Scientist Reveals The HEALTHY FOODS That Heal The Body and REDUCE INFLAMMATION | Jessie Inchauspe

90% of us are walking around with these glucose spikes happening in our body without knowing it. Yet we're very familiar with the cravings, the fatigue, the mood swings, the weight gain.

All of us are flooded in a sea of sugar and flour. I mean, the average person in America eats 152 pounds of sugar and 133 pounds of flour a year. That's about a pound a day per person per year of sugar and flour, which is insane. How do we deal with it? What are the hacks that you found to help regulate your blood sugar?

Number one hack that is incredibly easy, that has fantastic evidence supporting it, is eat your food in the right order. So, yes. So anybody listening, if you're about to have a meal, look in front of you. Let's say you have some chicken, some broccoli, and some potatoes. Okay? If you eat the elements of this meal in a particular order, you can reduce the glucose spike of the meal by 75%. This means less aging, less inflammation, less weight gain, fewer cravings, et cetera. The right order is vegetables first, protein and fats second, and starches and sugars last. And so when we do this, when we eat our vegetables first during a meal, the fiber in the vegetables lands in our stomach, then in our upper intestine, coats the walls of our intestine with this viscous mesh, and then any starch or sugars you eat afterwards will be absorbed to a lesser extent in your bloodstream, therefore smaller glucose spike. But you're eating the exact same thing. And this is so cool. And so many people send me messages like, I just simply changed the order in which I ate my food. I didn't change what I ate. and things started changing for me. Yeah, that's the number one really. So it's interesting.

I often recommend people take something called PGX or PolyGlycopleX, which is a derivative of cognac root. Cognac is a Japanese tuber, like a root vegetable that is made into noodles. It's actually used a lot in Japanese cooking and is very viscous and it absorbs 50 times its weight in water. So if you take some of this powder beforehand or even the capsules, it basically acts like a sponge, absorbs all.

The water and slows the absorption of everything. So you get the glucose.

Doesn'T spike.

Very cool. I mean, this is really super powerful. Another one that people love is vinegar. I don't know if you know about this, Mark. It's like, it's incredible. So the hack is before your meals, take a tall glass of water, like the one I'm holding now. So this is about, you know, twice the size of a regular glass. And pour into it one tablespoon of vinegar. It can be any type of vinegar. My favorite is apple cider vinegar, but, you know, white wine vinegar, rice vinegar also work. and drink it up to 30 minutes before your meal. And in the studies, the scientists say that the effect of vinegar is almost the same as the effect of medication given to diabetics to reduce glucose spikes.

Why are you doing this?

By just doing this, because there's a molecule in vinegar called acetic acid. And acetic acid does two really cool things.

One, well, that's actually what vinegar is. It's acetic acid, right?

Absolutely.

Right?

Absolutely. There's also water in vinegar, right? So that's one of the molecules in vinegar, it's acetic acid. So it goes into your stomach and it talks to this enzyme called alpha amylase. And alpha amylase's job is to break down starch into glucose. And it tells that enzyme, Hey girly, please slow down your roll, slow your roll. And so that enzyme works slower. So the breakdown of starches into glucose happens slower. That's number one. So, slower delivery of glucose into your bloodstream later on.

Not faster. So, you take the vinegar, you take it like a spoonful before?

You should dilute it in water just to be safe. Yeah, so a spoonful. In the studies, you can do one tablespoon, you can do two tablespoons. Personally, one tablespoon is what I use because it's just two tablespoons starts being a lot of vinegar in your glass of water. So, one tablespoon is what I like. And the second thing it does, which is incredible, is that it goes to your muscles. And it says, hey muscles, as soon as glucose gets into the bloodstream, soak it up, store it as glycogen in the muscles. Don't let it float around. And so by these two mechanisms, by these two mechanisms, glucose is broken down at a slower rate in your stomach. And as soon as it arrives in the bloodstream, it gets soaked up. As a result, glucose spike reduced by up to 30%. And this matters because then you don't have the glucose crash. you don't have the cravings. You don't start that cravings roller coaster that so many of us are on, yet you're eating the exact same food as before.

Amazing. So I want to help you have me break down. You mentioned a few things, but I would really like to have you break down what the symptoms are that most people are unaware of that are related to swings in blood sugar. 'Cause it's not just high or low, it's these excursions up and down that often cause the most havoc. So kind of walk us through. You're the average person. You're kind of walking around not knowing what the hell is going on in your body and what kind of things might you experience if your blood sugar is out of whack?

Absolutely. So the average person walks around and they feel all these symptoms. So they might feel really hungry even though they just ate 90 minutes ago, or it might be four in the afternoon and they walk by a bakery and they're like, oh my God, I need to eat three cookies right now. or they might feel really tired right now, or they might feel really tired at 11:00 AM. And these are symptoms that often we tend to attribute to lack of willpower. And then there are the more long-term symptoms, like acne starts developing on your face, you might get hormonal imbalances that lead to things like polycystic ovarian syndrome, worsening menopause symptoms, long-term type two diabetes, and all of these things we tend to medicate. We're like, symptom, medication, boom. But actually these symptoms are your body telling you, Hey, hello, there's actually glucose spikes happening in here. There's something you can change and heal from within. So in my community, the most common symptoms, as I mentioned, are fatigue, waking up, not feeling rested, feeling like you need to eat every 90 minutes, you need to snack constantly, and feeling this pull towards sweet foods and then just having very unsteady energy and feeling tired after meals, feeling tired throughout the day, needing coffee to keep going.

Yeah, I mean, those are, those are really the common ones, but there, there's others. I remember a guy who came to see me who, was, having incredible panic attacks. And I said, well, tell me about your panic attacks and your anxiety. And of course, in, in medicine, we typically attribute these to psychological causes, you know, and, and we prescribe anxiety medication like Ativan or Valium. and I said, well, tell me what's going on. When do you get it? What happens? And you, you know, go into the details, the story. And it turned out, you know, he basically had this big belly and was severely insulin resistant, and he ate a very high starch sugar diet. And, you know, he would have tons of carbs for breakfast, which is basically the American breakfast, the sugar for breakfast. I should, I think we should call it dessert, not breakfast, for what most people are eating. Muffins, Bagels, cereal, which is 75 sugar pancakes. waffles, French toast, muffins, you know, just, it's kind of a sugar lollapalooza. And he said, every afternoon, I just, I just get overwhelming panic attacks. I start sweating, my heart's palpitating. I feel like I'm gonna die. I can't breathe. The world's closing in on me. And I said, and what do you do? He says, well, I drink a can.

