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The Glucose Expert: The Only Proven Way To Lose Weight Fast! Calorie Counting Is A Load of BS!

May 16, 2024 / 01:52:27

This episode features Dr. Robert Lustig, an endocrinologist, discussing the impact of sugar on health, obesity, and mental well-being. Key topics include the addictive nature of sugar, its role in diabetes, and the societal implications of high sugar consumption.

Dr. Lustig explains how consuming one sugared beverage daily increases diabetes risk by 29%. He emphasizes that sugar is a primary driver of various health issues, including ADD and depression, and discusses the food industry's role in promoting sugar-laden products.

The conversation also covers the difference between pleasure and happiness, highlighting that pleasure is short-lived while happiness is long-lasting. Lustig argues that the pursuit of pleasure through sugar leads to addiction and unhappiness.

He shares insights from his research, including a study where children reduced their sugar intake, resulting in improved metabolic health and behavior. Lustig advocates for eating real food and avoiding processed items that contain hidden sugars.

The episode concludes with a discussion on personal responsibility and societal intervention regarding sugar consumption, as well as Lustig's recommendations for improving health through dietary changes.

TL;DR

Dr. Robert Lustig discusses sugar's health impacts, addiction, and the food industry's role in promoting unhealthy diets.

Video

00:00:00
let's be clear and honest about this calories are not the issue this is all about that's the problem that's how you
00:00:06
lose weight do Robert lustig is an endocrinologist whose firsthand research has explored the role sugar has on
00:00:12
fueling the world's most destructive human conditions and answerers how we can regain control of our health if you
00:00:18
consume one sugared beverage per day your risk for diabetes goes up by 29% so
00:00:24
this is a big problem we also know that if you have high sugar consumption it's got multiple detriments effects such as
00:00:31
mental health problems cognitive decline early death we also know it's the primary driver of ADD but the problem is
00:00:37
Sugar's addictive and 73% of all of the items in the grocery store are spiked
00:00:43
with added sugar by the food industry cuz they know when they add it you buy more you can't believe what they're
00:00:50
telling you if they say something is healthy it's usually the opposite and I'm part of numerous lawsuits suing the
00:00:56
food industry because they knew that sugar was a problem but they paid off scientists to say it
00:01:03
wasn't you've been hacked but a lot of people don't have time to be doing a fine tooth comb over every single thing
00:01:09
that they're putting into their body they're not a scientist agreed so what advice do we give that is simple and actionable food can be medicine food can
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also be poison and the question is how do you figure out which is which so here's the
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secret congratulations daro gang we've made some progress 63% of you that
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and the bigger the channel gets as you've seen the bigger the guests get thank you and enjoy this
00:01:53
episode Dr Robert lustic on the front of your book it says
00:01:58
the hacking of the Mind very strong words to use indeed whose mind has been
00:02:05
hacked and who is doing the hacking yours mine everyone's who's been doing
00:02:11
it well pretty much anyone with a A belief system
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that's not yours and that's pretty much everybody the bottom line is uh we have been sold
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a bill of goods we as a society we as individuals have been sold to bill
00:02:32
of goods and the idea of the book The reason I put the book together is
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because it actually makes us miserable it has stolen our Birthright and our birth
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right is to be happy and we are not if anything we're the opposite of happy
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we're extraordinarily unhappy just look at the incidence of depression around
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the world not just in America not just in the UK but everywhere the World Health Organization
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now says that 5% of all of the people on the planet are clinically depressed and
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here in America it's at 22% so we're really
00:03:14
unhappy the question is why is this if you know our goal is to be happy it's in
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the Declaration of Independence life liberty in the pursuit of happiness well we're
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not so why the reason is is because we
00:03:30
have substituted pleasure for happiness what's the difference between
00:03:36
pleasure and happiness well pleasure is shortlived happiness is
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longlived pleasure is visceral you feel it in your body happiness is ethereal
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you feel it above the neck pleasure is taking like from a casino happiness is
00:03:54
giving like habitats for Humanity pleasure is experience
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alone happiness is usually experienced in social groups pleasure can be achieved with
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substances happiness cannot be achieved with substances the extremes of pleasure
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whether they be substances or behaviors so substances Like Cocaine amphetamine nicotine alcohol sugar or behaviors uh
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shopping gambling social media internet gaming pornography in the extreme all
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lead to addiction there's an a holic after every one of those shopaholic sexaholic chocoholic alcoholic Etc but
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there's no such thing as being addicted to too much happiness and lastly number seven the one that is the reason for the
00:04:41
book Pleasures dopamine happiness is serotonin and they are not the
00:04:47
same so two different neurotransmitters two different sets of receptors two
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different areas of the brain two different mechanisms of action two different clearance mechanisms don't
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dopamine is an excitatory neurotransmitter what does that mean means when dopamine is released in the
00:05:07
area of the reward center the nucleus accumbent it's an actual anatomic
00:05:13
structure in the brain which you can see on Imaging when dopamine is released there and it binds to its receptor like
00:05:20
so you get the you transduce the feelings of reward okay and reward is
00:05:26
good reward is what gets you out of bed in the morning if you don't have reward you know basically you shrivel up and
00:05:33
die okay reward is essential to the survival of the species orgasm is reward
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okay you know you need it it's it's part of daily life but okay too much reward
00:05:49
is a different story and the reason is because dopamine because it's an excitatory neurotransmitter it causes the next cell
00:05:56
to fire well if it causes the next cell to Fire and Fire and Fire that cell
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dies neurons want to be tickled not bludgeoned chronic overstimulation of
00:06:08
any neuron leads to neuronal cell death so that postoptic neuron with the
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dopamine receptor it's got a plan B it's got a way of mitigating that negative
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response it downregulates the receptor so now more dopamine less receptors less chance that
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a molecule will find a receptor to bind to well that means your the gain the
00:06:35
amplitude on the reward is going down more and more for less and less the more
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law of diminishing returns like an addiction like a tolerance yeah tolerance is one half of addiction and
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then when the neurons do start to die that is addiction exactly right so dopamine drives addiction and it doesn't
00:06:54
matter what the cause of the dopamine release is in the extreme it will be
00:07:01
addictive now serotonin does not uh does not downregulate its own receptor because
00:07:07
it's not an excitatory neurotransmitter it's an inhibitory one so do you need to downregulate an in inhibitory response
00:07:15
no an inhibitory means what well it means puts the next neuron to rest okay
00:07:20
instead of stimulating instead of firing it's actually calming okay right so
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there's no such thing as being addicted to too much happiness because the receptors are still there but there's
00:07:32
one thing that downregulates serotonin and that's dopamine so the
00:07:37
more pleasure you seek the more unhappy you get and we've been told for the last
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100 years that pleasure is happiness neurologically the pathways
00:07:50
are entirely different as you say and between pleasure and happiness one of the ways that we have been h h
00:08:00
act neurologically and Via our dopamine receptors is through what we eat and
00:08:06
your book Fat Chance covers this really profoundly in New York Times bestell the first word in the subtitle there is the
00:08:13
word sugar MH I've heard a lot about sugar um I see it in adverts I I I turn
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over the back of anything I eat and it says this word added sugar is sugar really a problem in society has it
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really hijacked us yes the answer is not only is it a problem I personally think
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it's the biggest problem it's not the only problem but I think it is the biggest one now why do I say that from a
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systemic health issue the biggest problem was trans fats what's a trans
00:08:50
fat trans fat is a fat that is has a double bond in it that is flipped so
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Norm normal unsaturated fats like olive oil like canola oil like rap seed oil
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like cesame oil like peanut oil okay Etc they all have a double bond in them but
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the double bond is in One Direction a trans fat has the double bond in the
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opposite direction one way to make a trans fat is to heat it you put enough heat across the double bond and it will
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flip by itself so if you heat olive oil too high you can actually make trans
00:09:31
fats at home but the food industry used trans fats for food
00:09:36
stabilization for to increase shelf life they've been using it in baked goods since the
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1920s the scientist who first figured out that trans fats were
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dangerous Fred Kumo figured this out in 1957 but it wasn't until 1988 that
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anybody took him seriously and then we started doing research on it and ized oh my God this stuff is killing animals and
00:10:02
killing people and finally in 2013 so over 60 years after the initial
00:10:10
uh science the FDA finally banned trans fats in our food without question trans fats are the
00:10:18
devil incarnate seriously you know consumable poison no if Sor buts is
00:10:24
sugar poison sugar is like alcohol so is alcohol
00:10:33
poison depends on the dose right the dose determines the
00:10:38
poison paracelsus 1537 we have an innate capacity to
00:10:45
metabolize alcohol and if we stay below that doesn't do too much damage if we go
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above it different story same thing with sugar same thing with this molecule the
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sweet molecule fructose and the reason is because fructose and alcohol are metabolized virtually identically what's
00:11:04
the difference between sugar and fructose so sugar dietary sugar the
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sweet stuff the crystals the uh stuff you put in your coffee the stuff I've got over here yeah like that
00:11:15
stuff yeah that stuff the 10 the 5B bag right there that's called sucros okay
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this is sucrose this is sucrose now sucrose is two molecules bound together
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one molecule called glucose one molecule called fructose they are not the same
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now the food industry will tell you they are the same they are not the same the reason they tell you they are the same
00:11:41
is because that's the way they assuage their own culpability for what they've done to the food but they are not the
00:11:48
same they will say a sugar is a sugar a calorie is a calorie a glucose and
00:11:53
fructose both have four calories per gram why should you care oh you care a lot you care a whole lot now glucose is
00:12:02
the energy of life every cell on the planet Burns glucose for energy glucose is so important that if you don't
00:12:08
consume it your body makes it okay the Inuit had no carbohydrate they had ice
00:12:15
they had whale blubber they still had a serum glucose level Inu so the people that live in the uh North Poles and
00:12:21
stuff that's right yeah the forly known as Eskimos right but they they didn't
00:12:27
have any carbohydrate they off fat but they still had a serum glucose level
