How To Overcome Sugar Addiction

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 and I'm talking to people saying you just do this you just do that she's like Tommy you have to remember that you took two years properly to just not eat any of this stuff anymore yeah so your taste buds have to change you have to give your taste but it's time do to make that change [Music] [Applause] welcome to the doctors pharmacy I'm dr. Mark Hyman and that's pharmacy with an F F AR ma cy and if you've ever struggled with sugar this conversations gonna matter to you sits with two extraordinary young men who are gonna tell us about their journey you might know them Keegan Allen is an American actor musician photographer and author he's known for his main role as Toby Cavanaugh on the freedom series pretty little liars his passion in his younger years tended toward photography cinematography and lots of other roles he's published two photography books and he's gonna tell us about his journey with sugar which you all know I care a lot about well having less of it that is although I love it and we're also have Tom hopper who's an English actor you might recognize him as the guy who got flamed with his father because he didn't bend the needs to Daenerys in the game of Thrones he's appear to serve merciful first of all in Merlin Billy bones and black sails dick and Tarly like I said in the game of Thrones and Luther Hargreaves in Netflix new show the Umbrella Academy those are all like English names welcome so you guys have been on a health journey last few years you know I wonder how you understood the connection between what you're eating and how you feel and how did you sort of find my work and get connected to you know processed food being bad and sugar affecting you and how did you connect those dots because most most young guys just eat whatever they want and they just like push through and they're like I'm Superman I'm never gonna die I can eat whatever I want but you guys seem to have a different experience well yeah I mean what you just said there about being feeling invincible was exactly the journey that I was on actually and I was training a lot so I was really into my fitness and it was actually for training for the show for that show you mentioned black sails that this whole journey kind of happened for me and we went on quite an extreme diet to get into shape for that show and during that process I started to get stomach problems a lot of stomach problems because I was what I was doing was going from being a sugar addict a major one actually I would do that and then do these extreme diets of cutting out all my carbohydrates than I'd be like oh I can eat whatever I want now and I when I'm not on the show i binge yet and these two extremes kept happening and what what happened I think this is a similar thing for for many people who make this extreme changes I had a health scare a major health scare where my stomach I got an extreme case of gastritis and I felt like I was gonna die it was it was so extreme yeah like extreme stomach pain bedridden just felt awful and my thought I've got to I got a lot what's causing this and I've been taking various bit of medication because I was getting my acid reflux problems and stuff and I'd realized at the end Said's as if I was taking and really ripped up my stomach she was taking NT inflammatories yeah yes yes so basically I was taking anti-inflammatories because I had two herniated disks and I went to a doctor who I thought was supposed to be helping me and he was just going yeah you your back's gonna feel like it's gonna hold a if you have these all these all these painkillers and stuff not thinking anything of it and that's that I think so many people are guilty of that it's just going I want to be free of the pain yeah and I think what happened was I had this premonition of my friend who lives a very similar life to us now my friend said to me he goes it's funny isn't it when you feel that ill when you feel that sick you'll do anything to feel better again yeah you'll do anything to feel just good and I said yeah that's charity because I felt so ill and I was like yeah that's true I would write now I'll do anything mmm and he was like well why not take every precaution to make sure you never feel like this again and that was a big moment for me as a kind of a lightboard moment and that sort of started my journey of going right I'm gonna look at the diet because he he was a bit like you know when we talk about how our link up was what you'll hear about for Keegan in a moment but he was a huge influence for me and seeing that he's always so healthy he never gets sick there's never any problems so I started looking at what he did and he just didn't eat processed food he didn't eat sugar hmm didn't he anything that would cause any kind of inflammatory response in his body and also through trial and error you know you find what works for you what doesn't and just being aware of that and I started surrounding myself with people that who were on the same journey mmm you know and I think that's very important is that yes totally because otherwise you're awaiting and healthier likely to also be and if you're out drinking green juice and doing yoga you're probably gonna be healthier absolutely yeah and it's that influence of its peer pressure right you might have times I get because I don't drink now either and every time I go out is have a drink well I don't wish culture Oh big cotton culture at pop culture yeah you go in the local pub it's like your expect so if I go and go just a mineral water please it's not going down well so yeah the peer pressure thing is huge so like surrounding myself like my aunt was a big influence for me who's there also a big fan of yours and she introduced me to you and to your to your podcast and that was a huge stepping stone for me because you know it was it was just about looking at medicine and food being medicine mm-hmm and having that mindset and going you know what I don't if I look at the way people fuel that car yeah their pride enjoys that car you know like an item a thing yeah a solid thing and they'll put their pride and joy into it you know yeah and they gonna fuel it with the best fuel remember if you have a pet I mean you we feed our kids that we would never feed our pet that a cheeseburger fries in the yeah yeah I mean yeah absolutely I see people giving their their dogs this like gourmet food yeah right exactly Marian now a cheeseburger I use this analogy I talked to him yesterday by this I use analogy when I was butchering in Toronto recently and every morning I would see this guy who was cleaning his shop front like meticulous cleaning with a steam cleaner to make his shot look amazing and he stood there with this the sprayer thing we cigarette in one hand and a big can of coke in the other and we're huge gut and just looking not too healthy not healthy no and I'm like he's putting so much effort into making his shop look that good yeah but has no care in the world about what he's doing to his body yeah and I think that's a thing that you know a lot of people have fallen