of dinner in front of you. Well, first of all, I'm starting someplace else. You're at a restaurant.
Yeah.
The first thing you sit down, the first thing they do is they bring a giant basket of bread.
I think it's a conspiracy.
It is. It's like they hate you. They want to kill you. Then the second thing they do besides the giant basket of bread is they bring you a glass of wine.
Yeah.
And I'm like, okay, this is like the worst thing possible.
Well, then 90 minutes later, because that bread created a big glucose spike, you're crashing, and you have a craving for something sweet, which is when they come to the table, they're like, would you like some desserts?
And here's our enormous selection.
I think it's a conspiracy to make you want to eat dessert after the meal.
Yeah. Yeah, for sure. So the first wasn't one of your hacks, but it's related to them, which is when people come and they offer you the bread basket and a glass of wine. For me, my first reaction is after you plate my main course.
Exactly. Exactly.
Right.
And this all came out of some wonderful studies that showed that if you're faced with a meal, if you eat the elements of a meal in a specific order, you cut the glucose by 75%.
A huge deal. And you also. You've talked about that. People lose weight doing that.
Yeah.
Okay, so you've got. You've got to put.
Okay, so what's the correct order? Veggies first. Okay. Salad, tomatoes, carrots, broccoli, whatever. Then proteins and fats. Okay. So your chicken, your avocado, your whatever. And then starches and sugars.
If you have room.
If you have room.
Right.
Key point. Even if you have room and you still eat it, it's still going to make a smaller spike.
So the. So the veggies first. The fiber first.
Because the fiber coats your upper intestine and makes a viscous protective mesh that slows down glucose molecules going into your bloodstream. So you still eat the carbs, but they arrive into your bloodstream more slowly, which is better for your.
And it slows the digestion.
Exactly.
Speed as well.
Yeah.
Protein next.
Yeah, protein next. And to be honest, you know, there's this very sort of strict scientific rule of like, veggies, proteins, fats, starches, sugars. The most important one to remember is the veggies first and the carbs at the end. And in the middle, do whatever you want, but veggies first. That changes the game completely because you don't have such a big spike after a meal. It's really transformative.
Again, for me, that's religion. It's like how I eat my food always.
It's cultural. It's been done in the world for a very long time.
Especially in Europe.
Especially in Europe, yes. We have antipasti, we have crudite. Like, it's just a thing.
You say that so beautifully.
Crudite.
Yes.
It's because I'm French.
Yes. So there's another part related, two other things you think about doing up front. The first is a glass of water.
Glass of water.
Sort of like stomach volume does impact how hungry you are and how much you eat. The second thing is putting yourself into a parasympathetic mode.
Relaxing your nervous system.
Yeah. I mean, the biggest challenge is, I know for me, I'm running and running and running. And the worst thing you could do is eat while you're working, or you're anxious and you're in fight or flight mode versus rest and digest mode. And you're not absorbing your nutrients. Right.
And also you won't feel as good afterwards. Your body is not going to be able to digest the food. You might feel a bit bloated, a bit uneasy. Yeah. So, you know, three deep breaths. You know, Andrew Huberman talks about the physiological sigh. So you go like through your nose and then.
Yes, a double intake.
Exactly.
Helen Messier, who's my chief medical officer at Fountain, who's absolutely brilliant, talks about getting vitamin O in the beginning of a meal. Right. And culturally, you would do a prayer or you would say grace. You'd slow it down.
That's a really good point.
And I think just intentionally eating your food, chewing your food. I mean, my mom used to say about my dad and me, you're inhaling your food. Yeah, Right.
And they say you should drink your food and chew your liquids. It's just a way of saying, like, if you're eating something that is solid, chew it until it's liquid.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think those are all, if you can remember these things, they make a huge difference.
You touched on weight loss. Right. That's an interesting one. So I never talk about weight loss as the main objective because I don't want my Work and these principles to be put in the diet category.
Yeah, but what they are very much about your health.
They are because then when your glucose levels steady, cravings go away, hunger reduces, insulin goes down, so you burn more fat. So naturally a lot of my readers lose weight as a consequence of things coming into balance, which I think is so key, because that way it's actually long lasting. It's not some sort of crash diet for a week and then you, you eat all the chocolate in the world afterwards.