Of Coke and I feel better. So he was on a roller coaster or glucose.

Yeah, it was, it was, sugars were up and down. And I'm like, you, you are hypoglycemic. So, yeah, even though your sugars can go high, they can go low.

And I think what happens is there's an overshoot.

It was meant to go low. Yeah, and it creates all these mental health issues, depression, anxiety, palpitations, panic attacks. And then you mentioned a bunch of things that people aren't even aware of, like infertility or acne. I mean, most people don't think about that. Wrinkles. Wrinkles, right? Wrinkles. Aging. Aging, dementia. Yes. Heart disease. Cancer. Fatty liver disease. Fatty liver. every pretty much age related disease, in fact, aging itself is often related to sugar issues and to lack of insulin sensitivity, which is what happens when you make, you know, a diet that is full of starch and sugar, you get these wild spikes in sugar, but then that causes a spike in insulin and then sugar crashes, then you need more and more insulin just to keep the sugar balance. And ultimately that causes a whole cascade of problems that we now know as the fundamental drivers of aging.

Yes. And on the topic of aging, one thing that really startled me that I discovered is that every time your glucose levels spike, all the glucose that's rushing into your system, it's going to bump into other molecules and it's going to do this thing called glycation to the other molecules. And when a molecule is glycated, it's damaged. And glycation leads to us literally cooking from the inside, like a piece of toast in the toaster. That's what happens. And then when we're fully cooked, we die. That's why we die. And so the more glucose spikes in your diet, the faster you age internally, but also externally because it leads to wrinkles.

It's mind blowing. It really is. Yeah, it's true. I remember I was at this longevity conference, the Menla Institute, which is Menla Center, which is by Robert Thurman, who's a Buddhist scholar, and he had the Dalai Lama there and all these Tibetan scholars, but also Nobel Prize winners. and scientists about longevity. And there was Lenny Guerite there from MIT who discovered sirtuins and the role of life extension by activating sirtuins with resveratrol and other compounds. And I said, you know, these master regulators like of aging, how do they get regulated? What screws them up? How does it work? He says, it's sugar. Sugar is the biggest problem that we have in terms of not allowing these longevity switches to work properly. And so we literally turn off the longevity switch. We should have rapidly accelerate aging when we over consume sugar. And I would say starch as well. I mean, that's just the same as sugar because you can eat a bagel or sugar is the same thing. Yeah.

And so we end up in this situation where we know it's bad for us and we know we need to avoid glucose spikes, but often People can be a bit lost as to where to begin. Does it mean I should never eat starch and sugar again? That feels very draconian for most people. And so what I've developed are these 10 principles, these food principles that allow you to keep your glucose levels steady without giving up all the foods you love. Because personally, Mark, I need a chocolate cake for my birthday. I'm not going to have a Brussels sprout, low carb, no sugar cake. Like, I need chocolate cake. This is a non-negotiable part. You're a better human than I am, but like, I love sugar. And so, When I first discovered the world of glucose, my fasting glucose levels was 95. I was 23 years old and that was high. And through my hacks, I've lowered it to 79 without giving up all the stuff I love.

And that's two hacks. So we've got the timing of when you eat, what you eat when, right? Vegetables, protein, and starch. And then the vinegar before you eat. What else?

So if anybody is still having a sweet breakfast, This is a very important hack.

Have a sweet breakfast. Of course, nobody listening to this podcast ever eats a sweet breakfast because they've been listening to this podcast and they know that we should not have dessert for breakfast.

But just in case you haven't heard many of the podcasts. Just in case this is the first podcast you listen to. Have a savory breakfast. So in the studies, what they've done is they've taken two groups of people and they've given them two breakfasts, one of two breakfasts, same number of calories. We know calories don't count, but still it's important to mention this. One group had a breakfast that spiked their glucose levels. The other group had a breakfast that kept their glucose levels steady. What happened was in the group that had the spiky breakfast, they got hungry again after two hours, whereas the group that had the steady glucose breakfast didn't get hungry for five hours. So, yeah, of course, the curve of your breakfast really determines how you're gonna feel for the rest of the day and whether you're gonna feel in control and connected to your body Or whether walking by that bakery is going to give you an irresistible urge to buy all the cookies like it used to be for me. I used to have a Nutella crepe for breakfast every morning growing up, Mark. And by 10:30, I was starving.

I mean, Nutella crepe, yeah, that'll do it.

But I'm recovered now. I'm recovered. And if I really want a Nutella crepe, what I do is I have it after lunch or dinner as a dessert, and I have some vinegar before. so that's another hack.

You know, if you want something, vinegar on your cookies. Is that. Is that the thing?

Yeah, just pour vinegar. My friends love me when I come to parties. No, it's. It's. So it's having a, you know, the vinegar in the water before you eat the sweet thing, having the sweet thing after a meal, and also then using your muscles for 10 minutes. So your muscles are really your biggest Ally in reducing your glucose spikes. And so what I recommend, it's another hack. After your meals, use your muscles for 10 minutes. Top favorites include dancing to your three favorite songs really loud in your living room, going for a walk with your dog, doing the dishes, the laundry, whatever. Use your muscles. That way you'll curb the spike and you'll feel better.

That's a really important point. I think people don't realize this, but the data is so compelling on what you're saying, which is if you just take a walk after dinner for 15, 20 minutes, half an hour, you will see a dramatic change in your metabolism.

And your blood sugar. Absolutely. Absolutely. It's really incredible. And this works particularly well to combat the post-meal sleepiness that a lot of us feel. If you just use your muscles afterwards, you have all this energy again because you're not experiencing such a big crash. And if you can't go outside and you're just home and you're watching, for example, a TV show after dinner or a movie, people can get really creative. So you could do like, you could hold a plank, in front of your couch while you're watching the movie. You could get some kettlebells and do some bicep curls, whatever works, whatever floats your boat. That'll really help your body deal with the glucose coming through.

