Exploring the Best Healthy Sugar Alternatives with JJ Virgin

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Within one week of eating artificial sweeteners, the gut microbiome was transformed to become glucose intolerant which can make you insulin resistant which can make you gain weight, especially around the waist. So this is a super bad thing.

Here's JJ Virgin, Triple board certified nutrition and fitness expert and four time New York Times best selling author. It's time to reignite Wellness.

Hey, it's JJ Virgin. Welcome to the Reignite Wellness Show. I am super excited to talk about sweet sweeteners today because we get asked so many questions, there's so much confusion about them. In fact, when I wrote the Virgin Diet, the number one question that I got asked was about sugar. People were so confused. It seems like they were either confused about it, like is honey okay? What about artificial sweeteners? They don't have any calories, blah blah blah. Or they were controlled by it. Like, you know, sugar is the number one recreational drug of choice. Shout out to my buddy Dr. Mark Hyman who, who gave me that phrase. And so they could, they just couldn't quit. So I've been sort of obsessed with sweeteners ever since. And today we are going to talk about all the sugar alternatives, understanding allulose, the new kid on the block, sugar, alcohols and more. So you can make the right decision. You can know which to choose and which to lose. And I'm recording this live on Instagram and Facebook getting a bunch of feedback here. I super appreciate all you guys hanging out with me, especially with the a little bit of the tech issues at the beginning. So leave your questions in the comments. Remember, we have Friday Q A and so I'll be taking those questions and I'll be putting them into the Friday Q and A. The Friday Q and A podcast. Now also we have a super cool as usual, we always have great show notes but I always put fun stuff into the show notes. Today's are going to be@jjvirgin.com sugaroptions if you're watching it live, that is not up yet. So don't Go there, don't go there. You will not find anything. But if you're listening to this at the podcast, go to sugar options jjvirgin.com sugar options because we're going to have the quiz about whether you're a sugar burner fat burner. We can put in the sweet treats guide while the sugar impact diet information. So and some cool recipes. We'll also put in our creamy chocolate protein pudding and and our paleo pumpkin recipe. So you will definitely want to go there. So let's dive in. But before we dive in, I want to do a shout out to Kimmy K. 77 and it is love to listen. Five stars and Apple Podcasts by Kimmy K. 77 from United States of America on November 24, 2019. She says, I really enjoy listening to the podcast. Thank you JJ and team. And thank you Kim K. By the way, for saying JJ and team. Like, I sit here, I do this piece, but a whole lot of work went into it before I even sat down by the team. Putting information together, figuring out what people really want to learn more about. And then of course afterwards, all this magic happens. I have no idea what goes on there. I'm just sitting in the chair with the mic. All right. Says thank you for all the helpful knowledge on how to reclaim health and wellness. I want to get healthier and it's hard to know where to start, but the more info I hear, the better I can do, hopefully. Thanks JJ again. Hey, by the way, what we're really focusing on this year is really giving you a step by step roadmap of how you reclaim your health. So be sure to jump on over and again, we'll put it into the show notes. Jump on over to my website because that's the big thing that we do is is we are big on little hinges that swing the big doors. I'm making those 1% shifts that really get dialed in. So we're going to be doing these 1% challenges throughout the year. I'm super duper excited about all of this. Really cool. So we're going to take a short break. I want to do a shout out for one of my favorites and then I will be right back. Dive in to talk about healthy sugar alternatives, knowing which to choose and which to lose. So stay with me.

