 In this episode of Mind Pump, we talk all about sugar. Oh yeah, that component in food that makes it taste really good and sweet. So sweet. It's been demonized in some circles. Some people say it's not a problem at all so long as your calories are low. It's been blamed for rises in heart disease and cancer. We tend to think sugar probably best if you generally avoid it. So we talk about all of the stuff that sugar can do to your body and our experiences with sugar and our clients. We talk about its addictive properties. That's right, sugar does have some addictive properties and we worked a lot of people who seem to have issues with sugar addiction. We talk about how it can cause a weight gain. It's potential increased risks for heart disease, cancer, acne, type 2 diabetes might actually speed up the aging process. Energy swings, it can make people's energy go up and down. We also talk about how to eat it properly, how to have a good relationship around sugar so we know you're going to enjoy this episode. Also, this podcast is brought to you by FourSigmatic. FourSigmatic is one of our favorite sponsors. Now they make all products around mushrooms, adaptogenic mushrooms. Now why do we like this company over others? Well, one of the reasons is they test every single batch through a third party for heavy metals, allergens, bad bacteria, yeast, molds, mycotoxins, pesticides. They test their products for everything. So what you get is clean. That's very important when it comes to mushrooms because remember, mushrooms filter toxins out of the environment. So sometimes you could buy a mushroom based supplement or product and actually be dosing yourself with toxins like heavy metals or molds may actually cause yourself some problems, not with FourSigmatic. FourSigmatic has adaptogenic mushrooms like cordyceps, reishi, lion's mane. 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That's F-O-U-R-S-I-G-M-A-T-I-C dot com forward slash mind pump. Use the code mind pump and get 15% off your order. Also, this month, one of our more popular newer MAPS programs, MAPS PowerLift, is 50% off. Of course, MAPS PowerLift is a powerlifting inspired workout program. So if you want to boost your bench press, your deadlift, your squat, if you want to compete in powerlifting or if you just want to get more muscle and more strength, this program is for you. Again, it's 50% off. Here's how you get that discount. Go to mapspowerlift.com. That's M-A-P-S-P-O-W-E-R-L-I-F-T dot com and use the code POWER50. That's P-O-W-E-R-5-0. No space for the discount. Today, I was scrolling through social media. And I've seen a few of these posts on... Squatting and scrolling. Instagram and yeah, that's the move. That's when I'm on the toilet. Yeah. And that's hovering and scrolling. I see people doing, and this is starting to happen again. It comes in waves in the fitness space, but where people, you know, you have people who really demonize certain things in food. And then you have the other side, which like, all of it's okay. It's all good. There is no good or bad or whatever. Anyway, there was a post on sugar talking about how it's not addictive. Sugar is not addictive. I've never seen anybody sell their body for sex for sugar or whatever. Comparing it to drugs. And I kind of understand the message, but also it's a little bit of an annoying message. I hate this message. Yeah, why? Just because I think that when you think of the majority of people that are trying to... Our audience, right? Like when I think about the people that I'm making posts for or that are listening to the show or following me on social media, and this includes pretty much any other fitness professional, I would think, if you really understand your audience and you understand the people that you're trying to help, then you do know that a majority of people struggle with weight loss. And you have even crazier bias because they're following you, looking to you for fitness advice and information. And to come out and say things like that is stupid. It's stupid, it's ignorant, and it's a terrible message to send to people. Now, I understand that there are people that came out and said things like, sugar's as addictive as cocaine. And so, you know, there's obviously the science nerds want to retaliate and defend it from a physiological standpoint that, well, no, when we look at it scientifically, it's not as dependent as you can become on cocaine. But the reality of it is, you know, if you walked around snorting lines of cocaine in front of people at restaurants, people would fucking look at you like you're a weirdo and it's not as accepted as sugar is. Whereas if you're eating an ice cream cone or pounding a bag of candy next to somebody at the movie theater, it's completely socially accepted. True. And you also have to, because people try to compare it, you know, when they come up with the, because where it comes from is these studies on brain images where they show that sugar lights up parts of the brain in very similar or the same ways that cocaine will. So then these articles come out saying sugar is as addictive as cocaine or as a drug based off of these brain images. And then, of course, people get pissed off and say, again, you know, I don't know anybody that's, you know, robbing banks to try and get sugar. This is not okay. First off, you don't have to. Well, that's a big one. Yeah. Now, not saying it would happen, but let's also let's be fair here. Nobody's selling their bodies for sugar because part of the reason is because you don't have to. Right. Cocaine is not everywhere and super cheap and produced all over the place. Oh, what do you think would happen? What do you think would happen if the government came out and said right now that sugar is a scheduled one drug? You don't think you would see people doing crazy. You don't be a huge black market of 100 percent. Yeah. You would start to see some pretty crazy stuff for sugar. Now physiologically speaking, is sugar addictive? Well, okay. This is going to be my experience working with lots of clients. When you are in a high sugar diet and you go drastic in the other direction, when you eliminate sugar, they do suffer from withdrawal. They, the way that they taste food changes, things taste really bland. Part of that, a big part of that psychological withdrawal, but I do think there are some physical withdrawals, not nearly as strong as physical withdrawals from most drugs, but they're there nonetheless. And I'll also say this, people who overeat and over-consume sugar, many of them see what's happening to their bodies, okay? Many of them know that their health is bad, have been told by their doctors, or see that the