Scientist REVEALS Shocking Pregnancy Research That Most Women Miss | Glucose Goddess

Did you know that the nutrients you eat, or lack of nutrients you eat while you're pregnant, ladies, directly impacts the brain development and the nervous system of your kids?

Guys, ladies, if you're about to have kids, this is a must-watch, a must-listen-to episode on what you should be eating to set up your future kids' lives for success. Let's go ahead, Dive in.

I think there's an issue with the societal myth that when you're pregnant, you're going to gain weight anyway, therefore you should eat as much as you want and eat for two. There's an issue with this belief that's perpetuated in society that pregnancy is the time to eat whatever the heck you want because you're going to get fat anyway. It's really backwards. Actually, pregnancy is a moment where I believe we need to be extra aware and extra educated about what we're eating because everything you eat when you're pregnant goes straight straight to your baby's best dreams.

Known around the world as the Glucose Goddess, and she is a biochemist, a bestselling author, and one of the most influential voices in modern nutrition education. Jessie, welcome back to the School of Greatness.

Some studies done on animals are suggesting that during pregnancy, your brain gets more pleasure from sugar than when you're not pregnant. So it intensifies sugar cravings. And of course, would it be better to have zero sugar during pregnancy? Of course. Is that realistic? Absolutely not. This is not the mom's fault. The moms didn't decide that our entire food system was going to be processed food-based. They didn't decide that the cheaper thing to buy is the crisps versus the healthy broccoli. This is not the mom's fault. This is a societal issue.

You talk about these 4 key nutrients that influence a baby's development in the womb. What are those 4 key?

Okay, so the first one is—

I feel like people are struggling with their health so much, and I have a personal experience with my wife just going through pregnancy and having twins. But even in that process, I'm getting inundated with content on social media of like, don't do this, and moms need to do that, and make sure you don't eat this, you're going to ruin your children's life forever. And it's like, it's kind of scary hearing everyone talk about what to do, what not to do. Even doctors and scientists and researchers saying different things. They're like, well, this doctor says to do this, and that doctor says not to do this. So what do mothers do to make sure when they're pregnant, pre-pregnancy, during pregnancy, and post-pregnancy, to make sure they don't mess their kids' health up? Like, it's a scary thing.

I think you said it right. We're inundated. Social media tells you all kinds of things. There's also a lot of emotional pressure on women. Yes. You know, you can feel like guilty, like, am I not doing enough? Am I doing enough? Doctors are really focused on short-term diseases. Like, do you have gestational diabetes? Do you have this? Do you have that? You're stressed out? And I was in that same situation. I was pregnant last year with my son, and I also felt inundated. I also felt confused. And as a scientist, I told myself, okay, let me just like block out the noise a little bit and let me go into the science and the research. So that's what I did. I looked at all the studies, 'cause Instagram is not science. So I looked at all the studies, and I found some few easy, high-leverage things that I could do that had a proven positive impact on my baby's development in terms of food. Without it feeling overwhelming, without it being incompatible with, you know, the nausea-prone first trimester, etc. And I want to address this concept of pressure early on in this talk so we can then move on from it. There is innate pressure in being pregnant because you're building another human. And I hear a lot this word guilt, you know, when it comes to nutrition tips. Yeah, mom guilt for nutrition.

It's real, huh?

I think it's wrong because in terms of nutrition, for example, what I found is that most moms don't have access to the proper nutrition for their baby to grow optimally, but it's not the mom's fault. We live in a society today where most people are eating processed foods. We're all suffering from bad nutrition habits, including pregnant moms, but it's not their fault. And nobody tells them what they can actually do. So what I tried to do with this book is give people a simple guide to navigate that pressure without the guilt, to navigate the broken food landscape we live in during this period of of pregnancy, which has a disproportionate impact on the lifelong health of our baby.

Wow. And that's what you're doing.

That's what I tried to do with this book, yeah.

And so to start then, what would you say are the, you talk about these 4 key nutrients that influence a baby's development in the womb. What are those 4 key?

Okay, so the first one is choline. We're gonna talk about it.

Okay.

Choline is essential to forming your baby's brain. It's in eggs, in animal foods, a little bit in plants.

Watch out, vegans.

Exactly. The second one is glucose. And this has been my work for the past, you know, 7 years talking about blood sugar balance. It's also important during pregnancy.

So it's important to have glucose?

It's important to have enough for your baby, but not too much. It's all about the balance. The third one is protein. You need enough protein when you're pregnant because your baby at birth is 50% protein if you exclude water. So you need to give him enough protein to develop. And the last one is omega-3s, and this is a fat that comes from fish and is important for your baby's brain. So those are the 4 pillars, and if you optimize these 4 pillars, you will give your baby a very good soil out of which he can grow to develop. Exactly.

What would you say are the 4 things that moms should eliminate from their diet pre- or during pregnancy?

All the known toxic ones. So cigarettes, alcohol, as much as you can, drugs. I mean, all the stuff that your doctor will tell you, those are the real ones to eliminate. When it comes to things like sugar, for example, we all have sugar cravings during pregnancy. And in fact, some studies done on animals are suggesting that during pregnancy, your brain gets more pleasure from sugar than when you're not pregnant. So it intensifies sugar cravings. And of course, would it be better to have zero sugar during pregnancy? Of course. Is that realistic? Absolutely not. So it's about eating sugar in a way that creates less impact. And apart from that, really, do you need to eliminate anything else? No, I think anything can be part of your pregnancy diet. But if you have these 4 key pillars in, you're gonna have a really good baseline.

Is there an issue with pregnant women who say, "Well, you know what, I'm craving this and I'm just gonna eat as much as I want until I stop craving." There's no issue with women.

I think there's an issue with the societal myth that when you're pregnant, you're going to gain weight anyway, therefore you should eat as much as you want to, eat for two. There's an issue with this belief that's perpetuated in society that pregnancy is the time to eat whatever the heck you want because you're going to get fat anyway. It's really backwards. Actually, pregnancy is a moment where I believe we need to be extra aware and extra educated about what we're eating because everything you eat when you're pregnant goes straight to your baby's bloodstream. There's another myth Lewis, that there's a filtering process going on, that your baby is just going to get what he needs and none of the stuff that he doesn't need.

He gets all of it.

He gets all of it. So the placenta is an organ that you grow in your uterus next to your baby, and the placenta brings your bloodstream and your baby's bloodstream in really close contact to exchange nutrition.

Crazy.

I know. Now, the placenta is not a filter. The placenta trusts, largely trusts, that whatever is in your bloodstream belongs in your baby's bloodstream. Which is why it's important to not drink alcohol, smoke cigarettes, or do illegal drugs because they're going to show up in your baby's bloodstream. It's the same for all the other nutrients.

Let's say a woman who's pregnant is like, I'm just going to have the whole pint of ice cream every single day because I'm craving it and it's okay. And this is what moms have done for the last 50 years and whatever.

Yeah.

What is that like? How much of that sugar rush is actually going into the bloodstream of the placenta and then impacting the fetus and then as the baby grows, like how much does it impact throughout the stage of pregnancy?

So the first trimester is the trimester where most of us feel nauseous. So I felt extremely nauseous and I could only eat carbs. I could only eat like croissant and pain au chocolat basically for like 4 months. It was so good though. It was so good. And so in those phases, you do whatever you can, right? Just eat whatever you can.

Survive.

Survive. And in the first trimester, your baby's bloodstream and your bloodstream are not yet connected. The placenta is not in place yet. The placenta is in place from the second trimester onwards.

You're only hurting yourself, not you and the baby.