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because your brain runs on glucose they can also run on ketones too but you know
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your brain runs on glucose my brain runs on glucose and you need glucose because
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certain um hormones and certain proteins in the body require
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glycosilation in order to be effective an example LH and FSH when you don't
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have gly illation of LH and FSH the hormones that tell your testicle and your ovary to
00:13:04
work you are infertile it's that simple so survival of the species says you need some
00:13:10
glucose but if you're not consuming it you'll still get it because your body will make it it will make it out of
00:13:17
amino acids it will make it out of fat gluconeogenesis it's called so glucose
00:13:24
is essential it's just not essential to eat fructose on the other hand the a
00:13:29
sweet molecule in that bag which is sort of one of the two parts of the the the grain of sugar that I see one one part
00:13:35
of it is fructose that's right it's the other half it's the the evil twin if you will what are the two halves again
00:13:42
glucose yeah fructose found together I need glucose to live my body will figure that out
00:13:47
fructose do I need this you not only do you not need it but in high dose it's
00:13:56
toxic now your liver has has the innate ability to
00:14:01
metabolize a small amount on the order of about 6 to 9 teaspoons per day of
00:14:09
dietary sugar so half of that being fructose so about 12 grams your liver can manage about 12 gram of fructose a
00:14:17
day in the same way it can ma manage about 12 grams of alcohol per day without showing any signs of any U
00:14:25
metabolic derangement but if you go above that that now you get problems are
00:14:31
we above that oh we are so above that we
00:14:37
are at 50 gram of fructose per day 100 gram of sugar per day we're supposed to
00:14:44
be at 25 we are at 100 we are quadruple our limit and and also just because
00:14:50
grams are quite hard to wrap the head around right okay so if I was to get a tablespoon well do teaspoons a teaspoon
00:14:57
teaspoons how many teaspoons of sugar what I have to consume to get to that level of fructose CU I say this in part
00:15:02
because most of us don't realize that we're consuming sugar that's right because it's hidden in all of the food
00:15:09
that's exactly right we don't even know we say oh I never even add sugar to my coffee therefore my sugar consumption is
00:15:17
zero wrong that is not true okay because it
00:15:22
is hidden in plain sight in virtually every processed food in the entire
00:15:28
grocery store 73% of all of the items in the American grocery store and in the British grocery
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store are spiked with added sugar by the food industry for its purposes not for yours because they know when they add it
00:15:42
you buy more and how much does that look like in teaspoons then the upper limit
00:15:47
is about six teaspoons of added sugar per day the allowance the re all the re
00:15:53
the the upper limit okay the recommended allowance is lower than that yeah okay but the upper limit is about six
00:15:59
teaspoons of added sugar per day so in alcohol terms that' be like one drink so
00:16:06
if you have a drink a day you're staying below your threshold and all is fine
00:16:12
what if you have two drinks per day now it depends on how well your liver Works maybe how much exercise you
00:16:18
have how much total body mass you have Etc what about if you have three drinks a day you're going to get pretty tipsy
00:16:26
maybe you shouldn't be driving a car right what if you have four drinks per day you know they might have to you know
00:16:33
uh scrape you off the floor of the bar with a spatula and what if you have five drinks per day you're a fraking
00:16:38
alcoholic is what you are all right the point is the dose determines the poison
00:16:44
well the same is true with sugar so we have an innate capacity to
00:16:50
metabolize about 12 Gams of fructose per day by the way that's for adults for
00:16:56
children it's onethird of that four gram of fructose per
00:17:02
day okay four to six so we're talking very little talking very little but when
00:17:09
you think about for instance kid in America what you know 29% of kids in
00:17:16
America consume the National School breakfast program breakfast in school
00:17:23
okay 29% so what is the National School breakfast program breakfast it's a bowl
00:17:29
of Froot Loops and a glass of orange juice that is 41 g of sugar the upper
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limit for children in terms of their metabolism is 12 gram per day they got
00:17:44
41 gam and it's just breakfast what do you think that's going
00:17:51
to do now if a calorie were a calorie and if glucose and fructose were the same
00:17:58
then you say say well you get got to get your calories somewhere but because fructose is not
00:18:03
glucose because fructose is more like alcohol because fructose toxicity has
00:18:09
nothing to do with its calories that is a huge overdose and it
00:18:15
has metabolic complications has systemic Health complications it has mental
00:18:21
health complications and ultimately it has societal complications do you think it has neurological consequences without
00:18:28
question it's the it's a primary driver of add it's not the only driver but it's one of them it's a primary driver
00:18:35
depression because we have the data as it relates to ADD and ADHD and all those kinds of things how do we know we have
00:18:41
functional MRI we have performance uh data showing that when you take the
00:18:47
sugar out PE kids scores get better okay we did this ourselves at UCSF we did a
00:18:54
study where we took 43 children with obesity and metabol syndrome all high
00:19:00
sugar consumers all low socioeconomic status children a Latino and
00:19:06
African-American all high sugar consumers and what we did was we figured out what they were eating on their home
00:19:12
diet we studied them on their home diet and then for the next nine days we
00:19:17
catered their meals no added sugar we took the added sugar from 28 Tas 28 uh
00:19:26
uh teaspoons of added sugar per day down to 10 okay so huge reduction we gave them
00:19:33
fruit that was the only place they had sugar in their diet otherwise we cut the
00:19:40
sugar out now if you do that you're going to lose 350 to 400 calories per day out of your diet all right so the
00:19:46
goal was to keep their weight stable because if they lost weight the critics would say well of course they got better
00:19:52
they lost weight so we needed to maintain their weight so we had to put something back in that was we caloric we
00:20:00
gave them extra starch so in the vernacular we took the pastries out we
00:20:05
put the bagels in we took the sweeten yogurt out we put the baked potato chips in we took the chicken teriyaki out we
00:20:10
put the turkey hot dogs in so we didn't give them good food we gave them crappy food we gave them Safeway food you know
00:20:17
just cpg you know uh uh consumer packaged Goods food you know okay so you
00:20:23
didn't give them vegetables just no we didn't give them any vegetables okay but it was no added sugar food okay it
00:20:29
wasn't funky food it was just food we bought at Safeway but it was chosen to not be um sugar containing okay and we
00:20:39
gave them a scale and every day we'd call them up on the phone what your way and if they were losing weight eat more
00:20:45
in order to maintain their weight for the whole 10 days of the study and then we studied them on day 10 every aspect
00:20:52
of their metabolic Health improved blood pressure went down blood glucose went down insulin went down their pancreas
00:20:59
has started working right again they had a serum lactate level you're not supposed to have a lactate level that
00:21:04
means your mitochondria are dysfunctional if you have a lactate level okay their lactate cleared
00:21:09
everything got better most importantly for the first 5 days of that 10day
00:21:17
window the kids were obnoxious the parents would complain to us my kid is a
00:21:26
disaster and the reason was because of
00:21:31
withdrawal they were withdrawing off sugar withdrawing off fructose and then like you know Moses
00:21:41
the sky cleared and the kids started concentrating better they
00:21:48
started doing better in school the parents noticed they were less irritable the teachers noticed they weren't
00:21:55
nuisances or trouble in the school anymore the kids noticed they said this the first time my head hasn't been in
00:22:00
the clouds 5 days 5 days and in 10 days we
00:22:07
could see all of the metabolic benefits even though they maintained
00:22:13
their weight even though they maintain their calories sounds like a bit of a scandal when I hear that these kids are
00:22:20
getting 30 almost 30% of kids are getting you know almost you know three
00:22:25
to four times their recommended daily allowance of sugar from school and that
00:22:33
it's having these sort of really adverse consequences on us and the studies are there to prove that the consequences are very real MH it sounds like a scandal in
00:22:41
the sense that nobody's doing something about it ah well yes that way it is the
00:22:46
point is that the food industry is very powerful and they have you know um swept
00:22:52
virtually every aspect of this under the rug for 40 to 50 years
00:22:59
they knew back in the 1960s that sugar was a problem but they
00:23:04
paid off scientists to say it wasn't and we actually have the documents from the
00:23:11
food industry they live at the UCSF food industry documents library and we are
00:23:17
doing research on corporate interference in health what do those documents show
00:23:24
they show that in 1965 the sugar industry came to two
00:23:30
Harvard School of Public Health scientists the head of the Department of nutrition Fred stair and his associate
00:23:37
Mark hegstad who became the head of the USDA uh five years later and paid them
00:23:43
$50,000 in today's money to produce two articles for the New England Journal
00:23:50
saying saturated fat was the bad guy and that sugar was
00:23:57
exonerated and they did and they did it that's just one thing they did they
00:24:04
also infiltrated the National Institute of dental research n IDR their study
00:24:11
sections and their uh executive uh committee to take money away from
00:24:19
nutrition research for dental health and put it toward a carries
00:24:25
vaccine a what a dental carries a Cav vaccine okay how's that cavities vaccine
00:24:32
working for you okay we have all of the data in their own words to demonstrate
00:24:39
that they knew exactly what they were doing this is not hallucination this is
00:24:46
this is Hardcore fact and we've published this and we now have a um a
00:24:52
center at UCSF devoted to understanding the uh uh corporate determinance of
00:25:00
health and when we look across Society at the consequences of this sort of corporate interference some of the crazy
00:25:06
stats in your book fat chance that I really sort of highlighted were that by 2050 obesity will become the norm not
00:25:13
the exception correct what the World Health Organization said that the percentage of obese people globally has
00:25:18
doubled in the last 28 years and in the UK 28% of adults are obese and 36% of
00:25:25
them are overweight that's not from your book but that's from some research we did on the UK numbers as well well you
00:25:31
know the UK is the fat man of Europe yes that's true having metabolic syndrome is equal to losing 15 to 20 years of life
00:25:38
that was in your book that's correct um which is startling um and worldwide sugar consumption has tripled in just
00:25:45
the last 50 years correct all true now you could say that's correlation not
00:25:51
causation but we actually have the causation we have the data we have it in
00:25:57
mechanistic terms terms we have it in um uh clinical Interventional uh uh efforts
00:26:04
we have it in societal efforts um there's a method for determining proof
00:26:10
that doesn't need randomized control trials it's called econometric analysis this is what we have for for instance
00:26:17
climate change there's no control group for climate change but we still know it's true this is what we have for
00:26:23
tobacco and lung cancer you know you don't have naive people start smoking that would be illegal immoral get you
00:26:29
thrown in jail but we still know that tobacco causes lung cancer we know that football trauma causes chronic traumatic
00:26:36
Andy opathy okay none of these have control groups but we know it's true
00:26:41
through econometric analysis this is a method of using natural history data
00:26:46
over time to be able to determine proximate cause and we have that for
00:26:53
sugar and diabetes and we have it for sugar and heart disease and we have have
00:26:58
it for sugar and fatty liver disease and of course we have it for sugar and tooth decay we're working on sugar and cancer
00:27:05
and sugar and dementia we're not there yet in your book fat fat chance um on a
00:27:12
on page 120 there was something particularly curious because I think this is
00:27:17
a um yeah here we go it says the bottom line is sugar consumption is a problem
00:27:23
33% of sugar consumption comes from beverages yes
00:27:28
and the biggest abusers are the poor and underserved indeed so let's talk about beverages to start with then
00:27:36
MH diet beverages are they fine and how bad are the sort of fizzy pot beverages
00:27:42
that most of us consume every day so let's do the um sugar soft drinks
00:27:51
first okay okay they are really bad if you consume one sugared beverage per day
00:27:59
your risk for diabetes goes up by
00:28:04
29% wow okay that's and diabetes and that and that's if you have one if you
00:28:09
have two 58% and diabetes is now the main cause of death in 40% of death certificates
00:28:16
exactly right so this is a big problem so you know that's demonstrating its toxicity
00:28:22
at you know shall we say medium dose you know at low dose you can handle it
00:28:28
but you know as soon as you go above that dose it's a problem and we have the data for it okay and all of these are
00:28:34
factored in these are all econometric analysis we've shown that sugar is a proximate cause of diabetes whenever