Amazing. What else? You've said 10 things. There's a lot more.

I know. I'll give you one more, but then the rest are in my book, Glucose Revolution. One more is putting clothes on your carbs. So what do I mean? Do not let your clothes on your carbs. No naked carbs. No naked carbs. No naked carbs. So, I need to- what's a naked carb? Aha. So, a naked carb is sugar or starch that you're eating on its own. Naked. You just eat it naked and it lands naked and it creates a big glucose spike. So, to put clothes on your carbs, what you do is anytime you eat something sweet or something starchy, you make sure to put some protein, fat or fiber on it. You put some clothes on that. So example, I'm going to take the chocolate cake example. I put Greek yogurt on it if I ever want it in the middle of the day. If you want a piece of sourdough bread, put some avocado on it, put some butter on it. If you ever want to eat some rice, have some eggs with it, some smoked salmon, some greens that you saute.

That's brilliant. I think the idea that we need to not be eating any of this stuff in a way that spikes our blood sugar is key. And what we're learning, what you learn through measuring your blood sugar for years and tracking everything is how different foods affect you. But the interesting thing is that what might affect you might not affect somebody else and what affects somebody else might not affect you. So can you talk about the differences in glucose metabolism from person to person, depending on their genetics and even their microbiome?

Absolutely. So when I started discovering the world of glucose monitoring, I set a few of my friends up with one as well, and we tested the same foods. So for example, you know, we would eat the same cookie and then compare our glucose spikes. Turns out mine were always bigger than other people's. And I was like, darn it, I really love cookies. And so I started thinking, you know, what does this mean? Why is my spike so much bigger than my friend Luna's spike? What's going on here? Well, many things could be going on. So as you mentioned, microbiome could be a factor, hydration level, tiredness, how well we had slept the night before, muscle mass, obviously, because your muscles soak up glucose, insulin sensitivity, so you know how metabolically healthy we are, and just many, many more things, the phase of your menstrual cycle, your stress levels. There's a lot of stuff going on there. So it was really interesting to notice what choices might be better for my glucose levels compared to other people, but I kept coming back to the fact that the science shows that the hacks work in all of us. So if me and my friend who both ate the cookie had both put some clothes on the cookie, let's say, you know, 10 almonds, both of our spikes would have been proportionately smaller than the naked cookie spike. So you have to keep that in mind. These principles work for all of us, but then if you have the opportunity to use a glucose monitor, you might discover much more personalized and in-depth, you know, preferences that your body has.

Yeah, you know, Jesse, I remember reading that Israeli study where they looked at the microbiome and how that uniqueness of each of our ecological community that we live in, which is our gut, that lives in us. Yeah. How that actually is so determinant of what happens with our metabolism. And we know, we know from animal studies, if you take the poop out of a skinny mouse and you put it in a fat mouse, the fat mouse will get skinny.

Yeah. Or in a diabetic, diabetic to not diabetic.

Yeah. If you take a healthy, metabolically healthy person, which there's not that many of us around anymore. There's about only 12 of us in America that are metabolically healthy. But if you find a person, good luck, and you transplant their poop into a diabetic, their blood sugar gets better. And I remember, I remember a case which I had years ago, I think I might have mentioned on the podcast once. of a gentleman who had type 2 diabetes. We really poorly controlled, sugars were well over 200 all the time. And we got 'em down to like 150, but we couldn't just get 'em all the way normal, even on a ketogenic diet. And one day he called me up and he said, Dr. Hyman, I'm having a lot of digestive symptoms. I'm bloated, I'm distended, I'm all these issues. And I said, okay, well, well, let's do some diagnostic workup, let's do a stool test or anything. But in the meantime, you know, while you're suffering, just try some charcoal to see if that can absorb some of these, these sort of the bloating and the gas and the toxins, which. Which can cause these symptoms. And he did. And then he called me back, says, Dr. Iman, I don't know what happened, but my blood sugar went to normal. I don't even understand. But. And I did understand because the microbiome plays a huge role in our metabolic health and something called metabolic endotoxemia, which means that the toxins produced by bad bugs in the gut when we eat the wrong things get absorbed and they cause inflammation. The inflammation causes to be. insulin resistant and that makes us more diabetic. I mean, it's just a whole cascade of vicious cycle. And so simply by absorbing the metabolic toxins in his gut from bad bugs, we were able to actually correct his blood sugar. So it's quite fascinating. It's not as simple as we think. It's just, oh, just eat this or don't eat that or exercise or don't exercise. It's really, it's kind of a personalized story. And I think there are universal principles, like you mentioned. I just want to loop back on something you said before as well because you talked about these sort of toast that happens when proteins and sugars in your blood and you become toast and you're literally toast. I mean, it's actually true. You're toasting your system. And there's a phenomenon called advanced glycation end products. And we measure this when we measure our average blood sugar through hemoglobin A1C, which is just measuring the proteins in hemoglobin getting glommed onto by sugar and forming this like crusty creme brulee, like chicken skin, that kind of, that phenomena is called the Maillard reaction. Happens inside your body, not just when you're cooking. And, and that, that is one of the hallmarks of aging is the abnormal proteins that form in the body that gum everything up. And this happens in your brain. It's called type three diabetes. It happens in your heart, your organs. It really is the phenomena that leads to rapid aging and and death. And then what's even funnier is that these things are called ages, Advanced ligation end products, and they, they bind to receptors on your cell called rages. So the ages make you rage, literally, and turn on all the inflammatory Downstream phenomena that, that we see as inflam aging. So it's such an important thing to understand. And regulating your blood sugar is probably the single most important you can do. I remember being at Canyon Ranch years ago, and there was a cardiologist that came Harvard and he gave a lecture and he said, you know, if you could take a group of hundred year old people and you could find a group with clean arteries, they'd have one thing in common. What would that be? They're insulin sensitive, meaning they're very good at keeping their blood sugar even without a lot of insulin. That's the key to longevity and healthy aging and not just that, but all these other conditions that you mentioned from acne to infertility to depression to panic attacks to fatigue, energy, insomnia, I mean, night sweats are even a common symptom. You know, men get night sweats too, and often it's because they have these hypoglycemic spikes and they can wake up with soaked sheets.

