 Welcome to the Dr. Gendry Podcast. You've heard me say it before, but it bears repeating. Sugar is one of the worst things for your health. Yet it's hiding in almost all the foods we regularly consume. In fact, the average American eats about 153 pounds of sugar every year, whether they know it or not. For reference, that's about the size of a baby giraffe. That's a lot of sugar. Sadly our health is paying the price, but the good news is there is something you can do about it. In just a moment, I'm going to share some of my best tips for kicking a sugar addiction no matter how severe. I'll also expose the other health enemy when it comes to sweeteners and what to use instead. So don't go away. With the information I'm about to share, you can truly have your cake and eat it too. Welcome back. Alright, let's talk about the problem with sugar. Let's start with the basics. What is sugar? Well, sugar is a, we think of it as a carbohydrate. A sugar molecule, glucose, is a sugar molecule. Lactose and milk is a sugar molecule. Fructose is a sugar molecule, but most of us, when we think of sugar, are actually talking about sucrose. Table sugar. Sucrose is half glucose and half fructose. Now, many people now dread high fructose corn syrup. In fact, most high fructose corn syrup is about 45% glucose and 55% fructose. But plain old table sugar is 50-50 fructose and glucose. Now, there's a lot of misconceptions about, oh, fructose is good. It doesn't work the same way glucose does. If you've read the energy paradox, or for that matter, if you've read any of my books, you know that fructose may be actually more mischievous than glucose in terms of causing fatty liver, in terms of causing elevated cholesterol, and we'll get to that in a minute. But the point is, sugar is sugar is sugar. Now, most people have pretty much made the connection between sugar consumption, drinking, sugary drinks, and obesity. But what most people still haven't figured out is the effect sugar has on your gut microbiome. The gut microbiome, part of it, loves sugar. But unfortunately, it's actually the bad bacteria in your gut. And the bad bacteria in your gut, and certainly other fungal species like Candida, thrive on sugar. On the other hand, the other good bacteria in your gut really don't do well with simple sugars. Instead, they like complex sugar molecules fiber. And that's bunches of sugar molecules all joined together that are very hard for us to break apart, but are very easy for these gut bacteria to ferment. Now, Candida, which I mentioned before, thrives in a sugar environment. And you may remember that I recently did a science experiment to show you how that works. You can actually find it here on my YouTube channel. And we actually fed sugar to yeast, Candida, and you can watch what happens. And it's great must-see television if I do say so myself. You may remember that apocrates and I say all disease in the gut begins in the gut. And you begin to realize just how serious this can be by adding that much sugar into your gut. Now, I've written about this before. And I've actually written an editorial for thrive.com looking at the effect of World War Two rationing. Many of you are aware that during World War Two, the United States and many other countries rationed sugar and flour during the war to support our troops. And during the war with sugar and flour rationing, diabetes plummeted around the world in the United States and England and Denmark. And heart disease plummeted around the world for five years during World War Two, all because sugar and flour was rationed. And let's not mince words. Anytime you grind up into a fine powder like wheat, you actually produce sugar molecules that are more quickly absorbed than table sugar. In fact, most of you know that white bread has a glycemic index of 100. Whereas sucrose, table sugar, has a lower glycemic index than white bread. And when my patients tell me they don't eat sugar, but they're having bread, I reassure them that there are four teaspoons of sugar in each slice of bread. And so when you're having a sandwich, you're inadvertently having eight teaspoons of sugar, even though it's not appearing on the label. And we'll get to reading labels in just a second. Sugar also takes a huge toll on your immune system. And most of us don't know of a very famous study done by Linus Pauling in the 1950s that shows that any sugar consumption, including drinking a glass of orange juice, suppresses your white blood cell function, their ability to eat bacteria and viruses by 70% for up to six hours after you had that healthy orange juice with its vitamin C, or you had that piece of bread, or you had that pastry, all of which were tried in that experiment. So sugar is, you know, what a whammy. Now, don't even get me started on the effect of heart health. Over and over again, we're told about the dangers of saturated fats and of cholesterol. But in