Sugar, Inflammation and the Gut

Welcome to The Perfect Stool: Understanding and Healing the Gut Microbiome. This is your host, Lindsey Parsons, and today I'll be speaking with Danielle Dame, certified holistic nutrition coach and sugar addiction expert and host of the Beyond Sugar Freedom podcast. Dani helps women reshape their relationship with sugar once and for all. Having gone through sugar addiction herself, she knows how difficult and lonely the journey can be, which led her to create the Break Free from Sugar group program to support women along the journey inward in a safe and supportive way. But before our conversation, if you haven't yet followed or subscribed to the show, be sure to do so. And if you want to get transcripts of the podcast, pop over to my website, HighDesertHealthCoaching.com, and sign up for my newsletter. You'll also get my free ebook, Finding Your Root Cause Through Stool and Organic Acids Testing, when you sign up. And if you haven't yet done my quiz on which stool test would help you to get to your root cause, you can find a link in the show notes and take that. Now on to the show. Welcome to the podcast, Dani.

Thank you so much for having me, Lindsey. I'm, I'm so excited to be here.

It's my pleasure. So we're gonna talk a little bit about how sugar impacts the gut, but just to let my audience know that we're getting there. But first, can you tell me a little bit more about your own journey with sugar addiction?

Yeah, sure, I'll try to keep it short because obviously my journey stems back, as for most of us, to childhood. You know, from the minute I was born, obviously things are impacting my gut and my, my dietary preferences. So I grew up in a traditional household, as many of us did. Sugar was just a really big part of our everyday. I was a really picky eater when I— growing up as well. So I often joke that I only ate things that were white, so white bread and bagels and white pasta and just white sugar, obviously. So I was, I was really picky, and it was those simple processed carbs that, that were my go-to. And my poor mom, she, she did get some vegetables in me at some point, but that was really the start of my life, really, when I look back now. Obviously the start of this huge desire to have sugar as a big part of my life, more than just the physical pieces. Looking back, sugar was such a part of how we celebrated. If I got a good grade, oh, let's go and get some ice cream. Or if I scored a goal at my soccer game, there was always that sugar being a huge part of how we celebrated, how we showed love, and, and just all the pieces that we know now go into just our relationship with sugar. So that was really the start of my addictive patterns for sure. And I didn't realize that until about 6 years ago when I had my sort of a sugar wake-up call. My husband and I had actually quit our jobs in the finance industry and went traveling to South America for a year, and that was really obviously a soul-searching journey. We did a lot of work on ourselves and, and really just rediscovered what mattered to us and what we wanted out of life. And, and in that journey, I got to witness how people— obviously such a different culture than here where I live in Canada— in South America and a lot of these countries that we went to, people related to their food a lot differently. They went to the market, they actually cooked all their meals. It was very rare that people would go and eat out. Obviously it's becoming more and more prevalent with the fast food chains like McDonald's and Burger King just getting in all these countries. But it really showed me a lot of where I was getting sucked into this fast, convenient food sort of lifestyle that so many of us live in and how that wasn't really going to serve me in the long run. So I started really reflecting on my health and the way I was not actually nourishing myself. We didn't eat well on that trip, that year-long trip. Eating things that could survive on a 30-hour bus ride was pretty much just bread and cookies and cakes and things in packages. So all that being said, at the very end of our trip, we ended up actually living off the land in the middle of the Colombian jungle for, at a yoga retreat for 2 weeks. And it was there that I say I went, we went through our accidental sugar detox because I wasn't really aware of what was going on. We were, we were still eating a little sugar cuz we were actually eating mangoes from the trees and like we were eating off the land. But I went through my withdrawal symptoms there and I didn't know it at the time. I thought I was sick. I also happened to get a parasite at the same time, which was absolutely horrible. Don't drink the juice if it's made with water from the land. I should have known that, and it got me, and it was horrible. So that combination obviously made for a very interesting stay, but we— it really was the catalyst for me to start reflecting on the changes that were happening in my taste buds. Because as I was in that accidental detox, getting off of, uh, getting off of the processed food that we've been living on— I mean, I've been living on my whole life— I really started noticing my taste buds change, and I noticed my cravings change, and I noticed that, hey, I'm not really needing a cookie today, I used to. That really just started percolating those thoughts for me around, oh, I think that there's some sort of control that sugar has over me. Coming home from that trip, that was like 2 weeks after that, we actually came home to Canada and I started really diving into learning more about health and nutrition and just how to nourish my body in a better way. And I started learning and studying at the same time as, as starting to get into my own spiritual practices and my own meditation practices and things like that. And that's when I really started discovering, you know, I discovered my passion for, for nutrition and for actually making these shifts. And I started having some big light bulb moments, mainly looking at my genetic lineage and the state of health of my mom's side of the family and my dad's side of the family, riddled with every single chronic disease that you can think of. And I started really understanding the role that what I put in my body and the stress in my life. I struggled with stress my whole life, and that's been a big, big inward journey as well for me and really realizing that if it wasn't, it wasn't stress that was going to kill me, it was going to be sugar, and it was going to be these, these hugely toxic foods in my life. And I just started noticing those patterns and seeing, really making that connection for myself that I didn't want to live a life like my mom does and like her whole family and my dad's whole family, just being riddled with, with issues that have prevented them from fully living life. I'm someone who wants to just fully live life. I want to be traveling and hiking and exploring when I'm 90.

Exactly. Who doesn't?

