Podcast Episode #80: Which Foods Contain Hidden Sugar That You Didn’t Even Know About!

In this podcast episode, what you don't know about sugar, restless legs syndrome, getting rid of sciatic pain, whether something called ripped freak actually works, appetite suppressing tricks, when to foam roll, whether to do a marathon before a triathlon, and excessively high heart rates during exercise.

BenGreenfieldFitness.com podcast we provide you with free exercise, nutrition, nutrition, weight loss, triathlon and wellness advice from the top fitness experts in the nation. So whether you're an Ironman triathlete or you're just trying to shed a few pounds, get ready for non run of the mill cutting edge content from BenGreenfieldFitness.com.

Hey podcast listeners, this is Ben Greenfield from BenGreenfieldFitness.com and I'm pretty stoked today because we officially get back to the regularly scheduled podcast for the 2010 season. And that means that I'm going to be bringing you interviews with some fantastic experts today. We've got Nancy Appleton, the author of Suicide by Sugar. And we also have upcoming interviews with Dr. Cohen on testosterone, as well as with Dr. Carolyn Dean on several different aspects, including her new book, how to Change youe Life With Magnesium. So we are going to jump right in to this week's content. We're going to start with some special announcements, we'll move on to this week's featured topic and then we'll finish up with a jam packed listener Q and A.

Special announcements.

As most of the listeners to this podcast know, one of the things that we talk about quite a bit is triathlon and triathlon training. Now for those of you who are triathlon coaches coaches or who even want to be triathlon coaches and are listening in, I've got a couple things I wanted to tell you. First of all, the USA Triathlon Organization is hosting something called the Art and Science of Triathlon International Coaching Symposium. That sounds really important. Takes a long time to say at least, and that's February 12th through the 14th down in Colorado Springs. I will be presenting at that symposium and so if that's something that you want to attend, definitely check it out on the USA Triathlon website. And you should also know if you're listening in, you're a triathlon coach or someone in the fitness industry who wants to get into working with triathletes. I just finished a new book on that topic and the book is called, fittingly how to Become a Triathlon Coach. I will put a link to that book in the show notes, but I just basically walk you through everything that you need to know to get good results from the athletes that you coach while at the same time making a career out of triathlon coaching. So check that out in the show notes. And then the other special announcement for today is that Last Thursday on January 28, we officially launched the Rockstar Triathlete Academy. And we are just about full in terms of the number of members that were initially letting in as charter members to the Academy. But there are a couple of spots left. There's a lot of cool stuff going on in there. We're hosting a call with Matt Fitzgerald tonight who's a fitness, nutrition and running expert and that'll be open to Q and A to members. So definitely go check out the Rockstar Triathlete Academy. I will put a link to that in the show notes as well. And what we're going to do next is a jam packed listener Q and A where I guarantee that you're going to pick up some things that you really did not know. And then we're going to move on to the Featured interview with Dr. Nancy Appleton where you are also going to learn some things that are going to shock you and surprise you and definitely entertain you. So let's move on.

Listener Q, Q and A.