fact, most cholesterol is manufactured in our body. And most cholesterol, most elevated cholesterol in my practice come from people's sugar consumption. Sugar is converted into the first form of fat, which is triglycerides. Triglycerides in turn are carried by cholesterol. So the more sugar you eat, the more triglycerides you make. And the more triglycerides you make, the higher your cholesterol goes. And there are many, many, many studies showing that it's your triglyceride level that has the biggest impact on you and your heart in terms of developing coronary artery disease. And that's why anyone in my office knows I'm a really mean person. And I want their triglycerides to be 40 to 50. And the national standard says that 150 is absolutely normal. And I can tell you that national standard was put there because if you have a triglycerides of 150, I guarantee you that I will have to put you on a statin drug to lower your cholesterol. So it's kind of, oh, a triglyceride level of 150 is normal. I guess I need statin drugs because my cholesterol is so high. And imagine my patient's shock when we lower their triglycerides by removing their fruits and sugars and other sources of sugar from their diet, that their cholesterol plummets just by getting rid of the sugar in their diet. Now, as anyone knows, I'm a, I guess, a recovered sugarholic. Maybe you never recover, but the effect of sugar as an addictive substance is incredibly well known and well studied. We know that studies on rats, rats will choose sugar over both heroin and cocaine if they get the opportunity to press a lever. And they will always go for the sugar hit instead of heroin and cocaine and think about that for a little while. Okay, so getting off a sugar is pretty doggone hard. One of the reasons it's so hard is because our tongue is two thirds of the surface is sugar receptors. They're actually sweet receptors, not sugar receptors. So they're looking for sweetness. Why? Because quite frankly, we evolved from great apes, great apes only gained weight during fruit season, and fruit season only occurred once a year, usually in the late summer and early fall. And even in the jungle, fruit does not ripen year-round. There are always dry seasons or rainy seasons or cold seasons when fruit isn't produced. So great apes only gain weight during fruit season. So it would be advantageous for us to have sweet receptors on our tongue to make us literally want to eat sweet things that had sugar content. And that sugar content, by the way, was fructose. And we recently had a podcast guest who wears a continuous glucose monitor and has recently been shocked with how healthy fruit spikes his blood sugar. And I see this all the time in my patients. I see it all the time in their blood work in triglycerides. And fruit is just another form of sugar that will spike your blood sugar. I guarantee it. Okay. So we got to get rid of sugar, but sugar is hiding everywhere. So you got to look at labels. And there are lots of sugar disguises, things like brown rice syrup, glucose, fructose, agave. These are all other words for sugar. Now, there's an even more important trick for decoding food labels. As you remember, the food labels were manipulated to hide the sugar content. And this was done at the behest of big agriculture. So most people, including most of my patients, look at the back of a package. And they look at grams of sugar. And quite frankly, they're often quite low on a lot of the products that I tell people are safe. But you have to actually look at, first of all, serving size. Secondly, you have to look at total carbohydrates. Total carbohydrates tells you how much sugar is in that portion. Now, you take away the fiber, which is the next line right below that. And so you take total carbohydrates minus the fiber. And that will actually tell you how many grams of sugar are in that serving size. Now, for fun, there's four grams of carbohydrate in a teaspoon of sugar. So take whatever number you arrive at, total carbohydrates minus fiber, and then divide it by four. And that'll tell you how many teaspoons of sugar is in that product. And when you do that, you will be shocked with where the sugar is coming from. And when I sit down with my patients and we go through their meals and what they're eating, we always find the source of the sugars they're eating. And many of them are apoplectic because it doesn't taste sweet. And they were looking at that sugar on the label, not total carbohydrates. And once we show them that, and once they change and get that out of their diet, not only does their triglycerides plummet, their insulin levels plummet, their pre-diabetes or diabetes goes away, and bonus, their cholesterol numbers plummet. And the good cholesterol goes up. It's win, win, win. All right, I'm gonna say it again. I said it in my first book, I say it in every book, please give fruit the boot. Fruit has been