Listen, when you're nauseous, you do whatever the heck you can to survive. So it becomes your bloodstream and your baby's become really connected from the second trimester onwards. So your question was how much of the sugar that you eat ends up in your baby's bloodstream? All of it. Wow. When you have a blood sugar spike, meaning your blood sugar levels increase after eating, for example, a big tub of ice cream, your baby also has a blood sugar spike.

The exact same, or do we—

No, it's a little bit lower than yours, but it's perfectly correlated. Wow. And they know this because they do studies on, in babies. So for example, at Oslo University Hospital, the scientists recruited 200 women that were going to get a C-section. And what they did is they drew blood from the mom's arms before the C-section and they measured their blood sugar levels. And then the baby was born through cesarean, and then they took blood from the umbilical cord of the baby. The umbilical cord is an external cord that connects your baby's bloodstream to the placenta, and it's actually perfectly representing the baby's own blood composition. And they took blood from the umbilical cord and they showed the perfect correlation. If a mom had lower glucose levels, her baby also had low and healthy glucose levels. And as the mom's glucose levels increased, the baby's also. Perfect correlation. So your baby does not get just the glucose that he needs, he gets the glucose that is there. And so let me talk a little bit about glucose. So glucose has been a foundational part of my work for forever, for the past, you know how long I've been doing this. And glucose is quite important. It's your body's fuel. It's your body's energy. You need to give glucose to your body by eating carbs. Now, a little bit is great. Too much causes issues in an adult body. So too many blood sugar or glucose spikes too often leads to being on a glucose rollercoaster, spike, crash, spike, crash. And that leaves you feeling not so great. It increases inflammation. It increases fat gain. And—

How does it impact your nervous system? How does a glucose spike over and over again impact your nervous system and your ability to navigate the emotions of the world?

Well, a big glucose spike can create stress in your body, right? Inflammation and stress. A big glucose spike can also impact your sleep and mean that you have less deep sleep. So if you take those in combination, that means your nervous system can become stressed chronically. How does it impact how you navigate the world? That was your question. I think for me at least, it makes me more unstable. I feel less resilient. I feel that I have more emotional swings, more mood swings. My own journey came through mental health. So for me, big glucose spikes meant poor mental health. And when I kept my glucose levels steady, I felt stronger. I felt—

Calm, steady.

Calm, steady, sturdy, grounded. I don't think there are any studies yet looking at glucose spikes and like how grounded one feels.

That's interesting.

We should do one.

I'm curious about how the glucose glucose spikes impact the nervous system and then how that impacts the quality of someone's life.

Absolutely. Well, listen, the nervous system is impacted by stress and glucose spikes, repeated glucose spikes, and especially the crash that comes afterwards, increased stress. So they're not good news.

And it, you know, glucose spikes impact increased inflammation, correct, in the body. And that causes stress.

Absolutely.

It makes it harder for the nervous system to regulate under stress.

Yes, I think regulation is a really good way to put it. Yeah, absolutely. If your body and your nervous system are busy dealing with a glucose spike, you don't have much energy left to deal with the rest of the world.

Wow.

Yeah.

So in this study in Oslo, they took 200 women who had cesarean C-sections and they saw this correlation.

Yeah. And some babies were born with double the blood sugar levels than other babies. That's how much of a wide spectrum there is.

What does that mean? They're born with double the blood sugar levels.

So that means that the concentration in the bloodstream, some babies had healthy low glucose levels. Some babies had double the normal healthy levels of glucose in their blood.

That's a bad thing, right?

That's a bad thing. Yeah. So very high glucose levels in an adult means diabetes.

Wow.

We don't want high glucose levels.

So can a mother give their child diabetes in the womb?

So no, but I would say like a diet that is so high in carbs can lead to a baby having very high glucose levels in the womb. So what happens in the baby's body? Same thing as in the adult body, inflammation and fat gain as a response to this high glucose. Now, some glucose for your baby is important and good. He needs the energy, okay? But in extreme cases, when, for example, if you're only eating carbs during your entire pregnancy, your baby is going to have glucose levels that are too high. And you might think, Lewis, okay, well, after birth, surely this must then—

Normalize.

Normalize, right?

It'll clear it out. It'll run around and be okay.

And this is the key thing. Scientists find that when a baby is born with high glucose levels and high fat mass on his body as a response to this glucose, he is more likely to get diabetes as an adult.

Come on.

Yes.

Really?

Yes. This is the whole point of why pregnancy is important. Let me give you an example. Families where moms have 2 kids. During one pregnancy, they had normal glucose levels, the mom. During the other pregnancy, they had very high glucose levels. Both kids born back to back grew up in the same family, same environment, same food. The kid that was in the womb during the high glucose pregnancy, 4 times more likely to get diabetes in his lifetime.

Oh my gosh. It's crazy.

It's crazy. It's crazy.

I mean, mom guilt is already a thing. And so if you're like a mom that's like, wow, I had this, I didn't eat correctly during this pregnancy 3, 4, 5 years ago. Did I ruin my child? You know, it's this fear of like mom guilt is big already.

I understand. And my mom, when she was pregnant with me, she only ate sugar. She ate Coca-Cola, Coca-Cola, table sugar at every meal. Really? Yeah, just carbs.

But you also had extreme mental health challenges as an adult.

And I was on the cusp of prediabetes at 25 years old. So what happens in the womb is important, but it's not the only thing. Okay, these increases are still modulated and impacted by what you do in your life. I didn't get diabetes. I was like at 25, oh, whoa, I have high glucose. Let me manage that. I never got prediabetes. It might make a baby a bit more vulnerable to disease. It's not going to dictate his entire life. What you do during your life is still important. But today, if you think about two of your friends that have the same diet or same routine and one of them has higher glucose levels than the other, maybe one has diabetes, the other one doesn't. One of the factors that could be influencing this is what was happening in the room. And again, on this topic of guilt, like, this is not the mom's fault. The moms didn't decide that our entire food system was going to be processed food-based. They didn't decide that the cheaper thing to buy is the crisps versus the healthy broccoli. They didn't decide that the food industry is going to make highly addictive, highly sugary foods to get them hooked. This is not the mom's fault. This is a societal issue. This is the system messing up everything for us. It is not the mom's fault. So I wanted to write this book because we need tools for moms to navigate this toxic food system that we're in during pregnancy to try to, you know, use these high leverage points that we can use and to use these 9 months as a moment where you can slightly program your baby to get better odds during his lifetime. But again, it's not the mom's fault. And it's the same thing when you're not pregnant. Like today, if somebody has type 2 diabetes, it's not their fault. It's absolutely not their fault. It's not a willpower thing. It's a food environment thing. It's because of the food that is available today and because of big food trying to make us addicted to sugar. It's not the mom's fault.

I hear you on saying it's not someone's fault who has diabetes today, but is it their responsibility to start to reverse it or make different choices and start making, saying, listen, I know I'm eating these highly addictive sugary things, but isn't it also their responsibility to say, and I've got to learn how to start making healthier choices and be more consistent in the other way. Otherwise, I'm going to be stuck like this forever.

I think that implies that it's a choice. I think it's really difficult when you feel addicted to the sugary food and that's all you have access to and you don't know how to cook. And so you think you're making the— nobody wants to have diabetes.

No.

Everybody thinks that they're buying the healthy food or they're doing the best they can. And they look at something that says like, oh, well, this is a vegan gluten-free cookie. Surely it must be better for me than the regular cookie. Food marketing tries to trap you into thinking you're making a better choice. So yes, it is the way out, I believe, is through educating individuals to be able to make better informed choices, but it's not their fault. And my whole work is around this. Like, what are simple food hacks that are not complicated that can help you break free from these cycles of addiction?