scale has moved up quite a bit. I mean, before you become 80 pounds overweight, at one point it was 20 and 30 pounds overweight. You don't usually out of the blue get a heart attack and die. Typically, there's lots of stuff that happens leading up to that. And yet, people continue down that path, which is kind of a characteristic of what happens when people are addicted to drugs, too, right? Yeah, and it's just funny to me because, you know, why do people get addicted to drugs in the first place? It's an escape. It's a coping mechanism. It's a thing that they're doing to, you know, break away from the day-to-day pain that they're experiencing psychologically because of whatever trauma or whatever, you know, they're going through in their specific life. And to think that people don't use sugar in the same exact way is idiotic, in my opinion. Like, it's very visible to see that people, you know, act in accordance against their own health interests because it makes them feel good momentarily. Right. And not just some people, most people. Right. Very good point. When I evaluate someone's nutrition, so the very first thing we do is, you know, I tell clients, be yourself, track your food, I eat whatever you normally eat. Don't try and be good for me. I want to look at it and then we'll assess it and we'll make changes. The number one thing that I have to address right away is the overconsumption of sugar. It's just, it's in so many foods, so many people eat in excess and don't even realize that they do. So the problem that I have, and it really annoys me when fitness professionals put out messages like that, it reminds me of what it would be like if somebody was standing up in an AA meeting, drinking a beer and trying to convince everybody at the AA meeting that, look, you can be like me and fit and still have a beer every once in a while and not become an alcoholic. It's a fucking horrible message when you know who you're communicating to. Does that mean that the people in this room don't have, I bought a bag of gummy bears in the airport on the way over to flying over to Ohio. So it's not like I don't have sugar, too. But you also don't see me as a fitness professional, post that and share with, see, I, too, eat sugar, too. It's, yeah, I do, okay, but I'm also not going to promote that message because then I give all these clients that are already struggling with that a free pass to do that. And they're just not in the same place as you or I. And so that's the irresponsibility of trainers that put out messages like this. It's one of my biggest pet peeves in our space. And let's boil it all down to this. If we were to examine all of the things that cause sickness, illness, and even if you break it down further, cancer, heart disease, diabetes, dementia, all of the health problems that are really plaguing modern societies, if you get all the stuff and boil it all down, the number one culprit, the number one culprit is food. Too much of it or the wrong kind of it or both, right? It's food. Are people aware of this? They are. A lot of people are. They know what's going on, they see what's happening. I could walk up to the average person on the street and ask them, does America have a problem with eating too much or does America have an obesity problem? Are we having chronic health problems due to overconsumption of food? Most average people would say, yeah, and yet we continue along that path. That shows me that there are some addictive properties to food and more specifically to certain things in food and sugar being one of them. Well, we've already made the case that, that you know, they've done studies on this on groups that eat processed foods versus groups that eat whole foods. What's one of the main ingredients that in processed foods that make it hyper-palatable? Sugar. Sugar. Yeah, sugar's one of the main components. Good luck finding 100 grams of sugar in nature in whole foods. Tell me, I'll wait. Yeah, it's actually sugar's quite rare in nature. If we didn't have agriculture, okay, where we're actually planting trees and plants ourselves and structuring it, if you're just in nature and we haven't discovered modern agriculture, sugar would be extremely rare. You know how you would find it? You'd find the occasional fruit or berry, which by the way, fruits today don't look like they used to. Okay, we've been- We have selective farming. We have modified, if you look at what bananas used to look like, they were full of seeds, fibrous, very little sugary flesh, same thing with apples, same thing with lots, with most fruits, right? So, and those were rare, those were rare. If you're walking and you see a tree with a few of them, oh my God, it was an exciting event. Or honey, and honey came with a lot of pain. It was guarded by lots of bees. It's just not that common. I mean, sugar cane, where we get sugar from, do you know how hard it is to get the sugar out of sugar cane? Give you- A bamboo. Yeah, you ever seen a panda bear eat sugar? They chew on that thing forever. If I had a sugar cane in my hand, I'd have to chew on that thing for weeks to get a couple teaspoons of sugar out of it. And it's full and full of fiber. And so, why is this important? Well, our bodies evolved for the most part in this kind of an environment where, now, let's look at the other stuff that was salt. Salt was a little bit difficult to come by as well, but you'd find it in rocks and especially if you live near the sea. Fat is fat, super hard to come by. Not really. Every animal that you killed had lots of fat and lots of protein. Sugar was very, very difficult to come by. Now, today it's not. Like you said, Adam, almost every processed food has added sugar. There's a reason why we crave it. It's an easy energy source. It probably came along with certain nutrients that we needed as well. So, again, if you're in nature and you see the random fruit and you eat it, now you're getting some vitamin C along with it. So, we evolved to have these really strong mechanisms to crave it because it was nature, excuse me, because it wasn't very plentiful. So, we would seek it out. Now, you combine that with modern life and you have a bit of a problem. Now, there are lots of studies that have been done on sugar. Now, here's the deal with studies, okay? Context makes a big difference. So, most of these studies that we're gonna talk about are in the context of a high calorie diet. Right, and this is the case that some of the fitness professionals will make, that it's just, it's a lesser evil when you are in a calorie, and I think this is very clear. Yeah, if everybody in America was in a caloric deficit, then we'd be less worried about things like