So if you have a question for the podcast, remember you can email me Ben BenGreenfieldFitness.com you can Skype@Pacific fit and I love Skype.com it lets you call anybody online. It's really cool and they don't pay me to say that. And then you can also call toll free. I actually did. You know, I pay every month to have a toll free number set up so you guys can call in. So few of you call in. But it's so much fun to actually play back your call in questions. And I actually do have one of those today. The toll free number is and you can write this down, put it on your refrigerator. And then when you're milling around your kitchen and you have a nutrition question, you can just pick up your phone and call 877-20994. And don't worry, it's not going to bother me. That doesn't ring through to my office. It actually just pulls up a playback where you can record your question and then your question actually gets emailed to me as an audio file. How cool is that? So let's go ahead and start with the first question of this week, which comes from listener Paul. Paul says, hey Ben, I love your podcast. I was wondering if you have any advice on dealing with restless legs. I've read many things relating to the topic but nothing seems concrete. I've been dealing with this for the last six years or so. I never know when it's going to happen. I started taking a multi mineral supplement in the evening, which I was told could help. I feel like it is hit or miss. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. All right. Well, restless leg syndrome is what's called an idiopathic syndrome, which means that there can be multiple causes and nobody really knows exactly what causes it in any specific individual. Has another term, it goes by Whitmock Ekborne's syndrome as well, but it's a disorder and it affects your extremities. For those of you who don't have this, what people feel is a really strong urge to move their limbs, typically at regular intervals and usually during the night. And a lot of times there's a little bit of nerve pain and some tingling sensation that's associated with that. And since it most often occurs in the legs, that's why it's called restless leg syndrome. So because a lot of times you really don't know what's causing it. My first recommendation to you, Paul, is, and I don't know if you've done this, if you've had this for six years, you may have. But try and identify some things that may be actually causing restless leg syndrome using essentially a guess and check method. Some of the things that would commonly be associated with restless leg syndrome would be coffee or soda or caffeine before bed. If you're taking any type of pharmaceuticals, including like a seizure medication and even some over the counter drugs, you would want to experiment with timing those earlier in the day, preferably farther away from bedtime than two hours. The same would go for recreational drugs. I guess if you're snorting crack right before you go to bed, you might have bigger issues than restless leg syndrome. But alcohol could be an issue. Very hard exercise sessions before you go to bed. And believe it or not, if you are using magnesium, sometimes that can be associated with restlessness leg syndrome. However, as we'll talk about in a second, it is also associated with a pretty potent ability to reduce restless leg syndrome. Vitamin B12 could be another thing that could cause that. You'll find that in a lot of health drinks and vitamin profiles, calcium and then fatty or greasy foods. So I would definitely experiment with trying to reduce some of those, especially before you go to bed. Now, I just talked about magnesium and you say that you're doing a multi mineral supplement. But one thing that I would try if you haven't yet, because it can act a little bit differently than the type of magnesium that you take orally. Is a topical magnesium supplement actually applied to your legs prior to bed at night? Rub that in about 10 to 15 sprays per leg. And I don't want you to consider this medical advice. I'm not a physician, but it's something that I know that people have tried before in the past for all sorts of different spasmic conditions within the leg and it might actually help. So I'd try that out. And if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and you do a search for magnesium, I've got a couple really good interviews on there. I also have a link to some of the topical magnesium supplements that I personally like to use. So check that out and best of luck. Paul Listener Rick Ben just started listening to your podcast. They're very informative. Thanks. My question about six months ago, I began training for my first triathlon. I love playing sports like volleyball, and while I was playing, I herniated a couple discs in my lower back. The result has been daily sciatic pain. Do you have any experience with athletes who've experienced this physical and mental blow? And if so, what advice can you offer to keep your spirits high? Keep my spares high. What exercises should I stay away from? Which should I perform? There are many more questions that I have, but I'll let you take it from here. I hope one day to be back on track for my first triathlon. Yeah, it can be a difficult situation. Rick, when you experience an injury that takes you away from triathlon training, one thing that I would encourage you to do is creatively train around the injury as much as you can because the the physical, active exercise will help keep your mental spirits high. You can do a lot using things like the weight machines in your gym. You can try a recumbent bicycle instead of your regular bike. You can do light swimming exercises. There's actually an article. Where did that article just come out? Actually, you know what? There was an article on the TrainingPeaks blog that I wrote about training through injuries and some of the different ideas that I had. Go to trainingpeaks.com and do a search for training through injuries because there was an article that I wrote on some workouts that you could do if you have a low back injury, some workouts that you could do if you have a shoulder injury, workouts that you could do if you have a knee injury. Just things that you can utilize to stay fit. But some people will tell you don't move at all when you have a low back injury, that's some of the worst advice that you can get because the act of exercise will not only improve blood flow and if done correctly can help with healing, but it will also help keep your mental speed spirits high. Now, as far as exercises that I would recommend, traditionally extension type of exercises have helped people with sciatica and those would be things like light, low back extension, lying on your back, doing double leg back bridges, anything that extends your back or opens it up essentially. Now I find that with some people that I've worked with and in terms of physical training and personal training, hip flexor flexibility work can also help out quite a bit with sciatica pain. And the best one is just a lunging hip flexor stretch with the arms held overhead at the same time. Long periods of time in a seated position can shorten those same hip flexors that you stretch with that lunge position. So avoid sitting for long periods of time. Try and get up and stretch when you do have to sit for a long time. There are a lot of ways that we can go with sciatica. You know, we could talk for an hour about different exercises and full on programs for managing sciatica. But extension exercises, hip flexor flexibility, and then creatively maintaining some form of at least cardiovascular exercise and preferably machine based strength training will help you out quite a bit as you allow your low back heal. Now listener Brandon has a question. He Sundays, I'm a 20 year old male from Toronto, Canada. I've just begun cycling and spinning and loving it. I have a question for you. Two years ago I lost 90 pounds doing weights, intervals and low carb, which I will never do again. I seem to still have a little belly. I love to eat great foods, healthy in fact, whole grains and wheats. Although I'm going to interrupt you, Brandon, and say that for a lot of people that's not healthy. A friend of mine has begun a cycle of thermogenic product Ripped Freak. It promises to be the strongest product in America. Sorry, I just have to laugh at that name. He has lost 10 pounds currently and I would like to lose just about that. I'm 6:1 and 180 pounds. My ideal personal weight would be 170 pounds. What do you think? Think if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and you search for thermogenic. I have reviewed some of the more popular thermogenics that are out there, but I've never talked about Ripped Freak. Gosh, I love that name, Ripped Freak. So I'm going to get all scientific on you, Brandon. And we're going to look at the ingredient label of Ripped Freak. Now, it's called a hybrid drug Fat burner. And what a hybrid drug is defined as is it's typically kind of originally derived from nature, but it's been organically or chemically altered and resynthesized to deliver kind of a more powerful drug like effect. And so it's, it's definitely not a natural compound. It's been messed around with, so to speak, by science. But the primary active ingredient in Ripped Freak is something called a methyl ester. Now, if you actually pull open the ingredient label on Ripped Freak, if you go to rippedfreak.com you'll see that there are a ton of ingredients and just about every one ends with methyl ester. It's basically a cocktail of methyl esters. That's just about all that's in it. Now, at first glance, you could easily be fooled by this because you can look at all these methyl esters and not really see much other than that. But if you look at something like, you know, epigallico, Epigallocatechin. Epigallocatechin, that's a green tea extract. Okay? So what they've done is they've basically methyl esterified a green tea extract, which is a central nervous system stick stimulant. And if you go through the list of ingredients, there are a lot of central nervous system stimulants in there, but they've actually been kind of, kind of masked by these long chemical names. They're not doing that to fool you. It's just that when you esterify a compound, it definitely changes the way that it appears. So don't think that this is not a central nervous system stimulant. It actually is. And it could give you the same kind of jittery feeling that some of these do. And you do need to be careful with excessive central nervous system stimulation. And actually not a depletion of your adrenals, but more of an exhaustion of your adrenals. Because when Ripped Free claims to increase your epinephrine by 300% and increase your norepinephrine by 112%, those are adrenal compounds produced by the adrenal glands on your kidney. And you do not want to overstimulate your kidneys, or you can, to use the highly scientific term, mess up your metabolism. Okay, you can exhaust yourself. Now, the reason that they have esterified or added methyl esters onto all these compounds in Ripped Freak is that an Ester is very absorbable by fat tissue. And the idea is that when you add a methyl ester to a compound, it will have a greater bioavailability to fat tissue. So it's kind of a cool concept and it's something that is used in a lot of pharmaceutical drugs. Actually, that's why they call Riptofreq a hybrid drug, Fat Burner, because these methyl esters are very popular to be able to deliver a compound of fat tissue when normally that compound would be more hydrophilic or dissolvable in water, but not very likable to fat tissue. So my question is that with all these methyl esters, has there been much study on them and are they actually healthy? And there actually was a pretty comprehensive study done on the safety of fatty acid methyl esters. And this was actually a study done by a task force that was set up in Europe to look over the safety of these. And they looked at things. Well, they looked at nine different characteristics of methyl esters and some were like the ease of cleaning them off ship tanks because of all the foods that contain methyl esters that were being sent back and forth. But others looked at the mutagenicity and the tumorigenic potential, which means, you know, can or can they not cause cancer? The acute oral toxicity, the safety of nutritional use, and the basic conclusions, because I don't want to bore you with a ton of science, but the basic conclusions were that first of all, they're relatively easy to clean from ship tanks. I'm sure that you really don't care about that. In terms of fat burning though, acute oral toxicity. I'm going to go through a few of these results. Most of the methyl esters were found to be non toxic and these were all tests done in rats and mice. Okay, metabolism. They are metabolized basically the same way as other dietary fats are metabolized, meaning that they are what are called hydrolyzed or broken down by water to an alcohol and a fatty acid. And then they are metabolized by your body producing carbon dioxide and water and then other building blocks for energy. And the non usable compounds are converted to free fatty acids and then metabolized by your body's metabolic processes or else stored in the fat deposits in your body. So takeaway message from that. If you're using ripped freq and you're consuming all these methyl esters, you sure as heck better be exercising or that metabolism is going to occur and it'll be as if you were just ingesting a little Extra fat, the mutagenicity and the tumorigenic potential. Essentially all the studies done on rats and mice found that there really wasn't much carcinogenic potential. That's not 100% relevant to the conditions of human exposure. But it basically means that there's not going to be a real high carcinogenic risk according to research and you know, tumor promotion, things like that. As far as nutritional use, methyl esters have been fed to experimental animals without toxic effects and they appeared to be fairly safe to consume. So as far as actual safety, I wouldn't say that ripped freak is going to give you cancer or lead to a high level of toxicity, but I would say A, make sure that you're exercising if you use it and B, understand that as a central nervous system stimulant, it is not the best way to lose weight. When you cheat on your body's metabolism and you overstimulate your body's metabolism, it eventually will crash on you, it'll eventually slow down. And in my experience, the people who get the best and the healthiest and the longest lasting fat burn burning results are the people who don't use high levels of central nervous system stimulating compounds, but rather exercise in a smart manner, eat well and you know, cup of coffee in the morning, that's okay. A bunch of energy drinks and something like ripped freak before a workout. Yeah, you're gonna lose weight quickly, but it's not healthy long term, especially for your kidneys and yipes. That was a long answer. Sorry, Listener Chris asks, I have a fitness and nutrition question for you. I've dived headfirst in the world of competitive cycling and have recently bumped up intense bike workouts to three to four days a week. On these intense days I have a very firm control over my eating habits, but on my easy days I tend to get extremely hungry and sometimes have a hard time disciplining myself not to overeat. I notice I have more control over my eating on the top tougher days because most likely of the appetite suppressing effect of exercise. I thought about running on these easier days, but then thought that since running has such a high impact on the muscles of the legs that it might defeat the purpose of taking an easy day from the bike.