Yeah. You know, we talk about going out to a restaurant and one of the challenges is that a lot of times when I'm eating, I'm not thinking about what I'm eating, I'm just consuming. I think one of the most dangerous things you can do is mindless eating.
Like in front of the tv.
In front of the tv.
But I love doing that.
You do?
Oh yeah.
I mean, one of the pieces of advice I have for folks is do not watch the evening news while eating your dinner. Right. Because that's putting you into a fight or flight. You're so all the murders, all the Crisis News Network. Yeah. Well, that's good. Neither do I. Another thing, one of my hacks is when I'm out at an event or out at dinner and they come and they start plating dessert, I emphatically say, no, do not put that in front of me. Because if it's sitting in front of me, it's irresistible. The willpower just degrades over time. And so it has to become sort of a reflex to just say no.
Protection. Reflex.
It's a protection. Absolutely. And I think one of the things that, that you've spoken about and I know to be true, I think everybody listening knows it'd be true. Your willpower drops over the course of.
A day, which is why the morning is the best moment to not have sugar. Because willpower is at its all time high.
Yeah.
Nobody around you giving you a slice of cake and it's going to set you up to crave less sugar for the rest of the day.
Yeah, for sure, for sure.
Yeah.
Another favorite hack of yours, what would you put?
I would say maybe the most surprising is the vinegar hack.
Yeah, it is. I read about that. I've never tried it. So tell me about the vinegar hack.
So vinegar contains a cool molecule called acetic acid. And when you have a tablespoon of vinegar in a big glass of water like this before eating, the acetic acid is going to interact with your enzymes and it's going to slow down the Breakdown of carbs into glucose. So you can still eat the carbs afterwards, but they'll have less of an impact on your glucose levels. And this is one to use, you know, in an emergency situation. You're like, oh, I'm about to have a cookie. It's a birthday, it's pizza night. Yeah. And that's, it's a good tool. But, you know, combining it, for example, to the veggies first hack is even better. So you could do a plate of vegetables and then a dressing with vinegar in it. Very simple. So you get both of the benefits. Fiber and acetic acid.
Interesting. I always just go with olive oil as my dressing.
Try to add some vinegar.
Interesting.
A little bit of white vinegar, apple cider, you know, whatever. They all work, except the very syrupy Italian balsamic. That's like a glaze, that's full of sugar. So avoid that one, but add a bit of vinegar, see how you feel.
Okay. I like that. Another hack. What do you got?
I like the moving after eating.
Yeah. So let's talk about this. I think again, this is more cultural, where you take your evening stroll after.
And a lot of these things have been around forever. It's not groundbreaking, but now we have the science to understand why they deserve to be actually applied to our life.
So how much moving adds value?
Just 10 minutes and you can just walk. If you're at work, you can even just do some calf raises. And under your desk, nobody will be able to tell. It can be anything. You can be watching tv, you grab a bottle of water, you do some bicep curls.
You talk about doing just some squats and push ups against the. Whatever you can just get engage your end your.
Or clean your kitchen. That's, that's moving your muscles. So within 90 minutes after the end of a meal, you want to use your muscles because your muscles are going to use glucose for energy.
Yeah.
And so if you do it after eating, they're going to use some of the glucose from the Frosted Flakes you just had instead of letting them make a big glucose spike.
Great.
Yeah.
So I'd have my kids run around the block.
Yeah, I mean, you could. That would help. Or, you know, if they're really into Frosted Flakes cereal, you could tell them, hey, have this, but have, for example, some yogurt with it, some plain Greek yogurt. And that's another hack. It's called putting clothing on your carbs.
Yes, I saw that.
Yeah. So never let your carbs run around naked. Always try to add Some. Some protein, fat, or fiber. And so, you know, here you have something I want to talk about. I love that you brought this.
Yes.
You have some hazelnuts and almond butter. This is the version that has chocolate in it. So I would recommend people always look for nut butter that doesn't have any added sugars or flavors. But this is a great piece of clothing to put on some carbs. You know, you can put this on a banana, on an apple. You can have a little bit of this with your chocolate cake, with whatever your oats, your granola. That's a good thing to add. And so as you're adding the protein and fat, it's slowly.
Nutella doesn't fall in that category.
No, unfortunately, no. Nutella falls in a very different category. Can you believe it? Nutella crepe and orange juice every morning.
Oh, my God.
From ages. You know, I don't know. When you start eating four to 16.