sugar. Show me a high calorie, excuse me, a high sugar, lower calorie, adequate protein and fat diet. And you're getting all the nutrients required. So, okay, a high sugar diet, it's almost always a high calorie diet. Almost always, unless you're sick or, it's very, very easy. So, okay, but I do wanna be clear. Again, most of these studies are done in the context of a high calorie diet. Some of these studies compared high sugar, high calorie diet to low sugar, high calorie diet, just to see the difference. And of course, nutritional studies are notoriously difficult because they tend to be observational, they tend to be based off of surveys. So you have to look at a lot of them and then you have to look at populations of people to kind of pull out the truth. And consistently, what we start to see across the board is that a high sugar diet, probably not good for you. So I think we should go down kind of a list of things that studies have shown that high sugar diets kind of contribute to. Number one, they cause weight gain. Now, of course, you need to eat more calories than you're burning in order to gain body fat. But again, I'm gonna go back to what I said before, eating a lot of sugar typically results in eating a lot of calories. In fact, I learned this when I was younger. You know, when I was younger, trying to put on muscle and I didn't really understand nutrition super well, all I understood at this point was, gotta eat more, gotta eat more calories. It was, I thought I had discovered a hack. How can I get more calories? I'm eating so much food and I'm not gaining any weight. I would seek out sugary foods cause I knew that like after I ate a big meal, for example, and I felt full and stuffed, I'm like, I gotta eat more. I'm not gaining any weight. I knew I could reach for the high sugary dish of whatever, ice cream, dessert, candy. You always got room for dessert, right? Yes, because it made me wanna eat more. And studies show this, studies show that sugar has a positive effect on hunger. In other words, it increases hunger for most people. And again, think of yourself when you're eating a big family dinner, even if you're stuffed, sweet dessert, typically, you know, gets the appetite to be stimulated. It's just funny that that gets like refuted that, you know, it could promote like cravings. Like we just, if you ask anybody if sugar, after you eat sugar, if it actually promotes, you know, the desire to then keep eating even if it's something small, you just have, I know personally, like so many clients that I've trained, I mean, this has been a problem. It's something that just introduces the idea that, you know, at this timeframe, like I eat, you know, something sugary and now it all of a sudden sparks this desire for more. Well, here's an easy test for all of the fitness people that are listening right now that, you know, already measure away, track food and love doing all that, you know, put this to the test, measure out oatmeal and berries and equal amount of calories, eat that for breakfast one morning, then the next morning get up and have eggs and bacon with the same calorie intake, and then tell me how you feel two hours later from both those meals. It's a really simple test to see what happens. And although we could make the case that the oatmeal and berries may be more valuable to you or from a size of portions, you could eat more of it in relation to the bacon and whole eggs, but watch what happens over the next two hours. Like, and this was something that I remember happening to me as I was trying to cut for a show. Like one of the best things I ever did was switch over to a high fat breakfast instead of having that, because that was like a staple for me for like most of my fitness career was oatmeal, oatmeal, berries and a whey protein scoop was like my breakfast forever. And I would be starving two hours later. Now, for somebody who was trying to bulk and build, I use that as a strategy. Like this was a great way for me to promote wanting to eat again less than two hours later where I put another meal down. But for the majority of people, most people are trying to lean out or lose body fat. It's not an ideal breakfast, you know, for those reasons because it does, it promotes hunger, it makes me wanna eat again two hours later. Now here's something else, and I think this may be one of the biggest nails in the coffin for sugar. And that's that if you are going to drink a drink that contains calories, for the most part it's a high sugar drink. There's very few drinks out there that are a high protein or high fat drink that people tend to over consume. You know what I'm saying? That would be hard. Maybe a milkshake, you know, but that's also a lot of sugar too. Yeah, you know, but a high sugary drink, first off studies show they don't curb any appetite. So you could drink, you know, 250 calories of sugar. Absolutely. The appetite has not been curbed. Now if you drink a 250 calorie drink that's full of fat or protein, you start to notice some appetite curbing. But not with sugary drinks. And I would say that's probably the biggest problem is our consumption of sugary beverages, sodas and juices. Again, the vast majority of high calorie drinks that are out there. Too quick, too easy. Our sugar, right. Here's the other thing, high fructose consumption has even been shown to cause potentially cause leptin resistance. Now leptin is an important, you know, hormone in the body that tells the body, hey, we need to stop eating. Well, you start to become resistant to leptin. You start to get this hunger signal that's a little bit haywire. And now your signals don't match what your body actually needs or wants. And so you just start eating a lot more. A high sugar diet, high sugar, high calorie diet has also been shown to cause more visceral body fat than other types of higher calorie diets. Visceral body fat is that body fat that's around your organs. It's the bad inflammatory type. And sugar, you know, a couple of studies suggest that sugar can contribute to more visceral body fat than other, you know, types of, you know, components in your food. How about heart disease? Studies are pretty clear on this. There was one study, they took 30,000 people and they found that those who consume 17 to 21% of their calories from added sugar had a 38% greater risk of heart disease, which is a huge, huge jump. Yeah, it's insane. And you know, again, back to the sugary drink, a 16 ounce can of sodas, 52 grams of sugar. Adam, how many grams of sugar would you want your clients to eat, typically, when you'd work with them? That's about it. You're looking at it like, especially coming from some of that, it all depends