Would there be any reason not to.

Do swimming on these days to gain the appetite suppressing effect or increase in general fitness? Or is running not as bad for the competitive cyclist as bad as dogma says I wish I had more self control, but I know myself and what I have to do to Control my behavior. Wonderful question, Chris. First of all, as you say, there is definitely an appetite suppressing effect of exercise. It improves what is called your insulin sensitivity and it can help you control the levels of something called ghrelin and leptin, two of your primary appetite stimulating or decreasing hormones. Now, your paradox is that you're trying to get that appetite suppressing effect through exercise, but you don't want to do that on your recovery days. First of all, it would be fine to swim. That movement, that blood flow will help you if you want to do something even more low impact. Another great activity would be yoga, which is also going to give you extra benefits as a cyclist. You are right in that running will decrease a little bit from your cycling progress. Cycling can make you a better runner, but the same does not apply vice versa. Okay? Running does not make you a better cyclist and it can actually tear you down a little bit on your recovery days. Now, in addition to using exercise to control your appetite, some other appetite suppressing tricks that you can use are to a, make sure that you drink at least 10 to 12 ounces of water about 30 minutes before you eat. Make sure that you chew everything, every bite that you take at least 10 times. Okay? So completely chew it. We're trying to eat more slowly so that we slow the release of the hormone ghrelin. Okay. And ghrelin will actually essentially increase your appetite. I like to think about ghrelin being your stomach growling. Okay? So ghrelin will increase your appetite and you want to control it. Make sure that you eat your protein first, all right. And separate from your carbohydrates and fats. It's a little trick that actually works for a lot of people. Okay, so if you like to mix your cranberries and your turkey. Sorry, not going to work for you. But if you eat your protein first and then your carbohydrates and fats, that can be helpful. If you drink water while you're eating and specifically have a sip of water between each mouthful of food, that can help quite a bit as well. Now, in terms of supplements that you could take, a few different supplements that can help increase your insulin sensitivity and actually control your appetite would be vanadium and chromium. Those are two that can help out a little bit. There's another one called hydroxycitric acid. It's abbreviated and more popularly known as hca. That's a gentle natural appetite suppressant. And then another one called HTP or 5 HTP, that can help out quite a bit as well. In reducing sugar cravings. One of the supplements that I recommend to my clients as a natural appetite stimulant is called Thermo Factor, and you can find that@pacificfit.net a company called Hammer Nutrition also makes something called Apostat, which I would also recommend in terms of appetite suppressing efficacy. So Chris has a second part to his question. He says, correct me if I'm erroneous, but my understanding is that consuming some protein with carbohydrate within about 20 minutes of a workout will assist recovery time, and that stretching after workout will tend to lead to less injury as opposed to stretching before. Correct and correct doesn't matter. In regard to the timing, when one might include foam rolling in the mix of all that, I always foam roll after workout, but I don't have any reason to do it within a consistent time. After I finish working, working out. Is there a window of opportunity in which foam rolling might be more or less useful than just whenever I feel like it? Okay, so when to foam roll? First of all, foam rolling will help remove a lot of the adhesions from the tissue and improve flexibility within the muscle tissue. So it is actually also effective if you can get it in before a workout. Now, what I will do sometimes when I'm like driving to a running race or a triathlon is I'll bring one of those training sticks with me that you can rub up and down over a muscle. And I'll do that like at the stoplight in the car while I'm driving, just to help improve the elasticity of some of that muscle tissue, remove some of the adhesions, increase movement a little bit better. It's different in that a statically held stretch will actually decrease your ability to produce a force. And when you roll something up and down over the muscle, it doesn't cause that that same effect. So different type of elasticity that I'm talking about now in terms of after your workout, the same as a massage. Once you've actually cooled down and your heart rate has come down and it's safe to lie down or get into a prone position, that would be the time that would be ideal to work a lot of those metabolites out of the muscle tissue to assist in recovery and decrease soreness. If I am going on kind of a longer breakthrough workout, or I've just gotten done with a triathlon, or I've done a hard run, I try and get on the foam roller or take out the stick as quickly as possible. Afterwards, if I don't get it in. I'll still do that later on in the evening. So directly after would be ideal. And a lot of times when I'm planning a workout and I'm planning what I'm going to be doing after that workout, if it's a long and intense workout, I will definitely factor in time to roll, even if it's just for five or 10 minutes. And I have a foam roller in my office and one in my home and I just hit it right after the workout. So best time ideally would be right before and right after. But if you have to choose one time, try and hit that window directly after as soon as you've cooled down. So Listener Elizabeth asks my aim I'm gonna Elizabeth asks a three part question and I'm gonna kind of rapid fire the answers to her questions. My aim is to be fit as a triathlete. One I am always falling ill at least once every month. Any tips on what supplement to take to improve my immune system and what may be as to my diet? So quick rapid fire answer is a as you're going to hear in the interview in just a little bit, decrease the sugar intake in your diet and then as far as your immune system, you're going to find me talking about a lot of this in previous podcasts. But but oil of oregano, vitamin D and then a greens supplement like Ener Prime. Those would be my top three recommendations for your immune system. And an essential fatty acid would also be nice if you can get that in like a fish oil or a flaxseed oil. Number two, after not working out for over a month, I need to restart my fitness base and lose 5kg. Can you suggest a simple interval training to build my cardiovascular capacity? Capacity? Yes. Tabata set that is four minutes of 20 seconds as hard as you can go and then 10 seconds very easy. If you can do that three times a week, it will be one of the best things that you can do to rapidly improve your cardiovascular capacity. Throw in a long warm up. When I do a Tabata set, I like to warm up about 20 minutes and then do my four minutes of 20 seconds hard, 10 seconds easy. And then number three, you say I am required to do four different kinds of workouts twice a week as well as one to two hours of tennis practice. What would you recommend I avoid doing at the same time or on the same day? My recommendation for just about all the athletes that I work with is to not run on consecutive days and not weightlift the same muscle group on consecutive days. Follow those two rules and that can help you out quite a bit. So I hope that gets you started in the right direction. Elizabeth, final question, actually, final of two questions. Listener Andy asks My dad is 49 years old. His entire life he has not been a runner. This past summer though, he took up running. Now he runs a few days a week. His longest run this past fall was about 10 miles. Since he's begun running, he's been tracking his heart rate and there is some worry that it may be too high, especially especially considering his age. On a casual five mile run, his heart rate will easily reach and hover around the mid to upper 180s. Is this a concern? Obviously it is well above the ideal max heart rate for someone his age. When he slows to about a 12 minute per mile pace, he's able to keep his heart rate in the target range. But he comments that it seems too easy, like he's barely even working at this pace. He's in great health overall. He has no health problems and he leads a healthy lifestyle. He's hoping that taking up running will help make him healthier. But he's sleeping slightly worried about his high heart rate. Do you think his high heart rate is so high simply because he's relatively new to running and his body will take time to undo a lifetime of not running? Should he just run more slowly until his body and cardiovascular system adapt? Is this high of a heart rate normal and common for someone like him who takes up running for the first time at nearly 50 years old? What would you recommend? Great question, Andy. Understand that everyone is different, that that equation for the ideal max heart rate is something that's been around since late 70s, early 80s I believe, but it really does not accurately define maximum heart rate in most individuals. And I've taken many, many individuals in my physiology lab up to max heart rate and it's never is never what you would expect. Sometimes it's way too low, sometimes it's way too high. So that equation is kind of a coverall equation that gives you a ballpark, but it's often inaccurate, especially in people who have smaller hearts, smaller stroke volumes, smaller blood volume, and so their heart has to beat more times per minute to deliver oxygen to the tissue. And that can be a function of cardiovascular fitness. It can also be a function of genetics. Now I would expect as your father becomes more fit, that his maximum heart rate will decrease. That's something that you find in most individuals. However, I would recommend, just because of his age, that you actually do a couple of tests just to cover your Bases, it's going to be worth it. One of the things that you can try out is a stress test. They've got one called a PET stress test. We actually talk about it a little bit in the upcoming interview on Sugar. But it visualizes the heart under stress by giving a radiolucent chemical and watching that drug because it simulates exercise and the heart reacts as though you're experiencing a hard workout. And then they take pictures on a special X ray machine. It's usually in the nuclear medicine department of a hospital. And it gives you a more accurate picture than what you can get during a treadmill test, just because you can basically study the heart at rest, how blood enters and leaves the ventricles, what's happening, if there's any muscle weakness or valve problems. So I would look into PET tests. I would also look into a stress test, which is a measurement of the electrical activity of the heart during graduated intervals on a treadmill. And that will identify any abnormalities in heart rhythm that would be of concern. And you can get that done in an exercise physiology lab or at a hospital. And then the last thing that you could get is an event monitor. And that's actually something that your dad could be given to wear usually for about two weeks. And it's like a mobile version of the EKG machine. And whenever he experiences these high heart rates, he can push a button which actually records that high heart rate. And once you have a certain number of those type of high heart rate events, you can bring the machine back in and get it evaluated by a cardiologist. So a lot of different choices there. But just for peace of mind, I would at least get an EKG just to look and see if there's any abnormal heart rhythms or electrical issues going on. So great question. And then finally we have a calling question from listeners. Judy.