Yeah, yeah. Incredible. You're still alive.
I know, I know. But, you know, it just goes to show, you can turn everything around, Even if you're 85 and you've been eating sugar your whole life. Changing today your habits is going to have a positive impact hugely quickly. Never too late, you know, for sure. Never too late.
You want some kind of delicious. Get you a spoon.
Okay. It kind of looks amazing. It's like healthy Nutella. But, you know, if I'm going to eat something, like, kind of nasty with chocolate in it, I'd rather eat the real. The real deal.
Which brings me to the point of if you're going to eat something sweet and yummy, actually enjoying it intentionally. I remember when I was at school, at college, or maybe it was grad school, whatever, I lived in a fraternity at mit and we had these giant fraternity mugs, and I used to go to the ice cream cooler and fill it up with, like, scoops and scoops and scoops. And then I would go get hot chocolate mix. Oh, wow. And I would pour hot chocolate mix in scrap, stir it up, and just like, mindlessly. It was mindlessly eat it in front of the tv.
Oh, good times.
That was a different life. I want to dive into some of the medical challenges that glucose causes. I think people need to realize how damaging it is so that they want to play, they want to experiment. Just try a few of the things, the order in which you eat your food. Right. At a minimum, try that.
So what could motivate you? Well, first of all, you should know that even if you don't have diabetes, about 80% of the population still has these glucose spikes on a daily basis. And there are three things that I think are really motivating for people. One, to understand that these may be causing your irresistible cravings. Two, that these lead to chronic fatigue, and three, that they lead to glycation and accelerated aging. And this is not just internal aging. It's also the wrinkles on your face.
Yeah.
So those three things, if you ever have cravings you wish you didn't have, if you ever wish you had more energy to go after your dreams and do the stuff that lights you up, fix your glucose levels, it's going to help you immensely.
It's so counterintuitive to people's belief that, you know, this sugar is going to give me energy to get me to go and do it.
Well, let me give you an example. Yeah, right. There's a. There's plants around us, and if you own a plant at home, you know, the plant needs some water to survive and live, but if you give the plant way too much water, it's going to drown and die. And so too much of a good thing ends up being a bad thing. You can die of too much oxygen.
Yes. You know, especially in a fire.
Yeah. So a little bit of glucose is fine, but today, we're just giving way too much to our bodies.
So glycosylation, that's a term some folks may not understand or know. Would you define it?
Glycation? Yes, absolutely. So, you know, when you put a chicken in the oven and it goes from pink to brown, it's cooked. And that cooking process is actually glycation. And from the moment a human being is born, it slowly glycates, it slowly cooks. And then when you're fully cooked, you die. It's true, folks, it sounds crazy, but it's science. And if you look at, for example, the cartilage of babies, it's white. And if you look at the cartilage of 100-year-old person, it's brown. Because it's glycated, it's cooked.
Is that from the oxygen? The.
It's from glucose bumping into other molecules and glycating them. And once another molecule is glycated, it's damaged forever. For example, if glucose glycates a molecule of collagen in your skin, it breaks it. And then that molecule of collagen is never going to get back to its proper, healthy form. So with every glucose spike you experience, you're accelerating this cooking, you're accelerating this glycating. And actually, glucose and glycation they sound like very similar words. Right. It's because it's the glucose that is doing the glycation. And so with every spike, you're accelerating aging, you're accelerating glycation. This shows as wrinkles on your face. I'm actually, actually 85 years old.
You are amazing.
Yes, yes. But it's because I don't have any glucose spikes. I look so young. And then on the inside, your organs are slowly deteriorating, and that's glycation, and we can't stop it. And I know a lot of billionaires want to stop aging and live forever.
At least slow it down.
At least, though. No, we can slow it down. We haven't been able to stop it yet. But slowing down glycation is a big part of it. You want to slow down those reactions that your organs and your skin and your liver and your brain stay healthier for longer and stay younger for longer.
I appreciate that. I want to run down a few of these. So inflammation.
So inflammation. There's a few different ways that glucose increases inflammation. The first one is actually with that glycation happening, it's releasing free radicals that leads to inflammation. And second is your mitochondria. So your mitochondria are in charge of turning glucose into energy. And they love doing that when they get a steady supply of energy. But if you give them too much glucose, they go on strike. They're like, cannot know too much information, too much to do too much work. And they're like, I need to take a nap. And so they just are not able to convert glucose effectively anymore. And so you feel tired. Your mitochondria are not making energy effectively anymore. And as they become stressed and overwhelmed, they also release free radicals. And that also increases inflammation. Now, inflammation is awful. Three out of five people today will die of an inflammation based disease.