When I was growing up, I had, what, 8 Dr. Peppers a day in the summer, and I thought it was like, I'm hydrating myself. It was just eating candy all day, sugary things, cookies. It was just whatever I could eat. And if I wasn't running 6 hours a day, playing in the backyard, playing sports, I'd probably have diabetes. I mean, I don't know, but I think that helped me. But it has been very hard to break the addiction of that habit for decades that I had.

Everything is built to make you addicted.

Yeah.

It's not your choice. There are billions of dollars being spent on making food extremely addictive. Billions of dollars in marketing campaigns trying to make you believe that orange juice is healthy. How can one single person person. Yeah, break free from this as a choice. It's not a choice. It's so hard.

I got— I love that you're saying this, but I mean, you know Shawn Stevenson? Yeah, he is— he goes against the other— he goes against that. And he'll say— I don't know if you go on a show ever— but he said, I was the guy laying with like back pain for months in my bed because all I was eating was fast food for my whole life. And I was inflamed, and I was overweight, and I was obese, and all these pains that I couldn't get out of. And he said it was extremely hard. It was extremely challenging because there was no healthy food in his city where he was living in, in Ferguson, Missouri. It was like food desert for miles, right? But he was like, I had to work so much harder to go out of the city to find a healthy store and make conscious decisions consistently. And it was so hard. I'm not saying it's like not hard, but he was like, I did it and I reclaimed my health by taking those actions. But you have to make such a conscious effort daily. I'm not saying it's easy, but I believe it can be possible even with the pressures of the system in place. And again, it's— you have to be so committed to it.

I feel like I agree completely. And, you know, with my Glucose Hacks, that's my first book. What I try to give to people with these hacks is a way to go from 0 to 1.

Yes.

Small tips that don't take so much willpower that allow you to start feeling better. For example, Okay, you're gonna, what was the thing you were having? Dr Pepper?

Dr Pepper, yeah.

Is that what you said?

Dr Pepper, yeah.

Okay, so Dr Pepper, if you need to have it 'cause you feel addicted to it, have it after your meal instead of before so that you don't create a spike and a crash that's gonna make you crave more Dr Pepper. So it's these small little tweaks, and when you apply them for a week, all of a sudden you're like, oh wait, I feel a little bit less stuck here.

I don't need 8 of them, I could just do 1 of them.

Yeah. And this 0 to 1 is the hardest, and that's my passion is the behavior change from 0 to 1. 'Cause once you've done 0 to 1, then you're on your way. And Shawn is very strong and he was able to do that all without my glucose hacks. It's hard though. It would have been way easier for him with my glucose hacks.

Of course. Of course.

So it's all the zero to one, the small things.

And these are, he's an exception for sure. And he was extremely sick. He couldn't move. So he was like, I have to take complete control of changing and learning about these things because he thought, you know, fast food was healthy. He thought because like it had egg in it, you can have a Big Mac with like a bun and grease and still healthy or whatever. I thought pizza was healthy. You know, it's like I used to eat a whole pizza. I can eat a whole pizza like this still because it tastes so good for me. But just because I thought like, oh, this is on the food pyramid, you know, it's like bread, meat, and cheese, but it's not. Or at least, you know, maybe you can make it healthy, but that was not healthy.

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Speaking of the food pyramid, this just changed, or they're making these changes. What are your thoughts on these new changes for, I guess, at least in the USA, of the food pyramid suggestions?

I'm very happy that we no longer have the recommendation that says you should have 8 servings of carbs a day as the base of the pyramid, because carbohydrates— so bread, pasta, rice, potatoes— these are foods that are full of glucose, that raise your blood sugar levels, that lead to the glucose spike and the glucose crash, that give very little nutrition to your body.

That was my diet for Yes.

And so I'm very happy that this is no longer seen as the base of your diet. And this is true for everyone. I'm very, very glad about this. And I hope it's also going to impact school lunches. I hope that kids are no longer going to get just bread and orange juice as their meal.

Just big spikes, huh?

Yes.

Big spikes. So, I mean, of the food pyramid now, the suggestions, do you feel like they got it right? Do you feel like it's moving in the right direction? You feel like it's 80% overall there, or what do you think is good and what do you think needs to be improved?

I think my main thought process around this is what then happens to the food industry? Because the food pyramid is one thing, but what does it actually mean in terms of how we're going to change how we eat?

Yeah.

Because if you take it to the letter, meaning like now we're going to eat animal foods as healthy sources of protein, we're going to focus on fruit and vegetables and we're going to eat very few carbs. That sounds pretty great. But if this is co-opted by the food industry who's like, hmm, how can I use this new pyramid to sell my processed food?

Processed. Yeah. Yeah.

So I'm waiting to see what happens. I think it's definitely better than the old one. 100%. There's no question about that. But then where do we go? I don't know. I don't have a judgment yet. I need a little bit of perspective.

But in terms of the recommendations itself, let's say it was all organic and process.

Yeah, it's great.

You feel like that structure is the way to go?

Absolutely. I think it's great.

Yeah, I think obviously, you know, companies are going to market how they need to to say, okay, you're hitting the right things in the food pyramid, but it could still be unhealthy for you how they process things for sure. And it could still create spikes and all these different things.

Absolutely. But in terms of the overall volume and what's important, it makes complete sense to me that we're shifting away from carbs being the main thing that you should eat all the time as the base of your diet and towards healthy animal foods and fruit and vegetables.

I mean, Pasta, pizza, and bread. That was my diet. I mean, I had steak once in a while, but it was like, that was the diet. And it was like, no wonder I was exhausted all the time. Big yawning all the time, exhausted, tired.

And it wasn't your fault, right? There was just, this was the messaging.

I thought it was healthy.

That's what I'm saying.

I think it's healthy.

That is what I'm saying. Nobody thinks, I'm going to eat an unhealthy diet on purpose and try to feel horrible. Everybody's doing their best. Pregnant moms are doing their best. And so I understand that this information, nutrition advice around pregnancy can come as making moms feel like they're doing things wrong and guilty. The problem is, is that all of these, all of this science, all of these studies exist. They've been around for a long time. The American Association of Pediatrics have been talk, have been talking about this forever. We have these guidelines, we have the World Health Organization talking about choline, about glucose, about et cetera. Nobody's telling moms about this. Why is that? Is it because they think that, oh, moms can't handle it? No, I think this is key because it shows you these 4 high-leverage nutrients that are actually very simple shifts that can make a big impact on your baby's health. And as a result, you're not inundated by just Instagram, infinity Instagram content, and that's leaving you very confused.

If moms listening or those who are going to be moms soon, who are going to be pregnant soon, they're listening and you say these 4 key ingredients, choline, glucose, protein, and omega-3s are what they need to create a fertile foundation for a child's development of their brain to be set up for more success, right? That's more resilience, more resilience. Yes. More potential for opportunity for the growth for their brains to be forming better is what I'm hearing you say. If a mother who is pregnant does not get choline, glucose, protein, or omega-3s in their diet at all. What is— and they hear this information and they still choose not to get that. What is at stake for their baby's development?

So I will just say one thing. The glucose part of this book is not about getting more. It's about making sure you're not getting too much of it. Okay.

Having the right amounts.

Exactly. So if you don't do any of these things, your baby will probably be fine.

Really?

Yeah. Your baby will probably be born and probably lead a normal life. And just maybe one day in the future, he'll have a bit more susceptibility or yeah, be a bit more vulnerable to getting one of these diseases.

Gotcha. Because your mom was on sugar all day.

I'm like the perfect example.

And you were fine as a baby.

Of being somewhat okay with no choline, no omega-3s, not enough protein, and a lot of sugar. And look at me, I'm writing books.

You turned out all right.