Yeah, right, right. And I just had these lightbulb moments that really helped me understand that the way that I treat myself and especially the food that I put in my body and of course my mindset and calming my nervous system and all these important things have a direct link on turning on and off those genes. And I do have a big say in what my future looks like when it comes to my body and its ability to actually do things like hike and travel when I'm 90. So That was really just the eye-opening pieces for me. I feel very lucky and unique in my journey that nothing bad happened for me to shake me up. Obviously, watching my grandparents pass away from various diseases. I never met my grandpa on my dad's side because he died of a heart attack when he was 50. So just nothing, nothing dramatic happened to me. Like, I know a lot of people wait for something horrible to happen, right? Especially when it comes to gut health. We wait— people waiting until they get diagnosed with Crohn's disease or SIBO or something really bad happens before they, they start to make a change. And for me, it was, it was just a series of really deep understandings and connections with what I wanted out of life and the role that, that I, I had played in that and that I could continue to play in that depending on what I wanted. So that's, that was kind of the start of it. That was about 6 years ago that I really went into nutrition and I started my business in helping women really build a healthy relationship with food and themselves. And it's morphing every year. It's an ongoing process, as I'm sure you know. Okay.

Yeah. Well, thanks for that background. So I'm curious. So when I gave up sugar, for me, that impacted my weight. I mean, mostly it just ended that battle with the baby belly that I kept thinking I'd get rid of somewhere in between my first and second child. And then I adopted my second child, so then I had no more excuses and I had to do something. But I'm curious, did it impact your weight when you gave up sugar?

Yeah, yes, it did. I'm, I'm also someone that I've never been overweight. I'm grateful for that. I mean, I, I've been able to outrun it and out-exercise it for the first, especially in the first 30 years of my life. So as things change, obviously we go through different changes of life, it becomes more prevalent. But yes, I do, I definitely remember like the inflammation in my body going down, definitely feeling more energized, my taste buds coming back online. And yeah, I definitely did notice a little bit of weight balancing, right? My body was started getting back into balance when I started actually eating whole real foods. Who would have thought?

Who would have thunk it? So let's talk a little bit about how sugar impacts the gut.

Yes, yes, let's do it. Okay, so, uh, and I'm sure this— you've touched on this lots in, in many of your episodes as well, because this is— sugar is one of the, one of the biggest culprits when it comes to what we're actually putting in our body and how it affects our gut. So a couple things are going on here. We can dive a little bit deeper into some of these. Uh, caveat here, I'm not a scientist, and, and you definitely are, are more in this area of like all the specifics around gut health for sure. But when it comes to putting in sugar, first of all, when we're talking about sugar, when I'm talking about sugar, I'm mostly talking about those really simple carbohydrates. So the things that like white bread, white pasta, obviously the obvious sugars. So table sugar, even honey, maple syrup, agave, any of these sweeteners, any of those, those really simple carbohydrates and that essentially just turn right away into sugar in the body when we eat them. So we're giving our body that huge glucose or fructose spike right off, right off the get-go. So not necessarily talking here about complex carbohydrates, although some things like yams and beets that are higher in sugar can be really sensitive for some people. But what most people are struggling with in this world that we live in now is this highly processed foods, all of the added sugars, all of the juice, all of the things that really sneak in that give us that crazy spike when it comes to our blood sugar. So One of the things that's really going on here, and we can talk a bit more about this, is really understanding. And there's been multiple studies now in research. And again, I'm sure you've talked about some of this on the podcast, but this prevalence of sugar and processed foods feeds the bad bacteria in our gut. So we are getting this huge surge of all of this yummy food for all of the quote unquote bad guys, right? These nasty pathogens or yeast. And bacteria that live in our gut that normally lie dormant, or in a healthy world would lie dormant, right? And the good guys are kind of running the show. So sugar is the preferred source of fuel and food for these, quote unquote, bad bacteria. And they can really start to take over. And obviously that leads to all sorts of issues. Another thing that's happening here when we're eating and over-consuming sugar is that it's increasing the acidic environment in our gut. Our whole body, not just our gut, but I mean, that starts there, right? So our gut is becoming, especially our small and big intestines, right, are becoming more and more acidic because sugar is extremely acidic. So this is leading to obviously inflammation. It can lead to degenerating the lining in our intestines, which we know is not a good thing. We don't want that to be happening, leading to weak immune systems and, you know, all of these, this host of diseases that ultimately stem from inflammation and from gut damage, which is And that's why I love what you're doing so much, Lindsey, in this podcast and focusing on the gut, because I think it is really the hub and the number one area to look at and to focus on when we're looking at total body health, whether it's mental or physical or disease prevention and all of these pieces. So those are kind of some of the biggest things going on there. Do you want me to dive a little bit deeper into some of the specifics around that dysbiosis and the gut bacteria? Okay. Okay. So like how specific do we get again here? I'm not, I'm not a science geek here, so I'm not gonna get too technical.

That's okay. But the audience is prepared for a, a shocking level of depth.

Yeah. Yeah. That's amazing. Kudos to all of you really like soaking in that, that depth of, of information. So as I just mentioned, right, this, this bad bacterial overgrowth can really, obviously really take hold and, and can produce this dysbiosis, which is the, the overgrowth, right, of this balance between the quote unquote good bacteria and bad bacteria in the gut becomes way out of balance. So these harmful bacteria that love sugar that in a perfect gut live, live dormant and live peacefully being managed by the good guys. So some of the, some of the specific bacterias that have been proven, I mean any, we can really, really encompass this. Any of the bacteria that we would consider pathogenic or yeast-like or quote unquote bad bacteria will be fed by sugar. So the, the laundry list of those those guys, but some of the most common ones, and I actually have to read these because they're not words that I say often.

That's fine.

Staphylococcus aureus. Yeah, you say these words more than I do, so excuse my pronunciation. This is definitely one that gets fed in a big way by sugar and obviously produces a variety of toxins that can really lead to disease and damage.

That's, by the way, if you've heard of MRSA, That's, that's the, the name of the antibiotic. I forget the first word in MRSA, but it's Staphylococcus aureus. So the last two, yeah, it's something resistant Staphylococcus aureus, which is that skin infection that doesn't go away unless you get antibiotics, but you catch it in the hospital.

Yeah. Another one of the ones that, that can really be obviously loving this increase in sugar is Clostridium Perfidens.

