How To Break Your Sugar Addiction And Improve Your Overall Health

i started off just being trying to avoid sugar yeah and then i looked at everything else yes i was like what is that i can't even pronounce that let alone like put it in my body and think it's actually going to do anything good hi i'm kaya perot one of the producers of the doctor's pharmacy podcast we are all programmed to like sugar and having a sugar addiction is not a moral failing nor is it due to lack of willpower unfortunately we live in a society in which your hormones taste buds and brain chemistry have been hijacked by the food industry and it's making us sick earlier this year dr hyman sat down with actors keegan allen and tom hopper who each overcame their own health and weight issues by breaking their sugar addictions i had a friend who was the worked in the obama administration in charge of the food programs and the food labeling and he's like the the food companies don't want to have sugar listed as the number one ingredient on the label yeah so they'll put five different kinds of sugar because the list of ingredients is in order of the amount yeah right but if you if you have let's say you know wheat as the first ingredient and then you have like five kinds of sugar actually sugar is the most predominant ingredient they just because they don't call it you know sugar yeah they don't have the same kind of sugar it's just a it's just a loophole in the law that allows the food companies to get away with like bamboozling us yeah and it's it's pretty bad and then i was i was shopping the other day i was in cbs and getting something i don't know what and i looked over and i saw this this big freezer of haagen-dazs ice cream and i have a weakness for haagen-dazs ice cream but i don't eat that often and and they said this non-dairy haagen-dazs and i'm like oh cool and i walked over and i pull it out it says plant-based gluten-free free dairy free and like oh this is health food right turn the label over and it's like high fructose corn syrup and processed ingredients and i'm like what is this but this is one thing i wanted to ask you then as a doctor someone that does this as an advocate that goes around and and travels and talks to everybody what would you say to the younger generation if they want to start somewhere what's the first step to really recognizing not just like reading labels but what is the real first step that can be a tangible first step for someone who maybe lives in rural america i mean lennox i've been to linux before i've been there i know what that place is like i'm surprised that you came out of linux and you're like you know what i'm gonna do this and bring it to the world yeah what was it in your journey that was the first step well i used to be vegetarian too and i uh and i loved sugar and starch and bread and pasta you know i i bought into the whole low-fat milk you were doing it for health reasons you were vegetarian health reasons yes um and i thought this was the way to go and and you know it's interesting now that i've sort of cleaned up my diet and got rid of the the starch and the sugar for the most part you know if i look at pictures of myself without a shirt when i'm 30 i'm like way scrawnier and like kind of flabbier than i was than i am today at 60. right yeah and i don't do that much exercise you know like if i'm in the gym like five times a month weightlifting that's a lot right you know i do yoga i'll do other stuff but i just you know just because i'm busy i'm planning on doing more yeah i'll get you to help me look like you know what you're doing uh and and i and i uh um then i got very sick and i started to sort of look at what i was doing and had to sort of shift and as a science change i began to sort of look at you know cause i i think ideology is so problematic in nutrition they're all these diet wars they're always people in conflict with each other paleo vegan this that yeah and it's kind of crazy because of religions yeah it is but you know i i said let's get let's get away from that because um you know i i i came up with this term pegan which is a joke yeah it was like paleo vegan yeah and uh and i just published this book food fix and it was number one in paleo and number one in vegan books yeah and yeah good because we have far more common with each other than with the standard american process diet so you can be a chips and soda vegan right or you can be a cheeseburger whatever bacon paleo but that's not necessarily either of them are good right yeah it's more going towards whole foods so your question was what would i say to people i i think you know it's really easy to just sort of start simply you know if if you're eating industrial food like stop doing that right if you look at the ingredients and you see refined flour soybean oil or high fructose corn syrup just don't eat it if you can the next step would be look for non-gmo certified foods right not because gmo we know is that bad for you it may be it may not be there's a lot of controversy about that but it's a form of agriculture that's destructive the environment and there's often other things in there like glyphosate which is roundup which they spray on 70 different crops from canola to corn to wheat to soy and that is definitely harmful for our microbiome it destroys our gut bacteria which affects everything and uh it's linked to cancer uh and and there's a two billion dollar lawsuit that got a settlement of the judgment about roundup or glyphosate or weed killer uh and so so just be aware that if you just stop those things you're the quality you're already making it yeah i mean yeah whatever you do and so those are really simple things we can do and then if you can try to you know look at what you're eating is it is it whole food i mean is it something you can recognize like an almond or almond butter it's like not that many steps of processing because most food gets processed in some way we cook it or yeah it's all got some kind of intervention yeah yeah but if you you know most of the time i just eat stuff that looks like what it is you know broccoli is a broccoli you know yeah it's a fish a piece of fish grass-fed meat well i always call it what i said to him when when we first started when when he a was diabetic vegan sick man in australia um i i call it the uh the of the earth diet yeah so if you're eating stuff that's the earth naturally provides then you're you're never really in in harm's way right you know um how many steps did it take to get from the field to the fork yeah right exactly if you can trace them all okay but if you don't know how it got like that yeah and yeah we've got a problem yeah um the ingredients list is your ingredient right sweet potato is a sweet potato a piece of chicken breast is a piece of chicken breast there's no ingredient list on there yeah exactly right it is what it is and i think the the other thing i found as well which is important thing to talk about i think is how people who do make the shift they have to go through a process themselves like i know anthropos is where i kept going back i kept going oh i want that i still that addiction to that kind of food doesn't just disappear i didn't do it overnight yeah my wife always says this to me she was like you know when i'm talking to people saying you just do this you just do that she's like tom you have to remember that you took two years probably to just not eat any of this stuff anymore yeah so your taste buds have to change you have to give your taste buds time to to