The BITTER TRUTH About Sugar & How It WRECKS Your Health! | Mark Hyman

It's the sugar that's added by corporations to our diet that causes the problem. The insulin works in your body to keep blood sugar down until it doesn't work anymore.

Help us understand, put it in context or any stats that you might have to really help people understand that actually sugar is playing a major role in people dying early and being sicker in their life.

Absolutely. I mean, you know, we all were trained and I was trained because I'm old now. I was trained in the era when It was fat that was the boogeyman. Fat was gonna make you fat. Fat was gonna cause heart disease and strokes. Fat was gonna make you sick and fat. The truth is that it's not fat, it's sugar. And that I've written about a lot in the blood sugar solution, in the 10-day detox diet, in food, what the heck should I eat, and the Pegan diet. I mean, there's plenty out there about this sugar issue from my perspective. And the biology of sugar is fascinating because historically we only consumed about 22 teaspoons a year if we were lucky and found maybe some honey or we had a lot of berries, we get a little rush of sugar. Or maybe we're like the Nepalese honey hunters where they had to literally climb a tree 100 feet high with a smoking bush to get the honey out of the tree. Imagine if you had to climb a tree with a smoking bush 100 feet to get a cookie. But now we are living in a sea of sugar and the average American eats about 152 pounds of sugar per year per person, 133 pounds of flour per year per person, and we'll get into why flour may be worse than sugar. I'm talking about wheat flour, whole wheat flour, regular flour, any kind of flour, and why that is causing havoc in our biology. So you ask the question, what does it do when we consume this much sugar? Well, if you're consuming a berry here, a little bit of honey there, not a problem. Our bodies are designed for starvation. So whenever we got to see a lot of calories or a lot of starch or a lot of sugar, the body knew exactly what to do to get through the winter. It would store those calories in your belly, and it would put on a lot of belly fat. And this is what bears do. I mean, I was in Alaska. I remember with my daughter kayaking a few years ago, and we went to Admiralty Island, which has the highest concentration of grizzly bears. And they were fishing for salmon. You could, you could go to this one little spot. you could stand there used to humans, and they were fishing for salmon, and they wouldn't eat the salmon all day long, and they wouldn't really gain that much weight. And then in the summer, they'd go up in the mountains, and they would eat the berries, and they eat literally hundreds of pounds of berries, and they would gain 500 pounds. Then they would go to sleep all winter. And basically they would become diabetic and hypertensive and overweight, but then they would just live off that all winter. The problem is we just keep eating all winter. We don't have winter. We basically just eat all winter, and so we're consuming massive amounts of calories in the form of starch and sugar that are driving this ancient pathway to store belly fat. Now, why is belly fat bad? Well, it turns out the belly fat is the fat around your organs. It's the visceral fat. It's the fat that coats your liver, your kidneys, your intestines, all this fat. It's not the subcutaneous fat or the fat on your butt or your thighs. It's the belly fat. And that fat is so active, it's not just there holding up your pants. It produces all kinds of molecules. One of them we've heard about, which are called cytokines. you might have heard of the cytokine storm. Why is about 80% of the deaths caused or occur in COVID in people who are overweight or obese? Because they are literally a firestorm waiting to happen. Their fat cells make cytokines, particularly one called interleukin six. And this is fuel for the fire, not just for COVID, but for all chronic diseases, high blood pressure, heart disease, cancer, dementia, kidney disease. All these chronic illnesses are the result of this belly fat. this visceral fat, which is producing hormones, neurotransmitters, inflammatory molecules. And it literally, when you get the fat in those cells, in your belly fat cells, because of the way the body works with high insulin levels, the insulin lets the sugar and the fuel into the fat cells, but it doesn't let it out. So it's like a one-way turnstile on the subway. All the calories get in, but they don't get out. So basically you shut down what we call lipolysis, which is fat burning. so by eating sugar, you literally shut down your ability to burn the fat off your body. Second, and I don't just mean the fat you eat, the fat off your body, and the second is it slows your metabolism. Third, it actually creates inflammation. Fourth, it drives horrible hormonal changes in men and women that, you know, make basically men into women and women into men. You get men with men boobs and you get women with facial hair and hair loss on their head because of the changes in the hormones that happen from the visceral fat. And then you get shrinkage of your brain in the hippocampus. goes down, so the memory center goes down. That's why we're calling Alzheimer's type 3 diabetes. And if that weren't bad enough, it also fuels cancer cells. Cancer loves sugar. So basically you're fueling every disease that is resulting from sugar that causes chronic disease, heart disease, cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer's, all the things that we see as we age, high blood pressure, kidney disease, and more. And so, and when we sort of take a step back and we look at, wow, why are we seeing in America, major advances in science and the most money by a factor of two or three or four that other countries spend on health care. And we're seeing worse and worse and worse results. I mean, you, the US has the worst COVID outcomes. Why? Because we're the sixth population. Why? Because we eat too much sugar and flour. And so people really need to understand that this is something that is within their grasp to fix and that sugar is not only harmful in the sense of, of the volumes of sugar we're eating and the consequences, but it's also highly addictive. And we'll get into talking about that. So in short, when you eat starch and sugar, it turns on all the mechanisms in your body for disease and death.

In short, it's gonna kill you.

I know, I'm sure. It's so simple. Just, now, but I would say, Drew, I would say that Paracelsus, who's one of the fathers of, you know, Greek medicine, ancient medicine, said, he said, the dose makes the poison. So, is having one scoop of ice cream occasionally gonna kill you? No. Is having a little bit of chocolate gonna kill you? No. I'm talking about the pounds and pounds of added sugar to our diet. Every single thing in our diet has sugar in it. Your Prego tomato sauce has more preserving of sugar than two Oreo cookies. You know, having your orange juice, which is supposed to be healthy, is like basically drinking a can of soda. So we really need to take a step back and look at all the added sugar to our diet. It's not the sugar we added when we're cooking something. It's the sugar that's added by corporations.

To our diet that causes the problem. And I think that's a great place to start because so many people feel like, but Dr. Hyman, I'm not eating a bunch of candy. I don't have Twix in my house. I don't have Snickers. I don't have all this stuff that you would take. I don't eat a lot of baked goods. So break down a few other things and let's start with breakfast. and give us some examples. You mentioned orange juice, for example, and that's even a more challenging form of sugar because it's a liquid form, right? Now, in the context of this, again, the dose makes the poison. So we're talking about people doing this day in and day out, year over year, for 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, 40 years, and that's how we end up in this chronic disease epidemic. So walk us through the day, help people understand that even if they're not eating a lot of candy and baked goods, they're still getting these pharmacological doses of sugar as they continue to eat.

