Beat Sugar: The Glucose Goddess Method – Jessie Inchauspé | 1137 | Dave Asprey
Jessie Inchauspé, the Glucose Goddess, talks with Dave Asprey about blood sugar spikes and how to manage them. She explains why the order you eat foods matters: fiber, protein, and fat first slows glucose absorption. Small changes like eating a spoonful of vinegar before meals or taking a 2-minute walk after eating can flatten your blood sugar curve.
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Honestly, I'm so over all of these processed foods that call themselves no added sugar, vegan, gluten free, just to look healthy. Like, if I'm going to eat Nutella, I want the real Nutella. I don't want keto ice cream. I want the triple chocolate fudge brownie ice cream. If I'm eating something sweet, I want to eat the real deal.
So you like glucose?
I do. I love glucose.
Okay. And so you like sugar?
Yeah, I'm. I love sugar.
Just because you're French. You have like baguettes and all that stuff.
Yeah. But also, I think this is what got me into this because I, I didn't want to have glucose spikes, but I still wanted to eat.
We're gonna have so much fun talking about this because it sounds like you're hacking a problem here.
Yeah.
You're listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey.
You guys probably follow. Glucose Goddess has like 3 million followers, but you may not if you don't. Her stuff is really good. And so I've been a fan of blood sugar for a long time. In fact, in maybe 2014, after I started the first blog, I opened a package one day and in it was a Dexcom glucose monitor. I used one.
Nice.
And it was with this really nice letter from a woman who said, dave, I'm a type 1 diabetic. Your bulletproof coffee, this MCT oil especially, has made such a difference in my life because now my blood sugar goes low, I don't go into seizure because I have ketones as a backup. And it's been life changing. I. I got a new monitor. I know you'll want to geek out with this one.
Wow, One of your fans sent you one?
Yeah, it's just a Dexcom gift. And I was like, this is cool. So I played around with it, but it was an older one. The newer ones, I work with Levels. Do you work with Levels or a similar company?
No, I don't work with any of the companies.
Okay. So I'm an investor in Levels now. And Levels does the stick on white thing that you see a lot of people wearing the libre? Yeah. And I WORE that on Dr. Oz. And he's like, he's like, what's that? I'm like, oh, that's my cyborg arm because I have like an aura ring and like my little white thing. It looks weird on the camera.
Love it.
So, like, we're both nerds on that and many listeners, you guys are nerds too, but some of you aren't. So we're going to talk in details about glucose. Because you're not just an influencer.
No.
You're a scientist.
Yes.
Right. And by the way, guys, everyone says I'm not a scientist. Number one, fuck off. Number two, I'm a computer scientist, so.
Okay.
Anyway, I am a scientist also. But you're like. You're a scientist in.
I'm like a proper scientist.
Yeah. Cause you went to, like, Georgetown.
Yeah. Went to a lab, you know, and worked on, like, rat models and stuff like that.
Nice. Yeah, I worked on rat models once.
Really?
I bought them at the store. And you, like, glue them together and paint them like little rats.
What?
Is that what a rat model is? It's like Legos, but for rats.
What are you talking about? No.
Oh, God, you're easy to fool. This could be a fun.
Okay, I'm gonna be better now. I'm not gonna be fooled. Next joke. I won't be fooled.
I think I've got you. All right, tell me about glucose.
Well, Dave, as you know, glucose is your body's favorite source of energy, right? So as we're laughing and joking around, our brain cells using glucose. Our brain cells are using glucose. Wait, when you hang on to that water bottle, your finger cells are using glucose. Right. So in most bodies, all of your cells are using glucose.
Okay.
The time.
Even the neurons.
Even the neurons.
We're going to have to talk about that one.
Well, it just depends. Right. But I'm just talking in general. For most people, it's a primary fuel source. Primary fuel. Yes. But please, you know, add some layers and some complexity. But I like to start from the beginning. Right. Primary fuel source, principal energy for the body. And then we can talk about what happens if you don't want to do that. But the main way that most of us currently give glucose to our body is by eating food, by eating carbs, mostly. Right. So starches, bread, rice, pasta, potatoes, oats, and anything that tastes sweet from.
Except for stevia.
An apple? Yes, except for stevia. Correct. Except for sweeteners. So anything from an apple to slice of cake, right?
Yep. What about broccoli?
Broccoli? Well, broccoli is mostly fiber and water. Very tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny amounts of glucose. But that's not going to spike your glucose levels.
So when you eat broccoli, though, doesn't a meaningful amount of the carbohydrate eventually become.
Well, the thing is, in broccoli, most of the carbs are actually fiber. Right. There's very little starch. So the fiber is not going to turn back into glucose molecules. There's a very small amount of starch in broccoli that will turn to glucose. But if you eat a pound of broccoli versus a pound of bread, it's not at all the same thing.
It's negligible. And what about the protein in the broccoli?
Yes, there's not much protein.
There's about as much glucose forming starch as there is protein. But vegans believe it's high protein.
Well, listen, protein does turn to glucose at a much higher rate. Okay, but so when people hear this like, okay, so glucose energy, I want lots of energy. Carbs give me energy. So I should eat loads of carbs, Right? That's a, that's a common conclusion you might reach.
That was me in the 80s, that's for sure.
Is that what you thought?
Everyone thought that. So like, before doing a hundred mile bike ride, you would literally go to Dunkin Donuts and get the low fat muffins because they had more carbs.
Wild.
And I wonder why I was fat as a kid. But that's what we believed, because we believed all these, like, nutrition researchers and scientists, the American Dietetic association, the people who make hospital meals today. You did that to me. And I've got your number.