into now is that this that kind of aesthetic of what things look like or what an item looks like what you look like on the outside but not actually taking into account we're put on this earth in these vessels then we're actually supposed to take care of yeah you can ever get the owner's manual yeah and well yeah unfortunately the government and society is driven us into a place where the manual is oh just eat this just in yeah so it's only through self education that you can break that mold because the government's not gonna do it no the world we live in isn't gonna do it it's just it's our own it's our own journey and I think it's that thing like I say people who have an extreme health scare or change where they go off I've got to take control yeah it's powerful so and all that personal experience it kind of wakes you up I mean this thing that's the case for a lot of people yeah they don't sort of wake up until something bad happens but yeah unfortunate because you know most people are even when they don't have something terrible going on don't feel the best they could feel and they don't know how bad they feel until they start feeling better that's it that's it yeah it's normal you know if you have aches and pains or my nose as opposed to associate I it all the time tired or groggy or my digestion isn't great I got headaches or I don't sleep breath I guess these are just sort of quote normal things we think we have to suffer from and they're not and you know and I remember using I wrote a book called the ten day detox which is basically a sugar addict detox yeah yeah and you know I talked about FLC syndrome which is when you feel like crap you know yeah and there's a questionnaire I'm like how many of these symptoms you have and if you get a high score you have a bad FLC yeah yeah yeah and people just think it's normal and yeah no that was not something majority of people I think yeah it's Dianetics they think like oh I'm just genetically I processed food this way yeah I can't process yeah I'm just tired generically tired no I've got headaches cuz I'm stressed I mean yeah they are all factors but I don't believe it all does start with food I mean people will argue this point with me but I do believe that if you get what you're being fueled with right mm-hmm things start to fall into place yeah then you make better decisions yeah brain is working better you're not tired of me if you're not sleeping if you're not exercising if you're you know just stressed all the time yeah you're gonna make poor decisions and then the food that you choose is bad and then that kind of perpetuates that vicious cycle yes interesting you say about the about exercise and stuff because people say I haven't got the energy to exercise I'm got the energy and what's amazing I think about exercise is that if you get up and you do exercise you get more energy it's true it's not like you get become more tired no no that's true I mean last night I you know it's been out late night with a congressman in Washington and then I had to fly from New York to LA and then I you know it was kind of tired and gonna sleep and you know I was kind of tired Tory's in the day got here had to do some podcast and just went to yoga and I was anyone kind of punky when I got there and by the time I left I just felt so much better right yeah yeah it's really true it is yeah yeah yeah it does it there's something you just the Brian or whether it's the dopamine or something that just balances you out and gets you ready for you know we were talking about getting up early yes like if you've had a good night's sleep get up early mm-hm and and start the day with some kind of exercise yeah it sets you up for the day you know mentally for sure so Keegan you you had your own struggle with sugar I don't yeah yeah kind of knocked you to your knees very much so yeah I mean I I I met Tom actually in a very interesting way where I was at at the point that I had met you I was pre-diabetic I was very healthy you looked good on the outside I was I was on television six-pack felt really good about myself all the the boxes were checked on I was able to go to the gym workout you know but I always didn't feel right I never felt good and I would go to I'd go to work I'd be on set be chewing gummy bears I'd be eating like you know whatever was around a craft service by the way for actors really not the best ways because they just have a whatever is around yeah most of its very high in sugar and additives lots of corn lots of corn chips lots of corn things the world's gotta have the energy and we you know for book tour I was always really afraid you know when you probably been on book tour multiple times not at this point but like mm-hmm I was always afraid of getting sick and I would always get sick and I and and people would be like it's because you're thinking about getting sick I'm like no there's got to be something going on here and whenever we went to do a convention a big comic-con convention one of the things that especially now with coronavirus you don't want to touch people but I would always be like I can't I'm so sorry like I'm sorry I can't I can't touch you to them I'm my immunity said my immune systems really like compromised all the time when I travel must be something in the air but the reality was I was slamming something in your mouth and cookies and treats that fans would be bringing us and we were there with Jason Momoa and and and like all these people would bring us all gifts and I and I would be like mmm oh I'd be like hey you gonna eat those Tim Tams cuz I don't I'm like a time I don't want them and to Tom I'd be like hey man can I have those gummies any Billie yeah I'm not gonna eat them so I'm eating all these things at this convention and I had just met Tom and toms you know Tom's like physically looks ripped like I'm like oh man we should go work out together in the in the in-between times of the convention and I get really sick immediately I get like this Australian flu almost yeah which I had which was just because my immune system was so compromised as you know and what was pivotal in my entire journey at the start of my first step in this journey was when I was really sick Tom comes over and he's like me you go come out go no you can't be sitting in the hotel room the whole time and I'm like I'm like well I'm like really sick man he goes food we have to eat and all those things and can't be sitting in here and I'm like oh man I was really sick you're gonna get sick don't come in and he's like me I don't get sick I know you're sick girl I don't eat sugar only processed foods I just work out I was eat clean you should come train with me essentially and so III and so Ike I'm sick as a dog 103 temperature running around Brisbane with with with him and I feel like a lunatic yeah but I started we started here I look like your carer or so yeah yeah and he's like come on but the interesting thing was I slowly just in that week I slowly started to realize little things for example sweet potatoes why do you need to add anything to them just put them with olive oil they're naturally sweet but we were