Hi, Ben, I'm calling in regards to you answering a question about an early marathon in training preparation for an Ironman later on. I'm actually training for Ironman Coeur d', alene, which is June 27th. And I wondered what your thoughts were about doing an early season marathon for preparation. My half ironman falls 8 May, when the ironman schedule has been peaking in the distance run. So would it be beneficial to get in a marathon sometime like the end of March or the middle of April, or would this be too much distance, too early? I appreciate your thoughts, instructions on that.

Thanks.

Well, I think it's a great question, Judy. And the idea is that for a lot of people, especially people who haven't done an Ironman before and are going into it having not run a marathon, that can be pretty mentally intimidating. And so I do recommend that if you haven't done an Ironman before, that you get a marathon under your belt at some point if you can. Now, the paradox is that if you try to prepare and do a marathon during the build up to an Ironman and you're doing it, let's say, you know, eight weeks before an Ironman or six weeks before an Ironman, then what happens is that you have to taper for that marathon. You have to really put in a little bit more mileage than you would normally earlier in your build up to the Ironman, which risks a lot of injury. Running is one of the most injury prone activities that you can do, and increasing the volume of it over and above what you would normally be doing leading up to an Ironman is a pretty risky proposition. And I would recommend that if you've done a marathon or if you've done an Ironman before, that you definitely try and limit yourself to a half marathon. Now, if you have to do a marathon prior to your Ironman, especially if you haven't done a marathon or an Ironman before, I would recommend that you try and do it at a completely different time of season than your Ironman. Meaning if you're going to do an Ironman in June or July or August, you do a marathon in December or in January or at the latest, February, giving you time to prepare for the marathon, to do the marathon, recover from the marathon, and then move on to your Ironman training, rather than trying to squeeze a marathon into an Ironman build up, which can be pretty risky. In most of the Ironman routines that I write out for individuals, we peak with our long run at 18 to 20 miles and typically we'll do that no more than two times leading up to the Ironman with a last long run, ideally about four weeks maximum, five weeks out from the big event. So great question, Judy. And those are all the questions for today. So we're going to go ahead and move on to our Featured topic with Dr. Nancy Appleton and be sure if you haven't yet to go and leave us a ranking in itunes, those reviews will increase the popularity of the podcast and also increase the caliber of the guests that I can get on. So I can take a published and well known author like Dr. Appleton, call her up and get her on the show. And when somebody like that wants to know, you know, our listener reach or you know, why they should take the time to talk to me, to bring an interview to our audience. I can point them out to the popularity of the itunes podcast. So you leaving a review really helps this show out. So you can do so by going to itunes, running a search for Ben Greenfield fitness and then just going in there and leaving a star rating and writing a review. I would truly appreciate it. Quick jota note to do it if you haven't yet. And let's move on to the interview.

Featured topic.