on if it's coming from fruit, right? So I always allow a little bit more leeway for somebody who is consuming it in fruit. So I'm gonna look at that. Like, are we getting it outside of fruit or are you getting it with that? And that's just purely because of the fiber intake that you're gonna get from that. It's not that that cancels it out. It just, it has more health benefits than just pure sugar from like a beverage drink. But yeah, I want them under 70 grams a day. And if you're getting 50 of it from a single drink, it doesn't give you room to have any healthy fruit for the day either. Berries are also way more satiating. They've got fiber, you gotta eat them. You're not just drinking them. Juice would be closer to like a sugary soda in terms of its effect on the body and appetite and all that stuff. Now does American Heart Association have they, cause they obviously kind of changed their stance about cholesterol, you know, being like the major source for heart disease. Now, have they swayed it a little bit more and looked into sugar? Yeah, no. While sugar, they still consider it to be something that you wanna generally avoid. You know, it's kind of across the board. Even low fat proponents, vegans who typically have lower protein and fat in their diets, they all typically, there's only one diet I've ever heard of that's a high sugar diet and that's the fruitetarian diet. You guys ever heard of this? Oh yeah, yeah. Which is terrible, like what a terrible idea. It's obviously not super popular because I think the people who've tried it have had major. Yeah, easy go from that to breathetarian and then it's death. And then they're tired of it. Who's the guy that was famous for that? He looked terrible. Then he just died recently. Oh, there was a guy that. Yeah, there was a guy that did that. You guys know Steve Jobs tried that for a second, right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, he tried that for a quick second. Right before he died, right? I don't know if it was right before. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, I don't know, but it might've been right before he got his pancreatic cancer, which. Well, I know right now you're going through all the things and listing off like the science to support it and I think that's important. So people don't think we're just pulling things out of our ass, but you know, personally, for me, this really doesn't come down to, I don't need to see the studies. I've trained enough clients to see this in real life, to see the struggle that people have. And I have a lot of empathy because I come from this. I was raised in a house that we had captain crunch and fruity pebbles and things like that for breakfast every single morning. And if it wasn't that. Did you see that cinnamon toast crunch that now has churro cinnamon toast crunch? No, I didn't. My mind was blown. I'm sorry. It's only derailing this. So, or I had donuts or I had a stack of pancakes buried in syrup. Like that was, I mean, I ate that every day of my life for probably 20 years of my life. And then when I got into adulthood and had to fend for myself, it was like ego waffles and syrup or cereal for breakfast. And because I was a skinny kid who couldn't put body fat or muscle on, I thought nothing of it. I'm not fat. Why can't I have donuts? And that's how I feel the messaging when fitness professionals present that it's like. I'm lean. Look, yeah, I can be fit. I eat sugar, I do these things. And the reality is that when you're 20 years old, like I was when I thought the same way too, I thought I was invincible to these things. And now I look back at almost 40 years old and a completely different job where I'm sitting mostly throughout the day, which I would think that I probably relate more to my clients now than what I did 20 years ago. 20 years ago, I was a kid who was not only training clients eight to 10 hours a day. I was wakeboarding, snowboarding, playing basketball. I mean, my activity level, I was moving on a low day 15,000 steps of walking and then in addition to that exercise, like the amount of calories that my body was burning. Yeah, I could get away with four or five donuts a day. I could get away with a bag of candy or Ben and Jerry's ice cream every single night. And so then I justified that. And what was really bad about that messaging is you tell that to a client, which most trainers know that your average client is not 20 years old. Your average client is probably 35 to 55, middle age, need to lose weight, have sedentary lifestyles, and then you're promoting a message like that. It's a terrible message to send to them because they're already looking for justification on that why they should be able to do those things. And part of that wanting that justification is because they still struggle with addiction. And just because on a physiological level and with the studies and with the science shows of what cocaine does inside of your body and what sugar does to your body, doesn't mean that somebody mentally and behavioral speaking cannot be as addictive or more addicted to something. And look, at the end of the day, it all boils down to the individual because for some individuals, sugar is far more addictive than cocaine. Look, I've had clients who've done both cocaine and sugar. I've done both. I had no problem stopping the cocaine. I've got no problem not doing cocaine. It's not a problem for me. It really isn't. It's not like you need it before breakfast. Not having sugar though is still a problem for me at 38 years old. It's something that I have to consistently think about and I've got to reign in. And when I allow it in and I justify, hey, I'm a fit trainer, I can go have a three scoop waffle cone ice cream or I can go have a bag of candy. What I always notice is the next day I want more. It is way crazy. Yeah, it's crazy. And then all of a sudden fruit starts tasting less good and I start craving more and more of those. And I'm very aware. So I know as a trainer that my clients are not that in tune with their body. Most clients are not so aware that as soon as they eat something, they notice if their autoimmune issues flare up, they notice if they have poor sleep or lower energy levels or an inflamed gut from it. They don't notice those things. And that's why they hire people like us to help them make those connections so they realize that. So when I think about my own addiction, struggles with sugar and I'm unbelievably aware of it and still struggle with it, it would be naive of me to think that the majority and the average consumer or listener doesn't battle with this all the time and may not even realize that they're battling with this all the