hanging out and I'm like hmm these are really great he's like excuse me what's in this and I'm and they're like well what's you know a sweet potato and uh a little bit of sugar or rapeseed oil or or we were talking about this like canola oil or you know any of these things and people do not know about this because I was completely baffled by us I I had never stepped into this realm of what's in that what's inside of the food yeah and when you have Whole Foods and you think you're eating healthy oh I'm having fresh salmon caught fresh mmm-hmm but what what's in the marinade what's how is it prepared yeah and so hanging out with him and seeing that just in that week we kept in contact and throughout the next three months I went you know what there's something in this there's something to this way of living and I was familiar with you before this because I'm lactose intolerant I'm just gonna admit it here on the air no but uh you know you and about 70% of the rest of the world yeah and so I remote to be lactose intolerant like Northern Europe maybe it gets tolerated or your yeah it is a quality than milk days also yes it's so different when you look at the effect of pasteurization yeah no I just gonna Church over seconds no I study that was done in 30s by this guy dr. pottinger who took cats and wanted to show the effective processing of foods versus not and it wasn't even the worst stuff that we're eating now it was just like regular raw milk which is what we ate for centuries versus pasteurized homogenized milk and and and and a few other you know different kind of processing and after three generations on this the cats couldn't reproduce in the fourth generation their health dramatically declined they got sick and they look terrible and when they switched him back to whole like unprocessed milk for example raw milk they actually had profoundly dramatic improve on their health so infinity was a big fertility another one in seven eight couples now one in seven and and what's fascinating is that if you look at the effect for example even on cholesterol or your blood lipids when you have raw milk versus pasteurized homogenized milk is profoundly different on your own you're justyou're fats in your blood and your cholesterol so it you know but it's not only like what we eat yeah I'm having milk that's a whole food it's how that food has been manipulated or processed yeah great another thing was infertility plastic and now milk maybe this was in cats but it was really but it is interested in that other the infertility thing because I mean like you say the the rate of infertility of of young people you know there should be in that prime for reproducing is going up one in seven couples it's crazy that and a lot of you know a lot of it has to do with sugar I just the modern diet right I think well there's a book written by a Harvard professor called the fertility diet and it's all about how sugar causes insulin resistance which is when you make too much insulin and your body resists it because it's sort of like the boy who cried wolf and the insulin levels go up and it makes you store belly fat it makes you hungry make you tired make sure you not want to exercise and and it actually sort of drives you into this visceral fat but when that happens particularly in women it causes their testosterone to go up it causes them to not ovulate and so the whole hormones get screwed up and they get infertility from eating sugar there's most people don't realize yeah Wow unbelievable yeah that's that that's another profound about sugar there because he's getting people I think a lot of people just think oh it's about gaining weight it's about no you know there is so many knock-on effects like actually the future of the planet has something to do with it you know if it's maybe issues yeah or species and it's actually you know slowing down the I mean we are overpopulated as opposed to the fire so that's maybe one good thing about it but apart from that yeah that's that's not good no it's not and it's and you know and it goes all the way back to the farm and how we grow you know corn which is just turned into high fructose corn syrup yeah how its processed and put in all processed food yeah but can you were saying about how you you then figured out you were pre-diabetic yeah yeah so I I had I had found you actually through just going on we it wasn't even through YouTube at that point some weird third-party site and your doctor and what you were saying was not radical within itself but what was radical was that you were a doctor saying no you shouldn't be drinking milk because you shouldn't be drinking baby cows like formula and that all these things happen like any kind of lactose is lactose are just sugar anyway but the idea then is that I was able to use what you use you as a reference to then show people that were enabling like trying to enable me to drink milk and this huge elucidation from your catalogue of work became right in front of me this is true I mean you know the the school lunch mmm you can't actually have a school lunch unless you serve milk with every school it's absurd and and often it's chocolate milk which is yeah better than coke but not much yeah and a friend of mine David Ludwig recently wrote an article was called milk in the New England Journal Medicine where they went through all the research and showed house you know are thinking about milk is sill flaw that it's not nature's perfect food that it can cause a increases in cancer for example increases in prostate disease increases in type 1 diabetes allergies eczema asthma and for some people they tolerate it but it is a big driver of issues and as a doctor seeing patients for you know 30 years it's one of the big that I see as a lever I have is just try it holiday from Derry for a few weeks and see how much better you feel yeah acne is a huge cause of yes this is this is milk you want acne if you want pimples just yeah you know sugar and milk hey everybody's dr. Hyman thanks for tuning in to the doctors pharmacy I hope you're loving this podcast it's one of my favorite things to do and introduce to you all the experts that I know and I love and that I've learned so much from and I want to tell you about something else I'm doing which is called marks picks it's my weekly newsletter and in it I share my favorite stuff from foods to supplements to gadgets to tools to enhance your health it's all the cool stuff that I use and then my team uses to optimize and enhance our health and I'd love you to sign up for the weekly newsletter I only send at you once a week on Fridays nothing else I promise and all of you do is go to dr. Hyman com forward slash pics to sign up that's dr. Hyman calm for size pics P I see KS and sign up for the newsletter and I'll share with you my favorite stuff that I use to enhance my health and get healthier and better and live younger longer now back to this week's episode so a lot of our followers are younger and and I when we do these conventions and we meet all these fans people I've noticed that a lot of people will ask me hey like what is your regimen like what do you do like