00:28:41
sugar availability changes in any country diabetes prevalence changes 3
00:28:46
years later and we've also done what's known as advanced Markoff modeling where
00:28:51
we go into the future and show that when sugar consumption goes down in any country diabetes levels change in NE you
00:28:59
know reduce three years later so it's a threeyear window between the change in
00:29:05
the diet and the change in the metabolic Health consequences we have those data and the fact that they work both on the
00:29:12
way up and on the way down is like you know take it to the bank now that's for the sugar beverages
00:29:20
you asked me about diet beverages I've got one here let's let's uh look at it
00:29:29
all right I've covered up the logos cuz I I've never seen this before I wonder what that
00:29:35
is um the the data now show I mean for it it took a while for these data to
00:29:42
come in but the data now show that the toxicity of one sugared soda equals the
00:29:49
toxicity of two diet sodas half as bad
00:29:54
half as bad does not mean good half as bad means half is bad well it says zero sugar here so how can it be bad well so
00:30:02
because it's bad for a different reason so the yes zero fructose zero calories I
00:30:09
agree but that doesn't make it good makes it better than the sugared
00:30:15
alternative but it doesn't make it good why number one you put something
00:30:21
sweet on the tongue message goes tongue to brain Sugar's coming message goes brain to pancreas Sugar's coming
00:30:28
release the insulin so I still get an insulin release you still get an insulin response and the more other food you ate
00:30:35
the bigger the insulin response so you will have an accentuated insulin response because you were exposed to the
00:30:43
diet sweetener this is work from Yanina Pino um uh 2013 at Wu St Louis and it's
00:30:50
been corroborated multiple times since and why does that harm me having an insulin response because insulin is a
00:30:56
bad guy so we always talk about glucose being a bad guy in terms of diabetes and it is of course but insulin's a bad guy
00:31:04
too glucose causes small vessels to be dysfunctional causes endothelial cell
00:31:11
dysfunction it causes high blood pressure because it causes those small vessels to constrict it interferes with
00:31:19
nitric oxide uh which is one of the things that relaxes the blood vessel and
00:31:25
it will you know basically reduce uh blood flow to specific organs so high
00:31:31
glucose is not good for you and it's bad for small vessel disease and that's why diabetics get retinopathy nephropathy
00:31:38
neuropathy um uh kidney disease nerve nerve nerve damage and um eye
00:31:45
disease but insulin is also a problem because what insulin does is it causes
00:31:50
cell growth insulin is a growth factor and it causes vascular smooth muscle
00:31:56
growth like in your coronary arteries it causes glandular growth so it is one
00:32:01
of the primary drivers of heart disease and cancer so you can be a diabetic a type 2
00:32:09
diabetic and have your hemoglobin A1c measure of your glucose uh uh uh control
00:32:17
down near normal near normal range because you're on insulin or oral
00:32:24
hypoglycemics or even glp1 analoges for that matter okay and you will die just
00:32:30
the same because you will die of a heart attack or of a of a cancer because
00:32:36
diabetics uh have a much higher incidence of cancer they also have a higher incidence of dementia as well and
00:32:43
the reason is because of insulin because insulin is a bad guy in this story glucose causes microvascular disease the
00:32:52
insulin causes macrovascular disease they're both bad you need to
00:32:57
control both of them and this controls the glucose it doesn't control the
00:33:05
insulin do you drink that stuff of course not just checking is there any
00:33:11
other physiological consequences to diet sodas outside of the insulin response
00:33:16
indeed so the other thing that we've learned about uh uh uh non-nutritive sweeteners across the board is that they
00:33:22
alter the microbiome now the microbiome is the bacteria that live in your gut
00:33:28
now you have to feed your microbiome you have to feed your bacteria because if you don't feed your bacteria your
00:33:34
bacteria will feed on you it will strip the mucin layer a protective physical
00:33:39
barrier right off the surface of your intestinal epithelial cells and when it does that it denudes them and allows for
00:33:48
other bacteria toxic bacteria to take up residence and cause irritable bowel
00:33:53
syndrome inflammatory bowel disease and the Junctions between the cells become
00:33:59
dysfunctional as well and so they cells become permeable and so stuff you know
00:34:05
in your intestine the junk in your intestine the you know sh you know what
00:34:11
can actually make it through into the bloodstream you can measure the endotoxins and the whole bacteria the
00:34:17
lipopolysaccharides in the bloodstream when the intestine is damaged even from
00:34:23
diet soda and what that does is that ultimately leads to SU systemic
00:34:28
inflammation and that systemic inflammation also leads to metabolic
00:34:33
disease mental health problems cognitive decline early death is there a
00:34:38
relationship between sugar and our hormone levels of course I mean the main
00:34:44
one of course is diabetes I mean you know insulin but um high sugar uh you
00:34:50
know I mean if you if you have U uh high sugar consumption it's going to cause
00:34:56
changes in insin response at the level of the liver it's going to cause fatty liver disease okay it can change your
00:35:03
kidneys uh uh function uh you know which can ultimately increase blood pressure
00:35:09
so it's yeah it's got multiple uh uh potential detrimental effects what impact does sugar have on our liver
00:35:15
what's going on there so as I mentioned we have an innate capacity to metabolize
00:35:21
a limited amount yeah everyone says oh Sugar's
00:35:28
energy well yeah but not really not really so
00:35:34
let let's disect that the food industry says glucose is
00:35:39
four calories per gram the food industry says fructose is four calories per gram
00:35:45
therefore they're equal because they're four calories per gram and if calories were the issue then they would be right
00:35:52
but calories are not the issue okay the whole issue of calories
00:35:57
has has to go down the tubes okay as far as I'm concerned that's the problem and
00:36:03
I am here to # kill the calorie as a unit of measure it has no place in our
00:36:11
uh in in our dialogue it has no place in medicine calories suck now why do I say
00:36:19
that if you take a mole of glucose and you throw it into a bomb calorimeter you will get
00:36:26
four calories per that's true if you take fructose and you throw it in a bomb calorimeter you will get four calories
00:36:32
per gram that's true we are not bomb calorimeters
00:36:38
okay what's a bom calorimeter it's a contraption that explodes the whatever you put in it and
00:36:46
measures the heat that's uh given off from it so it measures the amount of calories in something effectively using
00:36:52
some that's what calories are is the amount of heat required to raise one gr of water degre Centigrade okay so it's a
00:36:59
measure of heat yeah is what it is that's what calories are now we do our
00:37:05
burning in these little organel inside each of ourselves called mitochondria this is all about
00:37:11
mitochondria and when your mitochondri will work efficiently and well you can burn
00:37:18
energy uh uh you know to completion and you can capture that energy in the form
00:37:24
of chemical energy in your cell called ATP denzine triphosphate and that's what
00:37:29
your cell uses to power all of the functions that the cell needs the little
00:37:34
molecular Motors and making stuff and you know basically you know and and also
00:37:39
cleaning house you know and recycling junk okay in order to keep your cells
00:37:44
Thrive thriving and Alive okay so mitochondria are essential now
00:37:52
glucose stimulates mitochondria to work better glucose is actually
00:37:59
good it it stimulates two enzymes necessary for mitochondria to work it
00:38:05
stimulates an enzyme called amyas which is a the enzyme that
00:38:10
actually makes more mitochondria and it's the fuel gauge on the liver cell so it tells the liver
00:38:17
make more and it also stimulates an enzyme called HH hydroxy asil COA dehydrogenase
00:38:24
which is necessary to cleave two carbon fragments and uh burn them oxidize them for energy too so glucose we can call
00:38:31
good because it helps mitochondria fructose on the other hand
00:38:37
this sweet molecule in sugar in sucrose it inhibits three
00:38:44
enzymes in mitochondria it inhibits that amp kinase it inhibits an enzyme called
00:38:49
aadl asilo dehydrogenase long chain it inhibits cpt1 carnitine pidol
00:38:54
transferase one that's the enzyme that uh regenerates carnitine which is the
00:38:59
shuttle by which fatty acids can get into the mitochondria to be burned so the net effect of fructose is to inhibit
00:39:07
mitochondrial function so does
00:39:13
fructose constitute energy if fructose is actually keeping you from making
00:39:20
chemical energy in your cell this is the conundrum
00:39:28
what do you mean by energy if we're talking heat then fructose is energy if
00:39:35
you're talking ATP fructose inhibits ATP and that's what we're talking about
00:39:42
because that's what leads to systemic health problems not the heat so all of these people as far as
00:39:49
I'm concerned anyone who ever uses the word calorie fire
00:39:54
them because they don't get it they are part of the problem not part of
00:40:02
the solution many people will say that sort of counting calories has helped them
00:40:08
with their weight loss goals you tell me virtually everybody who counts calories
00:40:15
loses a little bit of weight and then they plateau and then they get um you know
00:40:21
tired of their diet and the weight comes rushing back okay 90% of people who try
00:40:28
to diet through caloric restriction regain and sometimes yoyo back even
00:40:33
higher so are there I don't accept that are there studies that support this idea that sort of the the yo-yo dieting is a
00:40:41
BYOD of calic restriction not because of caloric restriction it's a problem of
00:40:47
insulin resistance it's a problem of when you gain the weight back did you
00:40:52
gain it in the liver as liver fat because now you've got high insulin and
00:40:58
Insulin blocks this hormone that goes to the brain called leptin that is in
00:41:03
charge of that set point so the higher your insulin goes the less well your brain can see leptin and so the less
00:41:10
well you can regulate and so that's what drives your weight up even higher so you
00:41:17
don't regain the weight by eating you know fish and vegetables you regain the
00:41:23
weight because you you know went for the bread and the rice and the pasta and the potatoes and the sugar what's a better
00:41:29
plan then if I'm trying to cut a couple of pounds what's a better approach to take versus sort of calorie counting or
00:41:37
these kind of things get the insulin down there is no weight gain without
00:41:42
insulin insulin is the energy storage hormone 20 years ago from doing the
00:41:50
research on kids with hypothalamic tumors who released enormous amounts of insulin we gave them a drug that
00:41:56
suppressed insulin release they lost weight and they started exercising spontaneously because we got their
00:42:02
insulin down we showed that the lower we got the insulin the more weight they
00:42:07
lost and the better they felt insulin is the bad guy in The Story So numerous
00:42:14
investigators you know the world over have now demonstrated that insulin is a
00:42:19
primary driver of both obesity and diabetes and metabolic syndrome you got
00:42:25
to get the insulin down okay how do you get insulin down best way don't let it
00:42:32
go up what makes it go up refine carbohydrate and sugar all the stuff you
00:42:37
have over there in that corner just to be clear he's not pointing at my lunch we
00:42:44
have a pile of different sugar products that we brought for the interview over in the cor Corner including various things that you find on a shelf
00:42:49
everything from apple juice to some popular snacks to um some like some some
00:42:55
other things just don't forget the peanut butter The Peanut Butter Cups yeah and even this this is just sort of um it looks
00:43:01
like water but it's flavored water where they've added sugar to it right um so
00:43:07
yeah all of that stuff over there all that stuff so so get the insulin down all right so cut the refined
00:43:14
carbohydrate cut the sugar the dietary sugar that is the single best way to
00:43:21
mitigate this process by improving insulin resistance by getting the
00:43:27
insulin down and we have done this time and time again basically I turned my obesity Clinic into an insulin reduction
00:43:34
clinic for this reason a lot of people at a sort of a prefrontal cortex logical
00:43:39
level understand this they understand that they shouldn't be having sugar but it's well they think it's about calories
00:43:45
they do some people do think it's about calories for sure but even the ones that know that sugar is not something they
00:43:51
should be having still struggle they do it's EAS because Sugar's addictive right
00:43:57
they struggle because sugar is addictive we know because fructose stimulates that nucleus cumb
00:44:03
yeah when we get stress which is a facet of daily life now that's right we're much more likely to to grab a sugary
00:44:09
snack indeed and there's a reason for that too because when you're stressed that actually puts a greater uh uh
00:44:16
burden on your amydala and your amydala requires more energy hippocampus too by
00:44:21
the way amigdala is the emotional center of the brain the fear center of the brain okay and so you're trying to calm
00:44:26
it and so you have to increase the energy available so because you need more ATP
00:44:35
and even though fructose inhibits ATP generation you still reach for that
00:44:41
because you're trying to mitigate the metabolic consequences acutely when I'm
00:44:46
tied I think I have a high propensity to grabbing sugar as well indeed why is that because you're tired you're
00:44:53
stressed and your amydala is dysfunctional and so it basically tells
00:44:59