time. And one thing I want to comment on, you said how you were a skinny kid and so you thought it wasn't a problem. Now, physical displays of poor health like obesity, they can be relatively accurate at determining whether or not someone's health is, especially when obesity starts to get really out of hand, predicting somebody's health. But here's the thing, a sizable percentage of people who die from heart disease and cancer were never overweight. Okay, so keep that in mind. It's not the, just because you're not overweight does not mean that you're, you could be doing damage to your body. Again, a sizable percentage. I forgot what the exact number was, but it's, I mean, I know it's millions of people who don't have these signs of being overweight and being heavy. Part of why I think I'm so fired up about this conversation right now is obviously that we've seen recent post relating to this. And this is also very, very personal besides what it is to me. It's also my sister was hospitalized because she was hyperglycemic, because she lived off of fucking candy and cereal for 20 years of her life. And she was rushed to the ER and she's sitting in the hospital today still right now and she's still battling things that the doctors can't figure out what the fuck is wrong with her. Now I can't pinpoint that exactly to sugar. I can't prove any doctors that is, they can't prove it's not either, but I can tell you that we both were raised on the same diet and ate that way all the way through our young years and into adulthood. And she has all kinds of health issues and autoimmune issues just like I do. And the only culprit that I could think of is the way we were eating as kids and then as adults. So- And the human body just did not evolve. And neither one of us were fat. Yeah, yeah. Neither one of us were fat. No, you're both naturally skinny. Yes. And weird stuff happens. Look, there's studies that show that sugar is linked to acne. Now I know some people like that's not true. No, there's studies. I found one that showed that they took 2,300 teens and those that consumed added sugar had a 30% greater risk of developing acne. Now as a trainer, when I would have clients reduce heavily processed food consumption or even when I just have them reduce added sugar consumption. Because sometimes, now my ultimate goal as a trainer was to get clients to reduce their heavily processed food consumption. That was always the number one. But sometimes that was a bit difficult. I had to break it down into smaller pieces. So then I would tell my client, okay, we're not gonna try to reduce heavily processed foods. Let's just try to reduce sugar. Now I knew naturally that would help quite a bit. But there's foods you could buy that are heavily processed that are low in sugar also. Not as much, but they're still there. And inevitably I would start to see, they would notice themselves some weird things happening. Aside from weight loss, one of the ones, the common ones was their skin would clear up. The skin is a wonderful window into the inside of your body. And you start to see it start to clear up. Now with a functional medicine doctor kind of trace that back to an autoimmune issue, like more so, like with the microbiome, like would they look into that in terms of like how, you know, the consumption of foods like sugar would affect and respond accordingly after that. Not sure, but I do know that consuming lots of sugar does feed bacteria that causes things like tooth decay. So this is why sugar causes. We know that is a fact. Yeah, we know that. We know that. So why wouldn't it feed bad bacteria in your gut also? It'll feed all bacteria. Right. All bacteria that consume. So if you have, so to Justin's point, if you have, and this is, I notice this myself, right? So my sister has endometriosis. That's what she battles with. That's her autoimmune disease. And it sucks because we don't have a lot of stuff around to help her with that. And then I have psoriasis, also something that we don't have a lot to really help. We have more information probably. And it's something that is less detrimental, I think, than what my poor sister has. But it's very clear when I have, you know, sit down and I have something like, in fact, the gummy bears I mentioned that I bought on the plane, I didn't finish them. One, right away, I felt something in my gut. I'm like, you know what? Yeah, I wanted to keep shoving them in my mouth because they taste good going down. But I was like, yeah, I'll pay for it later on. Within two hours, almost always, of me having something, enjoying some ice cream or doing those things, and this is what keeps me today from it. So it's almost like the autoimmune has now become a blessing in disguise. I try and look at it like that, even though I fucking hate it, but it'll flare up my psoriasis. I mean, within two hours, I'll be itching at it right away. Oh, interesting. Yeah, like clockwork. So 100%, I know it has to be going in there and feeding that bacteria and making it worse and upsetting my gut, which then expresses itself through my skin. And the first sign of it for me is just the irritation of it. It makes me want to itch it and then the next day it'll be scabbier and stuff. So, you know, and that's just how my body expresses it. When it comes to autoimmune, it could be so many different ways that- It shows up in so many forms, right? Well, actually, if you look up autoimmune diseases and sugar, you do find casual links to increased symptoms, to more symptoms, to having worse issues with most autoimmune issues. If you go and work with doctors or you work with functional medicine doctors and you have certain autoimmune issues, I don't think a single one will recommend a high sugar diet. Almost all of them will tell you to reduce your sugar consumption. And you're saying functional. The problem is a lot of regular doctors don't tell you shit. Well, that's why I brought up functional because they're not even gonna do that kind of work. No, I was going to a dermatologist for years. We never touch diet. And the vitamin D advice that Sal, you gave me years ago, one of the best things that ever happened to my psoriasis and cutting back on my sugar is the second best thing that's ever happened. And when we went on the ketogenic diet, my psoriasis was some of the best it had ever been. So that's the things that sucks is that we have doctors out there that are always looking on ways to try and address what's happening but not addressing the root cause that caused it. And so unless you're seeing a functional medicine doctor, a lot of them aren't gonna point you in that direction. No, no. Type II diabetes, which is an obvious