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Alrighty. Welcome back. So why I wrote the Sugar Impact Diet. And again, you know, the number one question when I wrote the Virgin diet was about sugar. And it just was kind of a head scratcher to me because I don't really have a sweet tooth. So I am very fortunate. I got plenty of other issues, though I don't think I escaped this one. It's just not sugar. And so what I learned was that people were really confused and that confusion, of course, was leading, making poor decisions. And that always kills me is when people are duped by misinformation. They're trying to make the right choices, but they just don't understand quite what those are or they just were controlled by it. And so I really started to dig into that because I knew we'd been looking at sugar all wrong, that the glycemic index, while it was a good start, it really fell short in helping us understand what's good and what's not good. And so I want to create a new framework for looking at sugar, which is what the Sugar Impact Diet is. It's looking at how much something will impact your blood sugar and insulin and. Or insulin or how much something will. How much fructose something has in it. Those are the issues. And then I counterbalance that. I guess I balance that out with nutrient density and fiber to get a rating of green, yellow or red, low, medium, and high for sugar impact. And so as I started to really look at that, I really looked at all these sweeteners and went, okay, so as far as a sweetener goes, you know, what's it doing? What's it doing to your insulin? What's it doing to your blood sugar? What's it doing to your cravings? Is it healthy and safe? Is it natural and natural like organic or versus artificial? Because remember, it's either artificial or it's not. And so let's start out first by. With what not to use. So what not to use table sugar. So why not table sugar? And what's very interesting is, you know, I remember when I put out the sugar impact diet to begin with, I went to the store to get sugar cubes because I wanted to do all these, like, little video vignettes with sugar cubes and blah, blah, blah. That'd be super cool. Could not find them anywhere. We're eating less table sugar than ever. But crazy enough, we're eating more sugar than ever. So back at the turn of the century, it was, I think it was like 5 pounds per person per year. Now it's 150 pounds per person per year. We're literally eating our weight and sugar. And it's because it's sneaking into places you would never expect. And so a lot of our table sugar is sneaking into marinara sauces, yogurts, salad dressings, et cetera. And, you know, you know, all the health issues that come with this. Type 2 diabetes and insulin resistance, heart disease, big cognitive decline, because these things drive up your blood sugar. Turns out if your blood sugar is just a little higher, like 90, and they, you know, the ideal range is about 80. Let's say it's 90 or five times the risk of some kind of cognitive decline and cancers. Of course, sugars feed cancers. Now, I think we all pretty much know this. It's like, you know, we should not be adding sugar. We want to get foods with 5 grams of sugar or less if we're getting a processed food. Better yet, just don't eat processed foods. You'll save money and you'll save your health. So that's the first thing, you know, let's avoid foods with added sugar. If it does have added sugars, 5 grams is your absolute, absolute limit there per serving. And so the next one then goes to honey. Because what I heard from it, from everybody out there is like, but honey, it's all natural. You know, it's from bees. What could possibly be wrong with that? There are some. There's some healthy stuff that goes on with honey, right? I mean, there's like, there's bee pollen and royal jelly, and there's also a little bit of local, organic, raw honey can actually help with seasonal organic allergies. And when I say a little bit, I'm talking like half a teaspoon. Okay? Not much. It works kind of homeopathically. So the challenge with honey is it's glucose and fructose. And remember, you know, people go, oh, it's all natural. Well, you know, tobacco is natural, opium is natural, mercury is natural. So arsenic is natural. I mean, so we can't really. That argument doesn't fly, let's be honest. But when you really look at it and break it apart, when you eat honey, your body goes, oh, sugar's coming in. It's no different in composition than table sugar. Next one up is agave. Now agave drives me nuts because it got this like healthy wrap by the health food industry because of the way we used to look at sugar, which is glycemic index. And when you look at the glycemic index, the glycemic index will test the amount that blood sugar rises in response to a 50 gram dose of, of food. And so agave look like this awesome thing because it didn't raise your blood sugar because it's mainly fructose. And fructose doesn't raise blood sugar. Fructose goes straight to the liver, the only organ that can metabolize it. And if it can't be turned into glucose and stored as glycogen, it probably can't because it's not very big there. It's turned into fat. And that is why we're getting fatty liver. It's the most aging sugar of all. I mean, all sugars are aging. They call cause glycation. Honey too. Sorry. Like don't shoot the messenger. Look at the research and look at the biochemistry of these things. But all sugars will glycate. This