hybridized, genetically modified to have more and more and more sugar content and to be bigger and bigger than ever before. And I've said this on nauseum. The other problem we have is we now have fruit available 365 days a year. Your genetic engineering could not imagine that a 747 can bring blueberries to Costco in January from Chile. There are no blueberries in January. They are in Chile, but you don't live in Chile. So what in the ding dong are you eating blueberries in January? And now they're the size of grapes and they've been bred for sugar content. As I go into in the upcoming book, Unlocking the Keto Code, if you got to have your berries and you want the benefits of the polyphenols in fruit, then do what I do and do reverse juicing. What's that? You get your juicer. I know you got one. It's sitting in the cupboard someplace. Buy your fruit, please buy organic. Put it in the juicer, throw away the juice, and then take the pulp, which has the fiber and the polyphenols, and mix it in your plain coconut and yogurt or mix it in your plain goat yogurt or mix it in your plain sheep yogurt or get a silicone ice cube tray, throw it in there, freeze it, pop a couple out and put it in your smoothie. Reverse juicing and please, please, please throw the juice away or give it to your worst enemy because it's pure sugar. Best advice I give any patient, retreat from sweet. If it's sweet, stay away from it. But the important thing is, so many of our foods, the sweetness is hidden. You don't taste the sweet, but the sugar is still there. So read the label. Okay, let's talk about artificial sweeteners. Now, I realize that giving up that sweet taste is incredibly difficult. After all, we're wired to find a sweet taste. And sometimes it's impossible not to be able to satisfy a sweet tooth. So that's where sugar alternatives come in. And a key point of sticking to a diet that you can live with, literally and figuratively, is to getting the right sweeteners that aren't going to do you in. But it's not quite as simple as it sounds. For years, we've had sugar alternatives that have been literally deadly to us. Things like artificial sweeteners like saccharine, aspartame, sucralose, which are particularly poison. In fact, some of you know them as sweet and low equal in splendor. We know from a Duke University study in 2007, one packet of Splenda sucralose will kill off 50% of your microbiome, one packet. That's all it took. Part of the problem is it usually kills off your good microbiome. The other problem with non-nutritive sweeteners is your brain does not know the sweet signal from a fake sugar versus real sugar. Your brain, when you taste something sweet, assumes you're eating sugar. It doesn't know any better. And so when sugar doesn't arrive in your brain, your brain literally says, wait a minute, you've been cheated. Sugar didn't come. Go back and get some more. And that's why, as you know, I was a Diet Coke addict. I drank eight Diet Cokes a day because I was always being told by my brain to go find more food. And I was 75, 70 pounds overweight thanks to the artificial sweeteners. Okay, but what about natural sugars? Those must be better for me, right? No, unfortunately, natural sugars are the same. Whether it's orange juice, coconut sugar, organic sugar. Sugar is sugar. Now, if you got to, you got to have honey. Try to have less or about a teaspoon a day. That's not much. And make it local or manuka honey. That'll be okay. Are there sweet alternatives that aren't going to kill you? Well, let's get to the good stuff. There are actually several quite safe sweeteners. And there's a really good one now that's gone to the top of my list. Two of the safest are Allulose and Monk Fruit. Now, both of them offer you that sweet taste without spiking your blood sugar. And they do so while also feeding your gut buddies with prebiotics. In fact, Allulose has now been granted a prebiotic fiber designation by the FDA. For those of you who don't know Allulose, I've touted it in the energy paradox. And it figures prominently in unlocking the keto code, my next book. Allulose is a rare sugar. It was first discovered in figs. But it's a very rare sugar. So it is a quote natural sugar. But it has no caloric value. But it's really sweet. The nice thing about Allulose is it has fiber. And I've found, and I think Kate has found as well, that Allulose works really well in baking recipes and also in ice cream recipes. It's really now my go to sweetener. But please look for non GMO Allulose. There's a lot of Allulose being produced. Most Allulose is produced from corn. It does not have any corn, lectins or corn proteins, folks, but look for non GMO. It's available. And I think you're going to like it. Now, when it comes to Monk Fruit, the Lakonto brand is really good. And I like that a lot. They also, there are several now chocolates that are sweetened with Monk Fruit. There are a couple