Yeah.
You know all these diseases that finish with itis, arthritis, gastritis, pancreatitis. That means inflammation of that organ. Inflammation is everywhere. It's a silent killer. And with every glucose spike, you're increasing inflammation.
Yeah. Cardiovascular disease. I talked about my conversation with Dr. Navarate and the idea that when we are glycating proteins, this is resulting in deposition on your arterial walls and causing potentially ischemia and plaque. Is there any other part of the heart disease sort of loop loop that you want to talk about?
Yes. So there's one. We used to think that all LDL was bad cholesterol. Now we understand there's LDL type A and LDL type B and LDL Type B is the more damaging one. It's these small, dense particles that lodge under the walls of your arteries. And LDL type B increases when you eat sugar. Your liver turns the sugar into LDL type B. So you have all these small, dense molecules. And then if on top of that, you add the oxidation, the inflammation, the glycation, it's a perfect storm. You're creating the perfect situation for all of your artery walls to become really callous and to have all these particles blot under it. And then all of a sudden, it makes a block or, you know, there's a clot that is created, and then you have a heart attack. So no bueno.
No bueno. And people think about, well, I need to go on statins. I need to go on, you know, monoclonal antibody. I mean, honestly, the number one thing you can do is change your diet.
Yeah. And exercise.
And exercise.
Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, we'll come back to this over and over again. The number one drug.
Yes. Is exercise. Absolutely. But it's hard. People don't want to go to the gym. I get it. But I love it now, you know, at the beginning, it's really hard, and you have to just be a bit violent with yourself. And then I crave it. I crave going to the gym. I love it. It makes me feel so strong and the feeling. Physical strength also translates to mental strength as well. My mental health is much better when I'm working out.
The other thing I've done is I bought a technogym bike and I take all my zoom calls on it. Right. The idea. I mean, one of the things. And I should probably put a couple of bikes in here and do our podcast on the bike.
Dude, you should totally do that. That's awesome.
Or at least, or a walking desk. But the reality is sitting is the new smoking.
Yeah.
When we're sitting here on our butts talking, it's like, it's. I don't know. You're wasting the opportunity to get exercise.
Yeah, but humans are really good at sitting. We're like professionals at sitting. And our biology has evolved to help us sit really well. You know, cats can't sit super well like we do. Dogs look weird when they try to sit like us. We're just very good at this point Position. It requires very little effort.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We are so neurocognitive disease. Let's differentiate neurocognitive and mental health. Oh, yes, of course they're related, but two different things. Neurocognitive disease. I mean, inflammation in the brain, insulin resistance in the brain, precursors to Alzheimer's and so forth. So how do you think about neurocognitive disease and sugar?
Wow, it's a very interesting topic. It's actually what I studied in grad school.
But what was your thesis title?
Something about Alzheimer's and nutrition. It was actually Alzheimer's, type 3 diabetes, something like that. I was looking at all the evidence showing that Alzheimer's disease has a lot of parallels with this idea of type 3 diabetes. So we used to think it was a, a plaque based disease, etc, now we're understanding it's more metabolic. So why are scientists calling Alzheimer's type 2 diabetes? Because they're seeing in the brains of people with Alzheimer's symptoms and you know, situation physiologically that are very similar to what happens in the body of somebody with type 2 diabetes. So inflammation, glycation and insulin resistance of the neurons in the brain. What is insulin resistance? Resistance. It's what happens after years and years and years and years and years of repeated glucose spikes. Okay. Your body, in response to a glucose spike, sends insulin to grab extra glucose and store it away. But over time, too much insulin becomes insulin resistance. Your body can no longer respond to insulin sensitive.
So what happens? The glucose stays.
Your cells cannot get the glucose that they need, need anymore into, into the cell. Right. So you're not feeding the cells in your body and in your brain in the way that they should be fed. And in your brain. This also happens if you have Alzheimer's. So I mean, it's so early, it's emerging. But you also see some amazing stats. Like if you have high glucose levels in your 30s, your risk of Alzheimer's goes way up. Right. So we're starting to understand it's all quite related. And I think this is really the future. Understand understanding that your food and your food habits are going to have an impact on your brain health in your later years. I mean, that is so motivating to me.