is a very aging process. It's kind of like what the brown the crust on bread looks like, where proteins combine with sugar without the needs of enzymes. And think of that as like the crust. But fructose does it like seven to nine times more and more. Also, fructose can make your gut more permeable, so it can lead to food intolerance. It also feeds the worst types of cancers. The reason we started to use it is super sweet and cheap. So there you go. Like that's kind of a recipe for disaster. Now we can't Talk about those without bringing up the artificial sweeteners, which drive me nuts, though. And those would be things like Splenda. So aspartame, saccharin, all those ones. Now, couple problems with those. One of the things that we've seen, you know, it's a couple. It was years ago where the first things that started to come out were, wow, people who drink diet sodas have a bigger waist circumference than people who drink regular sodas. And it's like, well, why is that? And there's the, you know, hypothesis was, well, people are drinking a diet soda and eating cookies. Yeah, I don't buy it. And then they started looking at people who were drinking a diet soda day had a 33% higher risk of drinking, of developing diabetes than people who didn't. Okay, getting a little crazy here. So what was going on? Well, finally figured it out with a study that looked at the gut microbiome and discovered that within one week of eating artificial sweeteners, the gut microbiome was transformed to become glucose intolerant, which can make you insulin resistant, which can make you gain weight, especially around the waist. So this is a super bad thing, and it's really upsetting because why did we create artificial sweeteners in the first place? We created artificial sweeteners in the first place to be able to use for diabetics who couldn't use regular sugar. So that's kind of a head scratcher. Now, besides that piece of it, there's another thing. There's a couple of things. Number one, what happens when you eat sweet? You crave sweet. Hey, team, if anyone's watching, let's take out. Omar needs to go. Bye. Bye. And let me see there. I can make you go away. All right, I love the world. Like, we can't do this on regular tv. We can't just go audience poof. But you can here. So one of the rules that we have in my community is everyone's nice. Imagine that. I know I might be a little bit of an idealist, but I believe it's possible. Anyway, here we go. So anyone listening to the podcast? We had a little. We had a little mean audience member who just got blown off the planet. All right, so back over to here. So beyond just changing your gut microbiome, the other thing we know is that when you eat sweet. And I'd love to hear this from your. The audience here. When you eat sweet, what do you want? More sweet, right? You want more sweet. And so what we want to do here is retrain your taste buds to appreciate natural, natural sweetness. Things like berries and sweet potatoes and cinnamon and vanilla. But if you're bombarding it with it with artificial sweeteners, it's like, you know, you start to train it to want progressively more sweet. Now, other thing we know is that it can cause calorie dysregulation. One of the things that can happen with artificial sweeteners is, and they did a study with rats where they showed that when they fed rats sugar water, they were able to eat what they needed to maintain their weight. Then they fed them artificially sweetened water and they were able to eat what they needed to maintain their weight. But when they went back to drinking the sugar water, they overate because they lost the ability to correlate calibrate the degree of sweetness with the amount of calories. And so that's one of my issues with some of these other sweeteners too is if you don't have the calories, you can lose a little bit of that. So something to be aware of. And of course there's some neurotoxic issues with a lot of these artificial sweeteners as well, because they're messing with mother nature. Don't do that. All right, so the good news is fortunately there are some healthy sweetener options. I'm not going to leave you hanging. That would be mean. But again, what I really, really want to stress here is this is not like get rid of, get, get the sugar out and then just start leaning on all this stuff. What I like to do is switch with healthy sweetener options is use them to help transition over. Part of what we do in the sugar impact diet is we teach you to start to slowly taper down from high sugar impact foods by trading in medium sugar impact foods. Eat from the plate of clean, lean protein, healthy fats and loads of non starchy veggies with a little bit of low sugar impact starchier carbs and really start to work on reclaiming your taste buds for many savory and spicy, right? So that you really can appreciate the natural sweetness again. And then use these things to transition or for me, I'll use them in holidays. This is how I do a lot of my baking and recipes and all of that stuff. So I use all of these for like especially around the holidays. Right now we did this killer, like if you saw Brie Argot singer's stories on Instagram, during my Thanksgiving, we had a dark chocolate avocado mousse and a pumpkin almond cream cheese cheesecake that were made with my sprinkles that were amazing. So that was a combination of stevia and erythritol. So stevia is pretty interesting. And there's a lot of misinformation out there. Be care