Hey, podcast listeners, this is Ben Greenfield, and I right now am holding in my hand I a book that I read last week. It's called suicide by A startling look at our number one national addiction. It was written by a doctor named Nancy Appleton, and this book was actually written by the same author who penned the 143 Reasons Sugar can destroy your health, an article that appeared over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com recently and created a little bit of controversy. Well, let me tell you right now that after I read this book, I realized that there were many things that I didn't realize about sugar. I thought this book was just going to be the regular old book that tells you that sugar is bad for you and might make you fat. But there was stuff in here that I literally, as a nutritionist, was not aware of that was well founded in science. And so I actually have the author of the book, Dr. Nancy Appleton, on the other end of this line. Dr. Appleton, how are you doing?

Fine, thank you, Ben. It's Nancy.

What did I say?

Dr. Appleton.

Oh, okay.

Okay. I'm like, I didn't get your first name wrong, did I?

No, no, no.

Okay. Okay. Well, you know, the interesting part, and I think a great place to start here, is that you used to be addicted to sugar, and you talk about that in the book. So can you tell me a little bit more about that and tell the audience about your sugar addiction just so people, you know, realize.

Yes.

That you're somebody who hasn't eaten healthy since you were born.

Well, that was how I got into the field. I was a sugarholic, and I still am. I mean, do you ever get over hollow ism? I don't think so. So that it's, you know, one day at a time even now. Although it's nothing like it used to be. Nothing. I mean, I craved it incredibly. Now I can walk by a Haagen Dazs or a famous Amos or somewhere and keep walking, which I couldn't.

Book, you used to have chocolate cake for breakfast.

That's right. Absolutely. No. And so that's nice, because now I can eat vegetables. And if I could eat chocolate cake for breakfast, then why can't I eat vegetables, which I do now. Anyway, let's go back to why I'm a sugarholic from the time I was very young. Don't ask me why, but we had what was. I lived in Los Angeles. And the helmsman came to our back door, which was a bakery. And you could pull out these drawers, hop into this little truck. Oh, it was wonderful. And get donuts and nut bars and cupcakes and cookies and. Oh, God, the list went on. And I would meet the truck down at the bottom of the street and flag him down and say, oh, I'm going the other way, but just let me take a few things. So mom would pay the bill at the end of the month, and she never really looked that closely, so I could keep this stuff, hide it. And I was a tennis player, a national tennis player, junior. And so I exercised a heck of a lot so I could eat a lot of this junk, which I did. So from a very young age, I craved the stuff. But finally, at age 40, I was sick as a dog. I had. When I was at UCLA, I had a tumor removed when I was 20 from my chest, a calcium deposit. And then by the time I was 40, I had chronic bronchitis. And the doctor said, take antibiotics 10 days out of the month the rest of your life. Oh, my God. So at that time, I started looking around and found ANSWERS. And I'm 74 now and feel better than I did when I was 40, I'll tell you that. So that's the thing.

Now, can you. When we're talking about sugar, can you give me a quick definition of what you're thinking of when you say sugar?

When I say. When I talk about what we're going to talk about today, I mean the good old table sugar, which is also called sucrose. But I also mean fructose. I mean, corn syrup, corn syrup solids, corn sweetener, dextrose, dextrin, maple syrup, brown sugar, turbinado sugar, raw sugar, beet sugar, cane sugar. What have I missed? Oh, tons of things. At the health food store, you can buy barley malt, rice syrup. Those are all simple sugars that hit the bloodstream very quickly and suppress the immune system. So I truly mean. And the research actually started at Loma Linda University, and they did this research, and they not only tested. They tested the phagocytes, the white blood cells that defend us against foreign invaders. And what they did is they fed people sugar and honey and various things and watched the white blood cells just go dormant. They just couldn't attack the things they were supposed to. And as the blood glucose went up, which it does, would you eat simple sugar? And the phagocytic index went low. When it came back in three or four hours to normal, then the phagocytes could do their number again. And so it does suppress the immune system, there's no question about it.

Now, would you say that there is a certain amount of sugar that somebody would have to consume to cause these type of health risks? Or how much sugar would you say is too much sugar?

Okay, this is a, I can't say, you know, give you a number of 110 or something. What I will say is if you have health problems, if you have high blood pressure, if you take pills to control cholesterol or any other thing, I don't think you're healthy. You see, I've asked people before and said, hey, are you healthy? And they'll say yes. And I said, well, do you take any pills? Oh yeah, well, I take this for blood pressure, I take this for that and the other reason. And it controls everything. But that doesn't make you well, you see, as far as I'm concerned. So first I have to define what I mean. Well, I mean a person who wakes up and goes to bed happy and sleeps okay, and is not on any pills and does some exercise and is in their normal weight range, that's a healthy person. And so those people have the ability to maintain a healthy, what we call homeostasis or balance in the body. Now sugar upsets that balance, but they have the ability to bring it back to balance quite easily. And unfortunately they can get away with eating a lot more junk than some of us can, including me. So I would say that person can eat 2 tablespoons of sugar, 2 teaspoons of sugar at any one time. Now a Coke has 10, so that would only be one fifth of a Coke. And then you wait an hour or so, the body has a chance to assimilate that and then you wait an hour and can have another two teaspoons. But you see, if you drink a Coca Cola, which has 10 teaspoons, that's a big hit to the body at one time, I have to tell you, a big hit now. So a healthy person, be my guest. I know 80 year olds. In fact, today, early this morning, I played tennis with a 89 year old guy who is on no pills at all. So there you are. And I'm certainly not going to tell him how to live or what to eat. It's the person. Go ahead.

Oh, I was, I was going to say that you use Coke as an example and you know, not wanting to insult our audience's intelligence, I think that almost everybody knows that Coke has a lot of sugar in it. But you talk about some things in your book that I think people don't realize have a lot of sugar in them.

Right.

And sure was one example. But what, aw. What sugar intensive foods are we eating on a daily basis? And we don't really realize how much sugar those foods contain.

Well, there's foods that aren't necessarily intensive, but when you eat two or three of them, you're going to get a dose. And by the way, I shouldn't just say Coca Cola, the average soft drink has 10 teaspoons of sugar. It says 40 grams on there. And so now you know that there is for every four grams of sugar there's one teaspoon.

That's a good number to know. It's four grams of sugar. If you look on the back on the, the nutrition label, basically think of one teaspoon of like the normal white sugar that a lot of people have in their, in their pantries.

Right. Most people, you know, look at the back of their thing and say, well, yeah, I'd like to know how much sugar. Well, most people don't know how many grams, so they tell them 40 grams. What does that mean? I'm amazed I can be in a lecture of 150 people in front of me and ask that question and no one knows. I think that the food industry does this on purpose so we can't tell how much sugar is in there. Anyway, back to this. What were we talking about?

You brought up some examples in your book of some sugar intensive foods that maybe we wouldn't think of as being high sugar foods.

Okay, well how about this? Sushi has sugar in it. It's in the rice. And whether you get it store bought or from a restaurant, next time you're at a restaurant ask them. In fact, look at your label on the one from, I don't know, Costco or Safeway or any one of your stores and you'll see that they all have sugar in it. So that's something most of us don't understand.