you hell with it I I don't have any sugar Cravings in the morning I've come to come to learn I don't feel the need
00:45:05
for sugar in the morning it's sometimes when we get later into the evening right after a long day exactly it's when my my
00:45:11
Cravings you and everyone else and me too by the way it's not like I'm uh immune to this I I you know am on record
00:45:20
I gained a lot of weight while I was a faculty member at UCSF and every
00:45:27
day at 400 p.m. I just ran out of gas and so I ran across the street to get a
00:45:34
you know large chocolate chip cookie okay and that was without question the
00:45:39
primary driver of my wak ging okay it wasn't until I actually started doing the research on this and seeing that the
00:45:47
kids felt better when we took the sugar out of their diet that I actually put two and two together for myself so now I
00:45:55
don't do that and my energy level stays constant throughout the day what so what
00:46:00
advice do we give that is simple and actionable for Jennifer or Judith or
00:46:06
Dave who's listening to this now they are you know 40 years old potentially they have a nine-to-five job they're
00:46:12
very busy maybe they have some kids to feed at the same time they they don't have time to be like you know looking at
00:46:19
doing a fine sort of tooth comb over every single thing that they're putting into their body they're not a scientist
00:46:25
agreed it's a it's a problem because the food industry has made the grocery store
00:46:31
a Minefield and it's really easy to set off an explosion if you walk in you're
00:46:38
basically lost that's how bad it is understood so the the simple rule is
00:46:46
eat real food so what's Real Food well food that came out of the ground or
00:46:53
animals that ate food that came out of the ground the problem is we all lead busy lives and we're looking for labor
00:46:58
saving devices cuz people don't even have time to cook most people 33% of
00:47:04
Americans don't even know how to cook anymore so like what are they going to do so we understand this I mean it's a
00:47:10
problem agreed we need food that is metabolically healthy for
00:47:18
us not metabolically detrimental and the problem is that as soon as you put the
00:47:24
added sugar in the food you have made it metabolically detrimental now the food
00:47:29
industry will say well there are all these other good things in there like vitamins and minerals we fortify it Etc
00:47:34
so I'm here to tell you toxin a plus antidote B still equals
00:47:40
Death okay just because they put some vitamins in there or you take a dietary
00:47:46
supplement if it's not solving your mitochondrial dysfunction what's the
00:47:52
point so you can't believe what the food industry is telling you okay if they say
00:47:59
something is healthy it's usually the opposite whatever it says on the package believe the opposite because they have
00:48:06
an incentive to put wrong stuff on the package and I'll be honest with you I'm
00:48:13
part of you know uh numerous lawsuits suing the food industry for deceptive
00:48:18
advertising misbranding mislabeling 70% of all of the items in the American
00:48:24
Grocery Store are misbranded or mislabeled in what way they say things
00:48:29
that are not true give me some examples well first of all any time they use the word
00:48:34
healthy okay um they say no added sugar okay but in fact they put in apple
00:48:42
puree or raspberry puree or evaporated cane juice you know they they there are
00:48:48
262 names for sugar and the food industry uses all of
00:48:53
them and so they will say that something's no added suar but that in fact is actually not the case okay
00:49:00
there's there's a whole you know whole host of this Kelloggs has been sued for raisin brand okay everyone thinks raisin
00:49:08
brand well it's just raisins and brand what color are the raisins in raisin
00:49:15
brand I've never seen it well I mean raisins are purple yeah you purple brown
00:49:22
yeah yeah yeah yeah normally well the the raisins in raisin brand are white
00:49:32
why if you take the raisins and raisin brand that's supposed to be 11 gram of
00:49:38
sugar but on the side of the package it says that one serving is 18 grams of sugar where' the other seven come
00:49:46
from it's the white because they've all been dipped in a sugar solution to make
00:49:52
them sweeter as an example
00:49:58
okay so post has been sued General Mills their's theirs was uh dismissed um uh
00:50:05
mandes a whole host of uh uh of companies are actually under the gun now
00:50:10
to change their practices why do you care so much I am a
00:50:17
pediatrician my job is to take care of children children are
00:50:23
vulnerable in the same way minorities are vulnerable same way prisoners are vulnerable okay they need a voice my job
00:50:32
is to give every kid a shot well we now have neonatal
00:50:39
obesity we have babies being born Israel South Africa Russia United
00:50:47
States four separate studies showing that over the past 25 years birth weight
00:50:52
has gone up 200 grams half a pound in all four countries and when you do dexa
00:50:59
scanning to look at body composition on those newborns those 200 grams are all
00:51:04
fat we have neonatal obesity these kids did not get obese by dieting and
00:51:11
exercising by gluttony and sloth they came out of the
00:51:17
womb behind the eightball it's my job as a pediatrician
00:51:23
to fix the problem that's what I care okay can you just give me a little bit of brief overview of everything you're
00:51:29
talking about the um studies you've referenced all of that what is the
00:51:36
academic experience background research that you've done that's built all of the
00:51:41
foundations of your knowledge I spent the first 20 years of my medical
00:51:46
practice you know in Academia basically you know doing what they told
00:51:52
me to do you know the way I learned it and I thought calories were the same and
00:51:58
I thought that you know it didn't matter and this is not what you do and this is not how you take care of patients you
00:52:03
you know do prescriptions and you do procedures and that's how you do it and then I started doing research because I
00:52:10
was at St Jude Children's Research Hospital taking care of these massively obese kids who had brain
00:52:17
tumors that were treated by surgery or radiation and they became massively
00:52:23
obese because of it because their hypothalamus was damaged because they couldn't see that leptin signal that we talked about earlier
00:52:30
which is the hunger which it is part of hunger it's not the only hunger related it's more of an energy sufficiency
00:52:36
signal okay right it's the energy sufficiency signal anyway when we
00:52:42
suppressed their insulin release with that drug I mentioned before they lost weight and they started exercising
00:52:48
spontaneously so we did that with adults and guess what same thing happened and we measured their energy expenditure and
00:52:55
instead of it going down as you'd expect when you lose weight normally your energy expenditure goes down their
00:53:00
expend energy expenditure went up so what this told me was that insulin
00:53:07
is blocking leptin and as long as your leptin's being blocked you feel like crap and you're
00:53:16
hungry and you don't want to get off the couch and as soon as your insulin goes down now your brain can see the leptin
00:53:22
and you're not hungry and you can start exercising what this showed me was that the behaviors that we associate with
00:53:29
obesity the gluttony and the sloth are actually secondary to this biochemical
00:53:35
phenomenon of insulin blocking leptin and so this put me on the path of
00:53:41
understanding insulin as the problem rather than insulin as the
00:53:48
result fix the insulin fix the problem and so I've been doing that for
00:53:55
the last 25 years and that's what brought you to the subject of sugar
00:54:01
because sugar increases insulin levels well sugar causes insulin resistance
00:54:06
okay so there are two phenomena in with insulin insulin release yeah which is an
00:54:11
acute phenomenon so that's when I eat something there'll be some insulin released which means my I have an insulin Spike right and then it comes
00:54:18
back down nicely if I not or not or not depending on how much and how consistently I've been eating sugar
00:54:24
exactly right so if your liver has fat in it and 45% of American adults now
00:54:31
have fat in their liver and 25% of kids now have fat in their liver and they never did before I mean before 19 uh 80
00:54:40
if you saw fat in the liver that was alcohol but if 25% of kids who don't drink alcohol have fat in their liver
00:54:47
how'd the fat get there sugar cuz sugar gets turned into fat in the
00:54:53
liver that's the that's the driver of this what that does is that causes a
00:55:00
phenomenon called insulin resistance your liver doesn't work right so your
00:55:06
pancreas has to make more insulin to make your liver work right you know like you having to put more people on the
00:55:11
assembly line when you know people are you know goofing off or you know not not
00:55:17
getting their job done right same idea so you have to basically Goose the liver
00:55:24
to do its job well that raises insulin levels all over the body and once that happens now you're taking energy from
00:55:31
your bloodstream and putting it in fat cells for storage so by getting the insulin down so if it's insulin
00:55:38
resistance fixing the insulin resistance by getting rid of the fat in the liver or if it's the insulin release at the
00:55:44
beginning by lowering your refined carbohydrate because that's the primary stimulus of that first
00:55:51
Spike either way it's refined carbohydrate in your sugar get the insulin down and diabetes is when your
00:55:59
pancreas can't keep up okay so it's really so much insulin it goes forget this I'm done right it's the end result
00:56:06
of both of these um phenomena which we've now realized is reversible I think
00:56:11
there was a school of thought once upon a time that diabetes couldn't be reversed but that's right but it is reversible it is very reversible for a
00:56:17
while so let's be let's be clear and honest about this there is absolutely no
00:56:23
doubt that what doctors learn in medical school is wrong we are told and I know
00:56:30
cuz I was told that diabetes is a chronic
00:56:36
progressive unrelenting disease that never gets better and that
00:56:44
you will need medication whether it be insulin or oral hypoglycemics or whatever for the rest of your
00:56:50
life garbage total complete trash now
00:56:57
Vera Health numerous other uh studies of
00:57:03
various diets show that you can absolutely reverse type 2
00:57:10
diabetes in order to do so you have to get the pancreas to make insulin properly and
00:57:19
the only way to do that is to get the liver to respond to insulin
00:57:25
properly one way is to not challenge the liver give the liver a rest well it's
00:57:32
metabolizing all that refined carbohydrate and sugar drop the refined carbohydrate and sugar and make your
00:57:39
liver work better little kit so a ketogenic diets the extreme version of
00:57:44
this it's not the only way but it is a way paleo diet is another version
00:57:49
fasting intermittent fasting will give your liver a chance to burn off the fat
00:57:54
that's accumulated over the last 16 hours there are many ways to skin this cat calorie counting almost never
00:58:04
calorie restriction yes calorie restriction but it's got to be consistent and longterm
00:58:11
and we've shown numerous Studies have shown that as you restrict calories that
00:58:18
leptin resistance does not get better quickly it takes years for that leptin
00:58:23
resistance to finally go away like five years before you change the set point
00:58:30
let's take a step back so what does leptin do again it's about energy so leptin is made in your fat cells yeah in
00:58:37
response to driving energy into fat the cell will make leptin the leptin will circulate in the bloodstream will go to
00:58:43
your brain go to your hypothalamus and say hey I've got enough energy on board
00:58:49
okay to engage in expensive metabolic processes so we don't need anym I don't
00:58:55
need to eat eat more I can engage in puberty I can engage in pregnancy okay
00:59:01
okay both of which are high metabolic uh uh processes okay okay so
00:59:08
it is like the servo mechanism like the thermostat on your house okay you have a
00:59:14
a floor but no ceiling so when you're when it's cold in your house the heat
00:59:20
kicks in but if you don't have air conditioning it can go higher right same
00:59:26
idea with leptin floor no ceiling so when your leptin goes below a certain
00:59:32
threshold your brain will see that as starvation you get really hungry and so you will get both hungry and you will
00:59:38
also sit on the couch okay okay H so that's the way the activity
00:59:44
component comes in because your brain's saying listen don't waste this energy exactly conserve okay because we're in
00:59:50
trouble here we're we're in trouble down here okay so eat more and don't
00:59:58
move that's the biochemistry that drives the behavior why don't they have leptin
01:00:04
injections well they do oh really but it turns out it doesn't work in leptin resistance because the problem is not
01:00:11
that you're missing leptin the problem is you have too much leptin it's just not working so adding more leptin is
01:00:17
like throwing kerosene on the fire the recepto sites have stopped receptor sites are not there either they've been
01:00:23
downregulated or they're being blocked one or the other if insulin blocks it okay or they can be downregulated too
01:00:30
both now if you're leptin deficient and there are 14 patients with
01:00:35
leptin deficiency and quite a few of them by the way are in the UK of the 14
01:00:40
and sadf faruki and Steve O'Reilly at Aden Brook's hos Aden Brook's Hospital in Cambridge are the people who've done
01:00:47
the most work on leptin deficiency if you take a patient who's LEP and
01:00:52
deficient they basically start gaining weight as soon as they're born by age 6
01:00:58
months they're already massively obese by the age of you know three they they
01:01:05
you you can't they can't even fit through the door okay they eat everything in sight
01:01:12
and they don't move you give them a shot of leptin because they're deficient you're replacing what's
01:01:18
missing and they slim down like that they're genetically leptin deficient