of the urban legends out there about stevia. It's kind of ridiculous because stevia actually can be, you know, stevia is kind of a what I would call a nutritional supplement that just happens to be sweet. The challenge with stevia is it can have potentially a bitter aftertaste. That's why I like to mix it with some other things. Like what I did was mix it with glycine and erythritol. We're also messing right now. When you listen to this on a stevia, on a potentially a monk fruit allulose glycine mixture. But the cool thing is you can use stevia. It won't impact your blood sugar or your insulin. It's also been shown to improve glucose tolerance and prevent the risk factors for metabolic syndrome. So I mean, how cool. This actually is a sweetener that will help you if you're insulin resistant or diabetic. It's also been shown to be a great natural alternative to help treat diseases associated with metabolic syndrome. So here is the one study here. I'm going to read one of these studies. Stevia was fed to lab rats with issues with hypertension, diabetes, inflammation, fatty liver and elevated cholesterol. And Stevie was fed to these lab rats. Their conditions improved. Rats with diabetes had positive effects in controlling and balancing blood sugar. And diabetic rats also lost weight as well as lowered their high blood pressure. Then 20 women's, 20 women with high cholesterol were given in a water extract of stevia and they found that their LDL triglycerides and overall cholesterol decreased. So beware the silly stuff out there, the misinformation on stevia, because everything that I found, I've not found any of the studies on that and I've searched everything out there points to really great health benefits for using stevia. We'll put those into the show notes. And again, if you're watching this live, the shownotes are not live. They go live when the podcast Go Li goes live. But you can get those@jj virgin.com sugar options. Okay, next one is alulose. Okay. I've been messing around a bunch with alos. My buddies over at no Foods turned me onto it a couple years ago. I even served their stuff at my wedding and really amazing stuff that they started using allulose And I was like, I got to tell you, I was skeptical at first because the FDA wasn't allowing them to really give the true calorie claims of it. But man, it is amazing. Doesn't impact your gut. You know, some of these sweeteners, especially sugar alcohols like xylitol can make you not have a great gut. Allulose does not do that. It flushes out of your system, it doesn't raise your blood sugar levels, and it doesn't get absorbed into your small intestine. So what they found was that allulose absorbed in the body was not converted into energy and it was not completely used by the body. In other words, when you take in allulose, most of it goes out, you don't absorb it, you don't get the calories. So it's what the FDA at first was like making a call for calories a gram, but it actually is way less than that because your body doesn't absorb it. So a random double blind. Now here's a cool study again. I'm reading some studies for you and we'll put these in the show notes as well. Allulose can potentially reduce the risk of fatty liver disease and type 2 diabetes as well as balanced blood sugar. I mean, like when sweetener doing this. How super cool is that? So a random double blind controlled placebo test done on 26 subjects showed who consumed just 5 grams of allulose and tea after a standard meal showed significant blood sugar level reduction. I mean, this is amazing because it is all about blood sugar balance, as you know. So this is super cool. Really awesome. So again, this, I'm, I have been really messing around with allulose. We're messing around with changing over some of our formulas. It is, I believe. Let me make sure. Yes, it's in the keto chews that I'm holding up. If you're listening to this on the podcast, it's because I'm holding up my keto chews. There you go. All right, now let's talk sugar alcohol. So sugar alcohols are, are kind of interesting and they're called sugar alcohols. They're not alcohol. They're actually a polyol. I wish they would be called sugar polyols. And they're derived from plants, but they're kind of this hybrid between sugar and alcohol. And they're not completely digested, they don't impact blood sugar levels, but they can also give you a little digestive discomfort like gas. So if you are one of those people like xylitol probably won't be your friend. So just saying our wits are tall. I find most people. People are totally, totally fine with it Is made from corn. But the reason I'll use it in the sugar impact diet is it doesn't have corn proteins. So if someone's got a corn sensitivity generally doesn't create any issues. If it's like a massive corn allergy, a different thing, like an ige response, that's a whole different story. But for someone who just has a little intolerance to it, because it's not the protein that creates the intolerance. It's. The protein's not in erythritol, they're fine. Now there's some urban legends out there about sugar alcohols causing cancer. Nope. No research on that one. And that's again, like, show me. I'm gonna. I'm gonna go all Jerry Maguire here. Show me the money. Show me the research. Like, hey, I'm all down on any of this stuff if there's research. But you know, like, there's not. So be careful about those. Those little mythy poos out there. All right, let's talk monk fruit or