So really important to get your sugar dialed in. So that's one of the things that happens when we have a glucose spike. It's the toasting. And maybe I can mention something else that happens when our glucose levels spike. So every cell in your body needs energy to function. You know, your brain cells need energy to think, your eye cells to see, your toe cells to dance all night long. Like, every cell in your body is really hungry for energy. And the most easy place they get this energy is through glucose that we eat. And so as you digest a meal and glucose goes into your bloodstream, it heads to your cells to be converted to energy. And the little organelles that do this work are mitochondria. They take glucose, turn it into ATP, which is energy. So you might think, okay, well, if I need energy, then the more glucose I eat, the more energy I have, right? There must be a correlation just like that. It turns out that's not the case. If you overwhelm your mitochondria with too much glucose, which is the case when a glucose spike happens, your mitochondria don't get excited. They actually shut down. They're like, whoa, can't deal with all this stuff. Don't know what to do. I'm stressing out. I can't work anymore. Your mitochondria shut down and they get stressed and they release these things called free radicals into your cells. And free radicals, they harm everything that they touch. So if they touch your DNA, they might harm it and create a mutation that could lead to cancer later on. If they touch a cell membrane, they can break the cell membrane and damage the integrity of the cell. So your body's response to these free radicals is inflammation. And that's one of the ways that glucose spikes increase inflammation. The problem is in this case, if it becomes chronic inflammation, it's not good. And that is another thing that creates a terrain for chronic diseases. I mean, three out of five people are going to die of an inflammation based disease.

I mean, so this- I don't know if it's three, it's probably a hundred percent.

You think?

Actually, sure. I mean, unless you get hit by a truck or fall off out of a train or something, I think most of the people die from inflammatory related conditions because all aging itself leads to more inflammation through a whole series of mechanisms, including your blood sugar, including environmental toxins, including your microbiome, including latent infections, including our processed inflammatory diet, including chronic stress. I mean, all the things that we see around us all the time are all driving this inflammatory process. But sugar is, is sort of the king, queen, and prince of driving inflammation in your body. And so it's, it's, it's such an important thing. It's why I've been talking about this for decades, because as a doctor seeing patients and testing this stuff, but no one else was looking at it. It was like, wow, people are messed up. I would do glucose tolerance tests, not on diabetics, but on almost everybody who came in as a screening test for their metabolic health, because your blood sugar can be perfectly normal and you can still be a mess, right? Yeah, absolutely.

And I think that's an important lesson.

We've had Dr. Casey Means talk about this on the podcast, talking about how you know, there's patients who literally have perfectly normal blood sugars, but their insulins are so high that they're keeping their.

Blood sugar normal, and that causes a whole other Cascade of problems. Yeah. Because I think insulin increases for 10.

Years before glucose, fasting glucose levels increase.

Yeah.

You know, yeah. I mean, the last thing that happens is your, is your fasting glucose going up.

Right?

Yeah. And then, and then the second thing that, you know, the second to last thing is your fasting your fasting glucose goes up, but then your, your insulin, I mean, your glucose after you eat goes up. But that's, again, a late stage phenomena. Earlier stages are high insulin after two hours, then high insulin fasting. And then it's like, so we're, we're.

Getting on the train so late in medicine. We need to think about how to go upstream to get to the cause. Yeah. And for a long time, we only thought diabetics should worry about this, you know, only if you have diabetes, should you then think about managing your glucose levels. And by the way, to manage it just Eat better and exercise more. I mean, come on. We need to give people the hacks, Mark. We need everybody to be using this. It's so easy. Yeah.

They eat better. People have no clue what that means. The other thing I wanted to sort of jump into was hormones. Right? We talked about aging. We talked about heart disease. But, you know, one of the real problems with sugar is, is screwing up our hormones, both for men and women. And can you take us down how that works and what why it's so common to see such hormonal chaos in this country.

Absolutely. I think one of the conditions that is becoming more and more prevalent, especially in my community, I'm noticing that the numbers are increasing so much, is polycystic ovarian syndrome. And this is a condition where women stop getting their period, their ovaries become burdened with cysts, They start displaying masculine traits like hair on the chin, balding, et cetera. And this is something that often we're told to just medicate, oh, just take the pill and it'll fix it. It turns out actually that polycystic ovarian syndrome is a disease of too much insulin.

Yeah.

And we know, yeah. And the way it works is fascinating. So when your body has too much insulin in it, it's not as good as it was before at converting male hormones into female hormones. so you end up with people who have uteruses who have this excess of testosterone in their body. Yeah. So their female hormones are just not working anymore.

Yeah. And you get, they grow beards.

Yes.

And they get acne.

You don't get a beard period anymore. Yes.

And, and they lose the hair on their head. So the, so women get bald. You ever see this kind of women with a big round middle and their hair's all thin and, like, looks like they're going bald on top. They got the little whiskers going. It's hard to believe, Mark.

It's really from sugar. Yeah, because they don't know that the reason this is happening is because of too much insulin. And the reason there's too much insulin is because their glucose levels are out of whack. And so what's really empowering, I think, is when women start applying the principles, the science backed stuff that I share, because they're able to get their period back within months. A few women even got pregnant, even though they had been told they were infertile. And this is so empowering because we have power. We have power. It starts in our plate. And this is really a message of hope. So anybody listening, like this can really benefit you and I hope you'll find a lot of relief in this information.

Yeah, it's not your DNA, it's your dinner.

I love that.

So here's the deal. In men, the opposite sort of thing happens. So what happens to men, right? What happens to men when they eat too much sugar and starch? is they actually produce, because they produce way more fat cells and the fat cells have a compound called aromatase, which converts testosterone into estrogen. And so the men get man boobs and they get soft skin and they lose the hair on their bodies. So they become more like women. So basically men become more like women. Women become more like men. It creates this massive chaos in the hormones. And I just wanna reinforce what you're saying because you say glucose. And most people, when they think of glucose, they think of sugar. But you should think of bread or sugar or corn flakes in exactly the same way. In fact, bread is the gold standard for measuring glycemic index. And it's worse than sugar. The score for bread is a hundred. The score for sugar is 80. So actually you're better off having the sugar than the bread. I would disagree, Marc, because in the.