White rice raises the blood sugar just as quickly as a tablespoon of sugar from your.

Yes, but this not only has white rice, it has table sugar.

Oh really? They actually add table sugar to the sushi?

Absolutely, yes, yes. Yes. I'm not talking about carbohydrates that have sugar. I'm talking about sugar. Sugar, right. So that's an interesting thing that most of us don't know. Another one is ketchup. 94% of the calories from ketchup is from sugar. Maybe it's 92. I think it's 92% of the calories is sugar. Now tomatoes have some sugar in it, but 90% of that 92 calories is from table sugar. So they add a lot to products like that. And like canned peas have, most canned peas have quite a bit of sugar. Why did they do this? Why do canned peas need sugar? I'll tell you why. Number one, it's a cheap filler. You can still get, you know, about three pounds of sugar for a dollar fifty. It's nothing. So it's cheap, number one. And it's addictive. And oh boy, those peas taste great. They're sweet. And so they keep coming back for more. So they buy more of their canned products. So those are one of the, those are the main reasons that people use sugar in their products.

Now how about products that are generally considered as health food or nutrition products?

Yeah, well, that's another problem too. You got to be just almost as careful at a health food store as you do a regular store in what you're eating because they have a soda section, they have a fruit juice section or fruit drink section that is sometimes 5% juice. They have all these same things in a health food store. So watch out, start reading your labels. All those words I gave you. Glucose, fructose, levelose, maltose, anything with an O S E means sugar. And high, of course, high eight. Sometimes they have hf, high fructose hfcs, and that's high fructose corn syrup. And that's a very difficult thing for our body to digest.

But I will say there's a couple of products that are made by a pharmaceutical company called Abbott Laboratories that you bring up in your book. The Ensure and the pediasure, two things that people use for healthy nutrition. I was shocked when you went into what's contained in them.

Those.

It's sort of scary, right? And you know, I didn't even know they made something called pediasure. And I'm looking in my book now for. Because like I should be able to. They're going to have to delete this part. Give me a chance. There it is. Okay, here's the insure. There's, as my book says, ensure is anything but a sure thing. And it certainly is not. The first ingredient is sucrose. The second ingredient is corn syrup, and the third ingredient is maltodextrin. And, you know, although Ensure has many vitamins and minerals, the sugar so upsets the body chemistry that those vitamins and minerals can become toxic in the body. Now, people don't like to hear that, but I have research that shows just that.

How would. How would consuming sugar, along with a vitamin and mineral, such as in a health drink like Ensure, actually cause problems?

Okay, the sugar depletes some of the minerals just by eating the sugar. Yes, you could get. You could eat all your RDA's required daily allowance of vitamins and minerals from your food from your supplement. But if you drink it down with a Coca Cola, you're in trouble because Coca Cola throws the body out of homeostasis and depletes some of the minerals in doing this. So forget the RDAs. As long as you eat sugar, it's a waste of time. So it depletes the minerals, and therefore the enzymes can't work because every enzyme is dependent upon a mineral. And most of us out there know that there's two types of enzymes. But the digestive enzymes help us digest food. And you don't digest all your food. And some of it sits in the gut and is not digested, and it irritates the lining of the gastrointestinal tract, the cells widen, and partially digested food gets into the bloodstream. And this is a form of food allergy and why it's so prevalent today. So the sugar itself is a problem. And so as far as I'm concerned, nobody should be drinking Ensure whatsoever. There's almost as much sugar as a Coca Cola Ensure, the version that you.

Bring up for babies. That almost upset me more that Pediasure is essentially almost the same ingredients as Ensure.

It's not only that. Wait till you hear this. I'd never heard of this. When I was doing my research in unsure, I realized, okay, oh, there's another product called Pediasure. I was a little dubious from the beginning, but I went to my grocery store at first. I went to the web and looked up Pediasure, and they gave all the ingredients, but they did not say that there was any sugar in it. And I went, hold on here. So many carbohydrates, so much fat, so much protein, so much vitamin A, etc. No sugar. And I went, I don't believe this. And maybe they made a mistake on the web. So I went to my grocery store, found the product, looked Again and no sugar. So I called up insure which makes pedia sure and said could you tell me a little about pedia sure. And she said well of course. And this sweet lady, I said well tell me how much sugar does it have in it? And she gave me four. I think it's a six ounce, what do you call it? Bottle of Ensure for babies. And there was just as much sugar as a Coca Cola. Now granted, actually every eight ounce bottle of chocolate, now why does a baby need chocolate flavor? Has 31 grams of sugar. Now a Coca Cola is, you see, 12 grams and it has 40. So actually this eight ounce bottle has just as many grams of sugar as a Coca Cola does. So anyway, so I said well why did you forget to put it on your bottles? Did you forget to put it on your website? And she said no, it is a doctor's whatever. It's supposedly complete balanced nutrition for children's health. It says on it and it's a. Doctors have approved this for babies so they don't have to put the amount of sugar. So a mom goes up there and she looks at this and she goes, there's no sugar in this. This is wonderful for my baby. Oh my God. I'm just. The whole thing makes me sick even think about it.

So that's some things that people don't realize are in regular foods that they come across every day. You also bring up in your book some of these things like baked beans have over two teaspoons of sugar in them. Peanut butter, again just a serving, two teaspoons of sugar. Breakfast bars, like the healthy breakfast bars, you've got eight and a half teaspoons of sugar. Oatmeal cookies, like healthy fat free oatmeal cookies. Ten and a half teaspoons of sugar. I mean it' sit's crazy so.

I know it is.

You know I think it's important for people to realize when you're talking about some of these health risks associated with sugar co consumption. If you can go read the long article over at the website@bengreekfieldfitness.com There is sugar in lots of things other than just table sugar.

Yes, yes, yes. There's so many different forms of sugar. I think the worst one today is agave nectar and it's being touted as this great thing because it doesn't raise your blood sugar so diabetics can eat it. Give me a break. If they never, never, never, everybody go throw your agave nectar out and eat table sugar. It's easier on the body than Agave nectar. And the reason is, is because agave nectar is 90% fructose and 10% glucose, when all of your fruits and beet sugar and cane sugar, approximately 50% glucose and 50% fructose. So this new agave nectar is 90% fructose. And it's the fructose molecule in this, in these sugars that's a killer because it doesn't go through, insulin doesn't. The pancreas doesn't regulate this. And insulin is not secreted when you eat this, when you eat the fructose. And it actually, it's the liver that does the metabolism of fructose. And our body just doesn't have the ability to do that with the amount that we're eating today. We just, we don't have them. We did not evolve from early man having the mechanisms to digest this glut of fructose that we are today.

Now, we talked a little bit about.

Babies, purported health drinks.