lohango. It's a Chinese fruit, so it kind of makes me. It's. It's sort of. I feel kind of like a stevia ish with monk fruit. What I love about monk fruit is. Doesn't have the funky back aftertaste of that stevia sometimes can have. That's kind of. If you go overboard on stevia, it doesn't raise blood sugars. It's naturally sweet. And it also. Here's what the studies show. Yay. And this is what I love about all these sweeteners, is that they all have health benefits. Like, you can't ever say that table sugar has a health benefit. I mean, that's crazy. So monk fruit has strong anti inflammatory properties and can help prevent certain cancers and type 2 diabetes. I mean, that's insane. Okay, so one of these. I'm going to give you a couple bits of the research and again, we'll link to it in the show notes. Tests found that mugricides and monk fruit reduce inflammation caused by lipopolysaccharides. Monk fruit also contains a host of antioxidants, anti carcinogens, and helps prevent diabetic complications. And then here's another one. The magrocides in monk fruit exhibit anti diabetic effects. When it was used to treat diabetic mice, it reduced clinical symptoms of diabetes and helped regulate the immune system. Very cool. This is also cool because, remember, one of the things that really cool precious the immune system is sugar. So the fact that we have one that can help support it is really awesome. Make sure when you're getting a monk fruit sweetener, though, that you're not getting one that's added maltodextrin or dextrose. So get clean ones. All right. What about glycine? This is something I threw into my sprinkles. And the reason is it's an amino acid that can help maintain blood sugar and insulin levels. So, I mean, great for people with type 2 diabetes. Great for. For people with insulin resistance. And it's naturally sweet. So it's like this sort of cool little, like, thing that's naturally sweet amino acids. So that's why I thought, I'm like, why isn't this in sweeteners? So here's some research on that. Research shows glycine can aid in decreasing inflammation as well as enhance immune function in those with type 2 diabetes. Glycine was given to a group of 74 patients with type 2 diabetes. They were either given glycine or a placebo to see the effects of what glycine does to those with type 2 diabetes. And the results showed that the A1C, which, of course, as you know, reflects the average levels of blood glucose in the body over three months, decreased significantly as opposed to those who received the placebo. So that, my friends, is a big deal. And the other two, two that I'm going to give a shout out for that people don't think of the sweeteners. You hear me wrestling. It's because I'm making some notes. People don't often think about these as sweeteners, but vanilla and cinnamon are also two. And the reason I let you know that I'm making some noise, and now the dog's making noise. Everybody's making noise. Wow. Here we go. Rock and roll is. Hey, there you go, dog. Anyway, you know, these things just happen. This is real life here on the podcast. Anyway, my dog just had surgery, too, so apparently she's feeling better because she's feeling the need to bark at nothing. So I will tell you that someone sent me a really nice, nice, sweet note, kind of a nasty grammar about the noise in my podcast. And I should spend some coin on a good mic. And I'm like, I'm taking notes. That's why I'm doing it. I've got notes for everybody. Okay, so here are the notes. Vanilla and cinnamon. Why do I like these so much? Vanilla helps it. First of all, it can, it can be. What is that word? When it helps boost your pheromones, like, or something. It's like, it's, you know, those foods like oysters, it's. Etc. You know what I'm talking about? It's one of those. So vanilla is that. And I'm blanking on what I'm talking about, but maybe someone on Facebook or Instagram will tell me what the heck that word is. But beyond that, vanilla can help boost serotonin and it's naturally sweet. So vanilla is a great one. And by the way, I just made, I got from Calavee when I was there speaking, I got a recipe for a champagne vinaigrette made with grape seed oil and aphrodisiac. Thank you so much. Thank you. Beach feet meets city chic. So I got a recipe and we'll put it in the show notes and credit Calavee for grapeseed oil, champagne vinegar, little Dijon mustard and vanilla bean paste. That is insane. It's so good. Oh my gosh. I made it for Thanksgiving and everybody was like crazy about it. Okay, so that's vanilla and then cinnamon. Here is what's so amazing about cinnamon. Cinnamon balances blood sugar. In fact, I saw one, one supplement that they had, a cinnamon supplement. I'm like, why the heck do we need a cinnamon supplement? Like, like, seriously like cinnamon. Super delicious. Dump it in your stuff. So cinnamon helps balance blood sugar and it's naturally sweet too. So that's super cool. All right, so here's what we're going to do. We are going to take a short break. We're going to do a shout out to one of our sponsors. And then when I come back, I'm going to share with you how you can manage your sweet tooth. A couple little tips that you can put into immediate action so that you are not ruled by your sweet tooth. Cool. I'll be back in a moment. Stay with me.

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Well, happy holidays gifts, holiday decor and more. The holiday road is long. We're with you all the way, Walgreens.