Yeah, it is. And given that you're still in your 20s, you can have all of the work that you need ahead.
Yes, exactly.
So when I think about this, you know, mental health and your mood is so tied. I mean, I know if I get hypoglycemic, my mood just falls apart.
Do you get hangry?
Rarely. But I can feel it. I can feel when it's like, oh, my energy has just dropped and it probably is due to something I ate.
You know, 90 minutes earlier.
Exactly.
Probably maybe a pop tart.
So let's talk about the mental Health elements of this. What's going on that people don't realize or that people.
That your glucose levels impact how your brain feels instantly. So we talked about Alzheimer's. That's a very long process. Right. But today, right now, what you ate 90 minutes ago is defining how you feel in this moment. Right. It's defining whether you feel brain fog. It's defining how irritated you are, whether you're angry with those around you. It's defining whether you have cravings, whether you feel hangry, whether you feel agitated and your tyrosine levels. Right. Your mood happy, not so happy. So your food impacts your brain. And that's what I discovered in my own journey. And that it was so shocking because you don't talk about this. People don't realize. But yeah, if you want to feel better, if you want to feel more like yourself, calmer, happier, it's so important to look at your food. And then your food also impacts your gut. And your gut secretes so many molecules that go into your brain.
The gut brain axis is fascinating, very real. And the amount of data we're getting, you know, one of the companies, viome, that's just getting massive, trillions of data points about this and connecting your gut with different types of cancers and different modalities. Do you still wear a CGM twice a year just for just fun?
Yeah. When I first started, I wore it nonstop for two years, and that's when I really got into the research and I was testing on myself all these different research studies that I was finding online. And now, yeah, I would say twice a year, I just know everything.
Yeah.
Sometimes I just feel like I want to check in with my body, but I find the absolute numbers very inaccurate. So I do once a year blood work on everything, and that's really how I track my health. The CGM is more for fun now or motivation. Yeah, exactly.
It's like an oura ring or an apple watch.
Exactly.
So let's say you're hangry. Let's say you're in a bad mood. Let's say, you know, you just energy down. How. What should I be eating in those moments?
Well, first of all, you need to realize those feelings are signals from your body telling you you messed up. I don't feel good. Help me. Okay, so your body wants help. They're not to be suppressed. You should not feel ashamed about them. They're just your body communicating to you. So if you don't feel well, but you feel hungry, the worst thing to do is to eat sugar. And I know that's what you want to do because you want the dopamine. But hear me out. Have something savory for first. Have some nut butter, have an egg. Have a leftover avocado with some crackers in your fridge. And then if you still want something sweet, you can have something sweet afterwards. But your body will have the savory food in it. That's going to slow down the sugar from the sweet food arriving into your bloodstream. Right? But ideally, if you feel like this on a daily basis, just tell yourself, okay, tomorrow I'm starting with a savory breakfast. I'll do the veggies first. I'll do the vinegar before I eat something sweet. I'll get some movement in close on carbs when I can. And then slowly, you'll build up these habits that are going to help you feel so, so much better.
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No. And the amount of fat you carry on your body is not a very good proxy for how healthy you are.
Yeah.
So, for example, there are some people who genetically are not really able to put on fat. But so what happens is that when they have extra glucose in their bloodstream, there's no way to nowhere to put it, so they get diabetes much faster. Right. And somebody can have. Yes, you know, 20, 30 pounds of fat, but it can be harmless subcutaneous fat, and they can actually be quite healthy. So I understand if somebody wants, wants to lose weight, and with my work and my hacks, you'll probably be able to get there. What I don't like is the diet industry that is telling women that they have to lose five pounds every month in order to be desirable or happy. And selling you the weight loss teas and the weight loss shakes and the yada yada, that's like, I want to counter that. But of course, weight is a factor in health and also in how you feel in your clothes and your body. So if that's your objective, great. This can help you. But I'm not saying, you know, need to lose weight in order to be healthier or to be worthy. You see what I mean?
Yeah. And I think that differentiation is really important because being able to be happy and feel good about yourself and be able to do what you want to do and have the energy and look good from a multitude and move well, feel good. Yes, all of that is super important. But if you were going to. Excuse me, if you were gonna describe why people put on weight, what is the eating habits that cause weight gain?