Yeah, these are pharmacological doses. That is exactly right, Drew. These are pharmacologic doses, massive doses that our biology has never been used to eating. And we think, oh, we know we're not getting that much sugar, but I was in the movie Fed Up and there was a great graphic where they showed you what you had for breakfast, lunch and dinner and how all had added sugar. So for breakfast, cereal, right? We're eating cereal for breakfast. Oh, hell, cereal is healthy. Even the healthiest cereal is pretty much pulverized flour, which is just like sugar. So, in Honey Nut Cheerios, which sounds like a healthy honey nut Cheerios sounds healthy, is probably one of the worst in terms of its glycemic index in terms of raising your blood sugar based on data that is coming out of levels. And Casey means work with her company looking at continuous glucose monitoring. So cereal is basically 75 sugar, and it shouldn't be called breakfast. It should be called dessert. Not only that, what else do people eat for breakfast? They have their frappuccino, lappalappalattes with a million calories of sugar in there. You know, I think the average large grande or whatever the venti has probably two or times the amount of sugar as you see in a Coca-Cola, for example. And we're having that for breakfast or we're having a muffin or a bagel, we're having French toast or pancakes or bread or toast. Those are all highly absorbable forms of starch or sugar that are just terrible for you. And then for lunch, you know, we might have a sandwich, we might have a glass of juice, we might have potato chips, we might have salad, but of course we're gonna have salad dressing on it, but most of the salad dressing is full of sugar if you look at prepared salad dressings. So you're getting flour and chips and potato, you're getting all these forms of starch and sugar that are doing the same thing. And dinner, the same thing. You know, we'll often eat potatoes and rice and pasta and bread and we might think we're not getting that much sugar, but we're getting a lot of sugar. And of course, you know, if we want dessert, we're getting even more. So it's just there all the day and we're literally mainlining it all day long. And, you know, I didn't really mention this earlier, Drew, but I'm working on a book called Young Forever. about longevity and aging. And one of the key mechanisms of aging is our nutrient sensing systems. So we have these key systems in our body. I'll just name them, but don't get hung up on the names, CMPK, mTOR, and sirtuins, which are these master regulators of our biology and of aging, longevity, and they're governed by sensing the nutrients in your bloodstream. So when you have high levels of sugar, it turns on all the wrong signals. It turns on all the signals of rapid aging and disease and death. when you actually get rid of the starch and sugar and you lower those inputs to those nutrient sensing signaling molecules, you literally reverse all of the kind of signs and symptoms of aging.

You know, we were talking about some mainstream cereals and foods that are out there and how they have a lot of added sugar. I think another area that's also useful for people that are typically a lot of listeners of your podcast, they're very much into health and they think of them as very health conscious. They shop at Whole Foods and Trader Joe's. and it's so important to be aware of this topic of sugar because even many of the better for you categories of foods, they may not have high fructose corn syrup, but they are filled with things like cassava flour and tapioca flour and these other things, and they can have just as much, even though they're well intentioned, and I appreciate them trying to do that, but there's a cereal brand that I'm looking at right now, I'm not gonna name any names, and it has, if you look at the amount of total net carbs in there, even though it doesn't have a lot of the junk that maybe Honey Nut Cheroos has, it still has the amount of same equivalent sugar inside of that. So even if somebody doesn't think, well, I'm not eating a lot of the processed foods that are out there, if you're eating a lot of these health brands, which have become very pervasive, this is still something that you want to pay attention to. And Mark, one of my favorite stories is that some of my close friends all have been having babies in the last few years. And many of the women, many of the women who pay so much attention to their diet and their lifestyle were very surprised when they came back with a diagnosis of gestational diabetes. And they thought, I'm eating really healthy. And it's just another reason why this is something that everybody should be paying attention to.

You're so right, Drew. The pervasiveness of the starch and sugar in our diet and everything is so great. And all these healthy for you brands have come around. Nut milks, gluten-free desserts, alternative sweeteners, they're all attempts to try to deal with the fundamental problem in our culture, which is sugar addiction. So, they want to swap out something that's really bad for something that's maybe a little bit better. But it turns out that gluten-free cake and cookies is still cake and cookies.

Right?

If you're having a food that is full of refined pulverized anything, even if it's a whole food ingredient, right? Pulverized whole wheat flour is still pulverized whole wheat flour. And that flour has a large surface area, gets quickly absorbed.

So whether it's cassava flour or tapioca.

Flour or brown rice flour, I mean, you know, there's all these pastas now with brown rice and so forth. They're, they're not that great. They're actually high glycemic foods and they may be a little bit better. They may have a little more nutrients and maybe a little bit, you know, sort of, better, but it's more like a wolf in sheep's clothing. And I think we need to be very conscious of the fact that we should be eating real whole food. It's really pretty simple. And I, I, I, people, what do I eat? What do I eat? I mean, I've written a bazillion books on it, but at the end of the day, it comes down to one question, which is, I, I came up with this when I was lecturing at this, at this church saddleback in California, which is, I was talking to Christian audiences. It's really simple to Pharaoh and tea. Ask yourself, did God make this or did man make this? Did God make a Twinkie? Yes, did God make an avocado? Yes, did man make an avocado? No, it's so easy to figure out what to eat if you just ask yourself a simple question, who made this? And if it's highly processed, if it's many steps from the field to the fork, and you can't recognize what you're eating, it's in original form, basically you pull a sweet potato by the ground, you put it in the oven, it's a sweet potato, oh, it's a sweet potato. Or you get a piece of chicken, it's a chicken, I mean, yes, it's cut up, but it's like you can kind of recognize it's a chicken as opposed to some weird chicken-like substance that I had when I was having one of those meals ready to eat, those MREs that the military eat when I was in Haiti. I was like, where's the chicken on the label? There's no chicken. It was a chicken-like substance. So I think we need to eat real whole foods and get rid of those, all those kind of things. And if we want a treat or sweet, make it yourself. Make it yourself. I mean, we have a food, what the heck should I cook book, cookbook, book, whatever. And India is a great recipe for cholava, which is made from sesame seeds and nuts and got a little honey and sweetener, but it's, it's Even though it's actually good for you even in small amounts and it's something you can make yourself. Now, we said people can eat whatever they want as long as they make it themselves. If you want french fries, make it yourself.

You want a chocolate chip cookie, make it yourself. Yeah, and just to soften that a little bit, because you know, having been friends with you and business partners over the years, it's not like you don't dabble in some of these other foods that are there. And it's not that you don't eat out or that you don't get packaged foods from the grocery store. It's just that it's not the base of your diet. It's not the base. You're not eating it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. when you're having it, it's as close to whole food ingredients that are part of it, right? Like you'll have occasionally like a protein powder that you'll use in your smoothies and other things.

Yes. Great.

It was made in a factory, but you're looking at the ingredients inside of there. Those things are whole foods largely.

Ingredients. Right.

That are ingredients that are a part of it. So, Mark, this is a great opportunity to go into the different types of sugar. Sugar has many different names and there's also artificial sweeteners that are out there that are not exactly sugar but are trying to make up for that and there's natural sweetener alternatives that are out there. So let's start off with the natural sweetener category. Break down some of the common natural sweeteners out there and what your take is on some of those popular sweeteners.