how do you keep your skin clear how do you like how do you like keep stay in shape and all these things and I always want to try and go back to I was in school unhealthy studying for finals thinking oh I'm just gonna eat M&Ms and study for finals candy be like junk food to think that that's gonna help my brain and all it did was the opposite and I would have I had really bad acne I was really insecure at it like already being a teenager is stressful enough but then had to have the anxieties that were food-related yeah 100% because I could not understand what was wrong with me and going through life I thought that that was just part of a healthy diet like the difference between an apple and a cupcake was nothing in my mind look you got educated background and family and yeah no worse it is for people who come from where they don't have that education yeah yeah and where they don't have the Eamonn access you probably live anywhere he had access to yes okay yeah their communes where they just don't anyway and I think and they don't even know that they don't know yeah right yeah and I write I had a prejudice I make sense before on a podcast but I had a prejudice that I thought you know well you know I always said it's not people's fault if they're overweight because of the food system so bad but you know most people kind of know it's just hard because of the biology but when I went down to to film for this movie fed up I was shocked that you know these people just didn't know what was in their food they weren't aware of what they were doing yeah we were talking about this about labels weren't me how how few people take the step to just go well what's what's in this you know they're just just a simple thing it's all written on the back not the front of the label but yeah right what's a nutritional yeah because our gradients because that's the best the most basic form of educating yourself of what is going in your mouth yeah it's it's tough though because even you know ingredient less than Europe it was percentages yeah here they delivering no boat like natural flavoring yeah which couldn't be another list of a whole other things that's true now but in the natural vanilla flavor is actually coming from beavers anal glands so you know what's really tracking and I add 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 food companies don't want to have sugar listed as the number one ingredient on the label yes five different kinds of sugar because the list of ingredients is in order of the amount yeah right but if you if you had 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 or they don't have the same kind of sugar it's just that it's just a loophole in the law that allows the food companies to get away with bamboozling us yeah and it's it's it's pretty bad and then I was I was shopping there today was in CBS and getting something on right and I looked over and I saw this big freezer of haagen-dazs ice cream and I hope weakness for haagen-dazs ice cream but I don't need that often and and and they said this non-dairy haagen-dazs I'm like oh cool I walked over and I pull it out his plant-based gluten free dairy free and like oh this is health food right a label over and it's like high fructose corn syrup and processed ingredients and I'm like what is this you know it's like well this is the other movement actually she's quite interested to talk about because you know we we know I'm sure we've all heard of this you know the documentary that came out and it's really pushed this whole vegan movement game changer game changes yeah so with that coming out and I mean I'm seeing so many adverse now in the UK I'm not sure if it's the same here I think it probably is for plan based vegan plant-based vegan be healthy plant-based vegan hmm and there's a picture of some processed burger or like some process piece of meat or something right and for me I think the biggest thing I have a problem again is that that lack of wanting to go and actually educate yourself people are taking this thing at face value and it does I have to say gain taters does make some very valid points about the industry the meat industry haribol and certainly i think with regards to like processed meat they absolutely have a point but when we're talking about you know you're taking a lot the stuff at the moment about regenerative farming yeah and the difference that that makes them on on the meat and on the planet yeah and I think that is something we need to look at more but people are using this this blanket thing of meat is bad yeah and it's just not the case in my opinion if it's self is eaten responsibly and it's the right kind of meat but what this vegan movement is the wrong side of it is it's actually encouraging more eating of processed foods yes yeah I mean all these new plant-based burgers sound great and they're billion-dollar businesses but they are highly processed food with you know different novel ingredients and if you go in to watch them be made they're made in a basic factory on an assembly line with all kinds of strange things that I you know aren't a whole food so you know if you want to be being great but eat whole foods and you aware what you're doing is you can be a chips and soda vegan like you were a vegan and you and what happened to you diabetic and alacrity diabetic went in and I was like what's wrong with me like why do I feel so tired all the time but this is one thing I wanted to ask you them as a doctor someone that does this as an advocate 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 yeah I've been to Lennox before I've been there I know what that place is like I'm surprised that new came out of Lennox 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 and I loved sugar and starch and bread and pasta you know I I bought into the whole low-fat but you were doing it for health reasons you yes I was yes health reasons yes 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 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 waist scrawny ER and like kind of flabby ER than I was that 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 now I do yoga do other stuff but I just you know just because I'm busy I'm planning on doing more like you know what you're doing and I and I then I got very sick and I started to look at what I was doing and had this sort of shift and as a science changed I began to sort of look at you know any ideology is so problematic in nutrition they're all these diet Wars they're always people in conflict with each other paleo vegan this thing yeah and it's kind of crazy because the religions only have it is but you know I say let's get let's get away from that because you know I came up with this term P ghen which was a joke it was a paleo vegan yeah and and I just published this book food fix and it was number one in paleo and number one in vegan books yeah yeah because we have far more calm with each other than with the standard American processed 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 one of what I say to people 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 number once 