It's mostly processed foods. Right. It's highly palatable calorie dense carb, heavy seed oil, heavy foods. Oh, my gosh. Wait, Peter. I used to have this when I was a kid. Oh, my God.
Fruit roll ups.
It was a heavy hidden there. I didn't know you had it. Wow, this brings back memories.
So let's look at fruit rollups. I mean, clearly they must be healthy for you.
Terrible for you. Ingredients. Corn syrup, sugar, pear puree. Okay, so this is something I love to talk about. They love saying fruit names in here. Right. But pear puree just means they extracted sugar from the fruit. Okay. I want to say something about fruit and then I'm going to have fruit roll up for sure. But the fruit that we eat today is not, not natural. It's like if you look at Chihuahuas today, they are the result of thousands of years of breeding all the way back to gray wolves. Right. To make these breeds of dogs that we enjoy. Fruit is the same. It's been bred for millennia to be really sweet, really low in fiber and very palatable.
Here is clearly a very healthy apple. Organic baked, crunchy Fuji red apples. Big USDA on it. Me, non gmo.
Non gmo. Well, because the fruit today is so high in sugar, the pro, a whole fruit is fine because it has fiber. But the problem happens when you denature. Right. You make it into a fruit rollout, you dry it, then you concentrate all the sugar ingredients. Organic apples. So that's the only ingredient. But what they don't say is that they've removed all the water from the apples.
Yes.
And so in one mouth, in one bite, you're getting as much sugar as in three apples.
Yeah.
Right. And your body doesn't care if the sugar came from an apple or if it came from a cane and is now in a fruit roll up or a pear. It's the same molecules. What matters is the matrix. What matters is the sort of the package in which the sugar comes.
So let's talk about eating fruit. You can actually eat that in front of me.
I'm going to smell it. I'm sorry. Wow. Oh, it smells horrible.
It's a good way to get to turn it off. But let's talk about eating fruit. How do you think about eating fruits? And are different fruits better for you than others?
I think fruit is fine. I'm not going to go into a fruit battle. I don't think it's healthy to say, you know, whole fruit, this whole fruit is bad for you. If you want to eat something sweet, a piece of fruit is the best thing to eat because it has fiber and water, you know, so have the fruit that you like. It's so much better than a chocolate cake. So much better than a fruit roll up or anything else sweet. But if you want, you can add some clothing to the fruit.
Yes.
So some nut butter. Yeah, really good idea. A bit of cheese, you know, to reduce the spike.
Yeah. Sodas. How do you think about sodas?
I mean, always have a diet soda instead of real soda. Yeah, but of course they're not good for you. Like, don't start drinking soda red wines. Listen, I don't drink alcohol. I think it's a pleasure disability decision. I think the science recently has shown that actually zero alcohol is probably better for you.
Yeah, it's, it's, it's clear alcohol has no benefits.
But like some people, you know, I love sugar. Sugar is my poison of choice. Some people prefer alcohol. Like, you know, go for it, pick your poison. Just be aware that you're doing it for pleasure, not for health.
Yeah. Intention. Be intentional. Yeah, yeah. The, the red wine industry, there is Veritrol. I think you'd have to like, drink like, you know, 50 bottles of red wine to get some resveratrol. Yeah. Take a pill instead.
Yeah.
How does this all differ for women versus men?
The hacks work in everybody. The hacks to me are the level of drink water, brush your teeth, wear sunscreen. You know, we're talking about, seriously, we're talking about basic physiology here. I think the one thing where people, people tend to differ is in the breakfast. So for men, I found that it's easier for them to have a savory breakfast for some reason. And for women, the, you know, the sweet oats and the granolas, they're just more culturally associated to what a female should have in the morning. So sometimes it's harder to break the habit. Does that make sense?
Is there anything regarding menstrual cycles or a, or pre or post menopause for women they should know about?
Yes. So the week before your period, the same food is going to create a bigger glucose spike in your body because your hormones are different. So let's say, you know, week after your period, you have a ice cream, it's going to make a spike. But if you have that same ice cream the week before your period, it's going to make a bigger spike, therefore a bigger drop, therefore more active activation of the craving center in your brain. And that's one of the reasons you get cravings before your period. So if you're prone to that, make sure you're using my hacks before your period to try to reduce that craving activation. And then after the menopause, unfortunately, your glucose, your ability for your body to balance your glucose levels becomes worse. So it's even more important to look at these hacks and to make sure that you're keeping your glucoses steady as you can.