Okay. Close.

Yeah. And this is the one that obviously it multiplies in your intestines as it gets in. And this is something that you get from food, in my understanding, contaminated food, and it can live dormant. And obviously this, the amount of sugar that we're feeding it just, just allows it to grow and grow and grow and kind of take hold. Obviously there's E. coli as well. That's, that's a big one that gets fed by sugar. And like I said, the list is long. So if you know a lot of the, the, the fancy technical names for these strains of bacteria, just know that they're really being fed. I was doing some extra research actually before this interview, Lindsey, because I wanted to really have some more facts to share with all of you. And I found it really fascinating. I found this one study published in the PNAS journals, and that was actually showing the link between fructose and glucose, which are the simplest sugar molecules, actually showing that it decreases the abundance of a protein in our gut that actually regulates gut colonization. So it's actually possible that this, this increase in consumption of fructose and glucose, and we'll just say sugar for lack of, is actually preventing our, our gut from actually being able to colonize with the healthy bacteria, with the good ones. And we do, we know now that over the years with how we're eating and how we're living, the amount, uh, and the variation of our amazing microbiome and the beautiful bacteria that we want in there, the, thousands of strains that we actually want existing in our gut are becoming less and less. Just like we look at the world and we see cultures and languages being lost, right? As we come together in this like one world energy. So this is happening in our gut too. And that's a, that's a big problem because we need the variety. We need these, these ancient strains and really to, to provide this total body health, right? So, so I found that really interesting.

Yeah, because I mean, I think you've probably seen too how all, all the studies show that the more diverse your gut microbiome is, the better your health.

Yeah, totally. And this is where the, the, the studies there proving, right, that children who are born vaginally versus C-section, right, getting more of that initial gut bacteria on birth and how that actually gives them stronger immune systems and, and just in total, right? So it's kind of serious, right? We need to be paying attention to what's going on with at a bigger level, not just even personally, right? And that's why I know you're doing such amazing work here with the podcast, because this is a huge importance, right? We're, we're losing diversity in all areas on the planet. And when we lose that in our gut, we essentially are just continually weakening ourselves, right? And leaving ourselves susceptible to disease and viruses and, and diabetes and cancer and mental illness. And it's just all of these things that are stemming from that, that imbalance, right? I found another study that I just wanted to, to mention actually out of Oxford that was really, really interesting. Actually, the research and studying around the adapt— it was called The Adaptation of Gut Microbiota to Modern Dietary Sugars and Sweeteners. That was the name of, of the article. And it's essentially hypothesizing that the gut bacteria actually living in there, even the ancient strains, are actually shifting and genetically modifying based off of the types of sugars that we're eating. So obviously the type of diet that we're eating is now impacting our internal environment in a big way, right? It's actually changing the cellular structure of our gut microbiome, obviously of our gut and of all the cells in our body to adapt and to live and to thrive off of these, whether it's artificial sweeteners or regular sugar as well. So our, our human body, I guess, is trying to adapt to all this processed nonsense that shouldn't be in it in the first place. And, you know, unfortunately we're getting kind of caught up in this wave of, of inflammation and, and obviously the cravings and the addictive behaviors and let alone all the things that are happening in the brain when we're eating sugar as well. So I found that just, just a great reminder for all of us that like this is having a long-term impact, not only on our gut microbiome, but also on our children's.

Yeah.

Right. Like if we're wanting to procreate, we're passing that on. Right.

Right. The one we pass on. Absolutely. Yeah. So you mentioned artificial sweeteners and I, and I thought that's an interesting topic that I was gonna talk a little bit more about better sugar alternatives, but I just wanted for just one second. Talk about things like a sulf— a sulfame potassium and was it NutraSweet? What is that one? Aspartame and those types of artificial sweeteners. Can you—

Yeah, a little bit. A little bit. I don't, I don't know all of the science and, and studies specifically on them. I really come at that conversation. There's a couple things actually to really know and to consider when it comes to what I just called alternative sweeteners, even things like stevia. There's so many sweeteners out there now being produced, obviously in laboratories. So this is the first red flag for me. It's like, this is not something that came of the earth, so why is it in my body? So this is, this is just something really important to consider when we're putting in any foreign substance into our body. Our body's gonna be a little bit confused about what's going on, and it's not gonna have necessarily the pathways to to metabolize it, to flush it out, right, to, to just recognize it, and let alone use it for any use in the body. So when it comes to a lot of these sweeteners, and obviously a lot of them are slightly different, number one, and one of the things especially in the work that I do around more of the deeper understandings to our relationship to food beyond even the physical in the gut, artificial sweeteners are designed, and alternative sweeteners are really designed to be way sweeter than even normal table sugar. So a lot of them are designed, especially like aspartame and sucralose and all of these, to be like more than 100 times sweeter than sugar. So what we're doing there is we're still giving our taste buds a crazy hit of sweet, and that's still sending signals to our brain, to our dopamine centers saying sugar's coming. It still releases the insulin into our blood because our whole body thinks, oh, sugar's coming, right? And I need to digest it. I need to, I need to assimilate it and do something with it. It, and it's really just, it alerts the whole digestive system that, that sugar's coming, even though sugar doesn't end up coming. A lot of these, these sweeteners are, are there, they don't have glucose or fructose in them. So that's, they're being touted as being safe for, for diabetics and those sorts of things when in fact there's still, there's still a response in the body taking place that's really abnormal and actually leading to inflammation around our insulin receptors and, and just a lot of toxicity and inflammation, in my opinion, when it comes to putting these foreign substances in our body. And they're, they're really not all that they're, that they're put out there to be. And it's really important to understand how the food industry actually does a lot of trickery. They know, they know the food industry, the billion-dollar food industry knows that we're on to them about sugar. They know that now the masses are understanding, oh, processed food is bad. These seed oils are bad for me. The, the sugar is bad for me. I shouldn't be eating caramel number 5 anymore. They know that we're getting wiser, so they are also one step ahead of us trying to find ways to sell us on their food products so they can label things as sugar-free or keto or— right. All of these nutritional labels are red flag, in my opinion. And we need to really be careful and start really, really, really paying attention and making sure that we're staying with whole real foods. Right. And real food as much as we can and understanding that. These sweeteners are, like I said, they're processed and made in a lab. I would put them in the pharmaceutical category, right? These are things that are foreign to our body and we're still discovering and research is still being done. We're never really gonna know the overall effects, but there's a lot of information coming out there now. And of course it's very easy to find and do your own research on a lot of these sweeteners and also in your own body. I have a lot of clients who would have things like erythritol or, you know, sucralose and they would just get extreme diarrhea or they would get extreme bloating or they would get— so to me, that's obviously a telltale, like, please don't eat that. Your body's telling you to stop that because it's not working. So there's, there's definitely a lot of things to consider there, especially around— and I want to hit that home— especially around like the, the, the actual addictive tendencies that we all have. So we're not actually solving a sugar addiction problem or a, a sugar eating problem when we're just swapping out natural sugar for unnatural sugar that's 100 times sweeter. We're still using it in the way, we're still using it to treat ourselves or to emotionally eat and avoid stress at the end of the day, or all of these, these root causes, which is my obsession and expertise, these root causes that are actually driving us from the inside out beyond the physical. We're still doing that when we, when we just switch over to these quote unquote healthier sugars.