I thought about this a lot as I was writing this book and I called my mom and I was asking her about her diet. And yes, I'm fine. But if I'm being honest, I've struggled with mental health a lot in my life. As I said, cusp of pre-diabetes. I have a hard time with emotional regulation. I've had aches and pains. I have a hard time building muscle. Are all of these things, do all of these things take root in the womb? Probably not all of them. Do I think, knowing what I know today about this science, do I think that if my mom had had this book when she was pregnant with me, do I think that maybe I would feel differently today as her daughter? Probably. I think maybe it would feel a bit better to be in my brain. Because by the time your baby is born, all of his neurons, so the brain cells that process information, are in place for life. In the womb, you're forming the basic architecture of your baby's brain. And then brain cells, neurons, they don't get replaced. You keep the ones you're born with for your entire life until they die. So my neurons were forming in my mom's uterus and she did not know about choline and she did not know about omega-3s, which are two key nutrients to allow my brain to form as best as it could. So yes, I do believe that maybe if she had known about choline, which is a nutrient you can get in eggs, for example. So if she had been eating a lot of eggs and eating fish and supplementing with omega-3s, maybe my neurons would be a little bit better today. I can't know. We don't know. But what we do have is we have animal studies. So we can't do studies on pregnant human moms. It's very unethical. But we can do this on animals. And so let me give you the example. So let's look at choline, for example. So when you deprive a mom of choline, like a mom, an animal mom, like a rat mom, okay? The development of her baby's brain in the womb stops earlier than it should. And the baby has fewer neurons than his peers because the mom is missing this key nutrient of choline. However, the baby is born. The baby is born and outwardly looks— It survives and it's—

Exactly.

Exactly. To be honest, we're an entire generation of babies. Probably you didn't have enough choline in the womb either. We're an entire generation of people who probably did not have enough choline. Why is that? Because choline is found in eggs, but also in organ meats. Like liver. And today we don't eat any more organs.

Yeah, we don't eat them. We used to, right?

And this is the case for everybody, pregnant moms or not. Is this the pregnant mom's fault? Absolutely not. It's the food industry. It's the processed foods we eat today. So we're all probably babies of low choline moms. We're mostly okay. But what if we could change that? It'd be cool. What if we could give mom this important information?

100%.

So one thing that scientists do, they're able to do trials on human moms where they supplement the moms with extra choline, for example. So we can't do the hardcore stuff that we do on animals. But we can do it in moms, for example. So there's one cool study that I'll mention. There's this test that scientists do on human babies. So they put them in front of a computer screen and they flash images on the screen and they see how quickly the baby reacts to the new image. So moves his eyes like this. And this may seem inconsequential, but it's actually associated with adult IQ. So the faster you react to the images on the screen as a baby, the higher your IQ as an adult on average. And so what they do is they do these trials where they give some moms during pregnancy a choline supplement and other moms no choline supplement. And then they measure the baby's reaction time once they're born in the first year of life. What do they find? 10% higher reaction time, faster reaction time when the mom had a lot of choline during pregnancy. Small, small, small marginal Small changes, but interesting nonetheless, because what happens in the womb seems to have a lasting impact on measurable measures of brain function.

It's fascinating because you're saying this, you know, I have twins and one of them was born, I guess, more premature or just smaller, you know, and we had to be in the NICU for a little bit of time. And it was like, well, the other one was like more fine right away. It was like everything was fine. The other one was kind of struggling. The one who was struggling in the NICU, it almost feels like the reaction time is faster than the other one that was like fine, you know, that didn't have like the complications. And so it's interesting to see twins that were born from the same mother. And I'm curious to see their development over the years to see what happens.

Yeah.

But all this stuff is fascinating.

Absolutely.

All this stuff is fascinating.

And your twins have different DNA, right? So DNA is one thing, and then the environment in the womb is something else, and they both interact to create unique babies. And there's buns, there are buns on this table, and I wanna talk about the reason there's a bun here.

Yes, please.

Is because of the myth. Yeah, go ahead, go ahead. Having a bun in the oven when you're pregnant. Have you heard that sentence?

Of course.

Of course.

What is that?

Why do people say like there's a bun in the oven, and why is that harmful to say that?

You know, I don't know where this comes from, them, but I know why it's not good. So telling a mom, "Oh, you have a bun in the oven," implies that the mom is an oven. And what's an oven? A passive object that provides heat and time. As a mom, you're so much more than that. You're not just passive, waiting around for the next ultrasound, providing heat and time to your baby. A better image is that you are soil and your baby is a seed. We all know intuitively that if you have a seed for, like, a nice apple tree, if you plant it in a driveway full of gravel, or if you plant it in a healthy garden, it's not going to lead to the same tree. You know that. You know that the soil co-creates the tree's plant.

Yes.

When you're pregnant, it's the same thing. The nutrients you provide to your baby co-create your baby's genetic plan. And if you provide all the stuff that he needs, he'll be able to develop more optimally. And this again is linked to adult vulnerability or resilience to disease. So as a pregnant mom, you are soil, you're not an oven. And this is actually— so in my book, I called the introduction, You Are Not an Oven. This is like the first idea you have to understand. You are not an oven. You have so much more power, so much more agency. And for some weird reason, this science has been kept from you. When with simple tools, for example, getting enough choline on a daily basis, you can give your baby's brain the nutrient that he needs. Because today, for example, in the case of choline, this is a shocking statistic. 90% of pregnant moms, 90% of pregnant moms are not getting the bare minimum amount of choline that is recommended during pregnancy. 90%. Not because we don't have access to eggs, because nobody's freaking telling them. Why? Big mystery. I have no idea. I think it's essentially like, oh, moms can't handle all this nutrition information. It's a bit too complicated. Or maybe because the medical system is built around short-term disease prevention and problems and doesn't take time to tell you about the long-term potential benefits that you can impact. So this is why the choline chapter is so important. With just 4 eggs a day, you get all the choline that your baby needs. I know 4 eggs a day sounds like a lot, but actually it's the easiest way to get the choline. It's in the egg yolk. So if you can't eat all your eggs, just eat the yolk. Make sure they're cooked through. It's important during pregnancy. There's also choline in fish, in chicken, in meat. There's a little bit of choline in plant foods, and there are great choline supplements that you can take if you don't eat any animal products. So easy. I ate so many eggs when I was pregnant.

Really?

Yeah. 4 eggs every morning, except the first 4 months where I could not eat a single egg.

Just carbs, just croissants.

Croissant, I'm sure there's some choline in here, right? No, no choline in the croissant. But so choline, eggs, super simple. We have evidence that moms are not getting enough. We have evidence that it matters. We have animal studies, we have human trials. We know it's important. The American Association of Pediatrics says failure to provide choline during this important time can result in lifelong brain deficits.

Really?

The American Association of Pediatrics.

It says that?

Yes. Can you explain to me, Lewis, why we're not telling moms this?

I have no idea.

Exactly. I have no idea. It's a mystery. So this is why this book is important.

Wow.

Yeah. So what would you say then is the biggest nutrition lie that moms have been told during pregnancy?

The biggest nutrition lie that your baby will get what he needs. Always.

Like just eat whatever and the baby's gonna be fine.

Eat more calories 'cause you're, you know, eat for two. That's a big lie also.

Having double the calories is not good for the mom.

You don't need double the calories. You don't need double the calories. And the biggest lie is your baby will take what he needs. The correct sentence is your baby will take what you give him. Your baby will take what is there, and your baby will adapt. Just like a tree in different soils, your baby will adapt. Your baby knows. Nature is smart. Even if you don't eat any choline, your baby will adapt and do things differently. But if you give him all the stuff he needs, he will not need to adapt so much, and he'll be able to—

He'll thrive better.

Thrive better.

Yeah. You could still grow a tree in concrete, I guess, maybe.