I grew up on orange juice and Nutella crepes every morning.
Where did you grow up? In France, I was going to say. But was it really Nutella or was it like homemade?
Oh, no, no, no. Real Nutella. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. The 70% palm oil kind. Yeah.
Palm oil is not that bad for you, is it? I don't think.
No, it's really good for you.
Was it hydrogenated?
No, but it's really, really good for you. Of course. No, guys, it's not good for you.
Hold on.
Nutella is not good for you.
Nutella's bad for you, but palm oil's not bad for you.
Palm oil is bad for you.
We have to talk about this, really. Why does your body make palmitic acid? It's the only saturated fat you manufacture.
Okay, but not in the same quantities as you. Nutella.
I will eat palmitic acid all day long before I eat serious. Before I eat canola oil.
Sure. Okay, but you're not gonna recommend that people start drinking a bunch of palm oil.
I wouldn't supplement it. I would do butter instead.
Okay, but if you say that, people might think, okay, Nutella is actually not too bad for me.
Not my people. My people are smarter than your people.
Okay, good. So I grew up in Nutella Crepe. Every morning. I'm chopped and orange juice.
I'm channeling Bobby. What's her name? Bobbi Alfoff.
Yeah. She's amazing.
Yeah. For some reason I just feel like I'm channeling her right now and I'm just to see if, if you just get uncomfortable because it's making me laugh.
I'm super uncomfortable right now.
You were, you don't, you don't act like it.
I'm really uncomfortable. Can I leave?
That was our Bobby skin.
Like to leave, please. So, yeah. So carbs are not actually a good, good way to give your body energy because it's like a plant. Some water, good for the plant. Too much water, plant dies, human body, some glucose is fine. Too much glucose, lots of problems start happening. So you gotta giving your body a little bit is fine, but too much is not gonna be bad.
What if you had a zero sugar Nutella, would you eat that?
Honestly, I'm so over all of these processed foods that call themselves no added sugar, vegan, gluten free, just to look healthy. Like if I'm gonna eat Nutella, I want the real Nutella. I don't want keto ice cream. I want the triple chocolate fudge brownie ice cream. If I'm eating something sweet, I wanna eat the real deal.
So you like glucose?
I do. I love glucose. Okay.
And so you like sugar?
Yeah, I love sugar because you're French.
You have like baguettes and all that stuff.
Yeah. But also I think this is what got me into this because I didn't want to have glucose spikes, but I still wanted to eat the carbs.
We're going to have so much fun talking about this because it sounds like you're hacking a problem here.
Yeah. How do you eat the stuff you love and get all that dopamine from the sweetness with less impact on your body? That's kind of the whole gist. Do you like sugar?
People are going to be shocked. Yes.
Do you eat sugar every day?
I don't eat processed sugar every day, but I eat sugar most days. But that comes from fruit or honey.
If I was going to buy you a cake for your million followers when you hit it, what kind of cake would you like?
I found this thing at Erawan here in town called Karma cakes. They look like. Are they Ding Dongs? No. Ho Hos? Whatever the round. No. Hostess Cupcakes? You wouldn't know this because you didn't grow up here.
No.
So it's like the 1990s processed little chocolate cupcakes that would Come, like at a 711 that you would never eat, but they're made out of, I think, sorghum. And there's grains I don't normally eat, and there's definitely sugar in them. And there's probably some palm oil in the whipped filling.
Ooh, your favorites.
But they're. Actually, I have one in the fridge over there.
Really?
You want one?
Yeah, kind of. We'll try it now.
Okay. At the end of the show, we're gonna have a karma cake together.
Okay, cool. But I prefer, like, proper. Really unhealthy.
This is, like, made by some sort of, like, hippie vegan person. It'll be unhealthy.
Well, come on. It'll pretend to be healthy.
It's from Erewhon.
I like stuff. Yeah, but so what?
Everything at Erwhan's healthy. Everyone knows that.
No, that's bullshit. When I eat sugar, I wanna eat the real stuff. I wanna eat the. I'm a chocolate person. I'm actually chocolate fudge with chocolate sprinkles and chocolate sauce and a brownie on the side.
I want everyone listening to hear this. The sprinkles I would ditch because they're gross. But if you're going to eat what we used to call cheat meal, which is a dumb idea, don't make it out of industrial processed crap. Like, eat the sugar. It's better for you than the sucralose and all the other crap. But don't do it all the time. And use what you're going to learn here.
Exactly.
To keep your blood sugar from going crazy.
Can I ask a question?
What?
What's that molecule tattooed on your arm?
I mean, you studied all this stuff. Do you know what that is?
No.
It's trimethylxanthine.
What's that?
Caffeine.
Do you like caffeine?
I like caffeine.
Nice.
You know why? It lowers my blood sugar.
Oh, really? Interesting. And some people, it spikes their blood sugar.
Depends on how long you wait, really. If your adrenals are tweaked and it raises your cortisol. And cortisol breaks down muscle and releases blood sugar. Yeah, but so does an infrared sauna. Spike of blood sugar, right?
Yeah, but I still haven't figured out if that's from the heat actually causing the glucose monitor to slightly malfunction or from the dehydration in your body. Like, what's going on there?
Oh, it actually is releasing cortisol.
Really? Of course. You think that's why.
It's the equivalent of a workout. It raises Your heart rate raises your blood pressure.
What about dehydration? Is that a thing, you think?
I don't think so.
Okay.
You couldn't raise it that much. Imagine how much blood you'd have to draw if you're going to raise your. Because it'll go up by 20 points, like from 80 to 100 or something. So that would be a 20% or. No, 25% dehydration if you're 20, not a lot.