Yeah. Well, thanks for that, that elaboration. I was thinking about before I, before I asked the question. Because I had a nonprofit advocating for healthier food in the Montgomery County schools in Maryland. And the studies show, because of course they were, they were saying, okay, we'll take the, we'll take the sugary sodas out of schools, but we're going to leave the diet sodas because those are good for kids, or at least not so bad. Right. But then the studies were coming out showing that there was a higher correlation between diet soda and type 2 diabetes than there was with sugary sodas. And the, the actual mechanism hadn't been elucidated, at least at that time. But some of the suspicions were that, and then there were studies showing that people ate more sugar when they were drinking diet soda. So it wasn't like you could just go, okay, well, let's just replace the sugar craving with this and then I wouldn't eat any sugar. Or they ate more calories in total. I'm sorry, I may be, I may be inaccurate there. I think it was more calories in total. So that sugar craving kind of kept them eating. That was fed by the diet sodas.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. That is really— thanks for sharing that. That is really fascinating. I've heard, I've heard of that as well in different studies and, and, and also just in my own experience. Right. And seeing my clients the last 6 years. Right. When, when we eat these alternative and artificial sweeteners, a lot of them are actually like exactly that. The mechanism in the body actually drives more cravings and it's actually driving because what we're doing is we're our body thinks we're about to eat something with nutrients in it and it doesn't get nutrients. So then it's going to keep calling for, well, feed me. Like, weren't you just eating something? And things especially like fructose are now being shown to actually turn off our, our what we call the I'm full hormone. So that ability for your brain to know like, okay, I've had enough, I'm full, right? Like fructose is something that we can just eat and eat and eat and eat. Hence high fructose corn syrup being used in every processed food. The food industry knows this. They know that it'll just keep us coming back for more and it'll keep us craving and keep us going and disconnect us from our body's natural ability to know when we're satiated, right? Like, oh, I'm good. I've got all the nutrients that I need. I'm going to stop eating, right? And instead we're on the, on the couch eating 6 bags of chips and a couple of boxes of cookies and not knowing what just happened. Right. So there's definitely some very, very, very intricate things happening in the body that, that are keeping us, keeping us going. So I love that, that example in the school systems. I've heard of other examples like that as well, right, where it's, it's just leading more and more cravings and more and more sugar intake.

And, and excuse this brief interruption, but I wanted to remind you that if you've been struggling with IBS, IBD, reflux, gastritis, SIBO, dysbiosis, Candida, diarrhea, constipation, and all that gut health stuff. That's my specialty. So I work with clients not just here in Tucson, Arizona, where I live, but also virtually on video chat. And now for single appointments as well as a 5-session gut health program for people with tougher gut health issues or mental health or autoimmune challenges that go along with that, who likely require testing and longer-term follow-up, as well as 12-week programs for weight loss. If you think that a 5-session or longer course of health coaching might help you meet your health goals, you can set up a free 30-minute breakthrough session with me to talk about what you've been going through and I'll listen and hear if it sounds like I have something in my toolkit that you haven't already tried and let you know if I think that health coaching would be appropriate for you. You can find a link for that in the show notes and I hope to hear from you. Right. Yeah. Not solving any problems. So I'm curious whether you recommend a cold turkey approach to cutting out sugar or like gradually decreasing your consumption. Like what works better for people?

Yeah, that's such a great question. I love this question because my answer is, it depends. There's no right answer to this. So I would really encourage anyone here to really just tune into yourself. I know that it's kind of a 50/50 split. Some of my clients love just, okay, here's the date, I'm all in, I'm going cold turkey. And funny enough, actually, the day we're recording this interview, my current group program, they just started Sugar Free today, their 4-week detox. So today's a big day. They're going cold turkey today. But we've actually spent the last 4 weeks in that program getting them ready mentally and physically to, to take that leap and go off sugar. So it's going to be really dependent on your personality and your lifestyle and how much prep you've done in advance. So if you want to go cold turkey and just, you know, get it all out, get all that, that stuff, get the gluten out, get the sugar out, get the processed seed oils out, get all those, those toxic inflammatory things out on a certain day, maybe it's December 1st or January 1st. First, really important that you prepare yourself in advance. So there's a lot of prep that needs to go into that to make you successful, to stick with it, right? And, and we probably don't have time to go into all that right now, but meal planning, really making sure that you have your freezer stocked with emergency foods and, and healthy snacks, and really, really thinking through how you're going to handle challenges that come up like birthday parties and holidays and vacations and, and all of those pieces that can really throw us, throw us off course. And if you are— if that terrifies the living crap out of you, then maybe a gradual approach is more manageable for you. Because for a lot of us, a lot of women especially, there's this huge fear of losing our best friend when we begin getting rid of processed food. And I know this fear is very real. There's this belief that we're not going to have anything fun in our life, we're not going to have any joy or any pleasure, and my best friend is going to be gone. So one of the things in that case that is really helpful, in my opinion, is to gradually ease into it. I find that people who do gradually ease into it with the proper plan and support tend to be way more successful because they're ready for the challenges that come, are ready for the hiccups or the withdrawal symptoms or the things that might show up in their body once they've sort of built, slowly built in some whole real foods and they're, oh, okay, I know how to cook a meal without sugar now, or I know how to do these things. Things and we can start to get it out. It'll also be a lot easier on the body if we, if we say spend 4 weeks gradually minimizing our sugar intake and then take it all out. It'll be a lot easier on your body than if all of a sudden cold turkey. So it will help with the withdrawal symptoms.