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 Jim oh you 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 as it's truck to the environment and there's often other things in there like glyphosate which is yeah roundup which they spray on 70 different crops from canola to corn to wheat to soy and that is definitely harmful for a microbiome it destroys our gut bacteria which affects everything and it's linked to cancer and and there is a two billion dollar lawsuit that got a settlement of the judgment about Roundup or glyphosate or weed killer and so so just be aware that if you just stop those things you're the quadric you're already making it yeah I mean yeah 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 or it's like not that many steps of processing because most food gets processed in some way we cook it yeah so go some kind of my mom invention yeah yeah but if you know most the time I just eat stuff that looks like what it is you know broccoli is a broccoli you know yes fish two fish red meat well I was called at while I said to him when when we first started when when he was a pretty diabetic vegan sick man in Australia I call it the of the earth diet yeah so if you're eating stuff this the earth naturally provides then you're you're never really in in harm's way right you know steps gonna take to get from the field to the fork yeah right exactly you can trace them all okay but if you don't know how I got like that yeah yeah oh we've got a problem yeah the ingredients list is your ingredient right a sweet potato is a sweet potato a piece of chicken breast is a piece of chicken breast there's nothing greeting this time there yeah 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 enterprises where I kept going back I kept going I have I one that 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 told me 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 but it's time you to make that change and really know what things taste like again like broccoli you can taste freaking ORS right it's so true and people get off at four a week eben 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 yeah you cannot overcome your biology with willpower it not fail every time yeah 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 it locks the fat in the fat cells so they can't get out it's like a one-way turnstile walking to Subway 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 sugar and their insulin goes up their blood shows 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 and for those worried about coronavirus one of the most important things you can do is cut out junk food and sugar because it suppresses your immune system yeah so Keegan you're eating a lot of sugar yeah and you were getting sick all the time it wasn't a coincidence yeah and I don't know if you're familiar with dr. Raymond Francis but dr. Raymond Francis there was like this video circulating about how he pretty much just he immediately was on like a news show and he talks about that sugar even even just a small what is it even like it it was like a teaspoon 50% your immunity goes now 50% and like that's other thing is like some people will go well there's no science in that that's how we're gonna get rid of coronavirus we're gonna like you're gonna not get front of it but but the interesting thing that I wanted to add is a volume is back to you then with with your immune system sugar is not the only culprit to lowering your immune system there's a desert there are canola oils there are what what other strategies and stuff stress and fatigue and luckily the ones that can the can drop it for sure yeah that's that's that's at 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 the well the other part about eating a diet of processed food is sugar it's 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 this is kind of surprising they're happy to be malnourished and obese at the same time the nutritional density of our food is so important and process food sure this doesn't have it in sugar to please 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 in 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 kid's get measles who's well nourished in America they're not gonna die from a usual right but in the developing more of these kids die all the time from basic disease because they're so malnourished yeah and I think we are a malnourished countries ninety percent of us are deficient and so the best way to build your immune system is to eat whole food you know cut out the sugar make sure you take your vitamins get enough sleep like you said and deal with stress is a huge factor and I think you know I think something simple like this meditation yeah yeah but we just don't talk about that enough I thinking and you as a functional medicine doctor I'm sure you you speak to your patients about how important this can be because it really is powerful and my wife went through this whole process like she didn't do a lot of the hypno birthing thing when she was pregnant with my son Freddie and then with truely my daughter she went through this whole process of just making sure she was really really relaxed all the time we do a lot of hittin the birthing meditation yeah and truly my daughter came out the most chilled but yeah I mean it was unbelievable I don't know there was a link there with that but she certainly thinks there wasn't one I mean there's a link and epigenetics we're so powerful so that whatever the mother eats her little exposure to stress yeah toxins all these things have huge effects on the baby and if the studies are so clear if the mother is eating a lot of sugar and processed food the baby is more likely to get obese to have heart disease yeah it's setting them up for that yeah I wrote I'm yeah it's so clear on this and I think people just understand the fact we eat about a hundred and fifty two pounds of sugar per person yeah that's almost half a pound a day yes sugar well it's hidden in every single thing that you could pick up when we were at the gym you know we go to the the bought the bar at the gym they have like a smoothie er yeah oh my god you know everything that is laid out that says healthy organic gluten-free is so counterproductive at the gym and you know that Oh everything you see there's like signs for coca-cola in some gyms yeah and there's like awful you don't look 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 wow 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 as a hidden there's so many different names for it and shows like this 200 names for sugar if you google names for sugar you'll see it'll come with Alissa like 200 different things 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 gonna be anything that is a whole food because I remember thinking well there's all this other stuff in there now like I started off just been trying to avoid sugar yeah and then I look to everything else yes I was like what is that I don't even pronounce that let alone like put it in my body and think it's actually gonna do anything good so I just I started to just go no I can't I can't yeah for that in anymore when the average American eats 