Sugar there's also fructose and all the things we talked about, you know, the aging, the inflammation, fructose does it at an even higher rate than glucose alone.

That's true.

I would argue that if you have a choice between something starchy and something sweet, I would go for the starchy thing. But better even have some vegetables first, then some protein and fat, and then have the starchy thing. And maybe you won't even want to.

Have the sugary thing in the end. Yeah, I think that's fair. But I also say if you're gonna have starch, have starch that's in forms that are coming in a good package. So for example, I have a Japanese purple sweet potato at night. I love that. Which is starch, but it's got full of phytochemicals and fiber and vitamins and minerals and I eat the skin. So it's really actually a very healthy food. and it's quite different than eating white bread, which is also a starch. So starch is a starch is a starch. It really depends on where it's coming from and how it's metabolized.

Even oatmeal versus steel cut oats, profoundly different. Absolutely. And this is, so what I've been doing in my work is testing all these things on my own body and using a continuous glucose monitor, showing people the different spikes that happen. So I tested steel cut oats versus regular oatmeal and the steel cut. has a smaller spike. And same for bread. So white bread is far worse than something like sourdough, for example, which is worse than something like very dark pumpernickel bread that's all gooey and feels almost like a cake because it's so rich of fiber. Yeah, from Germany. So it's always a spectrum, right? You have to think within a category. There's different types of bread, different types of potatoes, different types of starch, and you can always make a choice to get better. And you can always add some fiber.

To it and some vinegar and go for a walk after. so basically throw some Metamucil and some vinegar on your food and you're good, right?

Pretty much, yeah, sounds delicious.

So tell us some of the surprising things, Jesse, that you learned about your own body and in researching this about what you thought was okay to eat but actually wasn't, or what you thought wasn't okay to eat but actually maybe was okay.

Well, as I mentioned, you know, I used to have donuts for breakfast. So I really got a cold shower in terms of nothing sweet first thing in the morning because first thing in the morning when your body is completely fasted, your glucose levels will respond incredibly fast to anything that you ingest. So I realized that if I wanted to eat something sweet, for example, a donut, I should never, ever, ever eat it on an empty stomach. I should always eat it after a meal.

Yeah.

Then in terms of other surprising things, I mean, oatmeal was a big one. 'Cause they even say oatmeal is for diabetics. I mean, there's all this information that's very confusing. Yeah.

Rice cakes.

Oh my God. Rice is not a health food. No, it's not. Rice cakes.

This is crazy. Brown rice cakes.

How could they be bad? I tested brown rice versus white rice.

Literally no difference.

Well, what if you put like nut butter on top? Then it's perfect.

That sounds really gross, but it probably works. I love it.

That's my favorite thing. I get the rice cakes and I put like, on the rice cake. I thought you meant put the nut butter on actual rice, like warm rice. No, no, no.

You get a rice cake and you put on the, the nut butter and it's, it's kind of good. I don't know how that works.

Then that works.

Yeah. Then that works. I think, I think so, so, so all the breakfast things are really in this country so geared toward extremely high levels of starch and sugar. And in fact, fruit juice. Yeah, fruit juice is terrible, you know, right? And, and I think people need to realize that the most important thing they need to do when they eat in the morning, eat plenty of protein, fat and fiber. Yes. Because those are the magic tricks to actually keep your blood sugar normal, protein, fat and fiber. And you have to learn what foods have protein, fat and fiber. It's a little bit of an education because, you know, as most people may not know, but it actually, it actually is the key to success. And you're basically saying eat protein, fat.

And fiber before you eat any starch or sugar, and that will mitigate all the results.

Exactly. Something else that was very surprising was oat milk.

Creates a big glucose spike because it's.

No more oatmeal lattes. The oat milk lattes, no way, huh?

People got really sad when I posted that test. I was like, I'm sorry, I know you guys love your oat milk, but it's just a big bowl of glucose. It's dessert. Have it as dessert. Don't have it first thing in the morning on an empty stomach. And then fruit was actually quite surprising to me, Mark, because I learned that fruit have been bred for centuries to be extra sweet and extra juicy and contain lots of glucose and fructose. especially grapes.

Yeah, grapes are the worst.

You eat 20 grapes, super big glucose spikes. So I learned that anytime I have fruit, always put clothes on it. I'm French, so grapes and cheese. I actually just posted that test yesterday on my Instagram, glucose goddess, if anybody wants to see it. If you add cheese to the grapes, the glucose spike is smaller because you're adding, you know, this fat. But it's still there. It's still there. But it's still there. Yeah. So have it as dessert.

Yeah.

So, pineapple, bananas, definitely always put some clothes on those. And I've really completely changed the way I ate, Mark. I mean, now for breakfast, I have leftovers. This morning I have leftover green beans and cauliflower and two eggs. I don't have to eat anymore. So, dinner for breakfast? Dinner for breakfast. Dinner for breakfast. I feel better than I ever have, and I'm older than I ever have. I feel so good. I don't have any cravings. I have energy throughout the day. I don't even drink coffee anymore because I have so much energy just naturally. I mean, I sleep amazingly. It's very powerful.

That's amazing. So you basically have learned how to hack. Now, what other foods you thought were bad for you that actually weren't so bad?

Well, there was this whole thing about fat is bad for you. Fat makes you fat, fat's not good. And I learned that actually that's not the case. What drives heart disease the most is fructose in your liver creating low density LDL. and that fat is actually your friend. And so I started putting way more avocado and avocado oils and olive oil and good fats like that, eating more fish. And that really helped stabilize my glucose levels. Other foods that I thought were bad that were actually good. I think it was mostly the other way around. It was lots of foods I thought were good that were actually bad. What about yourself? What did you discover?

Fruit. Yeah, fruit, right?

Yeah.

I think fruit. Fruit has, you have to be careful with fruit because it depends on the fruit. It depends on how, you know, sweet it is, how it was bread, the kind of fruit, you know, like when you, when you go kind of get a wild fruit, they're very sweet, but they're very, very small, you know? And I think, you know, oh, dried fruit is another big one.