01:01:24
they're genetically leptin deficient they have a mutation in their leptin Gene so obesity could be genetic in some
01:01:31
very very small cases very small number of patients it is genetic but that's not
01:01:37
what's going on in the rest of the population so yes is obesity genetic for
01:01:44
a small fraction sure we have leptin
01:01:49
deficiency we have letin receptor deficiency we have pc1 deficiency we have melanocortin 4 receptor deficiency
01:01:55
we have sim1 deficiency we there a whole host of different genes and nobody has
01:02:01
them nobody has them all right like 14 people have them it's very rare for the
01:02:09
reason for General Garden variety obesity out in the world to be due to a
01:02:16
genetic problem this is an environmental problem in your book you talk about environmental obesogens I've never heard
01:02:23
that term before what does it mean so obesogens are chemicals in the
01:02:29
environment that actually drive weight gain they cause the differentiation of
01:02:35
fat cells or they cause the growth of fat cells now fat cells are
01:02:42
complex okay you have a certain number but you can increase that number
01:02:48
especially early on in life there's a critical period before Age 2 where you can actually increase fat cell number
01:02:54
and once a fat cell is developed it wants to stay filled I mean we got to
01:03:00
pause here just for a second because I think most people think that when we eat food we increase the number of fat cells
01:03:06
we have no we increase the size of the fat cells we have this was a really I learned this a couple of a couple of
01:03:11
years ago and it kind of changed the way I think about a lot of things including liposuction yeah because with
01:03:17
liposuction you kind of think that you're taking away fat cells that you've added to your body through diet but
01:03:23
actually the fat cells stay the same they grow and Shrink well there's also a problem with liposuction as well um
01:03:31
there are three fat Depot okay and they're not the same on
01:03:37
the scale they're the same because you weigh a certain amount but from a
01:03:42
metabolic standpoint they are not the same so let's take each of the fat Depot separately so that your audience will
01:03:49
understand what it is that they're actually concerned about so the first fat Depot is the obvious what we call
01:03:56
subcutaneous or big butt fat belly fat as well no that comes later oh that's
01:04:01
the second one okay subcutaneous cutanous big butt fat or does this bathing suit make me look fat fat so are
01:04:08
you saying that's good or bad it's actually good I agree it's
01:04:14
protective the more of it the less likely that you will have metabolic
01:04:21
disease it is the place where your body wants to put excess energy because it's
01:04:27
safe now most of us have a certain ability to grow that fat to a certain
01:04:34
level before it starts becoming a problem eventually you can overload that
01:04:39
subcutaneous fat where you will actually make the fat vacu the little pocket of
01:04:46
of fat within the fat cell grow so much that it will actually
01:04:52
cause the uh border of the V Ule to decompensate and now you've spilled the
01:04:59
grease into the cell that will kill the cell and that will cause um uh inflammatory cells to congregate to try
01:05:06
to clean up the grease and then they secrete um proteins called cyto coses
01:05:11
which end up causing the metabolic dysfunction in any case you can overload your subcutaneous
01:05:18
fat but you have to work at it so about how much fat does your sub cutaneous fat
01:05:26
have to grow before you become metabolically ill on average about 10
01:05:32
kilos 22 pounds some more some less okay
01:05:38
now let's take the second fat Depot belly fat viseral fat this fat here
01:05:44
everyone's worst type of fat well yes but not because of
01:05:50
Cosmetics because of metabolism in any case the the visceral
01:05:56
fat the belly fat is that due to calories is that due to weight gain that
01:06:01
is actually due to cortisol that's due to stress and the reason we know that is
01:06:08
because you can take patients who are have endogenous clinical depression okay
01:06:15
they are anhedonic they don't eat because they generate no reward from Life they
01:06:22
generate no reward from eating they are losing weight they have to be
01:06:28
admitted to the hospital to keep them from killing themselves so these are with people with suicidal ideation who
01:06:35
have to be admitted to psychiatric hospitals you put them in a scanner and it turns out they're losing subcutaneous
01:06:42
fat because they're not eating they're gaining visceral fat because the
01:06:48
cortisol from the stress that goes along with the depression is actually laying
01:06:53
down more fat in their belly why it's what cortisol does because when
01:07:00
you're stressed you need an a readily available and metabolically active
01:07:07
source of energy in case you're being chased by the lion so that metabolic fat
01:07:13
that visceral fat is eminently retrievable rapidly oh okay interesting
01:07:20
okay now how many pounds or kilos of visceral
01:07:26
fat you have to gain before you become metabolically ill I'm going to guess it's it's not a
01:07:33
lot based that's right not a lot so subcutaneous was 10 kilograms that's right now we're talking about two
01:07:39
kilograms okay so two kind of bags of sugar yeah pretty much okay now finally the third fat
01:07:48
Depot liver fat now how many kilos of liver fat can
01:07:56
you acrw before you become metabolically ill live is really small I no idea okay
01:08:03
one qu of a kilo half a pound and when you become metabolically
01:08:10
ill then all of the dysfunction we talked about previously happens that's right so you can become metabolically
01:08:16
ill and be thin because your subcutaneous Fat's okay even your visceral Fat's okay but if you've got
01:08:23
liver fat can you measure a quarter of a kilo on the scale
01:08:29
no have you had the phrase skinny fat that's this is skinny fat so tofi TFI thin on the outside fat
01:08:37
on the inside skinny fat was actually coined by Dr Jimmy Bell at University College London okay neuro imager that's
01:08:45
exactly right so just because you're overweight doesn't mean you're sick and just because you're thin doesn't mean
01:08:51
you're healthy because of these three fat Depot this is exactly what we're
01:08:58
talking about so are skinny fat people typically more stressed if we kind of they often are often are you they often
01:09:03
are the question is how did that liver fat get formed the answer is sugar and
01:09:09
alcohol because that's where sugar and alcohol go in order to be processed okay
01:09:15
and so that's why so many people now have fatty liver disease that never had it before that's why children have fatty
01:09:21
liver disease even though they don't drink alcohol because they drink something that is metabolized just like
01:09:28
alcohol like apple juice like apple juice I've got a bottle of apple juice here in front of me and on it it says 40
01:09:34
in big letters 40% less sugar than 100% apple juice it says with added vitamins
01:09:42
a c and e they've added all three vitamins in there that must be so that's
01:09:48
not apple juice that's an apple drink to be to be clear it says apple
01:09:53
juice beverage here on the front ah they called it a juice beverage not juice there's a that that's technically
01:10:00
correct but there's a you know reason they have to declare that from the FDA
01:10:05
why because they can't call it juice if it's not juice if they've done something to it I mean how would I know it says
01:10:11
apple juice beverage I well that that's part of the
01:10:17
subugu lawsuits they have to call it a juice beverage because they've done something
01:10:23
to it okay so I've got this Apple in my pocket mhm this apple here right this is
01:10:30
healthy that is healthy but if I blend this down it looks like this no well the
01:10:35
question is what was lost in the process of blending it down you took away the good
01:10:43
part the fiber the fiber by the way you don't know if that apple is as healthy
01:10:48
as it could be and the reason is cuz you don't know if it was sprayed with pesticides was it an organic apple or
01:10:54
was it just a standard commercial Apple was a standard commercial Apple you might have to wash it first why because
01:11:01
the pesticides can be environmental obesogens many pesticides such as I mean
01:11:07
the the famous one was DDT now it's been gone since 1972 Rachel Carson you know Silent
01:11:14
Spring you know was all about how DDT was you know environmentally affecting
01:11:19
you know the entire world okay we banned DDT in 1972 but you can measure the
01:11:25
metabolite of DDT called DDE in pregnant women's urine today 50 years later and
01:11:33
that level of DDE in that pregnant woman is predicting obesity in her
01:11:39
Offspring 11 years later so let's go over these two subjects then we've got environmental obesogens right I think
01:11:45
I've pronounced that correctly um let's finish off on that and then I want to go into fiber so environmental obesogens
01:11:51
which might be on this apple what what are they and where where are they so uh
01:11:57
an obesogen is a chemical that causes weight gain not because of its
01:12:04
calories okay now you say how can something cause weight gain if it doesn't have calories the answer is if
01:12:11
it causes the differentiation or growth of fat cells it will cause weight gain
01:12:16
unrelated to calories so we have chemicals in our environment that are
01:12:23
unescapable you can't escape air pollution you can't
01:12:29
escape forever chemicals like for instance pasas what's that polyfloral
01:12:35
alal substances Teflon remember Teflon yeah yeah the material the material that non-stick
01:12:43
pans were coated with yeah that's pasas that was per floro octanoic acid turns
01:12:50
out that causes obesity by itself it causes the differentiation and
01:12:56
growth of fat cells tributal tin this is what you paint on the bottoms of boats
01:13:03
to keep Barnacles from attaching to the hull it's in all of our food supply all
01:13:09
of our water supply all over the world that causes fat cells to grow before
01:13:15
you're born exposures to all sorts of things um BPA bisphenol a okay when you get your
01:13:24
receipt your paper receipt from Target that's bisphenol a phalates or plasticizers you stick a
01:13:31
binky in a baby's mouth a pacifier that's a plasticizer that's got phalates
01:13:38
in it that causes obesity parabens in
01:13:43
cosmetics will cause obesity vinyl
01:13:50
flooring um flame retardance in children's clothing and in mattresses
01:13:55
all of these things will drive different receptors in the body and act as what we call endocrine
01:14:02
disruptors and those endocrine disruptors will change the um uh
01:14:07
differentiation and the growth of fat cells to increase osity so what's an endocrine disruptor
01:14:15
so our cells have receptors that way
01:14:20
communication from one area of the body to another can occur like hormones binding to receptors well sometimes
01:14:28
they're not hormones sometimes they're other chemicals that cause differentiation of different uh uh areas
01:14:33
of the body to form different organs for instance this is one of the things that goes wrong in congenital uh defects like
01:14:41
congenital heart disease okay receptor alterations so we have receptors on all
01:14:47
of our cells for different processes for different chemicals there are things in our
01:14:53
environment that basically mimic endogenous signals to our body and
01:15:00
basically tell different tissues to do different things than they ought to be
01:15:06
doing because those things are present and one of them is obesity in my head I
01:15:11
think of it like a remember those toys you used to play with when you were a kid and it shows like a triangle shape
01:15:17
and a circle shape and a square shape and you've got to pick up the corresponding piece and Slot it in the
01:15:22
hole right I I see it as things in our environment are pretending to be those
01:15:27
shapes so they're sort of impacting with our recepto site right which is the whole and causing us to do things that
01:15:34
are dysfunctional that's right and this is well known has been known for years
01:15:39
we um you know it's one of the reasons for the decrease in fertility the changes in reproductive capacity it's
01:15:46
one of the reasons the alligator population in the Everglades is disappearing as endocrine disruptors
01:15:53
well it also has effect on neurocognition and brain development and
01:15:59
potentially I don't want to you know get too far a field but potentially might play a role in autism we haven't proven
01:16:06
that yet I want to make that clear but without question some of these chemicals
01:16:12
can cause fat cells to differentiate and grow so if they're everywhere what do I do about it because it's I feels like I
01:16:17
can't touch the floor I can't I can't go to a I can't lay in a bed I'm like well you can't do much about air pollution I
01:16:23
mean except as a society we can do something we can't do much about uh the
01:16:28
Teflon in the in the water or the TBT in the water except to try to pass
01:16:34
regulations to control those things but you know get get Congress or Parliament
01:16:39
to do that you know that's a that's a real trick is that better water that I can drink sorry just on that point uh
01:16:45
well you can try uh certainly uh tap water is going to be a problem but the
01:16:51
fact is some of the bottled waters still have obesogens and to be honest with you if there if it's bottled the obesogen
01:16:58
might be in the bottle canned foods if you look at the inside of the
01:17:04
can what color is it is it silver isn't it silver or is it
01:17:10
White H if it's white that's BPA so canned foods have high BPA levels
01:17:18
BPA is an estrogen okay and it doesn't take much to be an estrogen 22 angst two
01:17:25
hydroxy groups you're an estrogen okay there are a lot of chemicals in our environment that masquerade as estrogens
01:17:32
and BPA is one of them and estrogen causes fat deposition just look at the
01:17:37
curves of a woman that's estrogen causing fat deposition well BPA can do that
01:17:43
too so as an example but there are also things in our food that we think are
01:17:51