You'd be probably not. Okay. I've been practicing my cold plunging in sauna, and I can do three and a half minutes now in the cold plunge. Are you impressed? Do you think I'm cool?
I'm very impressed. I think you're cool mostly just because you have 3 million followers. I mean, everything else, whatever.
Makes sense. That's how I also think about people, like coolness and number of followers.
Do you, like, walk into a bar and just be like, I'm the glucose goddess. I have 3 million followers and they give you free drinks all the time?
Yeah, I don't pay for anything.
Man. You're giving it back to me. I don't know what to do with this when we're talking about the infrared sauna thing. I mean, I've seen mine hundreds of times in the sauna. And the length of the sauna does affect it. I just think it's elevated heart rate and cortisol. I would bet money on that. And it always goes back down pretty quickly afterwards.
Yeah, it does.
But what does the cold plunge do to your blood sugar?
I don't know, actually. I haven't tested it with a glucose monitor.
Interesting. I don't. I've never.
Does it do a similar thing?
No, I don't think so. You get the endorphins. I've never seen a spike from it, but it doesn't seem to bring it down either. How long. How long of a cold plunge do you want to be able to do?
20 minutes.
Why?
Because I want to be badass.
The benefits really happen after six minutes.
No, I don't want to go much longer because then I'm like. I don't feel my body anymore. And I could stay longer, but it doesn't feel very healthy.
It's not. Yeah, I was at an event and they had the ice cubes in the water. Yes.
You're like, it's really cold.
It's 1 degree centigrade or whatever. And I was in it for. What's centigrade? Celsius. What's the difference? That's the same word. Like different countries in Europe. Yeah, you should try traveling around Europe. You learn a lot. So we. I'm ministering for 15 minutes.
That's long.
Because I'm doing an IG live and I got an exciting question. I started talking and I got out. I'm like, I feel so freaking good. Yes, yes. And I'm starting to walk back to my room and I'm giving a talk at this investment conference and I'm walking and I start shaking. I'm like, I have hypothermia. This sucks. And I'm trying to drink warm coffee, but I can't because I'm spilling it on myself. It's like I got in the shower and turned on hot water and like laid there and twitched. Because you're not really supposed to be in hot water either. To warm up.
Yeah. You're supposed to let your body warm up.
Yeah. But I figured even if the blood sugar or the blood sugar, if the blood left my organs to the skin because it was hot, eventually it would make its way back. So I just like. I didn't pass out, but I was miserable. So, guys, cold, plunging, maybe two. Excess is not good for you. And it's not. Especially for women. Especially for women in their fertilizer.
It's a stressor. It's a stressor. So only do it. For example. Let me give you an example. Yesterday I went to the place that does the sauna cold plunge. And after my first minute, I was like, today my body just can't deal with it. It's too much stress. I just got out, didn't do any more rounds. You have to also do it. Be conscious that it is a stress of fasting for women, caffeine, a stressful job, kids, hiit workouts, all this stuff. Yeah, you have to be conscious. It's a stressor.
Turns out you should be kind to yourself whether you're a man or a woman. And that the stress tolerance levels for women and men are not the same on average, and they're not the same at different times of the month. So being aware of that or of your life for the menopause. Well, we get andropause too.
Really?
You ever see that movie Grumpy Old Men?
No.
It's a comedy about the two old guys. But it's a documentary on testosterone deprivation. So, yeah, low testosterone guys are cranky and bitchy and all, so, you know, the typical old men stereotype. That's a testosterone thing. So we go through andropause, we just.
Don'T so you have to supplement with testosterone.
Yeah. You just have to start hating your life.
Not fun.
Yeah, but same thing. You know, a lot of women in menopause, it's like, look what happens when you do bioidentical hormone replacement. It also helps to regulate your blood sugar, whether it's testosterone or the other one.
Absolutely. Absolutely.
You already know that.
Staring at screens, being inactive, being chronically stressed, they'll all drain your energy. And you probably won't avoid those factors all the time. But you can use your biology to your advantage to take back your energy.
And that's what I do.
One of the ways I do this is with Timeline Nutrition's mitocure. Here's why. Your mitochondria change the nutrients you eat and the air you breathe into energy. And over time, as you've probably heard on the show, your mitochondria do wear out. They get less efficient, and your body needs to replace them. And that's why I use Mito Pure. Mito Pure is the first supplement that both restores damaged mitochondria through mitophagy and makes room for new mitochondria through biogenesis. So it improves both the quality and the quantity of mitochondria you have to give you back your energy and slow down the aging process. I permanently added timeline nutritions might appear to my daily longevity stack a few years ago because the science was so strong then, and it only keeps getting stronger. And it works for me. So give it a try and see. If you notice a difference in your energy like I did, go to timelinenutrition.com Dave and get 10% off your order of Mitofure. That's timelinenutrition.com dave it's giving me interesting questions.
How much of aging is caused by blood sugar spikes?
I don't have an exact number, but glycation, which is the process that your body goes through, like the chicken in the oven, going from pink to brown, and it cooks, it glycates. The human body also cooks and glycates from the moment it's born. And then when you're fully cooked, you die, essentially. And if you look at the cartilage of babies, it's white. If you look at the cartilage of a 100-year-old person, it's brown. That cartilage has glycated over time. And glycation is quite similar to aging. And the more your body has glycated, the more you'll see signs of aging, like on your skin with wrinkles, cataracts, etc. And then on the inside, your organs also slowly deteriorate. And glycation and glucose, they sound quite similar. It's because it is the glucose that is doing the glycation. So when free glucose molecules bump into other molecules in your body, they damage them and those molecules become glycated forever. Collagen is a really good example. Right. Glycated collagen is going to impact your skin, your hair, et cetera. So I don't know what percentage, but glycation is a big, big driver.