I'm going to run through a few more of the hacks. Again, all of these are in your book the Glucose Revolution, which is amazing.
Thank you.
But we talked about eating foods in the right order, adding a green starter to all your meals. I mean, that's basically just getting veggies up front.
Right up front. Very important upfront. Yeah.
And I've gotten to a point where mentally I'm like, I attack veggies.
Oh, wow.
It's like, for me, it's like, yes, please. So it's like broccoli, broccolini, asparagus. I love Brussels sprouts. Now, who had ever thought about that?
I love Brussels sprouts.
Yeah. Super good. Stop counting calories. Talk about. So is there some caloric levels that we should or should not aspire to?
Well, I think my message here is more. If you look at just the number of calories, for example, this fruit roll up has 1550 calories.
And you say, oh, that's not too much.
Exactly. But the calorie doesn't tell you about what's in the food. Right. So two people can be eating the same number of calories. One person can have loads of glucose spikes, have diabetes, feel horrible, feel depressed, and the other person can be thriving. So calories are not enough. You have to learn about the molecules in your food. And that's what I try to teach people in my book, like how to decode, how to become a food detective so that you don't get distracted by the calories, which is what the food companies want you to do, and instead understanding how that food is actually going to impact your health, that's way more important.
Yeah, I love that. All right, fourth, flatten your breakfast curve. We talked about Savory Breakfast, Savory 5. Have any type of sugar you like. They're all the same.
It comes back to the pleasure thing. So if you're going to have something sweet, don't go for the, you know, agave syrup, gluten free stuff. It's just sugar anyway. There's no difference between honey, brown sugar, white sugar, agave syrup, whatever. It's just sugar. So have it for pleasure. Don't try to optimize. When it comes to sugar, I think it's important to put sugar pleasure category, not in a healthy category. Have the one you like.
Pick. I don't know if I mentioned typo here. Dessert over sweet snack, which would be.
Take dessert over a sweet snack. So if you want to eat something sweet, have it as dessert after a meal, not on an empty stomach. Yeah, yeah. So you reduce the spike of it.
Yeah. And especially at the end of that vegetable protein.
So for example, it's 11:00am you're like, oh, I really want to eat a cookie today. Well, buy the cookie but have it for dessert after your lunch. Don't have it before the lunch.
I love that. And one of the other things is if you're in. You talked about delaying your consumption of that cookie.
Exactly.
Yeah.
You delay it to say, I'll have it for dessert after dinner.
But also talk about the fact that if you're feeling super hungry, you may not feel that way in 20 minutes.
Yes. Because if you're having a craving that is due to a glucose crash after a spike, your craving center is activating. You're like, oh, I need to you something sweet. But actually, if you just wait 20 minutes, your liver is going to pump out glucose, bring your glucose levels back up to normal, and the craving might be completely gone 20 minutes later. So set a timer, like 20 minutes. I'll see if I still want the cookie in 20 minutes. I'll go buy it and then I'll have it for dessert.
Amazing. I love that we talked about vinegar before you eat. We talked about moving for just 10 minutes after eating. Get. Engage your muscles.
Exactly.
Get them to get hungry for the glucose.
Yep.
If you snack, go savory. And so this is interesting, right. Because this is more of the keto type of approach to life. You have some nuts.
Yeah. But savory can also mean a slice of bread with some avocado on it. Right. It's just nothing Sweet. Sweet. That's going to create too big of a spike. There's some elements in my work that you'll find in keto, but this is much softer. Right. You're getting a lot of the glucose. Steady benefits without very intense diet, dietary intervention.
I think what you built as a plan is executable by everybody.
Yeah.
And. And I just, I have your now. I have your voice. I had your words before now. Your voice in the back of my mind when I'm eating and thinking about the order which I eat my foods. Right. And taking that 10 minute walk.
I'm obsessed with behavior change. I want to help people change their behavior.
You know, I. It's. It's the most difficult thing on the planet.
Yes.
I love that cartoon that has, you're at a hospital and one window says behavior change and pills and pills and surgery. Right. Pills and surgery has a giant long line. Behavior changes nobody.