one. That's an obvious one that sugar, definitely. Now, to be clear, any high calorie diet for too long can definitely increase risk of type II diabetes regardless of what that diet is. That being said, when all factors are controlled, sugar on its own is more strongly connected to type II diabetes. And it's more closely connected to what they sometimes call type III diabetes, which is Alzheimer's or impairments of the brain. In fact, when you take, this is widely documented, you take some of them with Alzheimer's and dementia and you put them on a low sugar diet or you take it a step further and you put them on a very, very low carbohydrate diet, a more ketogenic diet, their cognition improves. They actually show lower symptoms of their Alzheimer's or dementia. Again, I mean, I think all the things we're pointing out point out to the fact that we just didn't evolve with all this sugar and there was a policy not that long ago. One thing you'll notice about, if you look at the back of your food labels, your high sugar foods, obviously typically the sugar comes in the form of high fructose corn syrup. So soda doesn't say sugar, it says high fructose corn syrup. If you buy bread, that's got added sugar, high fructose corn syrup. How do you get sugar alcohols? Candy, high fructose corn syrup. You wanna ask yourself, why are we using this form of sugar over other forms of sugar? We subsidize it. It comes from corn. Corn is a subsidized crop, meaning taxpayer dollars go to it. To bring the price down, making it extremely cheap. A long time ago, the US government considered corn to be a staple crop and thought it would be a phenomenal idea to keep the price low by having everybody pay taxes towards a weird rationale, right? Bad math, but whatever. Let's keep it down. Let's prop this crop up and our sugar stopped coming from sugar cane and actually decimated the sugar cane market which Hawaii lost that market quite a bit because we started to just use high fructose corn syrup because corn became so cheap. So sugar in general. And before that, we were actually propping up sugar also. So sugar is cheap and plentiful and very easy way to make something more palatable, which is one of the main reasons why you see it exploding. Just dusted on everything. It's in everything. It's just an easy way to make something taste a little more, a little bit better. Salt will do that a little bit as well, but sugar really is one of the key drivers. It's a massive industry that we also have to understand that when you see studies that try and counter, like counter the message of sugars like cocaine, who do you think it's coming from? If you, sugar is making so much money in the world that nobody wants, no companies or brands want to see that go away. In fact, you're starting to see this too. I don't think we've ever discussed this on the show that I think that the consumer should be aware of what's called nutrient splitting on labels. And sugar can come in so many different forms. I mean, you'll see corn syrup, fructose, you'll see regular sugar, you'll see cane sugar, dextrose, you'll see like there's- Evaporated cane juice. Right, and so they do, and if you ever wonder why you see this on a label, this is a total manipulation to fool the consumer into thinking that there's not that much added sugar into this. Coconut crystals. They nutrient split it all, so then they can put something else in front of the label because the way a label is designed is it's put in the ingredients, it's put in the order of what is the most in that food that you're, or that drink that you're drinking. So let's say they want to add 30 grams of sugar, what they could do is put evaporated cane juice, molasses, and then sugar, and so in that order. So you think, oh, sugar's the third ingredient when in fact it's been- Well, not only that, but then they can put something else, like real fruit, which let's say is, real fruit is actually, let's say 12 grams, and then they, so they can put it first, real fruit, and then the three afterwards are three types of sugars that add up to less than 12 grams, so therefore they can put the real fruit first. So when you read the label, you're like, oh, look, sugar's the fifth ingredient. They can bring the grand total down? Exactly. So that's called nutrient splitting, and they do this on ingredients labels as a strategy because the average consumer is now savvy that, oh, I shouldn't just have- They're aware, they're just looking right for the sugar grams. Right, and so be aware when you're looking at an ingredient label, when you look at all the different types of sugars, there can be eight, 10, 15 different forms, and they can put all those different forms in a product, and they only have to, they're measuring them individually so they can put them deeper into the label so it looks like there's not as much sugar, but if you were really to combine them all, the weight of it would probably make it the number one thing. Wow, so that's- That's crazy. It's extremely calm. Well, odds are against us. Well, one of the climbing reasons why more and more people in modern countries die is cancer. Cancer now, one out of every three people will die of cancer, so it's now, it's climbing, and it's actually one of the higher ones. Part of the reason is we're all living longer, so the longer you live, higher chances of getting cancer. The other reasons are quite, aren't so clear, but we do know there's a very, very clear connection between obesity and cancer, and then diet and lifestyle and cancer. In fact, some scientists would say that about 72 or more percent of all cancers can be prevented through lifestyle and good diet and from not being obese. But that all being said, sugar on its own is also being connected to many, many forms of cancer. In fact, when you're getting an image to see if you have cancer, do you know what they inject you with? Sugar. Oh, really? Yeah, they want it, it lights up, because cancer cells are hungry cells. They burn lots of energy. Is that really what they do? I did not know that. And they're very, very hungry, right? They burn up lots of energy, but they're also incapable, most cancer cells. There's some that can actually do this, but the vast majority of them can't use ketones for energy. So they'll either use amino acids, or they'll use sugar or glucose. Wow, that's interesting. So if you go in and go get tested for something like that, I think they also tell you to be fasted for 12 or 24 hours before. So that's why they're trying to get you into ketosis, and then they throw sugar in you to see it get sucked up real quick by the cancer. It lights up. Oh, wow. I did not know that makes sense