Dr. Jeffrey GladdenFounder & CEO of Gladden Longevity

Listen to Your Body's Signals 🚥

26 Feb 2026 · 1 min

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In this segment of the YouTube video "Listen to Your Body's Signals 🚥," Dr. Jeffrey Gladden explains a practical, lab‑free tool from his book for gauging how a person’s sweet‑taste perception may have become blunted. He asks listeners to bite into an apple and rate its sweetness on a 1‑to‑10 scale. If the rating falls below a 7, he interprets this as a sign that the individual’s sweet‑taste buds need a "reset." He attributes possible reasons for reduced sweetness sensitivity to over‑consumption of artificial or non‑nutritive sweeteners, alterations in the gut microbiome, and past disordered‑eating patterns that may have conditioned avoidance of sweet foods. The test is presented as a diagnostic cue that can help explain current cravings and guide further dietary or behavioral adjustments.

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But one of the things that I did in my book was I really leaned into all the tools that I've used over the years to help people understand the signals their body is sending without a lab test. So as an example if you bite into an apple and on a scale of 1 to 10 you have to have a clean mouth but if you bite into an apple on a scale of 1 to 10, it's not its sweetness isn't a 7 or greater then I know that your sweet taste buds are worthy of a reset a reset they need to that sweetness. And that might be too many artificial sweeteners, it might be too many non nutritive natural sweeteners. It may be your gut microbes, microbiome. It just tells us a place you know for us to go. It also helps me understand maybe why you've been having cravings. Maybe you're also from a disordered eating past avoiding anything sweet because you feel like you've even been told like not to eat fruit, things like that.