Maybe.

But it's like not gonna be the best growing tree.

Thankfully, the human body is not that extreme, right? As long As long as you have air, water, food, a uterus, your baby will probably be okay. But actually not necessarily, because in the case of choline, for example, we know that low choline levels can lead to brain malformations that end in miscarriage. So we talk a lot about folate. I don't know if you heard this when you were going through the pregnancy, but it's like, take a folic acid supplement, it's very important, etc. Choline is just as important, but nobody talks about it. And we talked about, you just said the sentence, eat for two, eat a lot of calories. I think this brings us to the topic of glucose, which is important. So glucose, as I said, is in carbs. So bread, pasta, croissant, rice, potatoes, fruit, chocolate cakes, etc. You need more glucose when you're pregnant because your baby needs it. But how much is the question? Not double.

10-20% more, maybe, right?

Like, so kind of. Yeah, exactly. So at the end of the third trimester, when your baby is really big or your babies are really big and they're just about to be born, born. Your baby needs 70 grams of glucose per day. 70 grams of glucose is the amount of glucose in a cup and a half of rice. That is the maximum. Yes, that is the maximum amount he will need when he's the biggest he's going to be right before birth. So at the very end of the third trimester. In the first trimester, you barely need any extra glucose at all. Second trimester, it starts going up a little bit. At the very end, the maximum, a cup and a half of rice. That is not nearly eating double the amount of carbs. You don't need to eat double that. So you need to give your baby a little bit, but if you give your baby way too much, he's going to have to adapt in the womb, and he's going to put on fat to try to protect himself from high glucose levels, and it might create some vulnerabilities, for example, to diabetes. And there's a cool thing we have to talk about, which is the difference between DNA and epigenetics. So when Imagine you conceive a baby. His DNA is set and it will never change. Half from the mom, half from the dad. DNA will never change. But that's not the end of the story. Scientists have recently discovered that there are little tiny switches, tiny molecular switches that sit on our DNA and control which genes are on or off. So DNA is one thing, but the programming of the DNA is very flexible and it's a whole other thing.

Is this the whole CRISPR thing?

Is that what that's different? That's gene editing.

Okay.

But epigenetics, we all have this. All of our genes are being programmed by these little switches at all times. And during pregnancy, you're setting up the epigenetics, the programming of your baby's DNA. And so scientists can measure this programming. They can see which genes are on and which genes are off. And what they find is that when a mom has very high glucose levels during pregnancy, The human baby has genes linked to diabetes that are turned on more than other babies. So with your diet during pregnancy, you're programming these genes on and off. And this can lead to the long-term increases in risk that we're seeing.

For someone who's not pregnant, what is the optimal amount of carbs someone should be eating on a daily basis?

Well, that's a very controversial topic, Lewis.

To have like a healthy lifestyle, to be, you know, in, in fat-burning phase, but also, you know, enjoying life as well. What is—

Well, the thing is, we don't actually need to eat carbs.

Really?

Yeah.

Oh, man. But it's so good, aren't they?

I know. Because if you don't eat any carbs, your body can make the glucose that it needs from within.

Really?

Yes. From other sources like protein. Your liver can create glucose as long as you're eating something. That doesn't mean we should all eat no carbs. Most people do fine on like 100 grams of carbs per day, for example.

How much is 100 grams of carbs? What is that?

2 cups of rice.

2 cups of rice a day.

Yeah.

That means—

Yeah, 2 cups of rice. That's correct.

2 cups of rice a day in terms of carbs is all you should need or is like the maximum or is like—

It depends so much. Like if you're an athlete, you need more because you're using up a lot of glucose for your muscles. It depends if you're, you know, if you're maintaining your weight, if you're trying to lose fat, it depends on so much. It depends on your individual sensitivity. If you're a female, if you're a male, time of the month, like you need to find your own balance.

What is the best use of carb source for most body types? Like, is it rice? Is it bread? Is it pasta?

Great question. So I would put carbs in two categories. So we have the starches, which are bread, pasta, rice, potatoes, oats, and then we have the sugars. So that's chocolate cake, fruit juice, even just fruit. Starches just contain glucose. Sugars contain glucose and fructose.

You don't want that.

Your body doesn't need any fructose.

So, so it doesn't need fruit?

No, you don't need to eat fruit.

It tastes good.

Yeah, that's fine, so eat it. Hey, listen, we're talking about biologically what you need, right? So it's always better to get your carbs from starches than from sugars like fruit juice or cake. Now, fruit themselves Whole fruit is mostly fine because they contain fiber and water. So there's glucose and fructose in there, but because of the fiber and the water, they arrive in your bloodstream more slowly. All that to say, it's up to you to find your optimal amount of carbs. You don't need to eat carbs, but it's a nice way to get energy. It's also a very social food.

Yeah, of course.

Carbs are a social food. So I do pretty well, like 100 grams of carbs per day, I would say. And then I focus a lot on protein and healthy fats.

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If someone is trying to, you know, get in shape, stay healthy, stay lean, trying to eliminate fat from their body, you're saying stay around 100 grams of carbs a day or less, or, you know, it all depends on who and when and all that stuff. But if it's a normal human being, who's not pregnant and they're just trying to stay lean?

I would avoid giving exact numbers. What I would say is if you are able to keep your blood sugar levels steady by using my hacks, for example, I feel like you naturally get to an amount of carbs that's going to support fat burning in your body because fat burning is a healthy state to be in. And when you don't have big spikes and big dips in your glucose levels,, your body can burn fat for fuel. So it's hard to say a certain number because, for example, if you only eat carbs but you're staying under X grams, does that mean you're going to be healthy? No, right? It's about a combination of things. I don't think we should say like X grams of this, X grams of that.

Keeping the spikes lower. Yes. And less frequent.

Yes. And focusing on foods that actually give your body something really important. So, for example, protein and fats, right? We can't make protein from within. So it's very important to give your body enough protein, but we can make glucose from within.

How much protein and how much fat should we have?

You want numbers? You want me to write a whole list for you?

Just on average, like, you know, is it— Yeah. Is it based on how big you are?

So for protein, I think it's actually useful to talk about exact numbers here because your body cannot make protein from within. And when we think protein, we often think muscle. Protein is not just muscle. So many things in your body are protein. For example, For example, the collagen in your skin that keeps your skin healthy is a protein. A lot of the parts of your immune system are proteins. They keep you healthy. They keep you safe from pathogens. For example, insulin, which is a hormone that manages your glucose levels, that's a protein. There are thousands and thousands and thousands of types of protein in your body. And it's really important to make— your DNA makes protein. The little code in your DNA, what does it do? It tells your body how to make different proteins. Proteins. So it's not just about muscle mass and bodybuilding. And during pregnancy, you're literally building another human's body inside your body. It's important to remember that sometimes. And as I said, your baby, the moment he's born, is about 50% protein if you exclude water. Proteins are everything. They're everything. So how much protein do we need? We've had lots of different methods to try to measure how much protein a human needs to eat. And the more recent methods They have a funky name. They're called the Indicator Amino Acid Oxidation method. Very fancy word, but it's just saying it's a new method for measuring how much protein you need to eat to give your body enough, not just to survive, but to thrive. And so this method is now showing us that in a pregnant person, we need about 1.2 grams of protein per kilo of body mass per day. In the second and third trimester, we need 1.5. And during breastfeeding, 1.9. Wow. So breastfeeding is very intense in protein because you're putting protein in your breast milk to continue to feed your baby. So these stats are core and very important to learn about for moms. Most moms are not getting nearly enough protein during pregnancy. And what happens is that your body starts breaking down your muscles Because your muscles are full of protein, break down the muscle, give it to baby. And that's why we see studies that say that 30% of moms lose muscle mass during pregnancy. Wow.