Welcome back. Let's. Let's roll into now putting this all together, because I just threw a lot of information at you, cited some studies, did a big dump of information. Now what's important is that we go, all right, so what do we do with all this information? So I hope the big takeaways were like, lose the sugar, because there really are no sweeteners out there. That without some drawbacks, but obviously, like, let's know which to choose and which. Lose things like fructose, you gotta lose, like, agave, all of that. Those have got to go. Bye. Bye. Those are terrible. I mean, apple juice concentrates, one of the highest sources of fructose out there. Drives me crazy when I see things in the store that will say, no sugar added, and they have apple juice concentrate. That is false advertising. Makes me nuts. Gets me on a rant. So let's agree that we are not going to do these high fructose things like agave and apple juice concentrate. These are higher in fructose than high fructose corn syrup, all right? Just like apple juice is actually higher in fructose than a soda. So beware of that. And remember, juices are fruit that have been unwrapped and the fiber's been tossed. So do not do juice. Eat the fruit, have a glass of water, okay? And then let's avoid adding sugar to things because there's better alternatives out there. And if you happen to be eating something with added sugar, 5 grams is the rule. Remember, with the things that I'm about to tell you that are the good ones, that you still need to watch for that calorie dysregulation we talked about. So monk fruit, also known as lohango alulose. I like allulose because it's got a little bit of calories, stevia, the sugar, alcohol, erythritol, cinnamon, vanilla, glycine, all those. Remember, when you're using them, don't go crazy with them. I love to use them for holidays as part of, like, when I'm doing, like, that champagne vinaigrette I talked about. I actually used a little bit in there. But this is not like, oh, it's fine. I can do whatever I want, because again, it can make you crave more sweet. Light up your. Your taste buds, and then you get yourself in trouble. I will do a full confession here. I'm pulling back the kimono that I had a little issue I had to have stern talking to with myself and make a deal with my hubby about what I was going to do here because I. I'm blaming My friend Jonathan who got me started on Zevia soda which is great because it's made with stevia. It's all great unless you are a sugar a soda addict. Like I've been my whole life and like I got into Zevia and all of a sudden I'm drinking a six pack of Zevia every day. I mean that's not good. That was ridiculous. So I like that as a transition thing for people. But if you're, if you're someone who has a little bit and then it lights them up to have more, well, guess what, like start to enjoy the natural sweetness of things like berries and sweet potato. And also you can use and we'll put this into the show notes@jjbirgin.com sugaroptions you can do my cravings crusher lemonade which is a little glutamine which can help get your sugar tooth under sweet tooth under control. And then a little bit of fiber. I like to use my extra fiber. You can use some chia seeds. That helps with blood sugar balance, lemon juice. The sour takes your sweet tooth away. And then a little bit of, of you can use my sprinkles. You can use a little bit of monk fruit. You can use a little bit of any of these types of things. Okay, so that's it. That will help with your sweet tooth. And then next thing is make sure you're eating by the trifecta. That means clean protein, healthy fat. And then loads that big plant push on your plate. Loads of non starchy vegetables. A little bit of a slow low carb like a sweet potato, pumpkin, wild rice. Okay. But all of that will help with balancing your blood sugar. You're going to retrain your taste buds right to again appreciate sour and spicy. See and get away from the sweet. All right, so a couple reminders. Number one show notes. You want them? I'm putting a lot of cool stuff in there. Jjvirgin.com forward/sugaroptions. If you're watching me live on Instagram and Facebook, those will come out when the show comes out. I'm on itunes and all the other platforms. You can subscribe by going to subscribetojay.com it is that simple. Shout out to my amazing team who did that one. Subscribe to JJ.com while you're there. By the way, you can also leave a review and put your name in there so I can shout you out. I love doing that. Put your name on in there. I'll shout you out. If you're watching right now on Facebook and Instagram. Thank you so much for hanging in there with all the technical glitches. Oh my gosh. And if you've got questions, leave them on in here because I got to do a big recording for Q and A Friday and I need some questions. Alrighty, that is it. You've been awesome. Thank you so much. Bye. Foreign.

Hello listeners. This is Ann Bogle, author, blogger and creator of the podcast what Should I Read next? Since 2016, I've been helping readers bring more joy and delight into their reading lives. Every week, I take all things books and reading with a guest and guide them in discovering their next read. They share three books they love, one book they don't, and what they've been reading lately, and I recommend three titles they may enjoy reading next. Guests have said our conversations are like therapy, troubleshooting issues that have plagued their reading lives for years and possibly the rest of their lives as well. And of course, recommending books that meet the moment. Whether they are looking for deep introspection to spur or encourage a life change, or a frothy page turner to help them escape the stresses of work, school, everything, you'll learn something about yourself as a reader and you'll definitely walk away confident to choose your next read, with a whole list of new books and authors to try. So join us each Tuesday for what Should I Read Next? Subscribe now wherever you're listening to this podcast and Visit our website whatshould I read next podcast.com to find out more.