Oh, dried fruit's terrible.

Yeah.

Dried fruit's like candy. You know, it is like candy. And now what I do, you know, when I want something fruity, I'll have one of your shakes, the, you know, the berries with nut butter and lots of nuts in them, chia seeds, almond milk, like that kind of stuff. And that makes for a very satisfying fruity little snack, but that contains all this extra protein and fat and fiber to minimize the spice.

Yeah, yeah, that's one of my favorite things. I call it a fat shake. So you basically take nuts of any kind, throw in a bunch of nuts like almonds, walnuts. You can take pumpkin seeds, chia seeds, flax seeds. hemp seeds and then throw in some berries and frozen berries. I put in cranberries in there, maybe throw some lemon in. Maybe I'll throw a couple of tablespoons of nut butter sometimes to make creamier. And you put in some non-sweetened macadamia milk. I hope macadamia milk's not bad because I use that a lot. I gotta check that out. You were telling me that's like oat milk. I'm like, oh boy.

Yeah, it comes from nuts, so it's fine.

That's good. Okay. And you blend it up and you can throw in greens in there. You can throw an avocado in there.

I feel like you can- Put some.

Cacao nibs on top. Oh yeah, cacao nibs are good. So you can make a really yummy smoothie that's basically not from processed powders, but actually from whole foods. I have that recipe in my book, Ultra Simple Diet. I'm sorry, the 10-Day Detox Diet. which has that recipe in it.

And I think you can add some protein powder too.

You can add some protein powder. And I think, you know, particularly in terms of muscle mass, it's really important. And the science is so clear on this that we need high quality protein in the morning, particularly to load up and build muscle synthesis. We need about 30 grams. And it has to be high quality protein, which it has to include amino acids that are found primarily in meat or animal products. Now, if you're a vegan, you have to figure out how to get those extra amino acids. You have to supply amino acid powders and add them in because if you don't have leucine, which is very low in plant proteins, you can't trigger protein synthesis. In other words, building muscle is critical. And you look at, I mean, not judgmentally here, but if you look at most vegans, they tend to lose a lot of muscle mass. and the longer they've been on a vegan diet, the worse their muscle loss is. And you go, oh, they're thin, they look good, their weight's great, but no, they're actually can be metabolically unhealthy. In fact, they can get what we call a tofi, which is thin on the outside, fat on the inside, or metabolically obese, normal weight, we call it, or otherwise called skinny fat.

Most commonly known as skinny fat.

Yeah, you look skinny, but you're really fat. And, and that actually is, is just as dangerous as, as, as actually being overweight in terms of risk for heart attacks, diabetes, strokes, all the same, same risk factor. So I, I think people need to understand that, that you gotta look under the hood. You gotta look at what's going on. So maybe you're, you're a vegan and you, you're like, okay, well, how am I gonna get protein in the morning? I don't, 28 meter. I have a whey protein shake, but what can I do? Well, you kind of have to look at your own biology and, and I encourage people to look at their Continuous glucose monitoring, I encourage people to measure fasting insulin, even measuring a two hour post meal insulin level, which most doctors will not order, but you can try to get them to order it. And if not, you can just, you know, maybe order it yourself. There are now companies where you can order stuff yourself that I think is really important. You can go to IHOP and have breakfast.

Yeah, you said that in your podcast with Casey or your Instagram live. You said just eat something that has a bunch of glucose in it, eat a bunch of rice. and then two hours later, go get your insulin, your glucose tested, and you'll know.

Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's really important. So the tips you gave are so important, you know, the sequencing of food. I mean, even if you have a glass of wine, I mean, the worst thing in restaurants, right? Because what do they do? You want to drink? Here's a bread basket. You know, it's like the worst possible.

Thing you could actually do for your health. If you think about it, if you're a restaurant owner and you want people to order a bunch of stuff at your restaurant, of course, that's what you do because you give them bread. They eat the bread first, big glucose spike, 90 minutes later they're crashing, so they're super hungry and they want to order dessert.

I mean, it's brilliant. Of course, of course. It's brilliant. Of course, exactly, exactly. And I wonder if they know that or if it's just sort of a habit, but it definitely, it's a sure way to get people to order more food. And I think drinking wine, the timing of the food when you eat what matters. It's not just about time-restricted eating, but it's even the sequence of eating in a meal. It's actually the combinations of the food that you eat, like you said, Don't eat naked carbs. That's a really important concept. The vinegar thing is a very cool hack. The walking after eating is really important. Getting your muscles to work and suck up the glucose, super important. Were there any other surprises or things you learned as part of your investigations, your scientific sort of diving into your own biology?

Maybe we can talk a little bit about alcohol because I think this is one of the places where context is very important to think about the fact that glucose is not everything. So if you just have a glucose monitor and you drink two bottles of wine, your glucose levels will stay steady. But, and they might even decrease actually because the alcohol is interfering with your liver's job to release glucose into the bloodstream. But the issue is you might think, oh, well, my glucose levels are steady. This must mean that this food is good for me. And on the completely opposite end of that spectrum, I discovered that when I exercised, I sometimes saw a glucose spike. Yeah. So, if I was just looking at my glucose, everything from the glucose lens, I would think, okay, wine, good for me, exercise bad for me. So, it's a great plan. How do I get on that health plan?

Let's see. A bottle of wine and skip the exercise. Okay, no? Perfect.

Well, then you'll have steady glucose levels, but you're going to get severely sick. And I realized, okay, There are some instances in which it's important to look beyond glucose. So in the case of alcohol, yes, it keeps your glucose level steady because it's hurting your liver. That's not a reason to drink alcohol. Similarly, when you exercise, you might see a glucose spike because your liver is releasing all this glucose so that your mitochondria can make energy. But the downsides of the glucose spikes, so the toasting, the inflammation, et cetera, are actually counteracted by all the positive sides of exercise. so in the balance, it's a positive effect on the body. So I learned. I learned about Nuance. You know, it became very important, and it's very interesting when you start diving into it. But you definitely need context. If you wear a glucose monitor for the first time, you need to have some information to make sure you understand these pitfalls.