Well, first of all, I'm just going to say that we should think about what Shakespeare said, which is a rose is but a rose by any other name. when it comes to sugar and all the different kinds of sugar, basically you need to think about them in much the same way and with a few exceptions. Unlike fat, you know, there's trans fat, saturated fat, monounsaturated, polyunsaturated, all profoundly different effects on your biology. Sugar is sugar is sugar, whether it's from honey or maple syrup or whether it's from brown sugar or from refined sugar or sucanat or whatever, like all kinds of raw cane sugar, whatever, whatever, whatever, whatever. It's all pretty much the same. I'm gonna give you a caveat around that. So that's really important to understand. You need to think about it as pretty much equivalent with a couple of exceptions. One is fructose. Now fructose is a naturally occurring sugar. It's combined in table sugar with glucose, with a powerful bond. When you have high fructose corn syrup, it contains glucose and fructose, but there's more fructose, up to 55 to 75% of the, for example, high fructose corn syrup will be fructose, but it's free fructose. It's liberated, it's easily quickly absorbed. And then when you have fruit juice or you have soda or you have things with high fructose corn syrup, it creates really profound changes in your liver. It causes fatty liver, raises your triglycerides, It doesn't raise your insulin level, it doesn't raise your blood sugar directly, but it will do it indirectly and it will lead to even worse downstream consequences. So it's probably the most evil thing you could be consuming is high fructose corn syrup. That's a never consumed food. If I see anything with high fructose corn syrup, I never stick it in my mouth. Now, will I have an occasional small glass of fruit juice? Yes. But it's an occasional treat and it's some kind of like passion fruit juice or something fun that I want to try. It's not a daily staple. if you're having fruit itself, yes, it's got fructose in it, but it's in the matrix of the fruit. So it's got fiber, vitamins, minerals, phytochemicals seems to offset one, the rate of absorption and two, the downstream effects. So it's important to understand fruit is fine. Again, not eating pounds and pounds of fruit a day, but fruit as part of your normal diet. Now, what about maple syrup or honey or agave, which sounds kind of cool, or table sugar or brown sugar. They're more or less equivalent. Honey is more fructose. Agave is almost pure fructose. So I would pretty much stay away from agave and put that in the high fructose category. High fructose corn syrup category. Even though it's in all the healthy foods, it's considered healthy and natural. Just because it's natural doesn't mean it's healthy. Right? Arsenic is natural. It doesn't mean it's healthy. So we're gonna be very conscious about what we're consuming. and then if you're using those, I encourage you to use them when you're cooking food. If I'm making some special like Thai thing or something, I might wanna put a tablespoon of brown sugar. I'll use coconut sugar 'cause it's actually a little bit better. It's a little lower glycemic index. It's sort of marginally better, but it's not a free food. So coconut sugar is what I have in my house. For example, if I wanna add sugar to a dish to flavor it somehow and I'm cooking, but I don't add a half a cup or a cup. I'll put a teaspoon or a tablespoon in. And in the whole dish, it's not very much. So, and if do I have pancakes occasionally? Yeah. I mean, there's a pancake recipe in the Pegan diet, which I love from Himalayan Tartere Buckwheat, which is the chai pancake buckwheat pancake mix recipe. And yeah, I'll use a little maple syrup as a treat occasionally, probably two or three times a year, if that. so it's not that you never have it, it's just be very conscious about what you're doing and enjoy it, but don't make it a staple in your diet.

Let's cover a couple other ones that are popular these days in this category of sugar alternatives. Let's start off with the monk fruit and get your thoughts on monk fruit and then maybe like allulose, which is another sweetener that's popular. So monk fruit and allulose, and then we'll talk about the sugar alcohol categories next.

Yeah.

So there's a lot of artificial sweeteners, right? I want to sort of touch on that because there's, there's non-caloric sweeteners out there as a category. And that includes what you just mentioned, monk fruit, allulose, but also includes things like stevia, which is from a plant that also includes aspartame and saccharin and sucralose and all these other artificial sweeteners. All the artificial sweeteners as a category. like aspartame, saccharin, and sucralose have been shown to one alter the microbiome, which is the bacteria in your gut, in a way that causes you to gain weight. And two, in large studies have been shown to be associated with, now we can't prove cause and effect, but associated with obesity and diabetes. There could be the people who are overweight drink more diet sodas because they're trying to lose weight, and that's why. But it seems to me there's more of a causative link based on some of the mechanistic data we've seen. basically you want to stay away from that. Also there's something called the cephalic phase insulin response. What that means is that when you are thinking about sugar, you release insulin. Now you're going, how could that be? Well, you've heard of Pavlov's dogs. He trained them when they heard the bell to salivate because they knew they were going to get food. So he'd give them food, ring the bell, give them food, ring the bell. And then he'd ring the bell, no food, they'd still salivate. that happens to us. Essentially, when we ring the bell of sugar on our tongue with the artificial sweetener, it sends a message to our brain, sugar's on the way. What does our body do? It kicks up insulin. Insulin is the fat storage hormone. Insulin makes you hungry. Insulin causes your body to put on that visceral fat and create inflammation and hormonal chaos and make you hungry and create all these diseases of aging. so they're not a free food. Monk fruit and allulose are typically better, and those are the ones I tend to use and recommend. Stevia can be okay for some people, but most of the stevia out there has been processed by Coca-Cola and Pepsi and Cargill in the form of Truvia or PureVia, which are an extract of stevia. They remove the bitter alkaloids, which actually may be beneficial. from the plant and they call it Reb A or Riboside A. So you really don't want to have that. That's kind of the artificial natural sweetener if you know what I mean. They're the highly processed. So you want to stay away from those. Then what about sugar alcohols? Sugar alcohols are another category that people are using whether it's erythritol, xylitol, maltitol. Those can be really problematic. They're large sugars, they don't get absorbed, so they taste sweet, but they don't.

Actually go across your intestinal barrier.

Now, when you are eating these sugars, if you have a microbiome that's not super healthy, which is probably most Americans, it causes fermentation of the sugars. So you end up basically with a brewery in your gut that can produce more disturbances and bad bacteria and bloating and distension and diarrhea. I mean, I personally had an experience with that. This was probably 20 years ago when these sugars were coming out on the market. and someone gave me a chocolate bar, which was a zero sugar chocolate bar. And I was seeing patients at Canyon Ranch in the afternoon, and I ate the entire chocolate bar. I'm like, it's free food. It's chocolate. I can eat it. No sugar. And I ended up in the bathroom all afternoon, my stomach going crazy, bloating, distension, diarrhea. It was terrible. So you don't wanna be doing that. So bottom line, if you're gonna look for something sweet, eat real sugar, have honey, maple syrup, coconut sugar, even a little regular sugar occasionally is fine. If you're wanting things to sweeten without any calories, try monk fruit or allulose. Stay away from the rest of the garbage.

So Mark, as a physician, when you're working with a patient and you see that their metabolic health labs, and you can maybe touch on that just big picture, what some of the typical things are that you're looking for to see, Is this patient basically have excess sugar in their diet? Not at a healthy, reasonable level. What do you look for and then how do you begin the process of helping them treat that issue and any symptoms that might be related to it?