I don't have a percentage either. It was one of the seven pillars of aging in my longevity book, where you have to control this. And this is why that postprandial spike in blood sugar is such a thing. Right. And postprandial, if you're new to the show, it means after eating. So let's say that we're going to celebrate me getting to just a million followers and we're going to eat this triple chocolate fudge. We're going to go to a French bakery with real butter because none of these fake oils. And they're going to bake this big old for me gluten free cake. I know that your French toast gluten free is wrong for you. Yeah, I knew you'd say that because you ate real gluten growing up. So anyway, we're going to have this giant cake, like really, really giant. And we're just going to eat it until our just chipmunk cheese. Yeah.
With fucking spoon.
It's gonna be like in my hair and everything.
And then we're gonna feel really sick.
Yeah. So what do I do to not.
Get old from doing that few things you can do. Number one, don't eat the cake on an empty stomach. Have it after a meal after bacon. After what? Bacon after bacon if you want. Or after a full meal would be better with like some proteins and some fats and some fiber. I would go like frozen chicken and broccoli, your favorite, and some.
You eat chicken?
Yeah.
Gross. What? Compared to steak? Why would you do that? Are you poor?
I'm very poor, yeah.
I could not laugh at my own joke.
I don't know. I think once in a while.
Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
But I don't know, man. It's just personal preference.
Okay. By the way, guys, the are you poor? Comment, that's a reference to this idea that in ancient France and every place we've raised animals, the peasants, when they're allowed to have anything, the first animal they get is a chicken because it gives them Eggs and chicken eggs. Yeah. And eggs, if you're not allergic, are so good for you.
So good for you.
And then, like, if you get a little bit more peasant dollars, then, like, oh, you're allowed to have a pig because they can eat everything. And then a goat and then a sheep and then a cow. And as you go up, each of them is more nutrient dense and more nutritious, but requires more land in order to do it. And I promise you that if chickens were the healthiest food, then we'd all be eating chicken at the highest ranks. But chicken has that reputation, and it has to do with the type of fat and type of amino acid availability.
Interesting.
So that was my joke about being poor. And, yes, chicken's more affordable. And, guys, I worked in an auto parts warehouse for a long time, so this isn't like one of those things. But I'm just saying, if you can afford beef protein, it's a superior source than chicken protein, and it shows the amino acid scores and all that.
It's just personal tastes and preference. I love fish and eggs and cheese and chicken. And I'll have, like, a steak once in a while, but it's not the. It's not for my palates. It's not my favorite.
Okay. You know, have you. Have you ever been fat?
No.
You're French. None of you guys are fat. It's not fair.
No, I've never been fat. I've been really unwell. Okay, mentally.
But tell me what happened.
I broke my back.
Oh, my God. How do you do that?
Jumped off a waterfall.
You know, they always tell you not to do that, and then we always do it, and then sometimes.
I know. Go figure. Yeah. So, broke my back. One of my vertebrae exploded.
Ow.
Yeah. Ow. So intense surgery, I got a lot of metal in my back, but I was young, so, you know, your physical health, you kind of heal fast. After two months, I was walking again, but my mental health went crazy. Depression, anxiety, depersonalization, which is this feeling of being a stranger in your own body. It's terrifying.
Oh, my gosh.
So I had that for 10 years.
For 10 years, yeah. Wow.
And that's what led me to study biochemistry, because I want. I was doing math. I was studying math at the time, and I just wanted to understand what the heck was going on with my body.
Can I just high five you?
Yeah, baby.
You did something about it.
I did. Yeah.
I was in the same boat, right? I'm like, I'm fat, I'm tired. Nothing works. I'm just gonna have to go do it. Yeah, right. Oh, my God. I did not know that part of your story. I'm sure you posted about it, but I. I just started following.
If you had read my book, you would know.
You know, I have people do that for me.
Uh, so, yeah, I broke my back. Mental health was terrible. That's why I went to biochemistry, and then I worked in genetics, blah, blah, blah. And then I had this realization about five years ago that the days where my blood sugar was unsteady, my mental health was worse.
Respect for figuring that out.
And that opened the door for me to finally understanding how my lifestyle was impacting my mental health. And that's the reason I got into this space. Because I needed to heal myself first. And then what I had learned, like these hacks that I will talk about, I found that they were just too powerful to not tell people about them. So there's the eating the cake not on an empty stomach, but after a meal.
And so. And you're saying some fat. Isn't the cake full of fat anyway? Should I just be eating protein and a bunch of fiber?
Yeah, you could. I mean, fiber is going to be the most powerful thing to eat.
So have some psyllium and some protein.
Yeah, maybe some real vegetables.
Gross. Okay, how about kale? Should I eat kale?
I know you love kale. I love kale as a kid.
I actually had a kale facial this morning. Yeah, that's why I have a pimple.
Yeah, I know you love kale, but you gotta stop talking about kale like we get it. It's your favorite food. Like we get it. Just relax.
It's an inappropriate relationship with kale.
Okay, but wait, I'm telling you these hacks because it actually works.
No, I wanna know what vegetables.
Any vegetables.
I was just teasing about kale.
Okay, okay. Any vegetables? Vegetables are fine.
Okay? It doesn't matter.
Any vegetables and some protein will be great. Because that way the sugar from the cake is not going to go so quickly into your bloodstream.
Okay?
Okay.
So you're going to slow the rate of release.
The whole point is eat the cake the same amount of cake as you normally would, but slow the release of the glucose and fructose into your body. That's one second. One is. After we have the cake, we want to go for a little walk or do some exercise.