Because usually doctors say eat better, exercise more. You're like, what kind of advice is that? That's terrible advice. So with these hacks, you know, it becomes fun and easy and attainable. And that's why I think they've been so successful, because you can actually we.
Talked one second already about when you have a craving, wait 20 minutes, cooling off period. I like that terminology. So you also talk about in the back of your book when you're at a bar. So what do you do when you're at a bar? You're out with friends. Interestingly enough, you know, for me, I guess tequila, if I'm going to have a drink, doesn't spike my glucose as much as wine does.
Yeah, well, all the hard alcohol, the liquors, you know, spirits, they generally keep your glucose pretty steady. The worst offenders would be Mojito margarita because it has sugar in it. But I'm like, if you're going to the bar with your friends, have the cocktail, don't obsess. You know what I mean? That's a pleasure moment, pleasure decision. I don't think it's that necessarily that healthy to try to optimize for your health in that moment.
All right, beautiful. Let's turn finally to a topic of spirit supplements. So what supplements do you take? And do you take supplements?
Yes. So I take omega 3s and vitamin B just because I'm deficient. And then people always ask me, you know, I don't want to do the vinegar, can I take a vinegar pill? I don't want to do the veggie starter hack or I can't, can I take a fiber pill? Or my dad has diabetes, he doesn't want to change his diet, can I give him something? And so actually it's great that you brought this up because I've been working for two years to try to figure out what is on the market that actually works for our glucose levels. And we see stuff like berberine chromium, but those have a very long term effect. You have to take them every day, etc. I've actually developed something amazing. It's a capsule you take before eating and it cuts the glucose spike of that meal by 40% and the insulin spike by 40%, which is so 4 040.
Yes, amazing.
And it's just plants that have been around since, since forever. But recent scientific discoveries have shown us that they have an amazing impact on that short term glucose spike of a meal. And this, to me, you know, it sounds like a magic pill. I don't want people to take it as a magic pill. I want them to think it's an added tool in my tool belt in.
Addition to all the things you've talked about.
Exactly, exactly. So it's called anti spike and I'm going to send you a bottle as soon as it's out. But this is your best friend if you want to take a supplement that's good for your glucose levels. 25 clinical trials. It's amazing. It's the best thing on the market.
So, white mulberry leaf y lemon peel.
So the white mulberry contains a molecule called dnj, which acts on your enzymes in your stomach and lets 40% of the sugar of your meal pass through. Not go into your bloodstream. Go to your microbiome where it increases GLP1, the satiety hormone that ozempic axon. But ozempic tricks your brain into thinking there's more GLP1 than there actually is. This little guy, after six weeks, actually increases GLP1 by 15% naturally.
Nice.
So I'm super excited. This is the best supplement. If you want something.
I love it. I'm excited to try it. And it's something you can have in your. In your bag.
Totally. Yeah, exactly. It comes with a little pill box. You can bring 15 in your bag.
Perfect.
Anti spike. My new baby.
Thank you for the work you're doing.
Thanks, Peter. Appreciate it.
It's so important. People have been, unfortunately, really injured by the food industry, and it's unregulated in the food pyramid and everything we have. And I think just educating people about this and giving them back control and it's not difficult and it's not expensive.
Exactly. It's free stuff.
It's free.
It's free. You can do it anywhere in the world, whatever your, you know, dietary preferences are. And again, this should be. To me, it's. We're on the public health level. I mean, it's like, brush your teeth, drink water, wear sunscreen, have a savory breakfast.
I mean, Jesse and Chausbi, thank you so much for the work that you're doing.
Thank you, Peter.
I'm excited to support you and promote what you do because it's as much as I want there to be epigenetic reprogramming and pills for growing muscle mass and all kinds of cheap, easy hacks, it starts here. It starts with food, exercise, sleep. And as I tell everybody, people ask me all the time, like, if there's one thing you could do, what would you do for a pro? Longevity. Life. Stop eating sugar.
Yeah, I feel you. Thank you so much for having me. It was a total pleasure to speak with you.
A pleasure. Where do people find your work?
Honestly, Instagram is kind of my hub, so glucose goddess, glucosegoddess.com also has all my books, all my things, but Yeah, I mean, I started on Instagram, funnily enough, and so that's where. That's where I communicate all the latest.
Great. I look forward to amplifying your message.
Thank you.
Thank you for joining us today. Appreciate.
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