It's a great question. So as a doctor, one, I've learned I can literally look at people now and pretty much predict their lab tests by just looking at their body type, their body shape, and a lot of other subtle clues, sort of like blink after you've seen tens of thousands of people with the same phenomenon, the same syndrome, you basically can tell what's going on. So when you're looking at lab tests, it's super helpful. They point to the emerging changes that happen over time when you start to eat too much starch and sugar. First, what happens is you start to see a rise in insulin. Now, most doctors never check insulin. It is the single most important test period that you can do to figure this out. Fasting insulin, yes, it's important. But the best test is a sugar challenge followed by insulin measurements at 30 minutes, maybe one and two hours. If your insulin spikes, that means you are insulin resistant. That means your body's producing more and more insulin just to get your blood sugar down. That is going to drive a whole series of changes for often for decades before you even see your blood sugar go up. and then you'll see your blood sugar go up. And that may be not be 70 or 80, it may be 95 or 100 or 110, you know you're in trouble. We also look at inflammation called C-reactive protein. We can tell people are more inflamed when they have metabolic syndrome or pre-diabetes. We look at their cholesterol, we see high triglycerides, low HDL, we see small cholesterol particles, we see oxidized LDL, and we see high uric acid. My friend David Perlmutter just wrote a book called Drop Acid, which is not about psychedelic drugs, it's about uric acid. acids, which is a phenomena that results from eating too much fructose in the diet and also sugar. And that creates all kinds of havoc and inflammation. We can also look at liver tests. We see fatty liver and elevations in liver tests. We see changes in kidneys. We see protein in the urine sometimes on tests. And then we see changes in hormones. For women, we see increases in certain hormones related to testosterone, which can cause facial hair and hair loss and menstruating women can cause infertility and acne. and they get high levels of something called DHEAS or dihydroandrostenedione, forget it. They have high levels of DHEAS. And in men, you can see low testosterone. I saw a guy yesterday who had a testosterone that was lower than most women because he was such a big dude and had such a big belly. His testosterone was 37 when it should have been 800 or 900. And, you know, anything under 200 is considered really bad. So he had the testosterone of a female, not even an old man. And so, this is what happens when you start to eat too much starch and sugar, your whole metabolic pathways get into this chaotic pattern. And, I've written a lot about this. There's a great guide that's online called How to Work With youh Doctor to Get what yout Need where I list all the tests you can look at.

To see if you're eating too much sugar and what to do about it, what they mean. Yeah, and we'll link to that PDF in the show notes that anybody can find. Or, talk about them once you know where the patient is. Talk about the typical protocol that you use to bring health back into their life.

Well, honestly, Drew, I'm very embarrassed by what I do because I get paid a lot of money for really simple advice, which everybody should know and is kind of common sense, but it's eat real food and that's it. It's like, and what do I mean by that? Well, you want to eat food in its whole unprocessed state. You want to eat food that's low in starch and sugar. You want to dramatically cut or eliminate or avoid flour and sugar from your diet. Does it mean never? No, it doesn't mean never. But it means if you're, for example, if you're 300 pounds and diabetic, yeah, it means never until you get your metabolism straightened out. Then you have more metabolic flexibility. For example, I have a fair bit of metabolic flexibility. You know, I went and played tennis yesterday really aggressively for an hour. and I had a piece of halva, which is like a Mediterranean Middle Eastern dessert with sesame seeds and honey and pistachios. So it's got like protein and fat and, but it's got honey, but I got a little piece of it and it was fine because I had it after a meal and it was in the context of an overall meal that wasn't going to be absorbed very quickly. So you want to make sure you're cutting out all the things that are driving it. Liquid sugar calories have to go. So one is what you cut out. starch, sugar, flour, liquid sugar, calories, artificial sweeteners, then what do you put in? You want a plant-rich diet. So what do you put in? You want a plant-rich diet, what I call the Pegan diet, which is not plant-based but plant-rich meaning most of your diet should be plant foods, colorful plant foods, lots of fruits and veggies, nuts and seeds, a little bit of whole grains. Obviously, if you can do non-gluten, it's better, especially American gluten. some beans. If you're having dairy, have sheep or goat, it tends to be less hormonal and, and less inflammatory for many reasons. And if you're having animal food, make sure it's not raised in a factory farm. Make sure it's grown in a regenerative way, if possible, organic at the very least. And, and, and it's just eating real food. I mean, it's not so complicated. And when we do this, we see dramatic results, Drew. I mean, you know, I always tell the story of Janice because it's such a great story.

But.

But I'm going to say it again, because it's just. It's just so powerful. Here's a woman who was pretty well educated, but her family, her whole life, all they did was eat packaged, processed food. She thought that was just what you ate. And even though she was very educated in one way, she was very uneducated about food. And she ended up slowly gaining weight and gaining weight and getting sicker and sicker and sicker. By the time she was 65, she had multiple stents in her heart. Her heart was failing. Her kidneys were failing. Her liver was failing. She had high blood pressure. She had diabetes. She was on insulin. and she was getting sicker and sicker and, and, and was on her way to a heart transplant, a kidney transplant. Within three days of changing her diet to do just what I told you, which essentially is a Whole Foods plant-rich low glycemic anti-inflammatory good fat diet with adequate amounts of the right kinds of protein. Within three days, she was able to get off her insulin. In three months, she was able to get off all her medications, which had a co-pay of twenty thousand dollars. she was able to reverse her heart failure, reverse a kidney function that was abnormal, fix her fatty liver, normalize her blood pressure, and reverse her diabetes. Now, there is no drug on the planet that can do that. None. Like, she was on all the maximal drugs by the best doctors in the country, and it wasn't helping to stop or reverse the problem. It was just masking the symptoms. And so when you use food as medicine, you have the power to really radically transform this. I mean, even Up to a few years ago, doctors were saying if you have type 2 diabetes, it could not be reversed. But now we're seeing reversal of beta cell dysfunction, which is the cells in the pancreas that make insulin. We're seeing the renewal and recovery and repair of these insulin producing cells so the body can actually start to regulate its metabolism naturally. It's really remarkable, Drew. I think we're in an extraordinary era and we're seeing, for example, companies like Virta Health which are using ketogenic diets, which is essentially 70% fat diets to reverse diabetes in people who are pretty far along and it works better than any treatment ever tested. And all the impact on the cardiovascular profile was beneficial. In other words, oh, you think, well, if you're gonna eat 70% fat, it's gonna screw up your cholesterol. No, it was the opposite. 'Cause in this metabolic type, which is a lot of people, about 88% of Americans have some type of poor metabolic health, which is somewhere on the continuum of pre-diabetes, which is somewhere on the continuum of this dysfunction that happens with sugar and starch in your diet, they were literally able to completely reverse these dysfunctions. And I see it all the time in my practice. So it's tough because sugar is biologically addictive. So it's easy to say stop heroin, but it's harder to do. And in fact, I'm going to be talking to a researcher about using a drug which is in clinical trials for drug addiction called Ibogaine. It's from a West African bark of a plant, a tree that actually seems to reset the brain and shut off addiction. And I'm very curious for America if it could be in some form a treatment for sugar addiction and obesity because it stops that craving and that addiction.