What kind of withdrawal symptoms do people experience?

Yeah, yeah, another great question. So it's, it really the whole gamut. So when we think of withdrawals, there can be headaches. There's often like digestive upset in the beginning, especially someone who's going cold turkey and switching from processed food to food, your, your, your bowels and your gut is gonna be very confused for a while. So there's gonna be digestive issues. The pain can, can really come out as like the toxins are being pulled out of your joints and out of your muscles. So you might notice some extra pain, headaches, and tired as well, like exhaustion, especially for the first couple weeks.

Yeah, I'm sure it's, I'm sure there's gotta be a die-off reaction because the bacteria, the pathogenic bacteria aren't being fed and they're, they've got lipopolysaccharide, which is, which is a endotoxin and just—

Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Those bacteria and they're like, what are you doing?

Why?

Where's my food? Right? So we're realizing a lot of that. Some people also have cold and flu-like symptoms, right? They'll feel really tired and really just sick, right? Kind of having this sickness come over them. So just knowing that all of that is normal is really helpful. There's quite the process. And I know a lot of my clients go through it's, it's almost like it has to get worse before it gets better kind of feeling. You're like, oh, I feel tired and sick and bloated and, and constipated and my head hurts and why? Right?

Yeah.

So it's, you have to push over the hump and it usually only lasts like, you know, 1 to 2 weeks, maybe 3. I mean, everybody's very different obviously. But once you get through that phase, I know for some, some of my clients it's lasted 3 days and then they start feeling great again.

Yeah.

Oh, it, it depends. But it's, it's important to stay on course and, and pay attention.

Yeah. That's gonna be worth it. It's gonna be worth it. Exactly like a Herxheimer reaction. Reaction when you start taking antimicrobials. The first 2 or 3 days can be really bad for some people who have a real severe overgrowth. Yeah. So you mentioned seed oils. Let's talk for a minute about why seed oils are bad and what they are.

Yes. Yeah. So seed oils are— and I'll throw in the word processed there. These are heavily processed fats that have been designed by the food industry because they are very shelf stable and you can put them in a lot of packaged foods, a lot of processed foods to add some flavor, right? This is one of their sneaky ways of trying to add flavor and fat, right? Especially if they're not going to be using sugar in a product, right? They're going to, oh, I'll just use some extra seed oils to make it have more flavor. So these are pretty much any of the oils that you see in the grocery store shelf in a clear plastic bottle. So things like canola oil, sunflower oil, rapeseed oil, vegetable, peanut, soybean, corn, margarine as well. Any of these oils that are from plants, a lot of them from plants. These oils are essentially just toxins to the body. They oxidize like nobody's business and can create a lot of— obviously create a lot of free radicals in the body and really get in and start augmenting and causing damage to our cellular structure. What they also do is inflame, you know, they inflame our cells. They also inflame our insulin receptors, which can support and lead to more insulin resistance.

Lindsey Parsons: Yeah, that's a relatively unknown piece of it. But I think I listened to like an hour and a half podcast on the very sciency details of exactly how you need omega-6 oils to have type 2 diabetes. Like, you pull those out. In fact, this is a little-known trick, but I think if you told someone the only thing you need to pull out of your diet is seed oils, that everything else would come with it because there's no processed food that does not have a seed oil in it.

It. Yeah.

So you could just tell them the only thing you're not allowed to eat is that.

Yeah, that's such a great point. I'm gonna have to try that because, yeah, I can't think of something that, that wouldn't have that, that would be whole real food. That's— yeah, that's a neat trick. There you go. Get rid of your seed oils. Another thing that they really do is actually really get into our, our fat cells, right? Adding to our fat cells and actually damaging our, our cells and body's ability to actually burn fat for fuel. Fuel. So again, this is the whole just really damaging our metabolism and the processes that are able to, in an ideal world, be metabolically flexible and either burn glucose or fat for fuel. And I mentioned earlier already about the oxidation, and they're just extremely inflammatory. Just think of seed oils as cancer-creating inflammatory substances that should not be used. And actually, I don't know, Lindsey, if you or anyone listening has ever seen that YouTube video of how they make canola oil. Oil. Watch— you can find it on YouTube. It's a very old video with horrible filming footage, but it is— you watch that and never again will you ever want to eat a seed oil in your life. It's really eye-opening what they actually do to produce it and make the sludge and what they mix it with. And it's just— it's pretty shocking to actually see that. So I encourage anybody to— I think you just do a YouTube search for how canola is made or something like that, and it will come Yeah, it's really, really powerful visual.

Okay, I'll try, I'll try and find it and link to it in the show notes.