3 to 5 pounds of additives every year yeah I mean unbelievable ha and I know I know that what's what's even more interesting Tuesday I'm looking your bookshelf right here and I see you have the surrender experiment by Michael a singer untethered soul that's this is an important - is that like along with your eating the reason I bring up Michael a singer that another soul was amazing and understanding meditation wim HOF oh yeah I do I know him very well oh it's amazing right yeah it helps so much with anti inflammatory there's any anti inflammatory v any aches or pains I take a steam and I jump in an ice bath yeah Mike yeah right amazing I did a thing for a while doing like contrasts showers with like going Sorna it might in my apartment I was staying in Toronto a nice shooting recently oh yeah they had a sauna downstairs mazing great so I started doing contrast like he might call ya hot cold man I felt so good yeah yeah I tried to do it in the morning and then before I do it like half an hour pree going to bed yeah and feel it makes you sleep so well yeah huge mental clarity more energy levels in the morning that I can go and train you feel good for the day like it's brilliant like those little things that you don't think would make a huge difference they really do it's so true so Keegan how did you then feel after you started to reset your diet yeah it took about three months I like Tom was saying and I'm sure you understand this anybody that goes on this journey for themselves where they go okay now I'm gonna be accountable I'm fully aware of my diet I'm gonna look at everything I'm gonna read the labels I'm gonna do some research I'm gonna follow health professionals like like yourself like Overmeyer Mark Hyman and start to not just do the research but put in the work and I would even with all of that and having this extraordinary world around me in Los Angeles of healthy places that I could eat it still was difficult yeah I would still be don't regress back to okay I'm gonna go and have a cupcake or I'm gonna go and eat I'm like one little chocolate chip won't mess me up and I immediately was sometimes caught in that and Max Lou Guevara talks about this that it's these are highly palatable foods yeah and hyper hyper how political it's like porn for your mouth yeah and you these things and they're just like I can't I actually physically cannot stop myself yeah and my girlfriend she's a very healthy person she does not eat anything any processed foods no sugar no nothing she's very healthy but she will tell me I can't even take a bite of that because I will never be able to stop and I never understood that until I was doing this right and so going through that understanding that it is an addiction and that the people that were enabling me and saying wait come like we'd go outside an alcoholic just have one drink yeah and you see yourself as an ex yeah but then you start to recognize that almost everyone around you is completely bonkers addiction yeah like addiction wise with sugar or with these processed foods and they would they'll nudge you they'll be like it's not gonna kill you like one bite of this lava dog food pushers yeah I went through all that and I finally came out on the other side recognizing that I felt I was a completely different person and I was a I was a person that I wanted to be I felt good I'm all like all the time and and then I started getting deeper into it so microbiome understanding that understanding probiotics not getting like junk like actual real good probiotics understanding how like my gut and the certain foods that I was I was eating maybe weren't responding to me like I can't have a cauliflower and cauliflower is great for us but some people might and and understand that my mother was went through a crazy amount of health issues and it happened right at the time where I was very deeply into this and one of the health issues was that she had a you know she was she was battling cancer for the last 11 years she at stage 5 hosta sized breast cancer and or spine they put her on I brands all these things but then we discovered a neuron or chromatic tumor on her pancreas and I'm neuroendocrine yeah and we went okay I went okay there's gotta be there's got to be a way that there's got to be something about this what is your diet what are you eating well I eat very healthy I know I wait wait wait hold on well I'll be able to think bait healthy yes they actually don't they do not and my own mother was it was under my radar because I didn't you know I didn't see her every day and no one shooting but prayer Mel every single second and I went okay well let's go through exactly what you're actually ingesting date moment a moment and what if you're thinking eating out you got to know what you're eating and we went through and I realized that was really really poor like bad yeah and we shifted a bunch answer yeah you know your body naturally creates glucose on his own right so it's we don't need all these extra sugars from sugar um but she was eating a lot of highly enriched flour gluten things that were very hyper inflammatory mmm so he cut all that out for about four months yeah and we recognized that it went away this illness - mer went away in her pancreas and her pancreas she still has other cancers but it has totally taken down a lot of that most people don't realize that sugar is a big driver of Canada and the mechanisms are really understood now how that works yeah look I'm in cancer particularly breast colon pancreatic prostate all them are driven in large part by by sugar yeah do you think that's just because it's an inflammatory thing for our bodies to consistently processing chaos insulin promote something like insulin like growth factor which actually was in high levels can be carcinogenic yeah that's part of the problem and and I think there's there's the sugar is the main fuel for cancer so we're like hybrids humans are hybrids we can run on fat yeah or on carbs or sugar right being on ketones or glucose cancer can so a lot of exciting research now on cancer is using ketogenic diets and to help treat cancer and to actually accentuate the benefits of chemotherapy yeah so actually a lot of research on this is wacky you know crazy people on the fringe those people like I said like literally turning their cancer around yeah from doing this it's amazing a friend of mine had a you know thyra lung throat cancer and you know he he was ill overweight and he ended up doing ketogenic diet and during the chemo and he said they'd never seen anybody with better outcomes less side effects from radiation from chemo and sail through it and it's been clear of cancer which is amazing and I know you were saying before about the addictive properties of it this is not an accident and there's a great book Michael Moss Roe who was on the podcast here called salt sugar and fat yeah and talks about 300 interviews he did with top executives and scientists in the food industry and what their tactics are and I remember having dinner with the vice chairman of exodor company and like how's it going we yeah you know we had a little bit of a bit