chocolate bars coming out with Allulose. They're a little expensive right now. But stay tuned. Another great option is Inulin. Now, Inulin is the sugar in chicory. That's also probably the best prebiotic there is, just like sugar is a great product. But wherever you see Inulin, that's also a good alternative. And you can buy Inulin in bulk. It does have a sweet flavor. It's not an overwhelming sweet flavor. So you got to use a lot of Inulin if you're using it purely as a sweetener. But it gives you a great prebiotic fiber at the same time. Now, Stevia is a natural nonchloric sweetener. It unfortunately has some bitterness that has to be hidden. My favorite Stevia is Sweet Leaf, which is blended with Inulin. But there are a couple of papers that suggest even Stevia raises insulin levels. And I can assure you, you don't want to raise your Inulin levels. But please, please, please, particularly if you're into the keto movement, beware of all these keto bars, because so many of them are sweetened with sucralose. And it's often hidden in the list of ingredients. And if you see the words of sucralose, that's splendid folks. And that's the Duke University study that it's a great way to kill off your microbiome. Okay, what about the sugar alcohols, like erythritol or xylitol? Now, the problem with sugar alcohols is that they for many people can cause digestive upset, either in the form of gas and bloating, or in the form of diarrhea. It's very individual. So I don't, you know, I don't have a big problem with these as long as you're tolerant to them. xylitol originally came from the birch tree. There's now lots of other forms of xylitol. Xylitol is interesting, because it is an antibacterial for the mouth. So antibacterial may not be as good as it sounds. So again, you just have to be careful with all of these. Now, I'm not a big fan of Yakon syrup, because quite frankly, a number of my patients who are using a lot of Yakon syrup see their triglycerides kick up. Even I've seen a couple become prediabetic. Now, it may not have lectins in it. And it may be a form of inulin, but it just doesn't mean you should go crazy with these. You can find these syrups at Walmart. You can find Sunfood Sweet Yakon syrup on Amazon. But I think now there's just far better options for you. Okay, so that's how to have your cake and eat it too. But just remember, when you're using ground up flowers of any kind as wheat flour replacement. And that goes for almond flour. That goes with tapioca flour. Be careful that you're substituting one form of hidden sugar for another form of hidden sugar. And it may not taste sweet, but the sugar is still there. Okay, there's sugar in a nutshell. Time for our audience question. Allison Callahan says, Dr. Gundry, I'm not sure if this is just a fad, but I am really interested in what you think of eating insects. I keep seeing cricket based flour and I've read that it is a good source of omega three. Any insight you can provide would be greatly appreciated. Well, I actually have some cricket flour in my pantry and I've used it multiple times in making my microwave muffins as a matter of fact. I've also used it in my smoothing. So I'm not a I'm not a great fan of cricket flour, but quite frankly, it's an underutilized resource. The other interesting things about crickets, particularly, is they're a great source of a lectin binding sugar molecule called chidison. And so it's also present in shellfish by the way, but most people if you have a shellfish allergy, you're not going to react to cricket flour. I've never seen that. But it is a actually a great source of protein and it's a underutilized resource because quite frankly, crickets will eat anything and they're very good at building crickets rapidly, as anyone knows. And so as we're trying to find alternative sources for animal protein, crickets deserve our interest. So great question, Allison. Now it's time for the review of the week. Olga B, watch my rerun on healthy holiday swaps. She says thank you for another wonderful conversation, Dr. G. Kate is very nice and knowledgeable on your lectin subject. I appreciate her confidence and pace when she is talking. Hey, nice work, Kate. I'm also on healthy keto, lots of lectin-free veggies, extra virgin olive oil and greens in addition to protein foods and pastured eggs dairy-free. Love your book too. Happy Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays to you, family, and your guests. Well, thank you, Olga B. And Kate, thanks you too. We love getting new recipes for you guys. We love figuring out hacks to give you the food you love that loves you back. And why do we do that? Because I'm Dr. Gundry and Kate and we're always looking out for you. We'll see you next week. Before you go, I just wanted to remind you that you can find the show on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. Because I'm Dr. Gundry and I'm always looking out for you.