You know, it's interesting. I had the same experience. I I had a good protein shake. My blood sugar, I had my continuous glucose monitor on. It was like. Maybe went up to 90 after my protein shake in the morning. I thought, I'm gonna go play tennis. And I really worked out hard. I had a great tennis game. And then I checked my glucose, my blood glucose, it's gonna be really good. I checked it and I was like, holy crap, it's 145. And I texted Casey right away. I was like, what's up with this? She's like, yeah, yeah, well that's normal because when you exercise, you increase cortisol, you increase your blood sugar. you increase adrenaline, you actually release glycogen from your muscles. So yes, when you're running from the tiger, you want to release a lot of glucose so you can fuel your muscles. But you know, the body doesn't really know that there's tennis. They just knows that you're running cuz.

You'Re chasing a tiger or you're being chased by a tiger.

Yeah.

On the topic of being chased by a tiger, I also saw a massive glucose spike after I gave a presentation to the whole company when I was working in Silicon Valley, and I was quite, quite stressed out. After the presentation, I checked my glucose levels and I just huge spike to 200, but very short and rapid spike. And that was because my body was preparing for me to run far away and fast from the tiger, so released all this glucose into my bloodstream. And it was really cool to just be able to see what was happening and to understand inner workings. And of course it got me just incredibly curious. And that's how this whole journey started.

Well, that's an important point you're making that stress alone causes you to have imbalanced blood sugar. And stress alone will release cortisol, which then causes you to increase your glucose levels and to become diabetic and to become more insulin resistant. So short term spikes of cortisol are great. You need them to wake up in the morning, go deal with any kind of urgently stressful situation, but it's the chronic low level stress and unmitigated, unremitting stress that actually causes us to have these metabolic problems down the road. So stress actually makes you gain weight, believe it or not.

Yeah. And poor sleep as well, Mark. So I discovered, I used to have a cappuccino every morning and I discovered that on the days where I was rested, the cappuccino wouldn't create a big spike. But then on the days where I was tired, the cappuccino would create a much bigger spike in my body. So I did the research and I found out that when you're not rested, your body has a harder time dealing with any influx of glucose into your system. So what I found out is that the days when I'm feeling tired, to put all the chances on my side to not create a big glucose roller coaster, always savory breakfast, like non-negotiable. And then I try to get in 10 minutes of high intensity exercise, you know, very soon after I wake up. So jumping jacks, whatever, put on a YouTube video, like 10 minute HIIT class. and this helps my body become more insulin sensitive and so I don't create this big spike from that cappuccino. Because what's so awful and so vicious is that when you're tired, you really crave sugar even more because you're feeling like it's going to give you energy. But the problem is that same sugar that you're going to eat will create a bigger spike than usual, putting you on the cravings roller coaster and then you're going to crave even more sugar. So anybody tired? Use the hacks even more. It's even more important.

I remember that. You know, I worked in the emergency room when I wouldn't sleep all night. I would, I mean, I literally would like go to the 11 o'clock at night shift. I would have a quadruple espresso, a half a pint of ice cream and a giant chocolate chip cookie. No.

And then I would go to work. No. Okay, so you were throwing shade on.

My Nutella crepe, but you were doing some pretty nice stuff too. It was, I was like jacking myself to get through the night so I could actually, stay up all night and see patients. And then I would, and I would kind of crash at three in the morning and, or two or three in the morning. I'd go to the McDonald's and I'd get an apple strudel and a bunch of french fries because, and it was the only thing open in the hospital in the middle of the night. And, and I, you know, I think the data is so clear that when you are sleep deprived, and they've done this with healthy and volunteers, your ghrelin levels or ghrelin levels go up, which makes you hungry. And the hormone that keeps you having a break on your appetite called pYY goes down. And so you end up in this, this double whammy where the thing that's supposed to make you stop eating is shut off and the thing that makes you wanna eat more and more goes.

Up just from lack of sleep. Yeah, and it's vicious because you feel like the sweet stuff is giving you energy, but then as we know, it's actually harming the long-term ability of your mitochondria to make energy. So, you know, you think that the apple strudel is giving you energy, it's.

Giving you pleasure, but long-term it's harming you. Amazing. So, so what, to close here, what is the, typical day in the life of a glucose goddess look like?

Okay, so let's see. Morning leftovers for breakfast. So as I mentioned for this morning, it was leftover cauliflower and green beans and onion, and then I had some eggs. Then what often happens to me, Mark, is that as I'm going for my walk in the morning, I'll see something that looks really tasty. Usually it's chocolate based. And so what I do now is that I buy the tasty thing, but I don't eat it right then. I tell myself I'll have it for dessert after my lunch. So before lunch, tall glass of water with some vinegar in it. Lunch is usually lots of greens, some nice protein, you know, I eat everything, so it's probably gonna be some meat or chicken or fish. And then I have the little sweet thing that I bought for myself. And then I go for a walk or I work out, so I do some exercise, whatever it is, or I dance around, do my laundry. And then for the evening, if I have friends over, what I'll do is I'll do a big plate of vegetables that people can munch on while I'm cooking. So, you know, in France we have this thing called crudité, which is raw vegetables, carrots, cucumbers, maybe with some hummus, some avocado. So people munch on that. And then for dinner, I'll serve more vegetables, some protein and fats that people will eat in seconds. And then some starches. So actually your purple Japanese potato really got me inspired. So I'll do that one next time. And people know to eat that last for sure. And then I get everybody up. We go for a walk around the block. So when people get back, they have a lot of energy and they help me clean up the kitchen.

It's as simple as that. There you go. That's so beautiful. And I think you're a great example. And it's important for people listening to understand that everybody's different. So you're basically a healthy, thin young woman.

Mm-.

But if you are not metabolically resilient, right, you, you've learned how to balance your blood sugar in the context overall metabolic health. But if you're very metabolically unhealthy, which accounts for 88% of Americans and everybody is sort of in that somewhere on the spectrum from mild to really severe to type two diabetes, you might not actually able to be able to eat some of the things that you're talking about yet. So the key is you can become metabolically resilient. But you have to go through that process first of making your muscle smarter, your insulin receptor smarter, lowering inflammation, fixing your microbiome, fixing your liver. And it's a lot of stuff to do, but it's easy to do. All you have to do is follow a very simple low sugar starch diet. And I, I've written a book called the 10 Day Detox Diet, which essentially is that. It's anti-inflammatory detoxifying. glucose balancing. And we, we, we had a woman who was on insulin for 10 years. And three days she was off for insulin in a, in a month, she lowered or three months, she lowered her A1C, which is average blood sugar from 11, which is stupid high, like it's dangerously high to normal 5.5.