Yeah, that'd be great. I'll look for it too and see if I can send it over to you. Yeah, it's, it's a, it's a good one to hit home kind of what's going on. And I know a lot of, a lot of experts in the nutrition space, a lot of my, my friends and colleagues, we have that debate of like, what's worse, sugar or seed oils? And it's, it's kind of a 50/50 debate. Like, we're, they're, they're on par. And there's a lot of people out there toting that seed oils are even worse for you than the sugar that, that we're ingesting. So either way, they're both equally, equally as toxic and, and produce a lot of cellular damage and free radicals and, and toxins in our body that we already know we're dealing with a toxic load just living in the world that we live in. And we don't need to be putting these added toxins into our body if, if we, if we don't have to. Yeah.

So, yeah. So briefly, what oils do you recommend people use?

Yes. Yes. So definitely you're gonna wanna shift into, and, and obviously there's, there's a line for, for those who maybe don't do meat products, it gets a little tricky. I definitely encourage you to be open to that, but things like obviously butter and ghee and avocado oil and olive oil are good for like no heat for salad dressings or things like that. You don't want to heat those oils. We can get into obviously like flax oil and walnut oil. Those need to be kept in the fridge. We want to— oils that are really delicate, right? These are, these are going to be the ones that are more packed with omega-3s and more packed with the saturated fats that we do need. So coconut oil is another good one and then any, any animal fat. So I actually have lard in my fridge. Who would have thought? Not that we would actually be promoting lard again. I remember the whole like don't eat fat craze back in the day that we need to get over because we do need fat in our body. Tallow is another one. Any of those, those fats that can be rendered from, from animals. And when it comes to actually cooking, especially high heat cooking, so like stir frying or baking vegetables and things like that, you wanna do your best to use fats that are solid at room temperature. So things like butter, coconut oil is okay, the tallow, the fat, the ghee, things like that that are more stable to high-heat cooking. So those are the ones at least that I use in my home and that I definitely recommend and paying attention to that heat amount because fats can become very unstable very quickly, right? And we don't want to, especially things like beautiful olive oil that is absolutely an incredible addition to, to your diet. You don't wanna heat it. You don't wanna, you don't wanna agitate the cellular structure of the oils because if you do, then we're ending up in the processed seed oil category again. Right.

And, and yeah, you certainly don't want it to burn. Like if you see your oil smoking, pour it out in the garbage, not down the sink. Yep.

I've done that.

I've done that.

I've been heating coconut oil on the stove and I forget about it and I'm like, oh no, it's burnt. Toss it. Toss it.

Yeah. Yeah. And I'm just like, it's poison now. If it were olive oil, all the polyphenols are going to be gone. You're going to burn them off. The good things in it. Just start over.

Do it.

Yeah. Okay. So let's talk a little bit about the emotions around eating and how that impacts the gut and digestion.

I love this question. Obviously, like in my line of work and the way that I work with my clients, Science, this is the emotional connection that we have to food is one of the biggest root causes around sugar addictive addiction beyond the physical addiction that's actually going on. For most of us, this is actually the stronger addiction. It's the emotional piece. And there's so much that I could talk about with, with emotional eating and this emotional connection. But when it comes to actually our gut, right, let alone is, are these heavy emotions or the difficult emotions that we might be dealing with on a day-to-day basis in this in the world, let alone those are driving us to actually want to eat the processed food, right? We're going for comfort, we're going for the junk. And then obviously when we're eating the junk, it's doing all these things that we just, you know, talked about the last minute. So the— our emotional state in any given moment, we need to start really looking at our triggers and our patterns around this. And when it comes more specifically to actually eating time and our digestion, when we are not in a relaxed state, which most of us are not when we eat. I look around, we're eating in our car, we're eating quickly at our desk, we're eating in front of the TV, not even paying attention to what we're eating. We're eating maybe while we're arguing with our husband. All of this puts our body essentially in a stress state, right? And in, in a, in a state where we're not relaxed, we're not aware that we're about to digest food. And this obviously can do a lot of things to our body, but the biggest thing that, that really does, especially in relation to our digestive system, is it really starts to actually shut down our digestive system. And especially if we're not mindfully eating, right? Especially if we're not even telling our body that we're eating, right? Because our digestion starts with our eyes or our nose, right? When we're like, okay, I'm going to eat this food and I'm looking at it. And a lot of my clients don't even look at their food or don't even know that they're eating, right? They're watching TV and they're scrolling on Instagram at the same time while they're shoving things in their mouth.

And the chips are just going into the mouth, right? Yeah.

They're just happening, right? They're just appearing in the mouth as if from nowhere. It's magic. When we do that, right, our, our body and the rest of our digestive system doesn't get the signal that, hey, there's food coming in and we need to release the enzymes, we need to release all the protein, like we need to release the bile and all of the things that we need to actually break down these foods to properly be digested into our bloodstream, right, into our bodies. So we really— this is, this is the, the argument for mindful eating, right, and learning to get back to actually prioritizing sitting down, going slow, being present with our food, right? Even if it's just for 10 minutes, even if it's just for that, that quick bit of time to really do our best to minimize distractions. And when we do that, we can also support our body in calming the nervous system. We need to, we need to be in the, the rest and digest state because when we're not right, if we're in a stress state or we're ruminating over an argument we had with a friend yesterday, or we're just feeling heavy and we're feeling nervous, or we're worried about work, and we're just kind of in this tailspin of stress and anxiety and worry, and our nervous system is fired up. What that tells our body at a deeper level, if we're stressed, is that we're in danger. And when we're in danger, all of our energy and our internal resources are being sent to our brain and our limbs so we can outthink, outwit, and run away from danger. So the digestive system is the last place that gets energy. It's the last place that gets focused if we're in a stress state, whether it's Mentally or physical stress, right? It, it doesn't matter. Even if we're thinking about being chased by a lion, right? Our body has that reaction even if it's not actually in our reality. So when we relax, right, our body can actually send the appropriate energy and resources to the digestive system so it can function properly and it can really function. And this is a great example and maybe experiment for anybody who's, or, or maybe you already noticed this, right? If you're eating when you're stressed, or you're eating when you're distracted, and then you feel bloated, and then you feel like you've got stomach cramps, and you feel gassy, and you feel all of these maybe digestive symptoms that might be showing up for you, probably because you weren't focused on your food and you weren't relaxed in that state, actually allowing your digestive system to, to do the magic that it, that it does. So that's a couple ways, right, that obviously our emotional state really plays a big role in in staying, keeping our digestive system calm and working optimally so that we can actually break down the nutrients that we need and actually get them into the bloodstream and into our cells and into, turn them into energy so we can thrive. Right. So it's, it's more than just meditate and relax every day. There's, there's a big practice here that I'm not perfect at.