Okay.
So maybe we'll go for a run after eating that cake. Or we'll do some stuff.
Run? We're talking about eating, like, cake with my hair. I'm not going to Run. I'll get cramps.
Really?
If you eat as much cake as I'm envisioning. I mean, they always tell you don't swim after you eat because you get a cramp and drown. Your mom didn't tell you that?
I think that's bs.
Yeah, that's what you said before you jumped off the waterfall.
Good point, good point. Okay, fine. We'll do some squats, we'll go for a walk.
Okay. I like that. Squats a lot.
Another thing you can do before eating the cake is having some vinegar and water. Apple cider, any type of vinegar.
Oh, interesting. It all works. It's acetic acid is the trick.
Exactly, exactly. Acetic acid also, it just slows down your alpha amylase enzymes. Again, just slowing down digestion. Right. That's the whole point.
So there were five apple cider vinegar pills in that handful I took this morning for a reason.
Really?
Yep. Do the pills work?
There's no studies supporting the pills work, so.
Don't they contain acetic acid?
They do, but we don't know if in that form, that dehydrated form, they actually work. We just don't know.
Okay, so like, you're a biochemist, you add water to acetic acid. What do you get?
Yeah, but we just don't know. And you have to take three. And I'm actually making a pill that does work.
Interesting. So when you say we have no evidence they work, we also have no evidence that if you jump out of an airplane without a parachute, because there's no double blind studies. So. But how could it not work?
Because perhaps when you dehydrate it or you do something to it or you process it, like. We just don't know. Right. Personally, when I've tried the acetic acid pills instead of the regular vinegar, it hasn't worked in my blood sugar.
That's so interesting. Okay, I believe you. I'm just like, why?
Yeah, I don't know why. I don't know why. And you also have to take three and to get 800 milligrams, which is about what you would get in a tablespoon of vinegar. Right. So that's a lot of pills. I have a pill that I'm just launching tomorrow, actually. It's called Anti Spike, and it actually has clinical trials showing that it reduces the glucose spike by 40% of food.
Have you seen the studies showing that the other spike, protein increases glycation meaningfully? No, there are studies. That's actually probably one of the many things it does. So your anti Spike Pill. Great name.
Thanks, baby.
We're talking about blood sugar spikes, only regulators. Just to be really clear, only blood sugar. There is no other kind of spike that even matters.
It's the only spike. Blood sugar spikes and insulin spikes are interesting, too.
Okay, let's talk about this. You're one of the people who really would understand this. So insulin is not blood sugar. And in common health discussions, people oftentimes confuse the two. Walk our listeners through, what is insulin? What is glucose? And then talk about high and low insulin versus high and low glucose and how you would feel those.
Okay? So when you eat a bunch of carbs like that cake, the glucose molecules arrive into your bloodstream and they make a spike. This glucose spike has consequences. Glycation, inflammation, mitochondrial stress, etc. Your body knows this glucose spike is not good for you, so it calls up your pancreas and it's like, yo, we need to send out insulin to get that glucose back down. So your pancreas releases insulin, which is an amazing hormone, and she grabs the excess glucose and stores it away in your liver cells and your muscle cells and in your fat cells. Okay? So your glucose levels come down thanks to insulin being released. Now, what's important to understand that the first time I drank coffee, it kept me up for two days. Two months later, three cups of coffee could not even keep me awake anymore. I had become resistant to caffeine. Okay, you become habituated to something and you need more and more of it to get the same effect. Your body can also become resistant to insulin.
So over time, but not in the same way as coffee, though.
Not in the same way. But I think it's a very important image.
As an image. Okay, I got you as an image.
So over time, your body's going to have to pump out more and more insulin to get that same amount of glucose into the storage units in your body. You will become slowly resistant to insulin. And then as this resistance gets worse, you get what's called pre diabetes and type 2 diabetes. As your fasting, glucose levels increase. So one thing that happens if you have high glucose levels is that your doctor might tell you just inject insulin to get those levels down. That might work short term, but actually it is the excess of insulin that's causing the issues. So it would be so much better to be able to measure insulin levels.
You say it's an excess of insulin causing the problem. Yeah, but isn't it the lack of ability to use insulin causing the problem, not the existing excess?
Well, the excess of insulin creates the Resistance, and then you can no longer use it properly.
Oh, so you think insulin causes insulin resistance?
Yeah. Excess amounts of insulin over time in your body, that's what creates insulin resistance.
We'll have to talk about that. Okay.
There's other things that can create it, right? Like specific stuff going on in your body, but generally this is one of the main pathways. More and more insulin creates more and more insulin resistance. And so when you talk about reversing type 2 diabetes, for example, people focus on getting your glucose levels down, but actually you want to get those insulin levels down.
That's correct.
That's the key. Right. So glucose is actually a proxy for insulin, if you will. It would be so much better to have an insulin monitor than a glucose monitor.
Wouldn't that be crazy?
Would be cool. No.
Now, Gary Taubes in Good Calories, Bad Calories, wrote a lot about what insulin's doing to us. That's a problem. And shout out Gary. When I interviewed him very, very early on in my show, he introduced me to the person who was my agent for the Better Baby book, my very first book. So, Gary, thanks. And I got really into this insulin versus glucose thing because I was trying to figure it out myself at the time. I'd already solved my high blood sugar issues.
Because you were pre diabetic.
Yeah, I was pre diabetic, yeah. I think that's just another American word for diabetic. Like you're, you're in the sales pipeline.
126 is technically pre diabetes, right?
Yeah.
You were at 117, you said.
Yeah, 117.
Yeah.
And so, and this is when I'm like 26 or something.