Wow.

In just three months of her eating real food that balanced her blood sugar. So. Do you think everybody should try one of these continuous glucose monitors?

I'm divided, to be honest, because first of all, they're expensive right now. I think they're very, very, very interesting. I think if you can afford it, 100%. If you can't afford it, use my hacks because they'll get you a long way to balancing your glucose levels without necessarily needing one. But if you can, yes, it's life-changing to be able to speak to your body and see what's going on on the inside. It's very motivating. It opens a door of curiosity and excitement, and then you can see the hacks in action. It's very cool. I mean, it changed my life, so of course.

Yeah, I think people can do it. I think some people need to do it long term, but sometimes you can just try for two weeks or four weeks and start to really tune into what's happening on the inside. It's just the beginning of this year of Quantified Self. I think you've been a great example of someone who's really taken the bull by the horns and actually looked at what's going on. change your own health and your own understanding of biology. And you came into this through your own doorway of mental health issues. So take us through your journey. What was going on for you? How did you figure out that it was the blood sugar that was a problem and what you learned from that?

So I was a happy and naive 19 year old thinking I was invincible. And then a freak accident happened. I was in Hawaii on the island of Maui. And I jumped off a waterfall thinking it would be a fantastic idea. Turns out it wasn't. And one of my vertebrae exploded just by hitting the water. Oh, F, yes, yes, it was intense. So I had, you know, very difficult surgery and then physical symptoms. I mean, I was in a lot of pain. But then what really stayed with me was mental health struggles. I started having this thing called depersonalization, which is kind of a cousin of dissociation. And at the tender age of 19, Mark, I just had one goal. It was to wake up in the morning feeling good because I felt completely broken. I had no idea what was happening. I felt lost. I felt alone. I didn't understand the signals my body was sending me. So I started a journey to try to figure out how to understand and communicate with my body. And that's actually, yeah, and that's actually why I went to grad school and did biochemistry first, because I wanted to understand the inner workings of the body system. And then I moved to Silicon Valley, worked in the field of genetics. Genetics didn't really offer any answers to me because your genetics, you know, they can help you understand what diseases you might have a slightly higher risk of getting, but they don't tell you what to do to wake up tomorrow feeling good.

No.

No. But while I was there, serendipitously, we had this internal research pilot at the company, and they offered five employees to try out a continuous glucose monitor, which is the device that had been usually reserved for diabetics that you wear on the back of your arms.

Yeah.

And that measure your glucose levels continuously. And I had a hunch this would be a fantastic idea, so I volunteered. I put the device on and then all of a sudden I could see the inside of my body on my phone. And it was really light bulb moment for me, like in the cartoons when the light bulb turns on above the head. Mark, it was, I could finally speak to my body. I would do something and get a response. I would drink a cappuccino, sometimes there would be a glucose spike, sometimes there wouldn't be. Eat something, spike, eat something else, no spike. And then what changed the game is when I realized that glucose spikes could trigger these episodes of depersonalization in me. So one day I was just going about my business and I felt this sort of wave of stress, anxiety, and sort of leaving my body come over me and I checked my glucose levels and What I saw was the biggest spike I had ever seen because I had just eaten a donut on an empty stomach.

How high did it go?

It went to 185.

What? That's really high, guys, for everybody listening. It should never go over 120.

Yeah, it's really, really high. And I had, you know, I was just in the throes of understanding what glucose was, what I should be doing, but that cemented it for me. I was like, okay, this is this is the solution, this is the key, this is the root cause that I need to address. And so I learned, Mark, how to flatten my glucose curves. And as a scientist, I delved into all the research, I read all the papers, I had like a million tabs open on my computer, and I discovered all these incredible hacks that I could put in place in my life, very easy, simple solutions, like eating my food in the right order, incorporating vinegar, having a savory breakfast, etc. that allowed me to stabilize my glucose curves. And as I did this, I healed myself. And not only did I heal the mental health stuff, I also healed things that I didn't even know were a problem. Like all of a sudden, I wasn't tired at 3:00 p.m. Or I didn't even crave donuts anymore, you know? I just, I realized that my body was functioning much, much better this way. So I started sharing it with my friends, my family, they got better, and then they asked me to put it online so they could share it with more people. And I started the Instagram account, and then it, you know, grew far beyond anything I had ever imagined because I realized 90% of us are walking around with these glucose spikes happening in our body without knowing it.

Yeah.

Yet we're very familiar with the consequences, the cravings, the fatigue, the mood swings, the weight gain, and optimizing our glucose levels allows us to reverse all those symptoms.

Absolutely. You know, it's so, it's so important. And, and your book is so important because it teaches us really how to reimagine our relationship to our own bodies and actually democratize health information, putting you at the center of your health care, not the health care system or your doctor, and empowers you with real data in real time to adjust your behavior to optimize your health, which is revolutionary. This is what we call the whole quantified self movement that's now emerging, whether it's your aura ring or your eight sleep mat or your Apple Watch or Whoop or Fitbit, I mean, these are all technologies that are coming and there's gonna be more. You're gonna be able to soon plant a sensor in your blood that won't just measure your blood sugar, but maybe a thousand different metabolites and we'll be able to get AI helping us sort through it all and make sense of what to do and tell us what to do and what not to do and what to eat, to sleep better, feel better, make more muscle. I mean, just, it's gonna be quite amazing. And this is just the, the beginning of this absolute revolution in healthcare. If you love that last video, you're gonna love the next one. Check it out here. When we heat up something on the stove, we know it's going to be hot, we don't burn ourselves. So, we actually avoid certain behaviors. When we go out into the sun, we know to put on sunscreen, it becomes second nature. I think food as medicine is something that can become second nature. You have to be exposed to the basic.