Nor am I.

Nor am I. I'm going to be the first to admit that this is still something I work I, yeah, no, this is harder said than done, but it's important.

It's something I teach some of my clients who are, especially the people who come to me for weight loss, is if you sit down to the table and you are, you just feel your stomach tense, you're just like, you've been running, running, running. You just stop and do like a couple minutes of 5-5-7 breaths, 5 in, hold for 5, out for 7. And just in 2 minutes you can just completely change into that parasympathetic rest and digest state. And have such a better chance at assimilating your nutrients.

Yes, yes. Which, wouldn't that be great, right? The, it, it often crosses my mind too, how, how much, I mean, people often complain about eating healthy being expensive, right? But so how much money are we wasting by not digesting the food that we're actually paying for, right? So let alone the amount of nutrients that are gonna be in something organic versus not organic and, and things like that, right? So it's a very interesting kind of argument maybe for another day, right? And I don't have the answer for that, but how much are we actually wasting financially and energetically when we're not paying attention and we're just shoving food in all day long and, and, and really not being present with that process?

Yeah. So I do still a little bit coach people on weight loss, but a lot more at the beginning of my career and, and breaking the sugar habit. And of course, some of my clients came to me with eating disorders, not necessarily bulimia, but certainly like binging cycles followed by punishing cycles, starving themselves, that kind of thing. So I'm curious how you work with people who do have essentially an eating disorder because I found that to be one of the most challenging things for me personally. Yeah.

Oh, this is such a good question, Lindsey. This actually came up in one of my group calls with my current group a couple of weeks ago because there is this, there is a very easy trap to fall into when we talk about, say, giving up sugar, right? Then are we not just on another diet, right? This is the question, is are we not then just limiting and controlling and starving ourselves of something over here, right? And I'm actually in the camp and of the belief that we do need to really be careful, all of us, whether or not we have an eating disorder, history of eating disorder, be careful with what we tell our brain we can't ever have again. Especially when it comes to food things. This can be really a slippery slope because as soon as we are told we can't, we don't, we can't have something, we want it more, right? And we feel like we don't have the freedom to make our own choices. So a lot of my work, and especially touching with your question, is really, really about tuning back into our true selves and rebuilding a deeper relationship with ourselves and thus a relationship with, with food and ultimately stepping back into our power, right? So when we feel fully empowered and we fully know and love and respect our body, right? It becomes a choice to avoid certain foods, right? Like, I'm making a loving choice to not eat processed seed oils and sugar. It's not that I can't have it, right? It's that I'm choosing not to because I know what it does to my body and I love myself too much to do that. Now, that's an ideal world, right? But this is, this is really like just scratching the surface on a lot of the deeper work that we need to do if we want to actually make a healthy relationship with healthy food in a lasting way and not just make this be another 30-day detox that you do off of sugar or another fad diet or another quick fix, because there's no quick fix here. We need to really go inward and take a hard look at why we're eating sugar in the first place, what the relationship, you know, with food is, our beliefs about food, our beliefs about ourselves. I often say that, you know, our relationship with sugar is just a byproduct of our relationship with ourselves. So we have to start repairing that relationship with ourselves. And when we do that— and, and obviously everybody's going to be very different— we need to— you need to really be paying attention to what's coming up for you. So if you notice that, you know, restricting sugar in your diet is triggering that old pattern of binging and purging and all of that, that's really important information for you to then lay off. Maybe you need more guidelines, maybe you need a there like this, no hard rules, right? Maybe there's some more work to be done there. I really believe that all of our patterns, even these eating disorders and, and troubled ways of eating stem from a deeper level. Like they stem from, there's something that happened. There's usually a trauma there. There's usually a story. There's a belief. There's a pattern. There's an old neural pathway that is using that. Your ego is using that pattern to get something or to accomplish something from a survival mechanism standpoint. Standpoint. So we need to look at that stuff and actually do some deep healing and really get in there and roll up the sleeves and get dirty with what's really going on internally for me so that I can show up more empowered and more from a place of love and control when I'm making my food decisions. Does that answer your question?

Yeah. I mean, obviously, it's a complex problem to solve. It's not an overnight problem. Sometimes I think about working with clients who start out with a self-professed eating disorder as don't anticipate in 12 weeks that you're going to lose weight. If that's your goal, anticipate that you might maintain, which probably is, is a step forward. And then maybe another 12 weeks, you might actually get to the point because it, because it's not an easy, it's not an easy proposition on doing a lifetime of an eating disorder. Yeah.

Yeah, for sure. For sure. Yeah. Yeah. And there's a lot of baby steps and obviously making sure that anyone listening to this this is in that camp or listening to this, you know, is really making sure that you are being supported in the right ways for you, right? And really, really being careful about who you get to support you. Unfortunately, there's a lot of, a lot of people out there, a lot of even these detoxes and even these things out there that might not work for you if these are your old patterns and these are your tendencies. So it's, it's definitely a tricky, tricky rope to walk, to walk. And, and it's very person-specific, it's very individual. So it's hard to give any specific advice here, of course, but But just, just be gentle with yourself, right? And know that this is a process and a journey. And the more that you connect to your true self and the more that you, that you go inward and really repair that relationship with you, the easier that does become to, to make better choices and to, and to hopefully not— the mindset work, right, is, is really about not guilting or shaming or—

exactly—

or, you know, making up stories about yourself, right? We need to find a way to understand that we're human and understand that most of us have spent decades to get to where we are, especially when it comes to our addictive patterns, right? This isn't going to change in 12 weeks. This isn't going to change overnight. I'm still learning and growing and finding weak spots that I'm working on. And this is 6 years into my sort of self-discovery and healing journey, and it's going to continue onward because I'm human and that's okay. I'm always learning and growing and being challenged, right?