Mm-hmm. How much— just curious, how much protein is in a cup of breast milk on average? Do we know? Did you ever study this with your—

I'm sure we know, but I don't know. I don't know off the top of my head.

I'm curious if it has a lot of protein or if it's like 1 gram of protein. I don't know. I'm just curious.

It's a good question. What I do know is that it's a complete source of protein, meaning it's very high-quality protein for your baby.

What's the science behind weird pregnancy cravings? Why do moms say, like, I want to eat, like, pickles and chocolate sauce? I don't know, like weird stuff.

So it's still up for debate, but the pickle thing, scientists believe that it has to do with iodine. So iodine is something that is found in sea salt. It's very important for your baby's thyroid and brain development. And when you crave pickles, it's probably because you're craving something salty something high in iodine. I craved red meat and kiwis and like citrus fruit, a lot of fruit during my pregnancy. Maybe it was because of all the vitamins.

That's a big glucose spike, right? Like all this fruit?

Well, whole fruit is fine. Okay. But the fruit juice, if you get rid of the fiber, that's going to be a problem for sure.

How much fruit is fine? Like what if you're eating buckets of fruit?

That's still a lot, right? Well, yes, because the fruit that we eat today, has been bred by humans to be very high in sugar.

Yeah. Yeah.

So, you know, if you eat a lot of it, it might cause a big spike. But what I recap in the glucose part of the book is all the glucose hacks to help you eat the sweet stuff without having an apple with peanut butter.

Exactly. By putting some clothes on your carbs.

Oh yeah. Nice one. Or having the fruit or the sugar at the end of a meal instead of at the beginning. First, the protein.

Exactly.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. So, but I'm a firm believer that whole fruit is totally fine and we should absolutely not demonize whole fruit. It's the best thing to eat if you want to eat something sweet.

Speaking of sweets, what's the real reason people feel out of control with sweets and sugar?

I think one of the main reasons is that they are on a glucose roller coaster and they don't know it. And the main culprit is often eating something sweet on an empty stomach. Because when your stomach is empty, anything sweet that you eat, those glucose molecules arrive very quickly into your bloodstream. Nothing is slowing them down, which means big glucose spike and big glucose crash. And we know that the crashes can activate the craving center in your brain. So I used to eat sweet stuff for breakfast all the time. And then at 10:00 AM, I was like, I really need like some chocolate or like something sweet.

More sweet. Need more. Need another taste.

I was like, I need like a muffin. I go to the coffee shop and get like a coffee and a muffin. Yeah. Nutella. Something sweet. And now looking back, I'm like, God, all these years I was just having a glucose crash because my breakfast was sweet and I had no idea. And then the cycle starts again because I have the muffin at 10:00 AM. What happens? Another spike. And then another crash. And then all day, and then it's 11:00 PM and I've just ordered on Uber Eats like 5 pints of ice cream. And I'm like, how did I get here? Well, it was all because of the breakfast.

Gosh, you made something for me last time you were here.

The chocolate brittle.

Oh my gosh, this was incredible.

This is a recipe in my second book, "The Glucose Goddess Method." Oh, I want it right now. It's so good.

It's so easy.

You just get this dark chocolate and you melt it, and then you put it on this baking sheet and you put a bunch of nuts in it. Like, I think I made it with pistachios and walnuts for you. Sea salt, put it in the fridge, you wait for it to harden, and then you break it up. Now, you know why this is a good dessert? Tell me. Because of the nuts. Because those nuts contain protein and fat, and they're going to slow down the glucose spike from the chocolate.

I want that now.

Are you having a glucose crash right now?

I'm okay right now, but I've been eating mung bean soup for like 6 days. I'm trying to kind of just like get more beans and reset from the holidays because I ate a lot of sugary sweets that I was too much. And so I'm just doing it for a number of days. But yeah, that brittle sounds amazing right now. You make some while you're here.

Okay. I'll say this to you.

I'll freaking Uber it over here. Oh my gosh. It's so good.

So I think that's one of the reasons people feel out of control.

It's when you're eating sweets essentially alone by itself. You're going to have a rush and then a crash. Even if it's a little sweet, even if it's a couple cookies, it sounds like.

Well, listen, having one cookie is going to create a smaller spike than 10 cookies.

Yeah, or a whole box.

Yeah. And listen, sometimes I wake up in the morning and I'm like, I want ice cream for breakfast. And I do it. And I'm like, this is going to create a big glucose spike.

And all day. Yeah. Was it worth it?

And I always regret it. No.

You regret it.

Because I feel awful.

You know the science. You know what it's doing to your body, your brain, all these things. It's good for an hour, but then you're like— and then the rest of the day you have to kind of like try to figure out how to re-regulate your system. And then the next morning, hopefully you can reset it. But it's like you also sleep worse when you're doing it all day.

Yeah. So it's a little bit of a vicious cycle. And we were talking earlier about, you know, people feel a victim and trapped in their diet and it's hard to exit out of it. Breakfast is a good moment to try to exit out of it. If you have a protein-rich breakfast, pregnant and not pregnant, this is a very great way to stabilize your blood sugar. And I found that during pregnancy when I was on a glucose rollercoaster, my nausea was worse. But if I was able to have a little bit of protein, like I would lay in bed and wake up and I had some almonds next to my bed and I would eat them before I got up. And that kind of helped a little bit of protein before getting up to stabilize my blood sugar. I mean, pregnancy is a whole thing. It exacerbates so much stuff. It's complicated.

Yeah. Pregnancy is also highly emotional, highly, you know, Some women have more anxiety around pregnancy. Other women have great pregnancies, but still there's a, it seems like there's something in the pregnant mom that starts to switch on where they're thinking about it more intently when you're pregnant is what it seems like from my interpretation, my experience of witnessing it. You're thinking about your pregnancy, you're thinking about your choices, you're thinking about your body, then your body's changing, then you're questioning your body. All these different things are happening. Happening. And I can only imagine what is happening with your mind and trying to stay calm.

And the hormones.

Yeah, trying to stay calm with all of it seems extremely challenging.

And so on top of that, there's the stress of like, what do I need to eat? Yes. And it can be highly confusing.

Very confusing.

Yes. That's why this book is a nice guiding light in all of this.

Your book is called 9 Months That Count Forever: How Your Pregnancy Diet Shapes Your Baby's Future. I want everyone to make sure they check this out. You also told me beforehand that you had a miscarriage before, right? What was that experience like for you? How did you navigate and overcome it and process it? And how did you step into the, you know, having your son after going through that experience?

I mean, talk about anxiety, man. So I was pregnant the first time.. And at no point did I think anything bad could happen. I had no, there was nothing in my field, nothing in my mind. I never thought anything wrong would happen.

You are young, you are healthy, you are all the right things.

And so the moment of that first positive pregnancy test, I told everybody, everybody. I did not know. I was like, oh, I guess people wait 3 months. But I just, I was like, oh, this does not apply to me. I just had no conception. Yeah. So ultrasound, there's a heartbeat. I'm like, oh my God, great. Really?

Yeah.

Baby's going to be born in December, blah, blah, blah. And I'm due to go to the second ultrasound. It was at 3 months. Oh. And I'm like, la la la la la, everything's fine. And I show up and they start, the doctor starts the ultrasound and this image pops up on the screen. And instantly I just knew, Lewis. I was like, something's wrong. Because the embryo had not grown since the last time. And it was sort of at the bottom of the screen, kind of, you could tell that day was not okay.

Oh man, that's so sad.