What about parents who are listening in who want to keep their children from getting addicted to sugar. You talked about how you got addicted to sugar as a kid. You know, I have children. I know a lot of our listeners have children. My apologies to the people who don't.

You're just going to have to listen in for a second.

But do you have some recommendations for parents to prevent their kids from getting addicted to sugar?

Yes. The first thing I can tell you is I have grandchildren. Not only that, there's other huge advantages to not letting your kids eat much sugar. And I have grandkids that are 12 now. One has been on antibiotics once in his 12 years. They're twins. And the other one has not been on at all. Their teeth, both of them are perfect. There are no cavities. Now we're talking. Oh, in fact, they just turned 13. And so how did they do this? Well, their mother, from a young age, from the time they were born, they had never had. They didn't have sugar in the house. Now, granted, they went to parties and they would have it now and then. Neither boy has even had a Coca Cola or a soft drink, tell you the truth. And they're healthy, happy, and get very, very good grades. And, you know, it works. But you've got to start at a young age. I have to tell you, you have to start at the beginning, and the whole family has to be involved. You can't tell your kids not to do it and then go do it yourself. It just doesn't work. Therefore, I think that the classrooms and in the class, unless you have PTA meetings and the parents come along, too. You're wasting your time because the whole family's got to change. But it not only helps the teeth, but the mom doesn't have to. At 2 o', clock, take the kid's temperature who feels terrible and try to decide whether she should go to the hospital or go to the drugstore and get some medicine and all the sick leave and the rest of it, that happens. You know, my daughter hasn't had to face any of that because she just feeds her kids, right? So there are great advantages. Once the kid is on sugar, how do you get him off? Well, I'll tell you what I did. I took my kids to England, swapped homes with somebody. But you could do this on a mini basis, like at summertime when you go camping, or if you go away for a week, take them and say, you know, we're getting off of sugar this week, and maybe the first day you give them a half of the dessert of their choice, or if they want a half a Coke or a half of something, the next day it's a fourth, the next day it's a bite and that's it. And hopefully on a basis where the kid is getting a little sugar, he won't go through withdrawal symptoms if he is a sugarholic. So that's one way to. And then after that, just say, there's none in my house now, knowing that the kid's going to eat it when he's outside. I mean, the most important thing is to love your kids, not to nag them until they're 21, because you can change their eating habits, but it's very difficult, except through therapy, et cetera, to change how your relationship is with them and how they grow up feeling about themselves. So I still think that loving them is the most important thing. I don't know how I got on all this, but I believe that.

I agree with you and you have some really great practical tips in your book, Recipes, Healthy alternatives. But one last thing before we get to those. There are two conditions that I wanted to briefly bring up. Cancer and heart disease.

Okay.

You talk about cancer in your book, and I don't think that many people associate sugar with cancer.

Why?

Do you?

No. And on the 140 reasons why sugar is ruining your health. Oh, my God. Probably 10 of them are different cancers too, so. And that's all from medical. You've got all the documented medical articles there, too, right?

Yeah. Well, they're in your book and they're on my website.

Yeah, yeah. Right on your website. That's what I mean, right? So that you can look and say breast cancer, liver cancer, lung cancer, it's all there. And go to the website and go to the pubmed medical journal article and you'll find it. Oh, by the way, what you can do is when you see an article like that, just go into Google and in the information section up there that you put in at the right at the top, right there, put in the medical journal article and it'll pop up. You don't have to go through any government agency or anything else.

Now, you talk about specifically. The part that intrigued me in your book was you talked about the positron emission tomography test, the PET scan that's used to detect cancer. How is that giving you a clue that sugar can cause or sugar can feed cancer?

Okay, this test that they give is to try so that doctors can locate to the inch nth degree exactly where the cancer is. So they inject this into your body and what it is is colored sugar water. And then they watch this colored sugar water go right to the cancer. It just whizzes right there. And they go, oh, that's right where it is. So they can pinpoint it. Well, you see, cancer loves sugar. And the reason they use a sugar, I forgot dextrose, dextrine is probably what they use, but it's a sugar. And so that the sugar will go right to the spot where the cancer is. Well, it would seem to me logical that doctors would say, hold on here, look at this. And when they put just colored dye in, then it doesn't work. So there you are. So sugar feeds cancer. And there's so much research out on this now. I can't understand why the medical community, I mean, the person with cancer research.

It looks like it was done onon people where they looked at their diets. Thethe high glycemic index or the high sugar diets and the increases in cancer or rates of cancer, especially pancreatic cancer.

Were enormous with people who ate the sugar. Yeah, yeah, I know, you're right. You're right, you're right.

Now, you also talk about heart disease, and again, I think most people associate.

Fat with heart disease.

They do. And I, in fact, when I say I don't think fat's the problem that we have thought for many years. And of course, it hasn't cured or stopped or waylaid heart disease by removing a lot of the fat. Used to be 42% of the. We ate 42% of our calories from fat Today it's down to about 30. And heart disease certainly isn't down at that rate that we have lowered the fat intake in our body. It hasn't helped at all. Anyway, yes, people don't like to hear this. They've removed the fat. That's what they've been told to do for 20 years. And they can try to continue to do it, but some don't do it very well, I'll have to say even that. But it's the sugar that's the biggest problem on here. And in fact, the American Heart association just came out about one month ago, that would be about the turn of the year into 2010, and said we should reduce the amount of sugar we eat by 70% every day. And that would mean that a woman, an average woman, could have six teaspoons of sugar. And remember, a Coke has 10, so she can only have a half a Coke. That's it. And she can't have sugar in any other form. And a man should be having only nine teaspoons of sugar. This is the heart association saying this. So there you are. The metabolic syndrome is the problem here where when you eat the sugar, the insulin reacts and that's what's causing the heart disease.

So you basically get a high number of. Of circulating fatty acids in the bloodstream. That's my understanding, from the fructose. But then also, the other thing that I think has been brought up quite a bit recently is the fact that.

The very, very small, what's called oxidized.

Cholesterol that can be produced when you consume sugar, that actually causes more damage to the arteries around the heart than.

Than fat does.

That's true. You got it. There's. It's a whole different ballgame out there now. Finally, finally, finally.

So what are some solutions, healthy alternatives to sugar that you've come across?

Okay, you know, I have actually, in my book, Suicide by Sugar, I have quite a few recipes that have no fruit.

I know.

No fruit.

I was.

I gotta interrupt you real quick. I was reading this book, book in bed next to my wife, and I'm just flipping out. I'm like, we're gonna make this one. Okay, we gotta do this one. And she starts looking, she's like, wow, those are actually pretty good, you know? Cause I read a lot of nutrition books. I kind of have to for my job. And, you know, a lot of them just have so many ingredients and they're so hard to make. But these are some awesome recipes that you have in here. Sorry to interrupt.