Powerful. The future is very bright and it starts off with us getting educated right now on all the things that we can do. Mark, this is the part of the podcast where we go into questions from our community and we got a bunch of really great ones. So let's jump in. So first question is, what about things like sweet potatoes and dates? Should we be mindful about the amount of sugars that are found in certain fruits or tubers in this instance?

So the way I think about it is, what's your level of metabolic resilience? and flexibility and not to brag, but, you know, I'm, I'm 62 years old. I probably have, you know, seven percent body fat. I have no belly fat. I exercise probably more than people want to know. I do a half an hour of strength training three or four times a week. I try to do an hour of cardio a day. I do other stuff, too. I'm very active, and I eat a very Whole Foods healthy diet, so I have a larger degree of metabolic flexibility than someone who is 400 pounds diabetic on medication whose system has been trashed. Now, the good news is that anybody can regain their metabolic flexibility at any age. It's harder to do if you're 400 pounds than if you're, you know, just a few pounds overweight, but it's possible. We've seen it happen. It happened to Janice. so we know that this is possible. So I think the idea is that we want to encourage people to focus on how they can gain a level of metabolic flexibility by improving their overall lifestyle habits. And it's all this stuff, right? It's a whole foods diet, it's exercise, it's getting up sleep, it's learning how to de-stress. I actually had my continuous glucose monitor on, which is fascinating yesterday, and I played tennis and I had really not eaten that much. I had a protein shake and my blood sugar was like, you know, 80s, 90s. and after tennis, I was like, oh, I wonder what it is. And I was like, you know, it's like a toy. So I put out, checked my levels, glucose monitor, and I was like, 146. And I'm like, holy crap, what the heck? How come my blood sugar's so high? And I texted Casey right away. I'm like, what's going on? She's like, well, when you're exercising vigorously, you're releasing glycogen stores from your muscle for energy. Because I'm, like, running around the core because my coach is making me run like crazy because his basically way of teaching is if I do something stupid, he hits the ball where I can't get it. and then I have to run really fast. I don't get back to the middle in time or whatever. He's like, kind of, that's how he teaches me. So I'm, like, going crazy all over the court. And it was like the stress response and also the glycogen release led to a high sugar. So I, I think, you know, and, but I, but I very quickly came right back down to 90. So I'm fine. So the more metabolic flexibility you have, the more resilient you are, the more wide you can make your diet. But if you are in a state of real metabolic inflexibility, you want to make sure you're adhered to a more restricted diet initially until you get the metabolic flexibility. So sweet potatoes, winter squash, they're great foods. I eat them. I actually have to eat sweet potatoes or else I'll lose too much weight. Right. So I, I have to, I know I have to eat some carbohydrates. Otherwise, I, I, my body doesn't work properly. Other people don't and are carbohydrate intolerant. So I think sweet potatoes are fine if you have metabolic flexibility. So or small, like, like fingerling potatoes, other starches are fine, root vegetables are fine, beans, carrots, all that's fine. It's just volume. And if you're again, fruit is the same thing. If you're metabolically inflexible, you don't want to be eating a ton of fruit. You can have some berries, low glycemic fruit, that's okay. Having the context of protein and fat, okay. There's a really important concept called glycemic load because the glycemic index of a food is the amount of the amount that a certain amount of food will raise your blood sugar. So for example, white bread raises your blood sugar more than table sugar. So it's got a high glycemic index. But what happens if you put nut butter or a piece of, you know, chicken or something on the bread? Well, it's gonna change and you put a bunch of maybe psyllium seed on or something or flax seeds, you're gonna get fiber and protein and fat. Well, that's gonna change the rate absorption of the sugar in the bread. so if it really is a total composition of the meal that matters. And when I'm constructing a meal, I make sure I include a lot of fat, good quality protein, and lots of veggies. And, and then, yeah, I can add a little starch in there without getting in trouble. Fantastic.

And I think the key with all this is personalization. And it's not that we can't, you know, even if we're minimizing certain foods, just like you said, there's plenty of hacks. And you covered it on a bunch of podcast episodes recently that you've done, where as long as you're having protein, fiber and fat. And anybody can do this, whether you're a vegetarian, vegan, whether you're following more of a Pegan diet or anything else in between. Having protein, fiber and fat, and especially before you have some of these other foods that are there, then you don't have to feel that things are as restrictive. You can still have a lot of the things that you enjoy. It's just a matter of sequencing.

So it's important to realize that everybody's different. An important study that was a landmark study done in Israel looked at the differences in people's blood sugar and how it correlated to their microbiome. So they fed people the identical amount and type of food, and they found profoundly different changes in their blood sugar, depending on their microbiome. That's just one factor. The truth is that There's many factors that regulate differences in how each person responds to exactly the same thing. For example, I am very insulin sensitive. If I drink a can of Coke, my blood sugar and insulin go like this. If I'm a Native American who's diabetic, it might go like this because they're genetically predisposed to pump out way more insulin given the exact amount of sugar. So calories, not a calories, not a calorie, it's really important to understand. It depends on one, the quality of the calorie, but also depends on the individual who's consuming that calorie and what their metabolic state is. So it's very important to think about how to individualize this. As we're talking about this, Drew, I don't know if you can eat a sweet potato. I mean, you look like you could eat a sweet potato, but how do I know if you could eat a sweet potato? Well, guess what? We now have a technology called continuous glucose monitoring. Now, it's, I think, something everybody should do, not just those who are diabetic, but everybody should learn about their bodies. It doesn't mean you have to do it forever. but wear one for a few months or six months and see what you're eating and how to, oh, I have a plum and my God, my sugar went through the roof, but if I have a cantaloupe, I'm fine. Or, God, if I have, you know, black rice, I'm fine, but I have white rice, it's through the roof. So you begin to learn how your body works. Or you have a sweet potato, go, God, I can't eat a sweet potato. Or maybe a Japanese sweet potato is better than a regular sweet potato. Or maybe I can have a Peruvian purple fingerling potato, but I can't have a Yukon Gold potato. so basically you can learn your own body and then you can start to match your diet to your own metabolic state and flexibility. Yeah.

And then just going back to that same example I gave earlier, you may be able to have all of those things. You just put a little bit of, you know, you put a lot of fat, you put a lot of fiber, and you put things that slow down the rate at which these carbohydrates absorb into your body so you have less variability. that's there. So for anybody who's feeling worried that what are you saying that I can't have like a sweet potato? No, that's not what you're talking about. You're talking about figuring out the right way to have it and then the amount of dosage that's there that's, you.

Know, appropriate in the context of your entire diet. It's also true. And it's also true what you're eating when matters. So if you have a glass of wine or a slice of bread when you go to a restaurant before the dinner comes, you're screwed, okay? Your blood sugar's gonna spike, your insulin's gonna spike, you're gonna gain weight. if you wait and you have a salad and some protein, olive oil, whatever, then have a glass of wine, then have a slice of bread, it might have a profoundly different effect on your biology and lead to not the same spikes in insulin and blood sugar and not the same metabolic consequences of weight gain and lipid problems and inflammation, everything else, even though it's exactly the same food, exactly the same amount of food.