And so I learned that I had had what's called a silent miscarriage, meaning in normal quote unquote miscarriages, you bleed and your body expulses the pregnancy naturally. My body did not do that. So I learned at the ultrasound that I had been walking around for 3 weeks thinking I was still pregnant. Pregnant, but the embryo had stopped developing 3 weeks ago. Oh my gosh. So entire life comes crashing down. I mean, like, just the emotional shock of that was unlike anything I had ever experienced. It was just— I do not even have words. I remember this one sentence I said to my husband, and that is the best way I can describe it. I said, if emotions could kill, I think I would be dead. The level of despair that spiraled into for the better part of like a whole month was just, it was so painful. So I had to have a surgery where they take the embryo out, et cetera. Yeah, it was a whole thing. And so how did I process it? It was just extremely difficult. Very, very difficult. And all of a sudden you see pregnant people everywhere.

Oh, you know, they're happy.

Yeah, they're happy. All of a sudden you're like, everybody's pregnant around me. Oh no. Everything. It was so painful. So I honestly, I didn't cope very well. I started drinking a lot of coffee and just working a lot and tried to get my mind off it. Really?

Yeah.

I was like, I was numbing, completely numbing. And then, you know, I spoke to my therapist, my husband, I had really supportive friends, but it was just a very difficult process. And 2 months after that, I was in 2 minds. One part of me was still grieving and still incredibly sad. And the other part of me was like, I think I want to try again. And I was wrestling with this thing of like, do I need to be healed from the miscarriage? Physically or emotionally?

Emotionally.

Before I am allowed to try again? I don't know. I had a sense of like, do I need to heal myself before I can try again? And I realized that no, that that grief was always going to— was always going to be there and it was probably going to coexist with a new pregnancy. Oh man. And so I got pregnant again rather quickly in 2 months, and I was extremely anxious that it was going to happen again. It was awful because again, I had no external signs of anything wrong. And until your baby starts kicking at month 5 or something, you have no clue what's going on.

Were you checking your ultrasounds every month?

I was going to the doctor almost every week.

Really?

Oh, yeah. Hey, make sure it's okay.

I was freaked out.

That's a lot of anxiety.

I was incredibly anxious. Very, very, very anxious. I would cry all the time, like for, you know, for 48 hours after, before each ultrasound, I would be crying and sobbing, scared it was gonna happen again. Walking to the doctor's office, I was crying. Everything was fine every time, but it was horrible. Very emotional. Horrible. And until my son was born and I could hold him in my arms, I was still anxious.

'Cause you're like, you never know, I guess.

You never know. So it was very, very difficult. And what I realized is that we don't talk about pregnancy loss at all. And when this happened to me, I learned some crazy things. Like all of these people close to me had experienced this and were just telling me now.

They'd never shared it before.

Like my mom was like, oh yeah, I had 3 miscarriages. I was like, what? My grandmother, I had 5. I was like, what? Wow. Tongues untied, but it's taboo. Nobody knows how to handle it. It's a heavy thing. It's heavy, but yes, I guess it's heavy. But look, when somebody goes through grief in another form, people kind of know how to handle it. So heavy things happen all the time, but the heavy things that we're okay talking about are easier to handle. So in my book, I talk about all of that, my entire story, because I wanted to put it out there because the only thing that made me feel better when I was going through that was to talk to women who had gone through that as well.

Not holding on to it.

Yeah. And to hear that, like, many people around me had had a miscarriage and then a successful pregnancy afterwards.

Oh, that's good. So there's hope. Yeah.

Yeah.

Do you feel like you've— or where are you on your healing journey of that?

Honestly, today I feel good. I feel like I've processed it. That's good. But, but it was probably one of the darkest moments in my life. Yeah. But today I feel fine because my son is here and he's okay.

Yeah.

And he's happy. Yeah. So in a way I'm like, okay, I can have a healthy baby. Like, this is possible. And maybe it'll come back up at some other point. Writing it in the book was also very cathartic and talking about it a lot. Was cathartic, but it's very, very challenging. Yeah.

I mean, something that guys will never know what that feels like. Yeah. You know, we'll never know what that feels like with their wives or people that have gone through that.

Yeah. It's a very isolating experience.

I can imagine. Yeah. Wow. I mean, but I think a lot of women, even if they haven't had a miscarriage, it sounds like what, what is very common for pregnant women after they deliver a baby is postpartum depression and some form of comedown, even though you have this beautiful miracle and gift that has come into your life. But, you know, even my wife Martha, she's the most positive person I've ever met. She has tools, she goes to therapy, she's been doing these things for years, but she had had, I guess it was prediabetes or gestational diabetes-like symptoms during the pregnancy, and then preeclampsia. And it was, it was rough for her for about 6 weeks. And she is super positive and has the tools and has support and family's there and, you know, has a, you know, supportive husband. All these things are there and it was still challenging for her. And there's still moments now, but a lot of women don't have all that support. And they go through extreme postpartum depression. Did you experience any of that? And how can we serve moms who have delivered babies on how to set themselves up for success after the delivery to minimize those things?

I think food is a big tool. Yeah. Because your baby will, you know, suck a lot of your reserves. In your body up to a point. So for example, if you eat zero choline, your baby will take a lot of choline from you up to a point because nature always wants to make sure the mom survives too. Yeah. So if you end your pregnancy depleted, muscle loss, no choline, all of your omega-3s taken from you for your baby's brain up to a point. Any adult with low choline, low omega-3, low muscle mass, and blood sugar spikes and dips, will not feel well. You throw that into postpartum, huge hormonal shift, sleep deprivation, isolation. Early motherhood is so isolating. Identity change, everything, everything. No wonder. Recipe for not feeling so good. So if you can use these tools in the book, you'll at least have the nutrition part not too depleted after you give birth. It's just very difficult. I don't have a magic wand. I also went through it. It was very painful. My baby's 8 months now, but for the first 4 months, it was rough. I didn't feel so good. It's very challenging in so many respects, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, physically. Very, very hard. Very, very, very hard. And I was finishing writing this book at the same time. It was just a vortex. Vortex. I feel a bit more stable now because he's sleeping better also. So it's helping. It's just a very tough, tender moment of life.

As a scientist yourself and a researcher, do you have a relationship with God? Yeah, I do. How do you wrestle with science and spirituality? I don't.

You know? No. I think it's ridiculous to say that the only real things are the things that science understands. I think it's absolutely ridiculous. Look at where science was 100 years ago. We didn't know about microbes. We didn't know about DNA. They still existed. We just didn't have the tools yet.

Did you have a relationship with God during and after the pregnancy that supported you with the isolation and with the feeling of loss or with the feeling of uncertainty or the scary, like, how did you navigate that?

So I'm very spiritual. I believe in something greater than me. I don't relate to a specific religion, but I'm a very spiritual person and I believe a lot in my intuition. I believe I can connect with guides, you know, I can ask for help, help comes. I believe I have access to a lot of insights if I can just connect and quiet myself and get there. I have assigned a bit of a meaning, I think, now to the miscarriage in a way. And one thing I did after the miscarriage is that I connected spiritually. I tried to connect to my future kids, and I was able to connect with them energetically, I felt like.

Before you had your son?

Before I had my son. And really?

Yeah. What was that like?

Well, it was just me sort of quieting my mind and sitting on my bed and just calling me like, okay, kids, if you are there, what is going on? Give me some support, something. Wow. Yeah. And I saw two kids and I was like, okay, what is the meaning behind this miscarriage? And they were like, do not worry. That was just not, that is not one of us. That was just, that was a process that needed to happen, but we're good. And that helped.

Wow.

Yeah.

That's a beautiful feeling.

That helped a lot.

That helped a lot. Speak to your future children or connect emotionally or spiritually with them and have a conversation with them of sorts.