food and one example is fructose now fructose has calories true but fructose
01:18:00
has all these effects on mitochondria that have nothing to do with its calories in the same way that alcohol
01:18:06
has calories but alcohol has toxic effects that have nothing to do with its
01:18:12
calories so just because something has calories doesn't make it a food what's
01:18:17
the definition of food Stephen I will tell you you was going to say don't ask
01:18:23
me substrate that contributes to either growth or burning of an organism so here's the question does ultra processed
01:18:30
food contribute to growth my colleague Dr arrat manigo Oran who is the chairman
01:18:36
of nutrition at Hebrew University of Jerusalem has looked at this question in
01:18:42
fact Ultra processed food inhibits growth populations that are exposed to
01:18:47
high ultrapress food consumption have lower final Heights than populations
01:18:53
that are not so if it's inhibiting growth not a food
01:18:59
okay now let's take burning I've already told you that there are three enzymes that fructose which is in 73% of the
01:19:06
items in the American Grocery Store it inhibits burning because it inhibits mitochondrial function so if you don't
01:19:13
stimulate growth and you don't stimulate burning is that a food no so if it's not
01:19:20
a food what is it poison so food can be
01:19:26
medicine food can also be poison and the question is how do you figure out which is
01:19:31
which when you walk into the grocery store it all looks the same but in fact
01:19:37
there are things in there that will contribute to growth and burning and
01:19:42
there are things that will inhibit it and we need some method for being able
01:19:48
to distinguish those we have it we made it
01:19:55
it exists on your computer it will ultimately soon exist on your phone and
01:20:00
you will actually be able to order your food to be metabolically healthy without
01:20:06
ever having to walk into that mine field of a grocery store ever again how would
01:20:12
that be and just buy the stuff that's good for you instead of chancing the
01:20:18
stuff that's bad for you it's called perfect and what it does is it will
01:20:23
filter out all of the stuff in the grocery store that's metabolically unhealthy for you not for the next guy
01:20:32
for you you can apply specific filters that will if you're glutenfree it will
01:20:37
take out all the things that have gluten so you don't have to look at the label if you are if you have metabolic syndrome it will take all the refined
01:20:44
carbohydrate and all the sugar things out so you don't even have to look at them if you specifically want to avoid
01:20:50
the ultr processed food it will take those out by the way that will cut the items that you can see in the
01:20:56
grocery store by 80% how many of you started thinking about your long-term Health when you hit
01:21:02
30 for me this was a wakeup moment of me thinking to myself okay I probably need
01:21:07
to start paying a little bit more attention now I already felt a change in myself when I hit 30 with things like my
01:21:12
metabolism my energy levels so this year is no different Zoe which is a company
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up enjoy and let me know how you get on let's talk then about fiber we we talked
01:22:02
about it briefly but I want to just really close off on the point of f because you said that when we take an
01:22:07
apple here like the Apple in my hand and we turn it into this thing in my hand this apple juice right the harm is that
01:22:13
they're removing the fiber why does that matter so everyone thinks that fiber is
01:22:18
the stuff you throw in the garbage after you've Juiced the fruit we were told forever
01:22:25
that the uh uh the juice had the essential vitamins and minerals like the
01:22:33
vitamin C or the lopine if you're a
01:22:38
tomato and that's true they do but turns out the
01:22:44
fiber is essential it's just not essential for
01:22:49
you it's essential for your bacteria it's essential for your microbiome
01:22:55
that's what your bacteria want to eat you have to feed your microbiome you
01:23:03
know always we always say when women are pregnant you're eating for two well we're always eating for 100
01:23:10
trillion okay the 100 trillion are in our intestine and what you feed them
01:23:17
matters because if you feed them well you will have what we call bacterial
01:23:22
diversity and you will not have one any one species uh overwhelming any other
01:23:28
species and that will actually contribute to metabolic Health it will allow for the barriers in the intestine
01:23:35
to work properly the mucin layer the tight junctions the uh immunologic
01:23:40
barrier called the th17 cells your intestine will present the appropriate
01:23:46
barrier so that bad stuff in your intestine won't get into your bloodstream to cause systemic
01:23:53
inflammation so feeding your gut is job one and what
01:23:59
does your gut like to eat it likes to eat fiber now we humans don't have the
01:24:05
enzymes to digest fiber you need specialized enzymes the bacteria have them so the fiber is the food for the
01:24:14
bacteria when you take the fiber out of the food you're starving the bacteria
01:24:20
now how many grams of fiber are we supposed to eat every day
01:24:25
our ancestors ate between 50 and 100 grams of fiber a day the USDA says we're
01:24:32
supposed to consume 25 grams of fiber per day how many grams do we actually
01:24:38
consume here in America and by the way uke the same mean 12 so we're getting
01:24:44
half the amount the USDA says and one qu the amount our ancestors did and the
01:24:50
question is does it matter the answer is oh yeah it matters big because what happens is when you
01:24:58
feed fiber to the bacteria you get multiple species instead of one that
01:25:05
basically crowd out all the others okay and you get this metabolic biodiversity
01:25:12
and it basically improves your metabolic Health in addition the uh bacteria will
01:25:19
chew that soluble fiber up into a compound called short chain fatty
01:25:24
acids acetate propionate butyrate valorate berate is particularly helpful
01:25:32
it is an immune suppressant it keeps your immune system in check it's one of
01:25:38
the reasons that covid was worse for people who were obese and who had
01:25:45
pre-existing conditions like metabolic syndrome and also of course minority
01:25:50
populations because of ultr processed food consumption and lack of fiber lack
01:25:57
of short chain fatty acids therefore lack of ability to fend off Foreign
01:26:04
Invaders because their immune systems were not tamped down where did the fiber go they took it
01:26:12
out why the because you can't freeze fiber so that Apple okay yeah okay your
01:26:20
homework assignment for tonight y take that apple and put it in your freezer
01:26:27
overnight take it out in the morning put it on the kitchen countertop let it thaw try to eat it see
01:26:35
what you get what am I going to get mush oh really now why does that turn it into
01:26:42
mush the ice crystals that form will mate the cell wall and let all the water
01:26:47
rush in okay okay turn it into mush food industry knows that so what do they do squeeze it and freeze it now it lasts
01:26:53
forever now you've you got apple juice or frozen concentrated orange juice you have taken a fruit which is food and you
01:27:02
have turned it into a commodity storable food which you can
01:27:08
sell on the Commodities exchange because it won't go bad so it has a price and
01:27:15
that price will fluctuate and you can then bet on the Commodities exchange but you can't sell fruit like that because
01:27:22
it'll go rancid by the time you've sold it anywhere so all these people are doing this to us um what responsibility
01:27:30
do I have on a personal level because you know if these comp the big companies with all this money
01:27:35
trillions of dollars they're all manipulating me bastardizing my food they you know hacking my brain giving me
01:27:41
these adverts y I am it's easy to fall into the Trap of thinking listen I'm a victim here well you are because you've
01:27:49
been hacked as we started this you know the the podcast okay you you've been told one thing and the real world is
01:27:57
actually something else okay you've been hacked you specifically been hacked with
01:28:03
the notion that processed food is food everyone thinks that because they
01:28:09
called it processed food maybe they shouldn't call it processed food maybe they should call it processed
01:28:16
nutrients because the stuff that's in it are nutrients but it's not
01:28:21
food because it doesn't do what food does which is contribute to growth or burning
01:28:28
so the question is what's your responsibility and what's society's
01:28:35
responsibility so this is a very important question and it's a question you know that comes up all the
01:28:42
time personal responsibility does it exist well in
01:28:47
order to exercise personal responsibility first you have to exercise Free Will that's a
01:28:52
prerequisite so we can get into this and we probably would need about 6 hours okay and we don't have it but do
01:29:01
we have free will yes or no complicated question it's a
01:29:07
complicated question and it's one I've actually been researching this week funly enough for a different project that I'm working on okay and I was
01:29:13
trying to find get to a point um where I had a solid answer now there's a couple of schools of thoughts here one school
01:29:20
of thought when we look at the neurological um processes might suggest and there's some
01:29:27
early studies that suggest that we have much less Free Will than we assume because things happen in our brain
01:29:33
before we make a decision there's some studies there um
01:29:39
but do we have free will to make our own decisions I think we have a lot less
01:29:45
Free Will than we think we have very little free will yeah if at all here's
01:29:51
the best way to think of it Arthur shopau famous German philosopher
01:29:56
famously said you are allowed to do what you want but you are not allowed to want
01:30:03
what you want those things are actually predetermined so you have choice in
01:30:10
whether you want the candy bar or the ice cream but you don't have choice about
01:30:17
the fact that your nucleus succumbent is Raging saying give me sugar that's the choice the choice is
01:30:26
how you satisfy the biochemical drive but the biochemical drive has you know
01:30:33
is is Way Beyond Free Will so the question is if you don't have free will
01:30:40
how can you exercise personal responsibility because that's a prerequisite in order to be able to do
01:30:45
that because personal responsibility says take the risks suffer the consequences but if you can't control
01:30:54
the risks or the consequences how can you exercise personal responsibility I have just shown you
01:31:00
that the behaviors associated with obesity the gluttony and the sloth are actually secondary to the biochemistry
01:31:07
which you have absolutely no control over in fact we have no ability to be able to mitigate that
01:31:15
and that's why we have this obesity pandemic and you know diet and exercise
01:31:21
hasn't solved it for just that reason so who do we need to point the finger at
01:31:27
who needs to resolve the issue well it has to be resolved at several uh levels it has to be resolved for the public
01:31:33
that's why you and I are doing this podcast now because they have to understand what's really at issue okay
01:31:40
blaming the victim has never worked when did it work did it work for
01:31:46
HIV did it work for tobacco it never worked okay every personal
01:31:52
responsibility issue becomes a Public Health crisis because personal responsibility
01:31:59
hasn't solved any of them it's a loser it's a loser in terms of its mechanism
01:32:06
and it's a loser in terms of its uh efficacy doesn't work can I throw a
01:32:11
thought into there as well because in some areas of Our Lives where we do have discipline we tend to have a bias
01:32:17
towards assuming everyone else doesn't have discipline and that's what they're missing if that makes sense so great way
01:32:24
to blame people were listening to this that don't struggle with diet and sugar
01:32:29
and all of those things and ex whatever all those subjects their brain will probably be
01:32:35
thinking God you can just choose not to I choose not to all the time I choose not to have the can of you know fizzy
01:32:41
drink all the time because their nuclear succumbent is not going off like a Christmas tree why is it not going off
01:32:47
like a Christmas tree we don't know yet why do some people smoke and some people don't why do some people drink and some
01:32:54
people don't look 40% of Americans are tea tolers never touch the stuff 40% of
01:33:00
social drinkers can pick it up put it down you know no problem I'm in that category 20% are binge drinkers I sorry
01:33:07
10% are binge Drinkers and 10% are chronic alcoholics what distinguishes the 20%
01:33:12
who have a problem from the 80% who don't we don't know yet to this day we
01:33:18
still don't know but we know that for that 20% it is a problem we also know there this thing called sugar addiction
01:33:25
and there's going to be on May 17th in London the International Conference on
01:33:30
food addiction I will be the keynote speaker um to discuss exactly this issue
01:33:37
is there such a thing as food addiction and if there is such a thing as food addiction does it portend uh need for
01:33:45
societal remediation ra or is this really just a personal responsibility issue well
01:33:53
everything that is both toxic and addictive has required some sort of societal intervention okay so you have
01:34:01
things that are toxic but not addictive Like Oxygen and water you don't have to regulate those you have things that are
01:34:07
addictive but not toxic like caffeine no you don't have to really regulate that either unless you add it to alcohol
01:34:12
which case then you have four Loco and then you get arhythmia and then you do have to regulate it but what if you're
01:34:18
both toxic and addictive like cocaine or alcohol or nicotine or heroin
01:34:24
for those we all have uh uh societal intervention you know rehab for the
01:34:30
personal and laws for the societal for sugar for ultra-processed
01:34:38
food we have nothing it's the same issue nothing
01:34:45
different so you want regulation from the government on sugar I think that the