Thank you. No, yeah, I did keep them as simple as could be. They're easy and quick to make. And there aren't any of you have to go to some Asian market to buy the ingredient in either. So. Yes, and I've used sweet potato, I've used carob. You see, I don't see anything wrong with whipping cream. I mean, a person who thinks fat's going to kill them will might pass out at that one. But it seems to me in a couple of these recipes I've used whipping cream, carrots, beets. It's amazing what you could do. And then spices like cinnamon to make interesting desserts.

Yeah, that's the thing is most of these are desserts which you wouldn't expect to find in a sugar book.

That's right. Yeah. But there is no fruit and no sugar whatsoever in any one of them.

Okay. And so you, primarily for your alternatives to sugar, are recommending these natural sugars that you get from some of these vegetable starches.

Yes. And I will tell you, I do another thing, you can buy carob chips and they do have forgotten some form of sugar. And I'll line up 10 of them in front of me, just 10 carob chips, and I'll suck on one after the other when I get a big craving. So there's ways that you can reduce the amount of sugar that you put in your mouth on a daily basis. And that will help, I have to tell you. But if you do have some sort of a disease or a problem, I really recommend you remove all the sugar from your diet.

What about stevia? Have you ever come across or used.

Oh, sure. I think that that's probably the only one that I would recommend of the sugar substitutes, if that's what you want to call them. But if you're a sugar holic, I don't recommend that either. And the reason is because it keeps you craving that sweet stuff. And you got to get away from that if you're going to get off of sugar, if you're a real sugar holic. So bite the bullet and after withdrawing for a week or so, you know, quit it. See if you can do that. And then I don't. Yeah. In the summer, I don't use much stevia in the summertime. I make lemonade after I've exercised a lot that tastes pretty good. But I don't use it on a daily basis. I don't put it on any foods whatsoever. And I'm scared to death I'll become a sugarholic again. But I won't because it's been about 25 years. So I think I've made it.

I want to shift track and talk about this article. This 143 ways or was it 100, 143 raised that sugar destroys your health. I posted it@BenGreenfieldFitness.com and I got a few responses that I'd like to pass by you. If one is from Christine and Christine.

Says let me find her response here.

I really have to question some of the statements in your list. The one that I really have to disagree with is sugar and juvenile delinquency. I'm a teacher of young children and have studied juvenile behavior for years. Well, I agree that sugar is not good for anyone. I have to disagree that it leads to misbehavior delinquency or add in children. And she goes on and says, in fact, if a child or parent ever blames poor choice behavior on sugar, I'd have to laugh. What do you feel about that?

Okay, well, it's Alexander or Alex Schauss. S C H A U S S is a person who's written I forgotten the name of the book, but he's gone into penitentiaries number one and removed the sugar and found that the people aren't half as violent. And then also he's taken children and done the same things. Now it's controversial because there has been research where they don't feed sugar to kids and they act no different than they did before. And I agree that all children, I was a teacher too, and I have to tell you, I felt it after Thanksgiving and not Thanksgiving, but Halloween and Christmas. I mean, the kids weren't. Some of the kids were unruly, period. But this lady apparently hasn't found that. And that's okay because every kid who's unruly will not become a nice kid by removing sugar. That's the first thing I definitely say. But it's such an easy thing to do, to try it for a week. It's cheap, it's non invasive, you don't need a doctor, it's not going to hurt the kid at all. So give it a try. That's what I'd have to say.

Okay, and then you, you have another response here from listener Ace. And he says.

Although there are a.

Few facts that are true in this list, the fact that Nancy uses the word can, for example, can cause or can lead to chromium deficiency or can cause copper deficiency means that these are probably not 100% facts. And there is not enough research or studies to back up what she is claiming.

No, that's not the way I view it. I wrote can, because there can be other factors that cause that depletion, too. So you can't say that again. Everybody who eats sugar is going to deplete their chromium. And you can't say that if you stop eating the sugar, your chromium will come back to normal. There's other factors involved, period. But that research is there showing. I've forgotten how they did it now, but showing that they, you know, that sugar did deplete the copper in the. In the research that they did.

Yeah. And I have another response here from Ben, who says with so many variables, I don't think we can say sugar exclusively causes all those things. And he says because basically sugar would have to be behind everything bad that could happen in your body.

I agree with him completely.

Yeah. And I think what you're saying, if I'm. If I'm understanding you correctly, is that, for example, if someone comes down with pancreatic cancer, you're not exclusively saying that sugar caused that, but what you're saying is that sugar could definitely be a factor, that it could be a choice.

That's why I use the word tan.

Yeah.

Interesting.

Yeah, those are. Those are good questions, and I'm glad that I hope the people listen to this tape.

Well, I didn't ask you this before our interview, but if I were interested in getting out a video camera and going into my kitchen and preparing one of these items that you have in your book, just to show the audience how easy it is, would you mind if I did something like that?

No, do it. I think it's a great idea.

I think that's what I'm going to do. So for those of you listening in, I'll actually show you a couple of these recipes because they're really fantastic, and I've been chomping at the bits to go make them.

Okay. What I do is maybe I'd make it first and make sure it comes out.

Yes. Make sure it comes out correctly. That's a good point.

Yeah.

Yeah. Well, Dr. Appleton, Nancy, I want to thank you for coming on the show today and talking about your book, Suicide by Sugar. And I'll make sure that I put a link to that in the show notes to this podcast. And is there anything else that you'd like to share with the audience before we close?

Well, they can go to my website, nancyappleton.com and take a test to see if they're a sugar. Holy. Read a lot more about sugar on my website. And I guess that there's one thing that I'd like to say to the audience, and that is start reading your labels. I think that's probably the most important thing you can do just to educate yourself to see how much sugar is put into so many things. Even Morton's table sugar has. Morton salt has sugar in it, but just a very little bit. But it's amazing what how much sugar is used in. But, you know, hopefully you're going to be eating God's food or Mother Nature's food, and there won't be any labels that you have to read. You can't read them because they're whole food. So that's number one. And the second thing I'll leave you with is what the white queen said to Alice in Alice in Wonderland. And what she said was, I eat jam yesterday and I eat jam tomorrow, but I never eat jam today.

Okay, we'll end on that. Never eat jam today. All right, well, thank you, Nancy, and thank you, Ben.

It's been great.

All right, goodbye.

Good luck on your food.

Thanks.

Folks. We've got interviews coming up with Dr. Cohen, with Dr. Dean, and many more really great people coming on to educate you on the BenGreenfieldFitness.com podcast. If you are a triathlete, you can still squeeze in as a charter member to the Rockstar triathlete academy@rockstartriathlete.com youm can check out my new book on how to become a triathlete coach@triathloncoachguide.com definitely leave us a ranking in itunes. And by the way, the Rockstar Triathlete Academy podcast will be coming out soon. We'll be releasing two podcasts a month for that as well, so check it all out. And until next time, this is Ben Greenfield signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com have a healthy week.