I've always had this kind of stuff. Wow. Even with the glucose work that I did before, I've never talked about this, but with the glucose work I did before, this book, for example, I always felt like that idea of blood sugar and glucose, I connected with it. And she picked me and she was like, hey, Jesse, there's this idea. Do you want it? Do you want to enter a relationship with me? And I said, yes. There's no reason for me to have come across a glucose monitor at, you know, 25 years old when I didn't have diabetes, when I didn't have any reason to come across it. It was just, I felt like the idea really wanted come through me. And so it was a spiritual experience in a way. That's just how I live. I don't know. It feels normal to me. Maybe this sounds completely crazy, but yeah.

I don't think it's crazy.

I think it's cool.

Thanks. But you don't talk about it.

No, I would love to. I think it's very fascinating.

Yeah. Yeah. So do you speak to your other future child today?

I haven't tried. No, I haven't tried. Maybe I should talk to them and see what's up. But now one of them is here so I can talk to him directly.

You think there's only one more?

Yeah, I always thought I would have many, many kids, but now that I've had one, I'm like, well, it's a lot.

It's a lot. Two at once is like another, it's another world.

Yeah, I definitely would like to have another child at some point, just also because I think my son would enjoy having that experience. And I grew up with many brothers and sisters, so I like, you know, I like that energy.

I think it's fun. You're one of what?

How many siblings? So I have one full sister and then four halves. Okay. And I'm the oldest.

Oldest.

Yeah. Wow.

I have 6. Wow. So you felt like, you feel like you're going to have one more in the future sometime.

Yeah.

What about you? It's not really up to me. I think it's up to Martha. You know, I, I think I would welcome another child into our family if she feels like she can physically, mentally, emotionally handle it. Again, she's 43. And so, you know, sure, she could have another child in a couple of years maybe, but it was also a lot. It was physically, I mean, we went to the ER twice. She was in the hospital multiple times and her health and her safety is my number one priority. Of course, obviously our kids, but not at the risk of bringing another child to like hurt her. So for me, it's not like I have to have this or my life is over. It's the idea of it is beautiful and amazing if she's gonna be set up for success and if, if she wants that, but if she doesn't, I'm happy as well.

And how has your— how has the experience of having kids been spiritual in any way for you?

Well, I think it's going to continue to be more spiritual the older they get. You know, it's still less than 3 months and it's— but even today I was looking and one of my daughters, both of them, but one of them like kind of woke up and I was like hovering over her, looking at her, and she just gave me like a little half smirk. And I was like, gosh, It's really beautiful. I mean, it's a beautiful experience. You know, it's like it's something really special. So I can only imagine how beautiful it will unfold to be, you know, how beautiful it'll be to be like, wow, you were just an idea. I mean, you were an idea that has been in a spiritual world that now you're in a physical world or whatever we want to call this world. But you're here now and now you're developing little by little. And I'm watching it. Yeah. It is a beautiful miracle. It's a miracle. It is a miracle. It is a miracle. Yeah, to have both of them is just a gift. And to watch their personalities already within a couple of months, it's incredible. But Martha's with them more. And so she is getting to really experience it deeper at this moment, which I think is more important for her than me. And they're sleeping a lot. So there's only so much you can do. But they're sleeping on you. And I'm like, gosh, this is the greatest feeling. You know, it's like I used to love my cat sleep on me, but this is like a whole nother level of having a human being sleep in your arms that came through your wife. How does it feel for you when your son's sleeping on you?

Well, he's too big to do that now. He can't sleep on me anymore. Yeah, yeah. It's incredible. It's everything. It's just such a complexity of emotion. It's like a bouquet of all the things. It's like the most incredible thing. Just like so much dopamine and serotonin and like, wow, this overwhelm. And also like, this is the hardest thing I've ever gone through. Even though I'm lucky enough that I have a nanny, like I have help, et cetera. Yes. It's just my brain has changed and is thinking about him all the time. And it's just really difficult. It's very challenging.

It's hard to be a career mom and a mom full-time, right? It's hard to do like both at a high level. Yeah, you really need support if you're going to be working on other stuff, I guess. And it's— it demands all of you.

Yes, demands all of you. Yes, you'll never be the same.

No, it's, it's a blessing. I'm so excited. Well, I want people to get your book. It's called 9 Months That Count Forever: How Your Pregnancy Diet Shapes Your Baby's Future. And there's a lot of different strategies and science and research in here that's going to help moms or pregnant moms Moms, really get clear on what to eat, how to eat, and also know that if you're a mom who already had a child and you felt like you messed your kid up, you, your kid's gonna be okay. Like it's gonna figure it out. And there's so many things you can course correct when they're young that you can start getting them on these habits now if they're 6 months old or 6 years old. So it's never too late. And like you said, you didn't have a bun in the oven, you had a seed., and you are the fertilizer to help flourish and help them develop and grow until they are delivered. And, um, at any moment you can continue to refertilize a human being at any season or stage of life so they can flourish from where they are to where they need to be. So just know that you haven't ruined your kids up if you didn't feel like you ate the perfect way. Uh, again, the book is out, 9 Months That Count Forever: How Your Pregnancy Diet Shapes Your Baby's Future. And if people want more, they can go to glucosegoddess.com to get all your content. Your newsletter is there, and also Glucose Goddess on Instagram, Glucose Revolution on YouTube as well. You've got amazing products out right now. You've got supplements that help people if they don't want to drink, um, vinegar, vinegar, which I don't like. I have some of your supplements. You can take that with food.

Exactly.

It'll help you minimize glucose spikes. And you've got other products coming out in the future that if they subscribe to your newsletter or subscribe to you on Instagram, they'll get notified of what those products are going to be, which I'm pretty excited about. Yeah, I'll send you some of that stuff. A couple final questions before I get you out of here. I asked you this before, but I'm curious now that you're a mom what your 3 truths are. So I'll ask the question from the context. You get to live as long as you want in this life, but many years away, it's your last day on earth and you get to create and accomplish anything you want to create. All the products and the business, and you have more kids, whatever you want to do, it happens. But it's the last day for you in this earth, and you have to take all of your work with you, all of your content, all of your social media, all of your books. They go with you. They don't stick around for us to have. But on the final day, you get to leave behind 3 lessons to the world. What would those 3 lessons be for you?

Have a savory breakfast. Listen to your body because symptoms are messages. And if you're pregnant, eat a shit ton of eggs.

There you go.

That's good.

I love it. Simple reminders. I wanna acknowledge you, Jessie, for the transformation you've been on as a mom now and how you continue to show up to serve not only yourself and your son and your husband, but also your community and the world of researching these things. 'Cause you went through it, you went through your own challenges pre-pregnancy in your 20s, and you went through your own challenges with a miscarriage and you said, I want to find the solutions. So you turned your kind of pain into solutions for yourself and others. So I acknowledge you for the book, the work you're doing, and the constant service to humanity with what you're sharing. So I appreciate you. And my final question is, what's your definition of greatness?

I think this has changed. I think my definition of greatness now is peace and contentment. Yeah. Because I'm, I think, you know, jealousy is a good marker of like where you want to go. And I'm so jealous of people who are just content. They're just happy. They're like, I'm content with my life. Yeah, it's beautiful. And it's not about more, right? It's about that contentment in your brain. Yeah, I think it helps to have a kid. I feel more content now.

Yeah, more present. Yeah, that's beautiful.

Jesse, appreciate it. Thank you, Lewis.

Thank you for having me. We've all heard about the social determinants of health, which is, you know, if you're poor, you don't have access to food, if you're stressed, if you have trauma, if you live in tough neighborhoods. Understand all that plays a huge role in our risk of illness, but the commercial determinants of health is the role that multinational corporations play in subverting public health and privatizing profits.