01:34:53
industory has to be told what to do they haven't yet now the question is
01:35:01
would it work the answer is yeah it would and actually who found out that it
01:35:06
would work the UK you did it it did it back in the 2000s so in 2003 the Blair
01:35:16
government brought all of the uh UK uh food manufacturers to the table in
01:35:24
secret so wait Rose and Tesco and M&S and you know every other cpg uh purveyor
01:35:32
in in uh the UK and had a secret meeting and were told and told them look
01:35:39
hypertension is running rampant and stroke is breaking the NHS
01:35:46
bank and it's because of the sodium we have to get the sodium levels in ultr
01:35:53
proc ESS Foods down so every one of you is going to play by the same rules so
01:35:59
that there's no competitive disadvantage and you're all going to reduce the amount of sodium in each of your items
01:36:07
by 10% per year over a three-year period so that there will be 30% less
01:36:14
sodium 3 years from now in 20 six it was 2007 I think at the time and they all
01:36:22
did and they didn't tell the public and in 2011 famous paper in British medical
01:36:27
journal showed a 40% reduction in hypertension and stroke due to this
01:36:33
public health intervention that the Blair government did without telling the
01:36:39
public it works should have told the public no don't tell the public so would
01:36:48
this work for sugar so I am working with a company in
01:36:54
the Middle East right now okay I don't take money okay it's a um you know I do
01:36:59
this because it's the right thing to do uh it's called Kuwaiti Danish Dairy kdd
01:37:05
it's like the Nestle of the Middle East and they make all sorts of junk they make flavored milks they make ice cream
01:37:12
they make frozen yogurt they make biscuits they make confectionary they make tomato sauce okay like all bad
01:37:18
stuff right they came to me in 2020 and said we want to be a metabolic healthy
01:37:24
company we want to do the right thing because right now Kuwait has an 18%
01:37:31
diabetes rate and an 80% obesity rate and we don't want to be the cause of
01:37:36
it can you help us re-engineer our product portfolio to be metabolically
01:37:44
healthy and so we com comen the scientific advisory team and we've worked for the past 3 years to develop a
01:37:52
set of guidelines a set of principles and we have developed what we call the metabolic
01:37:58
Matrix three principles three precepts to turn food metabolically healthy and
01:38:05
here they are protect the liver feed the gut support the brain any food that does
01:38:12
all three of those is healthy whether it's ultr processed or not any food that
01:38:18
does none of the three is poison whether it's Ultra processed or not
01:38:24
now why those three organs because if you the data show in the literature if
01:38:30
you fix those three organs all the downstream organs also get fixed whereas if you fix other organs those three
01:38:36
organs don't get fixed so those three organs are primary and all the data shows that if you fix those three you
01:38:43
can actually improve both U morbidity and mortality so that's the the goal that's
01:38:52
the rubric protect the liver feed the gut support the brain so could we apply that
01:39:01
principle to the food supply can any individual apply it to their own grocery
01:39:08
purchases use perfect you'll get it can the government do it yeah they did it in
01:39:15
the UK they can do it again it's not crazy it can be done the fact is we're
01:39:21
all carrying a belief system around okay and now where did that belief system come from the belief
01:39:28
system is that ultr processed food is food yeah where did it come from came from the food industry they told us so
01:39:36
the scientists and governments told us so as well though if you look back through history so how do we know the scientists and governments are telling
01:39:42
us the truth now that's a very good question that's a super
01:39:47
question how do you know what's true
01:39:52
where we're in this problem right now I'm worried that in 20 years time I'm going to be sat on this podcast if people are still listening and I'm going
01:39:58
to be sat with another scientist and he's going to be saying do you know that the uh Dr Robert lusting who you had on
01:40:04
20 years ago everything he said has been disproved and he's going to say fructose is the key apple juice is really
01:40:10
important we found out that uh vegetables are causing autism did you ever see the movie sleeper no Woody
01:40:16
Allen 1973 honestly I've seen no movies he wakes up after 200 years and
01:40:22
suspended animation and he finds out that hot fudge and deep fat are good for
01:40:28
you said oh we you know debunked all the you know stuff from before so I get this
01:40:34
question all the time everything we knew 10 years ago is already wrong and everything we know
01:40:42
today will be wrong 10 years from now so if everything we know today will
01:40:48
be wrong 10 years from now why do anything about it cuz no matter what it is is it's likely to be wrong this is
01:40:55
known as the pessimistic meta induction Theory this is how the Dark Ages
01:41:01
started the idea of Dogma there's only one Dogma Stephen and the Dogma is that
01:41:08
there is no Dogma because everything has to be
01:41:13
refined Dogma how do you define the word dogma Dogma means you take it on faith
01:41:20
okay you take it on faith okay that's what science is for is to debunk the
01:41:25
previous generation's Dogma if we didn't do that okay we'd still be using
01:41:31
leeches okay we've debunked that Dogma we would still think that seizures were
01:41:37
demonic possession we've debunked that Dogma okay ultimately science is not a
01:41:42
straight line it's a zigzag okay but it still moves forward
01:41:48
so if I end up being discredited 10 years from now 20 years from now 30
01:41:55
years from now hey I was a cog in the wheel at least I drove the the the
01:42:01
vehicle forward that's okay and science is really a process
01:42:06
isn't it it's exactly process it's not a religious belief it's not a set of answers it's just a process to
01:42:13
uncovering um information I guess but you have to then evaluate each piece of
01:42:18
information for its veracity yeah because the problem with information is
01:42:23
we are now peppered with disinformation and how do you determine what's real and what's not you say that to achieve
01:42:31
contentment you recommend following the four CES for contentment indeed what are
01:42:37
the four CES by the way if you follow the four seas you will be a whole lot better off in terms of your
01:42:43
understanding information versus disinformation so in my book hacking of
01:42:50
the American or contemporary mind I talk about ways to lower your
01:42:57
dopamine reduce your cortisol and raise your serotonin and they're all four things
01:43:04
your mother told you and they're all free and they're all available to everyone on the
01:43:12
planet number one connect now connect does not mean
01:43:18
through Facebook connect does not mean digital connection it means means social
01:43:23
connection it means what we're doing right now face to face eye to eye now why does Facebook not work why does Zoom
01:43:32
not work you're looking at somebody eye to eye they've they've now done the Imaging
01:43:39
studies okay there are a set of neurons in the back of your head in the occipital cortex called mirror neurons
01:43:45
and they are not just reading the lips of the person you're talking to they are
01:43:50
reading the facial uh structure and the muscle movements and they are
01:43:55
actually transducing the emotion from the person you're talking to when you're watching on a screen it
01:44:03
flattens out you can't tell so you don't get the same information that information ultimately
01:44:10
generates a serotonin signal so you get contentment so social connection
01:44:16
actually drives contentment so that's number one number two contribute and
01:44:23
does not mean to your retirement account it means contribute to others okay
01:44:29
contribute with purpose like Habitat for Humanity B basically giving to others
01:44:36
because when they when you give to others you feel better yourself okay
01:44:41
that generates the serotonin the signal okay so you know lottery winners you
01:44:48
know are not happy but people who actually give their money away are that's one of the reasons
01:44:55
why we have philanthropy makes people feel better it's quite selfish in that regard then isn't it in well yes indeed
01:45:01
it it seems selfless but it's actually selfish which is fine it works just
01:45:07
great number three cope and cope is three things it's sleep mindfulness
01:45:13
exercise all of which are necessary to Tamp down cortisol because you if you're sleep
01:45:19
deprived your cortisol goes through the roof if you are um uh distracted
01:45:24
multitasking your cortisol goes through the roof okay and if you're sedentary okay you number one you're eating like
01:45:30
crazy and you're also and your cortisol also goes through the roof sleep mindfulness exercise all things to get
01:45:36
your cortisol down and finally number four the last C cook why because there are three things
01:45:45
that contribute to this dopamine serotonin imbalance the first
01:45:50
tryptophane tryptophane is the precursor to serotonin tryptophane is not an ultra
01:45:55
processed food it is the rarest amino acid you find it in eggs chicken fish not exactly Ultra processed food number
01:46:01
two fructose fructose reduces serotonin okay and there's lots of fructose in in
01:46:07
the ultrapress food and finally lastly omega-3 fatty acids and omega-3 fatty
01:46:14
acids are in again eggs and in um in uh marine life okay there there's a little
01:46:20
bit of Omega-3s and vegetables you know ala which is doesn't reach the brain so that's not a that's not a big winner for
01:46:27
uh fixing this problem so you need high tryptophane low fructose High Omega-3s
01:46:35
sounds like real food to me so uh connect contribute cope cook it
01:46:44
will Tamp down your dopamine reduce your cortisol raise your serotonin improve
01:46:50
your mental health improve your metabolic public health and will solve
01:46:55
your problem it won't solve societies we have to work on getting the whole world to
01:47:03
understand what the problem is before we can fix it Dr Robert leting what is the
01:47:09
thing we haven't talked about the most important topic we haven't talked about that we should have wow
01:47:18
well we have a systemic Health crisis
01:47:25
diabetes metabolic syndrome um dementia cancer we have a
01:47:31
mental health crisis depression
01:47:36
suicide schizophrenia uh autism
01:47:42
add we have a global Health crisis we have cyber bullying we have social
01:47:50
inequality we have War we have um climate change planet is
01:47:59
ulating all at the same time
01:48:06
coincidence or are these somehow inextricably
01:48:12
related are these the same thing or are these different things if we believe
01:48:18
they are separate we're going to solve try to solve each one individual
01:48:23
and never get to the root cause the root
01:48:28
cause is our amydala the fearce center of our
01:48:33
brain it's under attack from all of the things we've talked about
01:48:40
today that dysfunctional amydala is the driver of chronic disease it is the
01:48:46
driver of the Mental Health crisis it is the driver of the global health and planetary crisis
01:48:53
there are four breaks on the amydala and they're all dysfunctional today and they're all dysfunctional because of the
01:48:59
things we've talked about today because of cortisol because of stress because of ultra-processed food because of sleep
01:49:07
deprivation because of the um uh change in the environment because of air
01:49:12
pollution because of um all the things that ultimately impact our brain's
01:49:20
ability to transduce information until we recognize where the problem is
01:49:28
we're going to be spinning our Wheels we can do this we can back out
01:49:33
the same way we drove into the Stitch but you can't solve a problem until you
01:49:39
know what the problem is Dr Robert leting thank you so much we have a closing tradition on this podcast
01:49:45
where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest not knowing who they're leaving it for and the question that's been left for you is here we go
01:49:52
let's have a look okay nice question um what would you
01:49:58
tell your 20-year-old self that you wish you knew and that would have positively
01:50:04
impacted your life and avoided
01:50:12
pain I wish I had known
01:50:18
that I didn't have to please everyone
01:50:25
there's a book called the courage of being disliked it's courageous to be disliked
01:50:34
I was afraid of being disliked and because I was afraid of being disliked I
01:50:39
was disliked it's such a wish I had
01:50:46
known that nugget of Truth early on in my career
01:50:54
thank you so much Dr pleasure thank you I have to say your work is exceptional um your books are incredible I've
01:51:01
got three of them here but I know there there's many more um I'd recommend them all incredibly highly the hacking of the
01:51:07
American mind is a fantastic book that doesn't just apply to Americans it applies to um all Industries around the
01:51:13
world um all Western economies around the world which are set up in in very similar ways fat chance and another book
01:51:18
that I've been through um in detail is about beating the odds against sugar processed food obesity and disease which covers much of your work in the studies
01:51:24
that you referenced today an incredible incredible book and I also have this book called metabolical did I pronounce
01:51:31
that correctly you did metabolical the L and the lies of processed food nutrition and modern medicine which is a little
01:51:36
bit of a bigger book but it's um it gives more of the foundations around metabolism which I think a lot of people don't understand so thank you thank you
01:51:44
for um your your Brilliance in so many ways and but thank you for your life's work because your life's work is Saving
01:51:50
Lives it's propelling us forward it's it's driving a conversation forward and you do it in a way that's so unbelievably engaging that it's hard not
01:51:57
to pay attention so thank you Robert well thank you and thank you for you doing what you do
01:52:05
[Music]
01:52:23
a