though, now. Yep, yep. So I think it's called the Warburg effect. If I'm not mistaken, maybe Doug can correct me, but this is the phenomena that they discover with cancer cells where if you deplete them of sugar, that oftentimes they'll shrink and sometimes they'll die. So in the context of a high calorie, high inflammatory diet, poor health, high sugar in all of that makes it far worse because now you're giving high octane fuel to cancer cells. So it has been connected, again, to many forms of cancer. It is complex. So just eating a high sugar diet might not increase your risk of cancer necessarily, but when you combine it with other factors, studies show that it's probably gonna cause some problems. Here's one a lot of people didn't know. It can accelerate skin aging. So there's something called, let's see, AGE is the acronym. I can't remember what it stands for. I'm trying to look it up right now. AGE stands for Advanced Glycation and Products. Okay, so these are compounds, I'm looking it up right now, are compounds formed by reactions between sugar and protein in the body and they're suspected to play a key role in skin aging. So believe it or not. So consuming a diet high in refined carbs and sugar leads to more of these things, which can cause your skin to age faster. So they've done studies where they've compared women who consume lots of refined carbohydrates and sugars to women who consume a high protein, lower carbohydrate diet, and they find that there's a more of a wrinkled appearance in the women who consume more sugar. Now I like to bring that one up because we're all so aesthetically focused. So sometimes I'm talking to a 30 year old in the cancer and heart disease stuff, they're like, eh, whatever, make sure it gives you more wrinkles, wait a minute. I look good now though. Yeah, let me pay attention to that one. It could also may increase cellular aging. So this is something that's being debated right now in scientific circles, but they've done studies to show, so you know what telomeres are? Okay, so telomeres are protective caps on the end of your chromosomes and as you age, they get shorter and shorter. And so scientists can, they can relatively accurately predict someone's age by looking at the length of a telomere, but you can make them age slower by having a better lifestyle. So they can see that, oh, this person's 30, but their telomeres show that they're like 20 and their lifestyle's healthy, they eat very healthy, they exercise, they get good sleep. I thought those were the cartoons with the little antennas on top of their little, their purple little cartoons with the antennas. That's what I thought that was. Telotubbies? Oh, that's what it is, telotubbies, that's what it is. No. You can tell by your telotubbies. No, I know that people listening were thinking the same thing as I was. So they showed, there was a study that looked at over 5,000 people and it showed that regularly drinking sugar, sweetened beverages was associated with shorter telomere length and premature cellular aging. Another study showed that each daily 20 ounce serving of a sugar, sweetened soda equated to 4.6 additional years of aging, independent of other variables. This is just based on the telomeres. So speeds up the aging process in the body. Of course, we know about energy swings. How do you guys feel when you eat a lot of sugar? Is there something that distinct that happens with me? Spike than a major crash. Every time. It's very distinct with me. If I eat- It's like an hour dump for me. Totally. I'll feel okay and then I'll want to fall asleep. And that has to do with the blood sugars up and down. If you ever, by the way, if you're a parent, you know exactly what I'm talking about. You ever watch your kid eat a lot of sugar? Yeah, having me eat a stack of pancakes with a ton of syrup and then, you know, like they'll play outside and all of a sudden it's like. Isn't it funny that we as parents that no parent will contest this, right? No parent will ever say, I let my kid have a big old piece of cake or I gave him an ice cream. And there was no change in the behavior. And there was no change in the behavior. No parent will say that. They're an angel. And so yet we have that in front of us, but then we just ignore it in ourselves because we're older than we are. We try and rationalize it later with other studies and other things out there that'll help to promote the fact that I still want to donate. And the reality of it is the reason why I think we see that in children and it's so clear and nobody debates it is because a couple of reasons. One, they're so young, so they're probably nowhere near as adapted to it as we are. And then they're a 10th of the size of us as adults. And so, you know, when we give them one cookie or. Yeah, like a cookie that an adult would eat. Right, you know what I'm saying? Think about that for a second. If they're less than a quarter of your size, most of your kids are even less than that, right? They're a 10th of your size. That's like you having 10x that and tell me you wouldn't feel a difference. Go have it, so go have a gallon of ice cream and tell me how you feel afterwards. Yeah, and the other part of it is kids just display their emotions very outwardly. Whereas if you're an adult and you start to feel kind of cranky, you might not let people know, but little kids let you know. And that's what I notice with my kids. They eat a big sugary meal. After about an hour or two hours later, they're just irritable. You know what I mean? They're just kind of a pain in the ass. And I know it's like they're tired. Their blood sugar crashed. They're not feeling good. This is especially when they were really, really little. I used to hate it. We'd go to parties and, you know, of course people would feed them all kinds of, you know, candy and sugar and cake and, you know, cupcakes and whatever. And then it came time to go. And then you go, and then you know, in the car they'd fall asleep and you'd wake them up and they'd be pissed off. And it was like, oh, what a nightmare. Every single time. Justin's also been somebody who's shared. And Justin, you're not the only parent that have shared this with me, where, you know, first kid comes along and they're really strict about diet. They, I'm not gonna let my kid have sugar. I make everything. Second kid comes around. Little looser. Little looser, whatever. And then five, eight, 10 years later, they can see a distinct difference in their behaviors with their food. And Justin's confirmed this both with Ethan and Everett before that this happened to you. And you're probably the fifth parent that I personally have talked to that's friends of mine that