of an interest it was interesting yeah yeah yeah like but he said mark you know we have incredible research facility in New York you should come visit I'm like why he says well we've harvested taste buds from humans and then we grow them in the petri dish and then we can stimulate them and see which foods and things will actually activate the taste buds and and they have something called taste Institute's where they hire craving experts and they they manipulate the ingredients and the mouthfeel and the taste of food and the sugar to create what we call the Bliss point of food which max is that maximum things like you get that hit like a cocaine hit yeah and then they actually don't look for how to sell that more to what we call heavy they call heavy users these are their own internal corporate terms yeah so it's it's it's hard to get you or me to start drinking a two-liter bottle of soda a day but you know if someone's drinking that candy soda then pushing more soda is easier on them and so they have this whole category people who are really heavy users and they target them and they're usually the poor minorities people on food stamps and it's really deliberate 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've seen people within a very short time really transform that I mean we've created something called the 10-day reset what essentially is a way to reset your brain chemistry and your metabolism your hormones very quickly and people don't get how powerful it is and it gets through all the inflammatory foods puts on lots of whole foods and people can learn about it they can learn how to do the whole program at get pharmacy calm that's GT pharmacy with an FFA arm Acy and it's there's a free program on how to do that if you want to upgrade to using the supplements and the shakes you can but it's it's a very powerful way for people to go WOW like you did holy crap what I'm eating makes me feel like crap yeah and I didn't really realize it you know I'm sick all the time my immune system not working you know I foggy I have no energy you know I look good but I feel like crap yeah yeah you know the food is medicine theory there's so much in that and I think people can really take the steps forward in terms of a mindset such thing changing mindset is the is the first state like you you saying this you know like you took a while from you me chatting back and forth to really go no there is actually something in yes you know changing that mindset so once you change that mindset and and just keep driving that through of food as medicine food as 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 yeah it's not easy yeah similarities other times 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 in term I don't get it do you think that also as well what I find sometimes is that people don't care enough about their own body to to do their their Lycia you know it's that like mentality of I'm here for for a good time not a long time and and that's all good and well until I I think about those people I think you've not been in severe pain or been really sick right you've not been in a position where you've had that that opportunity to have that lightbulb and the the last thing you want for that person is to have something when it's too late and here's something that you can't reverse or true you know in your much good about you guys is you're not just doing this for yourselves you actually said we're gonna try to educate the world by creating a documentary about sugar yeah and food tell us about it yeah well it came about because I mean it originally started about us being like why is everything impossible why does why does the why does the food industry make it impossible to eat healthy really it doesn't make it impossible so our most amazing almost nervous walk and ice and I said I felt so bad going to these two meeting fans meeting friends seeing my family go through chronic illness go through things that could be fixed so simply by a change in diet understanding and exercise any kind of fitness anything it could be changed just moving going for a walk anything anything and how atrophied most of the generation before us and after us is becoming this it's like a machine and it's driven by unfortunately big corporations like you're saying it's so sad to hear that they're putting in all the science and technology into essentially making people drug addicts to their foods instead of taking the time to see what is the best way that we can say use you know are what's already destroyed with climate change what how we can make the world a better place if you really make it a better place because we she's a healthy keep people better and there's something strange in in all of this so we both we're talking and I'm like why don't we just from our standpoint I feel like we have a very interesting both sides of the street I mean I've seen pictures of you before this and I can't believe the change oh yeah I mean yeah thanks to eat like twelve Krispy Kreme Doughnuts in one sitting you know like I was yeah that's good well it's it's actually real oh yeah well I think he's important drug was real yeah I think it's really important that people understand that we weren't born feeling this way about food you know we were victim of the system and sugar and all those things and we we went on our own journey and it's just that that realizing those like getting sick all the time all those sort of things you think is normal to just get sick all the time you it's normal to get and an illness every winter you know that is flu season and you're supposed to get the flu yes I mean I've never had the flu Wow wow that's really good yeah but all these fad diets all these things that are always circulating yeah I mean I there were times where I I must have whatsapp do you a million messages being like hey man what do you think about this diet or and you'd be like dude don't even it doesn't matter it's about it's not it's not it's not that hard it's not a hard it yes so you don't need a fad diet now what you do is you simplify all of the you you've cherry-picked the best things as a as a physician you've cherry picked the best things and put them into a very coherent small little construct that people can you know use and apply to their own life and whatever way they see fit and what I've found really difficult is throughout our our journey I'm sure you went through this as well you will try and figure it out on your own and you have so much trial and error that you end up going back to the original way if you were eating because you go it doesn't matter anyway but it does and that's the thing that we are very passionate about is bringing this to people that when you're driving in your car you're listening to this or you're sitting at home on YouTube watching this or are on our social media platforms that you go okay I'm gonna be a little bit more aware maybe a lot more aware of what I'm putting in my body am i I know it's a family's boat is and our family starts by show our children of like victims yeah 40% of kids overweight 1 in 10 have a TD I mean it's yes I mean that must be that being