Yeah. That's one of the first things that I, that I tell people after, after the first meeting is now I want you to go and watch without judgment, just with curiosity, what you're doing around food. Like when you eat sugar, what is going, going on in you?

Yeah.

And just to, just to try and not be judgmental of ourselves for, for the first time perhaps in your life, because there's so many people out there who are just, every time they eat sugar, they're just beating themselves up about it. Or every time they overeat. Yeah. And the first piece is to pull out the judgment and just understand. Yeah.

Yes. Yeah, that's, that's definitely where I start as well. I'm glad you mentioned the word curiosity. That's a huge focus when I work with my clients too. It's curiosity and awareness, number one. And also number two, like I have to remind everyone of this, that a lot of like our addictive patterns and our, um, you know, our unhealthy habits with food are not our fault. They're not our fault. We, we live like, it is sick when you actually do the research and you learn, you know, this world that has been created around us by the food industry and the pharmaceutical industry and the government. It's just all of the way that we have been taught to use food for emotional reasons, to, you know, it's everywhere. It's in the media, it's in, you know, false news and studies that have been paid by politicians.

It's just—

there's a lot and there's a lot of documentaries out there now that are really great, really pointing to some of this injustices that have happened. I think it's just that's important for any of you listening that are putting this all on you, that there's something wrong with you, that why can't I give up sugar? Why? Why can't I eat healthy? What is wrong with me? I think we, we all massively need to take that pressure and the blame off of our shoulders because we have been raised in a world that used sugar and food for every single emotional response, to treat ourselves, to show love. We've been constantly bombarded with the message of feeling sad, eat sugar, right? Like, it's everywhere and it's been hidden in our food. And just, there's so many things that are, have been out of our control.. So I often say this, right? It's not your fault, but it is your responsibility if you actually intend to turn a corner and be healthy and live a long, healthy life. So we need to know that there's nothing wrong with any of us. We need to— oh, we need to throw that out. It just makes me so sad that every woman I meet is walking around with that belief, right? That I'm broken or there's something wrong with me because I can't seem to get off of sugar. When we look at the laundry list, right?

Meanwhile, you can't even go to, go to a store and it's not every single store you go to, it's in the checkout. Even if the store—

Yeah, you're at the hardware store, right? Why is there a huge candy section here? I want nails and screws. Like what's happening?

Exactly.

Yeah. And, and every restaurant adds it to sauces and adds it, right? It's just, we've become addicted for many reasons and most of them are not our fault, nor were they our choice. So this is not a you problem, everybody listening. This is not— this is a massive societal problem which you can do a lot about. You can absolutely take your power back. You can absolutely do this, do this deep healing work that we started talking about and really obviously arm yourself with this beautiful knowledge from this podcast and actually make changes. I mean, there's so much that you can do. So please know you're not powerless. But it is important to take that blame off because that blame is just going to crush you and you're going to stay in the shame cycle.

Cycle.

You're going to stay in the guilt cycle, and you're never going to come out of, out of those patterns if you stay there, right? There needs to be some self-compassion, and, and curiosity is a great place to start. Yeah.

So tell me where people can find you and the Break Free from Sugar program that you host.

Yeah, absolutely. Yes. So my website's a great place, danieldame.com. You can, you can come and find me on my podcast as well that I— Lindsey, you're going to come and be a guest on. It's called Beyond Sugar Freedom, uh, podcast. That's probably the best space to connect with me. I'm on Facebook and Instagram as well at Danielle Dame, and I put my podcast up on YouTube too. So I'm, I'm kind of in, in many areas, but I'd say my website and podcasts are probably the best places to start if you wanna start diving deeper into your relationship with food, your relationship with sugar, and, and dive into some of those inner pieces that we touched on today.

Yeah, we'll link to all those in the show notes and the program that the Breakthrough from Sugar program that lasts how long?

It's a, a 10-week program. I'm just in the middle of a run now. I only host it a, a couple times a year actually. I haven't hosted it in a year. This is the first time in a year I've hosted it, but I have a couple other programs as well that I host, and I am going to be hosting it again in 2023. So you can get on the waitlist on my website and definitely check out some of the other resources.

Okay, great. Do you coach individually as well, or—

I don't anymore, actually.

Okay. Yeah. Only group programs. Okay. Yeah.

Just group. And then I have a VIP option with my group programs as well for people who want one-on-one sessions in the container.

Okay.

Yeah.

Great. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for sharing your knowledge about sugar and how to get off of it, and I hope some people can check you out. Who need help in that area.

Yes. Yeah. Thank you so much for having me on, Lindsey. This was such a great, great conversation. I really enjoyed it. And thanks everyone for listening. And I would love to hear from you. Please, please feel free to reach out. And looking forward to having you on my podcast, Lindsey.

Yeah, I look forward to it too. Thanks. I know a lot of you listeners are already super dialed in on your diets, but for those of you who aren't, I think that was a good reminder of how sugar can impact your gut and overall health. On another note, if you're a longtime listener, listener, or you're getting lots of useful information from the podcast, please consider becoming a regular supporter on Patreon. And if you'd like to connect with me online, you can follow my High Desert Health Facebook page, join my Gut Healing Facebook group, or join my newsletter list at highdeserthealthcoaching.com, as well as Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest. Links for all those are in the show notes. Thanks for joining me today, and here's wishing you all the perfect stool.