Yeah, it's wild.
And I don't believe that having high amounts of sugar causes or even is related to diabetes.
How so?
I think that it's bad fats, because bad fats break cell membranes. You can't express insulin receptors through them. So blood glucose builds up, the body makes more insulin. So you have high insulin, muscles become.
Fatty, they can't uptake glucose anymore. Absolutely, yeah.
And you get broken cells. And broken cells are going to cause all sorts of problems that way. And based on those ideas, I can have carbs. In fact, I have 2 to 400 grams of carbs a day and probably more rice than I do sugar. And I don't eat white sugar, but I will have some honey or some fruit or whatever. And I'm six and a half percent body fat. My visceral fat is at the very low end for an 18 year old. And it gets higher as you go. My liver fat is 0.8%, and I'm not on a low carb diet, and I don't eat bad fats ever. I haven't for 15 years.
Yeah, but, Dave, eating rice and eating fruit, that's not the problem. Right. The real issue doesn't come so much from the starches, especially if they're not refined and processed. The real issue comes from the sweet foods that not only have a lot of sugar in it, but also have bad fats in them. Right. So all of the processed junk. You could eat rice every day of your life and never get diabetes because that's just pure glucose. But when you.
Even if you ate three pounds, Right, Yeah. I mean, do I have to use kilos for you or you.
Yes, please, convert everything. I mean, listen, I don't know exactly how many pounds you'd have to eat, and I think that's a bit besides the point. But it's not so much about the rice. It's more about the donuts, the orange juice, the breakfast cereal, the smoothies, the dessert, the cookies. You know, that's the issue.
Is it because of the sugar in them or because of the trans fats in Canola?
I think it's both. Honesty. It's the sugar that's spiking your glucose, spiking your insulin, but it's also the fructose that's in the sucrose that's causing VLDLs to be created in your liver, and also the bad fats, which are calling all sorts, causing all sorts of insulin resistance because they're making all your muscles and your cells fatty. So it's important to understand that I look at glucose as a really interesting window through which to enter better health. But it's not the only thing, Right? It's not all about glucose. For example, you could add 15 pounds of butter to a meal, and that would lower the glucose spike of the meal. But that doesn't mean that meal is better for you, right?
Sure it does. Butter's great. You're French. Come on. You're violating your country ethos.
Fine. Or canola oil.
Okay, canola. Now we're on the.
Okay, canola oil. Jeez. So I think maybe also your audience is probably much more educated on this, but I try to teach people these very basic, important physiological principles that are going to allow them to reverse the diabetes and go from drinking orange juice and eating granola to having eggs in the morning. So I think we're operating maybe on a slightly different level of expertise.
No, I Don't think we are. Actually, I think that you're used to. And I'm going to sound a little bit rude here, but used to dumbing down what you say.
Exactly.
And that's a really valuable skill. In fact, that's why you have 3 million followers. And like, before I ended up on Dr. Oz, I went into his office, introduction from a friend, and he had two medical research people in there, and he's like, tell me about collagen. And it was like a PhD advice. Like, the amount of diligence that goes on behind the scenes was crazy, but I know what I'm talking about, so I nerded out and blah, blah, blah. And he goes, okay, fine, but can you tell that to normal people? And I go, oh, you don't want me to use doctor speak? So then I switched into that, and he goes, okay, you can do both. Go on the show. You actually are plenty smart. I can already just tell from our conversations, you know, how all this shit works. So I want you to flex your brain on the show so you don't have to dumb it down here.
Okay? Okay. Okay.
Okay. And some listeners, if this goes over your head, like, there's, I don't know, hundreds of episodes, listen as well to Gary Topp. Like. Like there's. There's tons of info here for you, but, like, let's do it. Like, explain it to me.
Well, people, when they think about carbs, right? They think like, okay, rice turns to sugar or donut turns to sugar. It's not at all the case, Right? You have the starches, which only contain glucose, and that, of course, spikes your glucose and your insulin levels. But then the real issue comes from stuff that contains sucrose, which is table sugar, because that contains half glucose, half sucrose. And then on a glucose monitor, if you compare a donut and a bowl of rice, you would see the same glucose spike, but you're actually missing a whole other part of the story.
This is the thing you guys need to know. Starch only makes glucose. Glucose you need. Glucose doesn't glycate your tissues the same way fructose does.
Yep, exactly. And then usually when you take a donut, there's also a bunch of your favorite bad fats in there, of course, right? So if you were just to compare a donut and a bowl of rice on just a glucose monitor, you would think, oh, they're the same. They're not at all the same. Which is one of the main limitations of wearing a glucose monitor and optimizing your whole life around it because it's such a small fraction of what's truly happening. Right. The fructose in that sugar in that donut is causing much more damage to your body. It's glycating things much faster. It's making your liver produce bad fats. It's just, it's inflaming your tissue. It's not good for you. Right. So that's a key, key piece of information.
I have a little story for you.
Tell me.
Late 90s, I'm probably £250 and I've lost some of the weight. I've learned I can control my weight and I've read all this stuff about whatever we knew back then. So I went out and I bought a bunch of fructose because the American Diabetes Association. By the way, guys, thank you for perpetuating the illness that you say that you're treating.
Told you it's low glycemic.
Yeah, it's low glycemic.
So agave.
Yeah, well, agave is the modern version of that. But I literally put fructose in things because it wasn't going to raise my blood sugar.
Like fructose powder.
Yeah. And it's the most harmful thing you could do because it raises triglycerides and it causes this advanced tissue aging. And after a couple months, I'm like, I don't feel good on this. It's gross. And I stopped it. Thank God.
I didn't even know you could buy powdered fructose.