created that over the last 20 30 years I imagine is ridiculous I don't know what the figures are but I mean yeah and I graduated from medical school in 1987 there there wasn't anything called type-2 diabetes not it was called adult onset diabetes act and juvenile diabetes and I had to change the names because two-year-olds are getting adult onset diabetes unbelievable some two-year-olds are so fat they can't even walk yeah you know because this is forgiven them soda in the bottle yeah and it's a big part of the documentary that we're making is is the future right and and changing the mindset of the children and and trying to reach out to parents to say you are responsible solely responsible from when that child comes out of the mother you are solely responsible of what goes in that child's mouth and we have a responsibility to make sure that that child has the best life possible yeah so we obviously this is a big argument here about as we've already said like certain place in America it's same in the UK people just do not have access to that food and that's down to the food system so we have to we have to go on a bigger scale we have to do kind of a same sort of thing that game changes has done and create a shock factor we have we have to go and see these these children in in their state and use technology available towards potentially to be able to see what's going on there and and show these parents the difference in their child that could be if they just change the way they eat sure there there are teenagers in America who are on the waiting list for liver transplants from drinking soda yeah that's unbelievable I mean that is just I mean I met a guy that conference was a pediatrician and it was a conference and obesity and I said what's your specialty says well I'm a pediatric gastroenterologist I said why are you here at this conference he says well we're seeing so much fatty liver and even five-year-olds conscious you know crazy and it's one of the most prevalent problems and at least inflammation the body and diabetes and heart disease and and it's terrifying if kids are overweight their life expectancy is 13 years less they're less likely to have productive lives to have good jobs graduate from school go to college yeah be productive and in it it people just don't understand that what we're doing to the future generation and then of their minds are affected by it too it's not just their bodies yeah they have trouble focusing and concentrating ad D poor academic performance less likely to succeed in life and it's it's so important you guys are doing this documentary because it's going to tell a story that people need to hear and the fact that you guys have and have big communities and fans telling the story is so important and I think the more people are out there talking about it the more we can come together you actually share was actually happening well sort of wake people up and it's happening that's pushing the food industry I mean Danone which is a big company just announced they were and they owned like Ben and Jerry's and they own all these ice cream they're not gonna advertise ice cream to kids anymore oh wow that's amazing yeah this is this is the thing too is that we want to also educate the children we want it to come through the kids because at the end of the day the parents can and will put down an iron fist when they realize that they are essentially doing terrible things to their kids by giving them these treats and things that they think well when I was a kid I had ice cream and it was summer days that I enjoyed that so much they don't there's a nostalgia to these terrible things there's a tradition to these foods on holiday and what has happened is that our like you said dessert has become now this normal thing whereas before it was only for a certain day and now what what I'm worried about is parents can do that they could stop it they can stop it I was at your homeless safe zone but then you know kids will go out and they'll have it on their own they're not and they're gonna be exposed to it you know in that's like what I think I always think it's about taking control in your own life so like you know my kids don't eat sugar and I think you know they're gonna go out there at some point they're gonna go to kids pie is they're gonna be exposed and they're gonna be offered these things but I think if as long as I can control it in our home and you know I probably sound like into certain people or probably like a really unfund dad like don't give them any trees they get no fun at all but no I mean I think for the purpose of their health I think you know is that the majority of the time they're spending in in my home and they can eat whole foods you know and that's and that's important you know that the future for us if we don't do that I always have you seen that movie the Pixar movie wall-e yeah how about the little robot we new movie about this yeah the in in the fear that's a story about the future and we we see the humans are all now completely obese and they're all in these they're all beep odd things water being fed to their eyes and things and just watching TV these little iPod things and they just go move around yeah and I'm like that's a vision of the distant future right so much distant it's C well it's I think things like that you see it and you think I don't want that future for my kids or their kids you know you know and that's where we're heading and I think we have to make a change now and you know using platforms and you know the media and things like that that's there are any way to do it yeah I'm so glad you have a name for it yet well we've had it we've gone over a few things we were one of them is called what's in this I was it was a big one and when is it coming out stop making it and we both have TV shows that we were at a job yes it's tough to get the footage we wanted but it's about making the plans and just getting the footage whenever we can and put in the word I can't I can't wait for it to come out you guys were amazing and an inspiration to people and I think the more younger audiences that can hear this before they get into trouble and be inspired by role models like you guys who said look you know I was sick I had that crappy diet and I kind of woke up and now I have a more engaged happy fulfilled life right I feel like crap all the time it's a great thing yeah so thank you so much both for the work you're doing for the awareness you're creating and for being on the doctors pharmacy pleasure Thanks and if you've been listening to the podcast and you love it please leave a comment we'd love to hear from you share with your friends and social media subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and we'll see you next week on the doctors pharmacy [Music] [Music]

Channel: Mark Hyman, MD

Views: 38,798

Rating: 4.918819 out of 5

Keywords: keegan allen, tom hopper, sugar, sugar addiction, quit sugar, dr. mark hyman, doctor’s farmacy, pegan, vegetarian, infertility, cancer, ketogenic diet

Id: O3Tf4Jbbkdw

Length: 61min 59sec (3719 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 01 2020