did something very similar and they all are in agreeance that there's a difference in their eating behaviors and they both attribute, or they all attribute it to, you know, the way they were as parents with the way they fed their kids. Well, if you look at like mood disorders, like ADHD, if you look at depression and other forms of disorders, anxiety, you can, you'll find studies that have links between diet and those things. And typically a high sugar diet causes those things to be worse. You see more symptoms in them. There was one study I read a long time ago on children with ADD where they had them, they eliminated sugar out of their diet. And they saw pronounced positive effect in the children's behaviors because of the diet. Their ADD symptoms were way better. Well, depression is another one. I don't know about you guys, but it's always been one of the easiest ways for me to right away start helping clients. That's why it's one of the first go-to places that I adjust. Right away, I normally just tell them to be tighter on their sugar and then tell them to get that all from fruit. You know, say, okay, here's the deal. Like I don't want you eating any other sugars outside of fruit. So if you have a craving sweet, have some grapes or have some bear, ideally berries, things like that. And just that alone already starts to change. And adding nutrient-rich fibrous type whole foods helps to kind of slowly adjust and change the palate. So then they start craving more nutrient-dense foods. I mean, that's something that, like if I'm eating a high percentage of sugar, like how many nutrients am I really like adding into my diet? A lot of times like that's something you gotta consider. Well, sugar carbs in general, but sugars are not essential macronutrients and they typically are empty. Empty. It's just, you know, it's just calories. You don't need them. Now here's the thing. I don't wanna demonize sugar and make it this evil scary thing. Here's how I treat sugar. I treat sugar like a beer. I sometimes I'll drink a beer, but I know I'm not gonna feel super great. I'm just aware. I'm just aware of it. Like I'll enjoy it. I'm having fun, but I'm aware that this isn't really good for me and I'm probably not gonna feel- It's a treat. Nearly as sharp later on. Same thing is true for sugar. I'll have it here and there, depending on the context. If I'm at a birthday party and it's important that I enjoy a slice of pie or a cake, then I'll do it if it's a holiday, if somebody made something special. Other than that, I generally avoid it and I feel better as a result. And that's how I've also coached clients. Of course, you don't wanna demonize things because it can cause a bit of a, you can get what's, you know, like a backlash or you can get, it can actually be the opposite where if you scare someone so much, then they do the restrict binge type of thing. I think it's really just about awareness. We're not, yeah, I don't look at it as demonizing. I look at it as not advocating for sugar to be a part of my everyday meal. That's silly. That's why I like the beer, the beer and AA analogy so much because I agree with you. It's like alcohol to me. That's not like something I'm demonizing. We all drink a beer. We all have alcohol occasionally, but are very aware it's not serving our body and very aware of like it creeping up and becoming a habit or a behavior. If my once in a while beer turn into a beer every single day and then turn into two beers every day, then three, I have a fucking problem. And I would look at consuming sugar the same way, not demonizing, not saying you shouldn't or can't have it and avoid it at a birthday party. No, enjoy those things, but also be aware if it's something that you find yourself gravitating towards every single day and multiple times a day, you have a problem. And there's a powerful pool there. Well, it can take people by surprise. There is because unlike alcohol and cocaine and these things that have been demonized for long and we know drugs are bad. And there's barriers to get those things. Right, those things, like people don't look at, if somebody was, like I said, the thing about the movie theater, when you're in the movie theater, like everybody has got a bag of candy. Oh my gosh. And we're all stuffing our faces and it's socially accepted. It's not a big deal. I mean, if you saw everybody doing that with cocaine, it would be fucking weird, right? So that's where you got to be careful with it, is that it's something that is so socially accepted that it's very easy to justify it and keep doing it. And that's why when you're a fitness professional and you're sharing your posts that have all these treats and foods, it's just a poor message for the general population. Since a majority of my career has been spent trying to help my clients find ways to eliminate the amount of sugar and replace it with more nutrient-dense foods, I think it's just a bad thing to be promoting just because somebody else has come out and been more of an alarmist about it. You have professionals that wanna try and counter that, but who are you really helping by doing that? Are you really helping the people that are, the people you're really speaking to and you think you're helping, don't need your help. They already have, they're already counting their macros. You got the discipline, all the things in place, they're trying. They're already competitors or macro counters and weighing their food and has figured all that stuff out and you're telling them, hey, it's okay to have the occasional ice cream cone or candy bar and they're not a big deal. But the rest of the people that are trying to piece this all together and figure out what's going on, saying that you just justify their bad behaviors that they already have. Yeah, and it's not helping anyone. And I'll say this, reducing sugar in your diet is a very easy way to make a large positive impact on your nutrition because what it tends to do is it tends to reduce your heavily processed food consumption. So that tends to automatically happen when you're counting sugar. You tend to, as a result of those, you also tend to eat less calories. Now I'm not saying there isn't more work that needs to be done. All I'm saying is if you want something simple that tends to have large effects, like one single step that has large effects, really reducing your sugar intake can help. It's one of the more successful, simple steps you can take. And with that, go to mindpumpfree.com and download our guides. They're all totally free. You can also find the three of us on Instagram. You can find Justin at Mind Pump Justin. You can find me at Mind Pump Sal and Adam at Mind Pump Adam.