It'S when you eat it in the mix of a meal. That's great advice. Okay, next question. from our audience, Mark, is can you talk about fungus overgrowth in regards to sugar and carbs? Do they feed Candida?

Candida, yeast, fungus, is there fungus among us? Well, yes, there is. And unfortunately, it's a big problem. But also, it's not as widespread of a problem as a lot of people think. People go, I have Candida, I have this, I mean, most people don't have.

A big issue with it.

We all have some yeast in our gut. But some people are more prone to overgrowth of fungal products in their gut. We call that CIFO, small intestinal fungal overgrowth. And it's a real problem. Now, some people walk around and you can spot them a mile away. They're walking mushroom. They have dandruff, they have white patchy scaly things on their skin, they might have vaginal yeast infections, they might have, you know, under their breasts or armpits, they might have yeasts growing. So you can kind of tell. they've taken a lot of antibiotics, eat a lot of sugar, flour, maybe they're on hormones, they've taken steroids, all those are clues that they might have fungal problems. So when someone says, I've been on lots of antibiotics and I have this and I have that, I go, oh, well, maybe you have fungal overgrowth. Those people need to be careful. And one, we need to get rid of the source of food for the fungus. And what do they love to eat? Sugar. I mean, what is wine, right? What is bread? It's, it's basically yeast that feed on sugar and it ferments. And that creates a lot of problems for your biology. And these produce toxic byproducts, creates inflammation, a whole host of other things. You can go to weight gain, fluid retention, irritable bowel. I mean, there's a long list of problems that can happen. However, for most people, it's really not an issue. Just cut down the sugar and starch, take probiotics. There's a special probiotic that helps to fight yeast called saccharomyces bouillarde, which I love to use. It's a yeast. We call it yeast against yeast. and it's great in keeping the bacteria healthy in your gut and keeping the yeast down. You can also use herbal antifungals that are available, oregano and many others. And sometimes you need prescription antifungals depending on the patient. But in terms of diet, most people, if they're, if they're having a real fungal issue, they really should cut down on starch and sugar for a period of time, reboot their gut, and then, you know, they can add moderate amounts later. But it is a real problem for people, but it's not as widespread as people think. Do you want to know my secret for Living a long and happy and healthy life. Well, all I have to do is check out my weekly newsletter, Mark's Picks, where I share my favorite tips for health, longevity, well-being and lots more. Check it out and the link below.

So next question we have is what are your thoughts on how sugar affects the brain and does natural sugar and sugar alternatives like stevia and monk fruit, do they have the same addictive properties on the brain?

First of all, sugar is not good for your brain. Your brain on sugar is essentially a depressed, demented brain, and also a hyperactive brain. All it takes as a parent to have ever gone to a kid's birthday party to tell you that. The kids are eating the cake and the ice cream, they're bouncing off the walls, and it's a bad scene. But the drivers of problems with brain and sugar are immediate through multiple pathways. A lot of it has to do with the insulin that I talked about before and insulin resistance and its effect on cognitive function over time. We know that when you eat a lot of sugar, it turns into creme brulee in your brain and that creates crusts and amyloid and plaques. And this is what leads to Alzheimer's and dementia. So definitely bad for your brain. It's also been linked to depression, been linked to attention deficit disorder. So it's really not a good thing for your brain. so in terms of the science of artificial sweeteners, there's still a lot to be done. I think we know for a fact that the true artificial sweeteners, like aspartame and so forth, they do have really adverse neurologic effects. Stevia, monk fruit, allulose, I honestly don't think there's enough data to really determine whether or not they're seeing this cephalic insulin response, whether or not it's driving secondary consequences in our metabolic Pathways that are driving inflammation and disease. It's hard to say. I've seen some preliminary data that makes me think they're not as bad. But again, these are not free foods. Just because Stevia has no calories or monk fruit has no calories, doesn't mean you just load it into everything. I prefer people to actually eat real sugar and know what they're eating and have a little bit. It's not the sugar you add to your food that's the problem.

It's the sugar that's added by corporations. All right, Mark, this is the last question from our community before we go into a little bit of a recap of what we talked about today. So, this audience member is asking us, I'm overweight and having a hard time with weight loss despite having average glucose levels in the 80s when wearing a CGM. What am I missing?

Ah, beautiful question. That reminds me of this patient I had when I was at Kenya Ranch who taught me so much about metabolic function. Here was a woman who came in who was the classic apple shape. round in the middle, skinny arms and legs. I thought she's gonna be a metabolic disaster. She was classic shape of someone who has diabetes or pre-diabetes I mean, enormous amount of belly fat. And I thought, her man, her sugar is gonna be off the chart. And you know what? It was normal. And we did a fasting blood sugar. It was perfect. And then I did a glucose tolerance test, basically giving her the equivalent of two Coca-Colas and measuring her sugar and insulin fasting and one and two hours later. Now, what happened was fascinating to me. Her blood sugar was perfect, not even a little high. Like it was in the 80s fasting, maybe 110 after two Cokes, which is normal, perfect. Her insulin, which should be under five, and ideally even lower fasting and should never go over 20 or 30 was like 50 fasting and over 200 and 300 after one and two hours. So her insulin was so high, it was keeping her blood sugar normal, and it gave her the false sense that her blood sugar was fine, but she was a metabolic disaster. And so the insulin works in your body to keep blood sugar down until it doesn't work anymore. It's sort of like, you know, the boy who cried wolf. And, and, you know, you once you just keep pounding and pounding and pounding sugar, the insulin goes up and up and up and up. And finally, it can't compensate anymore. And that's when your sugar starts to go up and you get diabetes. She wasn't at that stage, even though she looked like she was, she was there. So even though your blood sugar is normal, and you're not losing weight, it doesn't mean that you're okay. It means you should probably go and have a glucose tolerance test with insulin measurements fasting one to two hours. There's something doctors really don't do. You can also look at other indirect measurements that we talked about earlier, like your ins, like your lipid particle size and liver function and kidney function, uric acid, many other things. So you can kind of get indirect clues. But my guess is that you're probably having very high insulin levels. And guess what? Starch will raise insulin, sugar will raise insulin, even too much protein will raise insulin. The thing that doesn't raise insulin is fat. So when you think about a type 1 diabetic, they have no pancreatic function. They can't produce any insulin. They're thin. When they present to you in the office, they usually have a classic triad of symptoms. they're hungry and they eat everything in sight, they're thirsty because they're peeing out all the sugar and it's dehydrating them, and they're losing weight. So they're basically eating like crazy and losing weight. They can eat 10,000 calories a day and lose weight because they have no insulin. And guess what? Fat causes no insulin spike. And in the old days, Dr. Joslin, who the Joslin Diabetes Center was named for at Harvard, discovered that by treating diabetics with a ketogenic diet, essentially 70-75% fat diet, 5% carbs, and the rest protein, he was able to keep these people alive and functioning because they could metabolize fats but not sugars. So ideally, if you're having this problem, you want to be up in the fat and cutting the sugar and starch.