Wow. Yeah. And this is because, well, blindness to the fact that fructose does something and it's not what blood sugar does. So then later, when I got smarter about things, I said, well, if I'm going to work out or I just, I'm really wrecked, or if someone in the family is like right on the edge of getting a migraine or something. I have a 20 pound thing of dextrose, which is straight up glucose. You can get glucose powder. Right. And you take that stuff before, put that in your pre workout. Right. You're going to, you're going to kill it. I mean, your, your blood sugar will go up, but it won't.
But don't have donuts. Don't, don't eat the donut. You don't need the actual sweetness before workout.
Is there going to be a glucose goddess pre workout donut you could make? That would be good.
How did you know? No, I'm actually launching it today, exclusively.
On your podcast, little six pack of, like frosted donuts. Just eat them and Go live. You'd be the world's hero if you could. You think?
Okay, great. I'm just gonna cancel all my other plans and work on that. I think it's genius.
It would probably taste like dog biscuits is the problem.
Totally. You know another interesting thing? When you wear a glucose monitor, if you add alcohol to a meal, it's going to lower the glucose spike of the meal.
Of course it will.
Of course it will. But, like, it's quite shocking to see.
Explain why. Go through the steps.
So, alcohol. Okay, so your liver is the organ in your body that is responsible for making sure your glucose levels stay nice and steady. Right. And when you drink alcohol. Alcohol is a poison, and it's not good for you. Newsflash. Your liver is going to be busy dealing with that toxin. And so it's no longer going to be able to push out extra glucose into your bloodstream to keep your glucose levels nice and level. And so on the glucose monitor, you might see, hey, if I add three glasses of wine or three shots of tequila to this bowl of pasta, the glucose spike is so much smaller. But that's not a good way to reduce your glucose spikes. That's a terrible way to reduce your glucose.
And you'll preferentially burn the alcohol calories before all the other ones, which is going to change the slope of the curve. But then you have to pay for the alcohol. Do you drink?
No, I don't drink, actually.
Not even red wine? What about baguettes? Fresh creamery?
My person of choice is sugar. I don't care about alcohol. It doesn't make me feel too good.
But I love sugar, so I love this one thing that I'm.
Do you drink?
You know, if it's older than me. You're old. They don't make it.
You're like, very, very old.
Yeah, they don't make alcohol that old, so that makes it easy. It's one of those things where maybe twice a year I'll have something. It's just. It's not worth it. But what I'm finding that's actually really exciting is that all of my friends in there, I would say, like, mid-30s. I have a big group in Austin I hang out with, and either they drink a little bit or they don't drink at all. And for me, oh, my God, we drank all the damn time. It was so sweet.
The alcohol industry is making so much money selling you this product that quote unquote helps is very important in your social life. It's bs. It's marketing. It's a poison. You know, you have to be conscious about these things and not making it. Not make it automatic.
So psychedelic. Mushrooms or wine, which would you take? Mushrooms, MDMA or wine? What should you take?
MDMA.
Definitely 31. That's what I'm saying. Because Me too, by the way.
You know what I mean? Yeah. I'm not a big wine person. Alcohol person. I used to drink a lot of alcohol. You know, margaritas. All day? Not all day, but.
Where do you live now?
Between Paris and New York.
Okay. I guess New York. You could be a good. Margaritas. You're not going to find those in Paris.
Okay. No.
Cool. When you hear Americans talk about the French paradox, what does it make you think?
It makes me think one, they don't realize what's going on in France. More and more people are sick. Okay? People are getting sick. There's a lot of rates of infertility. There are a lot of problems. Cardiovascular health is a nightmare in France. People are getting diabetes. Like it's not the paradise that maybe it was once seen as. And second, I do think it's quite obvious when you go to France why we are marginally healthier than Americans. We have a much better culture around food. We still. Every day you come back from work, you go to the grocery store and you buy fresh produce. You go to the cheesemonger, you go to the butcher, you buy fresh food, you go home and you cook it.
Yeah.
And you spend time eating with your family. And it hasn't been replaced by junk food or frozen meals. There's still a strong culture around actually cooking. And all of those bad oils, we don't really use them. We use butter and olive oil.
I just read there's 30,000 bakeries in Paris. So you're getting fresh bread made with real grains that mostly don't have glyphosate. But monsanto, slash Bayer, AG, Farben, if you go back to World War II, those are. They're making inroads to getting glyphosate. And if you guys allow that in Europe, you'll look just like America in another 25 years, except your infertility rates will be higher because there's other chemicals involved too.
So let's hope that doesn't happen.
So 30,000 of those things and you.
Can'T get pastries from the previous day. So if it's 2am and you want a pastry, you have to wait until 7am for the pastry.
What happens to the ones they don't sell?
I think they sell them all. No, I Don't know, actually. Good question.
I mean, I know that the way it would have been is kind of like it was on my farm. You feed them to the pigs or the chickens, Right. They go back into the food supply. I'm sure. Maybe they give them to people who need food.
Maybe. Yeah.
But it's one of those things where in a healthy, functioning ecosystem, that's what you do. That's one of the reasons you have, like, chickens. They'll eat everything. They're carnivores or omnivores, so. And then you also have a much higher intake of saturated fat. And in America, especially in the 90s and early 2000s, the French paradox was all over the news. Well, why don't French people get heart disease when they eat all that butter? Which cause. Butter doesn't cause heart disease. But I always laughed. And in my head, after I learned how this stuff worked, I'm like, it's the American paradox. Why don't Americans just eat, like, French people?
Exactly.
Like, if that works. And so.
Because it requires cooking time and it requires, you know, I think it's a culture. Culture shift that it really requires.