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  • 75
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  • 75
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  • 70
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Episode Highlights

  • Pleasure vs. Happiness
    Lustig explains the difference between pleasure and happiness, emphasizing that pleasure is fleeting while happiness is enduring.
    “Pleasure is visceral; happiness is ethereal.”
    @ 03m 42s
    May 16, 2024
  • The Impact of Sugar on Children
    A study shows that reducing sugar intake in children leads to significant improvements in their health and behavior.
    “For the first time, my head hasn't been in the clouds.”
    @ 22m 00s
    May 16, 2024
  • The Toxicity of Sugar Beverages
    Consuming just one sugared beverage daily increases diabetes risk by 29%.
    “Wow, okay that's...”
    @ 28m 04s
    May 16, 2024
  • Insulin's Role in Weight Gain
    Insulin is a primary driver of obesity and diabetes; lowering it is key to weight loss.
    “Insulin is the bad guy in this story.”
    @ 32m 57s
    May 16, 2024
  • The Importance of Real Food
    Eating real food, not processed, is essential for metabolic health.
    “Eat real food.”
    @ 46m 46s
    May 16, 2024
  • Insulin's Role in Obesity
    Insulin blocks leptin, leading to hunger and inactivity. Fixing insulin can reverse obesity.
    “Fix the insulin, fix the problem.”
    @ 53m 48s
    May 16, 2024
  • Reversing Diabetes
    Diabetes is not a lifelong sentence; it can be reversed by addressing insulin resistance.
    “Diabetes is reversible; it's not a chronic disease.”
    @ 56m 11s
    May 16, 2024
  • Environmental Obesogens
    Chemicals in our environment can cause weight gain by promoting fat cell growth.
    “Obesogens are chemicals that drive weight gain without calories.”
    @ 01h 12m 04s
    May 16, 2024
  • Food as Medicine or Poison
    Food can either contribute to our health or harm us. It's essential to distinguish between the two.
    “Food can be medicine or poison.”
    @ 01h 19m 26s
    May 16, 2024
  • The Illusion of Free Will
    Our choices may be influenced more by biochemistry than we realize, complicating personal responsibility.
    “We have much less Free Will than we assume.”
    @ 01h 29m 45s
    May 16, 2024
  • Public Health Interventions
    Successful public health initiatives can significantly reduce health issues, as seen in the UK.
    “It works should have told the public.”
    @ 01h 36m 39s
    May 16, 2024
  • The Root Cause of Our Crises
    Dr. Robert Letting discusses how our amygdala is under attack, driving chronic disease and mental health crises.
    “The dysfunctional amygdala is the driver of chronic disease.”
    @ 01h 48m 40s
    May 16, 2024

Episode Quotes

Key Moments

  • Sugar Addiction00:37
  • Children's Health Study22:00
  • Insulin's Impact32:57
  • Insulin Resistance55:38
  • Environmental Obesogens1:12:04
  • Definition of Food1:18:17
  • Gut Health1:23:59
  • Health Crisis Discussion1:47:25

Words per Minute Over Time

Vibes Breakdown

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