Great, great overview, Mark. Really appreciate that. I think this is a great time period to reflect a little bit on what we covered today. on the topic of sugar, let's chat about it. What do we big picture want to remind people about sugar? What do you want to say about sugar alternatives that are out there? And most importantly, what kind of message of hope do you want to leave for someone who feels like they have way too much sugar in their diet and might even be addicted to sugar?

Well, first thing I want to say is that it's not your fault that we live in a sea of sugar and starch. and that it's everywhere and in everything. So don't feel bad. However, if you want to start to tackle this for your own biology, the most important thing to think about is how do you reset your metabolism? How do you regain your metabolic flexibility? And it's exactly as we've been talking about. The best way to do that, if you're really stuck, is use the 10-day reset or the 10-day detox diet, a book I wrote years ago, which essentially I've used in thousands and thousands of patients with remarkable results. can really help to reset your brain chemistry so that you're not craving and hungry all the time. That's the first thing. Because you don't want to be using willpower, you want to use science. The second thing is, you know, if you're thinking about negotiating and can I have this, can I have that, can I have more monk fruit, can I have stevia, it usually means you're an addict. Okay? Like if you don't care, you don't care, you're probably not addicted. But if you're trying to figure out, how am I gonna deal? Then that's a clue. And then you really should double down and get rid of all the artificial sweeteners, do the 10-day detox diet and figure it out. And then of course, eat in a way that actually keeps your blood sugar in balance, which is the Pegan diet or the 10-day reset with the 10-day detox. That's really powerful. And over time, you'll lose weight, your metabolism will become smarter, they'll regain more metabolic flexibility and resilience, and you'll be able to tolerate a wider range of foods. without getting all screwed up. So that's really the take-home message here is that, one, it's not your fault, two, we're living in a sea of sugar and sugar, three, it's the cause of almost all known chronic disease and aging, four, artificial sweeteners are much better, and five, if you're gonna use sugar, use stuff that you put in your food yourself, whether it's a spoonful of honey or maple syrup or whatever, don't let corporations feed you sugar unwittingly.

Mark, really one of the things I want to mention here is that I've learned from you is the importance of metabolic flexibility. Because you've talked so much about sugar, it's easy to take your words out of context and say, well, Mark Hyman says never, ever eat sugar. Again, cut it all out, cut all the refined carbohydrates, and that's not what you're saying. You're saying being smart about it, clean up your diet, and when the base of your diet is in a much better place and maybe even get some of these metabolic markers done. I know you can order a lot of these tests through levels now. They've actually offered that. We'll have the link in the show notes. Then you can partake in a way that if you have good sleep, the base of your diet is good, and you have moderate exercise that's there in the week, you can eat some of those same foods that, yeah, they may not be in the same quantities, but you can still enjoy and partake in them and have them, especially with friends or making them at home. So that's really one of the main things that I've gotten and I've incorporated in my life.

So, thank you for that. Hey, YouTube, if you like this video.

You'Re gonna love the next one. The food companies don't want to have sugar listed as the number one ingredient on the label. So, they'll put five different kinds of sugar because the list of ingredients is in order of the amount. But if you have, let's say, wheat as the first ingredient and then you have like five kinds of sugar, actually sugar is the most predominant. ingredient. They just, because they don't call it, you know, sugar. Yeah. Or they don't have the same kind of sugar. It's just a, it's just a loophole in the law that allows the food companies to get away with bamboozling us.

Yeah.

And it's, it's, it's pretty bad. And then I was, I was shopping the other day. I was in CVS and getting something. I don't know what. And I looked over and I saw this, this big freezer of Haagen-Dazs ice cream. And I have a weakness for Haagen-Dazs ice cream, but I don't eat that often. And, and, and they said this non-dairy Haagen-Dazs I'm like, oh, cool. And I walked over and I pull it out, says plant-based, gluten-free, dairy-free. And I'm like, oh, this is health food, right? Turn the label over and it's like.

High fructose corn syrup and processed ingredients. And I'm like, what is this? But this is the one thing I wanted to ask you then as a doctor, as someone that does this as an advocate, goes around and travels and talks to everybody. What would you say to the younger generation if they want to start somewhere? What's the first step? to really recognizing, not just like reading labels, but what is the real first step that can be a tangible first step for someone who maybe lives in rural America? I mean, Lennox, I've been to Lennox before. I've been there. I know what that place is like. I'm surprised that you came out of Lennox and you're like, you know what? I'm gonna do this and bring it to the world. What was it in your journey that was the first step?

Well, I used to be vegetarian too. And I loved sugar and starch and bread and pasta. I bought into the whole low-fat movement.

And you were doing it for health reasons? You were vegetarian because you thought that was healthier.

Yes, health reasons, yes. And I thought this was the way to go. And it's interesting now that I've sort of cleaned up my diet and got rid of the starch and the sugar for the most part. If I look at pictures of myself without a shirt when I'm 30, I'm like way scrawnier and like kind of flabbier than I was than I am today at 60.

Right.

And I don't do that much exercise. Like if I'm in the gym like five times a month weightlifting, that's a lot. I do yoga, I'll do other stuff, but I just, you know, because I'm busy, I'm planning on doing more.

Yeah, it's tough.

Yeah. Maybe I'll get you to help me. You look like you know what you're doing.

And then I got very sick and I started to look at what I was doing and had to sort of shift. And as a science changed, I began to sort of look at, you know, 'cause I think ideology is so problematic in nutrition. There are all these diet wars, there are all these people in conflict with each other, paleo, vegan, this that.

And it's kind of crazy because-- all.

These little religions, aren't they?

It is, but you know, I said, let's get away from that. Because I came up with this term Pegan, which is a joke. It was like paleo vegan. And I just published this book, Food Fix. and it was number one in Paleo and number one in vegan books.

Yeah. There you go. Because we have far more in common.

With each other than with the standard American processed diet. So you can be a chips and soda vegan, right? Or you can be a cheeseburger, whatever, bacon Paleo, but that's not necessarily either of them are good, right? It's more going towards whole foods.

So your question was, what would I say to people?

I think it's really easy to just sort of start simply. If you're eating industrial food, stop doing that. If you look at the ingredients and you see refined flour, soybean oil, or high fructose corn syrup, just don't eat it. If you can, the next step would be look for non-GMO certified foods. Not because GMO is that bad for you, It may be, it may not be. There's a lot of controversy about that. But, it's a form of agriculture that's a structure of the environment and there's often other things in there like glyphosate, which is Roundup, which they spray on 70 different crops from canola to corn to wheat to soy. And, that is definitely harmful for our microbiome. It destroys our gut bacteria, which affects everything. And, it's linked to cancer. and there was a two billion dollar lawsuit that got a settlement of the judgment about Roundup or glyphosate or weed killer. And so just be aware that if you just stop those things, the quality of your diet.