make that change and really know what things taste like again like broccoli can taste freaking awesome right it's so true and people get off that for a week even and then they have blueberries they go my god this is kind of like candy right and i think people don't understand how how hard it is because of the biology of sugar yeah it's not a moral failing right it's not that you're weak willed but you cannot overcome your biology with willpower it will fail every time so you have to use science and the science of sugar is fascinating because it it it not only drives mechanisms that make you gain weight because it produces more insulin so it stores belly fat yeah it makes you hungry it slows your metabolism and it locks the fat in the fat cells so it can't get out it's like a one-way turnstile in some way you can't get out and and when you look at the biology on the brain it's even scarier so in really well controlled studies they've shown that by looking at brain imaging and blood tests eating the exact amount of calories protein fat carbs and fiber in a shake like a milkshake they just swapped out the level of the kind of carbohydrate so that one raises your blood sugar a lot and one doesn't it's like a slowly digested starch when they did that they found that the brain imaging showed that the addiction center which is stimulated by heroin or cocaine or whatever gets lit up like crazy by the sugar and their insulin goes up their blood sugar goes up their adrenaline goes up so sugar causes your adrenaline to go up your cortisol which is the stress hormone so it literally creates a biologic stress the interesting thing and i wanted to add to volume this back to you then with a with your immune system sugar is not the only culprit to lowering your immune system there's these are there are canola oils there are what what other lifestyle as well like i find you know like strategies and stuff stress and fatigue and lack of sleep are ones that can that can drop it for sure that's that's that's a cycle is that like if you eat sugar if you eat processed foods then you don't really sleep that well they don't really move that well and it's just well the other part about eating a diet or processed food is sugar is it depletes your nutrients right it actually doesn't have the vitamins and minerals and nutrients you need to metabolize stuff so the people who are often the most nutritionally deficient are the most obese which is kind of surprising because happen to be malnourished and obese at the same time the nutritional density of our food is so important and processed food sugar just doesn't have it and sugar depletes our nutrients like b vitamins and so when you have low levels of zinc and you have low levels of vitamin d and low levels of omega-3 fats and the levels of iron and vitamin a your immune system can't function yeah so in the developing world we know very clearly that the kids who die from diarrhea or respiratory infections or measles is because they're malnourished yeah if a kids get measles who's well nourished in america they're not going to die from it usually right but in the developing world these kids dial the time from basic disease because they're so malnourished yeah and i think we are a malnourished country 90 of us are deficient and so the best way to build your immune system is to eat whole food yeah cut out the sugar make sure you take your vitamins get enough sleep like you said deal with stress as a huge factor and i think you know i i think something simple like just meditation yeah it's so powerful yeah it's it's a thing that's going to be woo-woo but yeah we just don't talk about that enough people just understand and the fact that we eat about 152 pounds of sugar per person yeah that's almost half a pound a day yeah sugar well it's hidden in every single thing that you could pick up when you're at the gym yeah we go to the the ball the bar at the gym you have like a smoothie or something yeah oh my god yeah everything that is laid out that says healthy organic gluten-free is so counter-productive at the gym and you know all everything you see in there there's like signs for for coca-cola in some gyms yeah and there's like awful things you get like green smoothie things and you look at the label it has more sugar than a can of coke yeah i mean that's just insane yeah and then people become addicted to it because they're like well i'm eating healthy i'm drinking this healthy juice but what they're doing is they're spiking their insulin levels they're they're becoming addicted to this fruit fructose almost i'm sure that some of it maybe even is a hidden there's so many different names for hidden sugars now um 200 names for sugar if you google names for sugar you'll see it'll come with a list of like 200 different things that you don't even know are sugar yeah that's i mean that's one of the things that started me on on the journey of like i'm just not going to eat anything that isn't a whole food because i remember thinking well there's all this other stuff in there now like i started off just being trying to avoid sugar yeah and then i looked at everything else yes i was like what is that i can't even pronounce that let alone like put it in my body and think it's actually going to do anything good so i just i started to just go no i can't i can't put that in anymore the average american needs three to five pounds of additives every year yeah i mean and it's really deliberate and and the biology of addiction in the food is not it's not like an emotional response it's not because you have no willpower it really is hijacking your brain chemistry and your metabolism in ways that we don't really understand and so i i've seen people within a very short time really transform that the the food is medicine theory there's so much in that and i think people can really take the the steps forward in terms of a mindset because that's the thing changing mindset is the is the first step like you you saying this you know like you you took a while from you me chatting back and forth to really go no there is actually something in there and changing that mindset so once you change that mindset and and just keep driving that through of food as medicine food is medicine you'll see the difference simple as that it's so easy really when you when you get down the road but you've got to put the steps in place to actually get there and that's not easy yeah that's something i teach all the time is that food isn't just calories it's information yeah so are you upgrading your biology or downgrading it with every bite and it affects everything your hormones your brain chemistry your immune system your microbiome and every aspect of your health is controlled by what you're eating and it's it's literally like code so it's like you're putting in malware into your mouth that's what it is thank you for tuning in to this episode of the doctor's pharmacy if you'd like to hear more about the specifics of keegan allen and tom hopper's personal health struggles and how they overcame them i'd encourage you to check out the full-length version of this interview if you enjoyed this episode please consider sharing with your friends or family and leaving us a comment with your feedback until next time you

Channel: Mark Hyman, MD

Views: 63,912

Keywords: sugar addiction, sugar, tom hopper, keegan allen, dr mark hyman, the doctor's farmacy, health podcast, nutrition, health

Id: CnD_szEGdBw

Length: 14min 5sec (845 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 11 2020