Is it a culture shift or is it an ingredient shift? We have so many weird chemicals that aren't allowed over there. I feel like they hijack our brain.
But also, people in France just don't eat in their cars. So it's both.
Is that because the cars are so small they don't have room for their elbows?
No, it's because it's just not a thing. You don't go to drive throughs. You see what I mean?
Drive throughs. I haven't been around in so long.
They're fun. I used to go to, like, crispy Kreme drive throughs and get a big box of Krispy Kreme. That's so good.
That's like the worst oil.
So good.
If. And I'm just gonna say this for the entrepreneurs listening to the show, if there was a donut shop that would use beef tallow and you'd make donuts out of rice flour or something gluten free, I would actually eat them. I would come in and I would get like. I would get a whole box and I would just, like, rub them on my face. So good. So seriously, somebody comes to you and.
Is like, dave, I'm doing that. I need an investment. You're gonna back them, right?
We're gonna have to talk about what grains you use. White rice flour. Guys, you can do it. I know. I make all kinds of stuff.
With it.
But a lot of the gluten replacement flours, like they spike your blood sugar just as much and they contain a lot of toxins like oxalates.
People don't realize gluten is a protein.
That's a fair point.
Right, so actually it does reduce the spike of starch.
Well, you know what else is a protein?
What?
Serin. Nerve gas.
Okay, sure.
So maybe different proteins do different things. I'm just saying.
True, true, true, true, true.
That's my anti vegan. So plant based protein was. Oh, wait. And then I. Oh, but snake venom. So like we just have to be conscious of which proteins.
Another thing I hate is when people say, oh, this is 100% for example, vegan. Yeah, right. It's bullshit. Or it's not because sugar comes from a plant that it is good for you. It's not because something comes from a plant that it is good for you.
High fructose corn syrup is plant based. And vegan tobacco.
Yeah, I mean, you know.
Wait a minute. You're telling me you've never smoked?
Of course I've smoked, but I'm just saying it's not good for you. And it comes from a plant.
Are you sure it's not good for you?
Tobacco? Yeah, yeah, I'm pretty sure it's not good for you.
Now I don't remember the episode number, but I interviewed.
Do you have somebody promote cigarettes on the show?
I call him Dr. Nicotine.
Okay.
He's from Vanderbilt.
Wait, nicotine is not the same as.
Oh my God. I'm talking to a qualified scientist. This isn't fair. Yes, you're correct. Tobacco is not good for you.
But nicotine is a neuro something.
It's a nootropic. But more importantly, and we're talking like 5% of what's in a cigarette and it stops Alzheimer's disease. People who smoke don't get Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. Massive reduction. But then they get lung cancer and cardiovascular disease like you're getting.
So what would you rather die from? You know?
So what I do is I do 1-3mg of nicotine on a regular basis.
And how do you ingest it?
I spray it under my tongue.
No way.
Because if you go to France.
Yeah.
Or anywhere in Europe or Mexico or Canada, you can buy a spray that's 1 milligram goes under your tongue. Do you want to try it?
Yeah, kind of.
Okay. I'm grab. I think it'll be awesome.
Okay.
Okay, here's how it works.
I think I'm going to figure it out. Show me.
Okay, well, actually, here, try it.
Okay.
It's not as easy you think. Everyone gets confused. Sure you don't want help?
Okay, show me.
I've sprayed this in hundreds of people's mouth at Bernie, man. So there's a lock thing. You pick it up.
Oh, cute.
And then you spray it like this.
Okay. Just one.
Keep it close. Don't breathe in.
Okay.
There you go. And you can, like. Don't swallow it. Yeah. Just like you can close your mouth and let it under your tongue. It's minty.
That's very minty.
Guys, you can't buy this in the U.S. lucy, gum in the U.S. is the cleanest source. One milligram.
And how many milligrams are in a cigarette?
20.
Oh, wow.
It can actually be between 12 and 20. It's pretty.
Doesn't taste so good. I feel amazing now.
Does it hit you?
Whoa, bro.
Can you feel it? Oh, when it hits you, I'm going to laugh because you'll be like, I did this on the Almost 30 podcast.
Oh, I love them.
They're so cool.
Yeah.
And I sprayed them both, and one of them's like, I feel like I'm rolling now.
Really?
Yeah. Because it's a pretty potent nootropic, and it stacks really well with psychedelics. But as a longevity compound, think about niacin or nicotinic acid. And then you look at niacinamide, which goes to nicotinamide riboside, or nr, which goes to nmn, which goes to nad. So this affects the nicotinic acid receptors in the brain.
Very cool. Do you become habituated to it? Do you need more and more?
You don't need more and more, but if you use more and more because it's so damn good, then it's a little. Yeah, you can. So I did one milligram a day for five years. Wow. So you just have to be disciplined.
But that's why you're so smart.
I take a lot of nootropics. But then I also maybe wasn't so smart. I'm like, I just love.
Okay, imagine you have this decision to make. Either you keep taking your 200 pills a day or, okay, so you have to choose between exercise and those pills for the rest of your life. Which one do you choose?
I think I would choose the pills.
Really?
Exercise takes a lot of time. I'm busy. Right.
It's incredible for your health.
You don't need to exercise to get the benefits of exercise. Now people are going to be really pissed about that, especially, like, all the, like, you know, weightlifter bros.
But it makes me feel so good to exercise. I love exercising.
Yeah.
I've been working on this bicep for, like, 18 months.
Nice.
Pretty good, huh? Tricep.
Can I throw some electrodes on there?
I don't like the electric stuff.
Yeah, but we could add an inch to your bicep right now.
No, I don't want to.