You're already making a difference with your body.

Yeah, whatever you do.

And so those are really simple things we can do. And then if you can try to look at what you're eating.

Is it whole food?

I mean, is it something you can recognize like an almond or almond butter? not that many steps of processing because most food gets processed in some way. We cook it or.

Yeah, it's all got some kind of man intervention.

Yeah, yeah. But if you, you know, most of the time I just eat stuff that looks like what it is. You know, broccoli is a broccoli, you.

Know, it's a fish, a piece of fish, grass-fed meat. Well, I was caught. What I said to him when, when we first started, when, when he was a pretty diabetic vegan, sick man in Australia, I, I call it the, the of the earth. Earth diet. So if you're eating stuff that the Earth naturally provides, then you're never really in harm's way. How many steps did it take to get from the field to the fork?

Yeah, exactly. If you can trace them all, okay, but if you don't know how it.

Got like that, then yeah, we've got a problem.

The ingredients list is your ingredient, right? A sweet potato is a sweet potato. A piece of chicken breast is a.

Piece of chicken breast.

There's no ingredient list on that. Yeah, exactly right. It is what it is.

Right.

And I think the other thing I found as well, which is an important thing to talk about, I think, is how people who do make the shift, they have to go through a process themselves. Like, I know went through a process where I kept going back. I kept going, oh, I want that. That addiction to that kind of food doesn't just disappear. I didn't do it overnight. My wife always says this to me. She was like, you know, when I'm talking to people saying, you just do this, you just do that. She's like, Tom, you have to remember that you you took two years probably to just not eat any of this stuff anymore.

Yeah.

So your taste buds have to change. You have to give your taste buds time to. To make that change and really know what things taste like again. Like, broccoli can taste freaking awesome. Right?

It's so true.

When people get off that for a week, even, and then they have blueberries, they go, my God, this is kind of like candy.

Right?

And I think people don't understand how how hard it is because of the biology of sugar. It's not a moral failing, it's not that you're weak-willed, but you cannot overcome your biology with willpower. It will fail every time. So you have to use science, and the science of sugar is fascinating because it not only drives mechanisms that make you gain weight because it produces more insulin, so it stores belly fat, it makes you hungry, it slows your metabolism, and it locks the fat in the fat cell so they can't get out. It's like a one-way turnstile. You can't get out. And when you look at the biology on the brain, it's even scarier. So in really well-controlled studies, they've shown that by looking at brain imaging and blood tests, eating the exact amount of calories, protein, fat, carbs, and fiber in a shake, like a milkshake, they just swapped out the level of the kind of carbohydrate so that one raises your blood sugar a lot and one doesn't. It's like a slowly digested starch. When they did that, they found that the brain imaging showed that the addiction center, which is stimulated by heroin or cocaine or whatever, gets lit up like crazy by the sugar and their insulin goes up, their blood sugar goes up, their adrenaline goes up. So sugar causes your adrenaline to go up, your cortisol, which is the stress.

Hormone, so it literally creates a biological stress. The interesting thing that I wanted to add to volume this back to you then, with your immune system, sugar is not the only culprit to lowering your immune system. There are canola oils, there are what.

Other... Lifestyle as well. Like I find, you know, stress and fatigue and lack of sleep are ones that can drop it for sure.

That's a cycle, is that like if you eat sugar, if you eat processed foods, then you don't really sleep that well, then you don't really move move that well and it's just the... Well.

The other part about eating a diet of processed food and sugar is it depletes your nutrients, right? It actually doesn't have the vitamins and minerals and nutrients you need to metabolize stuff. So the people who are often the most nutritionally deficient are the most obese, which is kind of surprising. It's not going to be malnourished and obese at the same time. The nutritional density of our food is so important and processed food just doesn't have sugar depletes our nutrients like B vitamins.

And so when you have low levels.

Of zinc and you have low levels of vitamin D and low levels of omega-3 fats and low levels of iron and vitamin A, your immune system can't function.

So in the developing world, we know very clearly that the kids who die.

From diarrhea or respiratory infections or measles is because they're malnourished. If a kid gets measles who's well-nourished in America, they're not gonna die from it usually.

Right.

But in the developing world, these kids die all the time from basic disease because they're so malnourished. And I think we are a malnourished country. 90% of us are deficient. And so the best way to build your immune system is to eat whole food. Cut out the sugar. Make sure you take your vitamins. Get enough sleep, like you said. Deal with stress as a huge factor. And I think, you know, I think something simple like just meditation.

Yeah.

It's so powerful.

Yeah.

It's a thing that doesn't have to woo-woo. But yeah, we just don't talk about that enough.

People just understand.

And the fact that we eat about 152 pounds of sugar per person. Yeah, that's almost half a pound a day.

Yeah, it's crazy.

Sugar.

Well, it's hidden in every single thing that you could pick up. When we were at the gym.

Yeah.

We go to the bar at the gym. They have like a smoothie or something.

Yeah.

Oh my God.

Yeah.

Everything that is laid out that says healthy, organic, Gluten-free.

It's so counterproductive at the gym. And you know, all everything you see in there, there's like signs for Coca-Cola.

In some gyms and stuff.

And there's like awful. You go to those like green smoothie.

Things and you look at the label.

It has more sugar than a can of Coke.

Yeah.

I mean, that's just insane. And then people become addicted to it because they're like, well, I'm eating healthy, I'm drinking this healthy juice. But what they're doing is they're spiking their insulin levels, they're becoming addicted to this fruit, fructose almost. I'm sure that some of it maybe even is a hidden, there's so many different names for hidden sugars now.

There's like 200 names for sugar. If you Google names for sugar, you'll see it'll come up with a list of like 200 different things that you don't even know are sugar.

Yeah, that's, I mean that's one of the things that started me on the journey of like, I'm just not gonna eat anything that isn't whole food because I remember thinking, well, there's all this.

Other stuff in there now.

Like, I started off just being trying to avoid sugar. Yeah. And then I looked at everything else. Yes. I was like, what is that? I can't even pronounce that, let alone, like, put it in my body and think it's actually going to do anything good. So I just, I started to just go, no, I can't, I can't put that in anymore.

I mean, the average American eats three.

To five pounds of additives every year.

Yeah. I mean, it's really deliberate. And they, and they buy biology of addiction in the food is not like an emotional response. It's not because you have no willpower. It really is hijacking your brain chemistry and your metabolism in ways that we don't really understand. And so I've seen people within a very short time really transform that.

The food is medicine theory. There's so much in that and I think people can really take the steps forward in terms of a mindset because that's the thing, changing mindset is the first step. You saying this, it took a while from you and me chatting back and forth to really go, no, there is actually something in this. And changing that mindset. So once you change that mindset and just keep driving that through of food is medicine, food is medicine, you'll see the difference. Simple as that.

If you love that last video, you're gonna love the next one. Check it out here. We're seeing rampant increases in autism, in neurodegenerative diseases. So we have to grapple with this problem of brain health in a more focused way, because it is the thing that we need to operate in our lives to be happy, to.