Change Your Brain Every Day - Pregnancy Cravings vs. Blood Sugar: The Science No One Talks About with Jessie Inchauspé

Episode Date: March 16, 2026

In this episode, we sit down with biochemist and bestselling author Jessie Inchauspé to explore a question that affects millions of families: how does what you eat during pregnancy shape your baby's health? Jessie explains the science of blood sugar during pregnancy, why glucose spikes matter more than most people realize, and how everyday diet choices can influence everything from maternal energy levels to a baby's long-term metabolic health. We also discuss common nutrition myths, pregnancy cravings, gestational glucose regulation, and simple strategies to keep blood sugar stable.   This conversation breaks down the latest research in a practical, empowering way—so expecting mothers (and anyone planning for pregnancy) can better understand the powerful connection between diet, metabolism, and early development.   If you've ever wondered how nutrition during pregnancy affects the next generation, this episode offers a science-backed look at what really matters.   Jessie's new book 9 Months That Count Forever: How Your Pregnancy Diet Shapes Your Baby's Future: https://www.amazon.com/Months-That-Count-Forever-Pregnancy/dp/1668219123   Thanks to our sponsors Amen Clinics: https://www.amenclinics.com BrainMD: https://brainmd.com Amen University: https://www.amenuniversity.com Change Your Brain Foundation: https://www.changeyourbrain.org Love & Logic: https://www.loveandlogic.com   Follow Daniel Instagram: http://instagram.com/doc_amen TikTok: http://tiktok.com/@docamen Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/drdanielamen   Follow Tana Instagram: http://instagram.com/tanaamen TikTok: http://tiktok.com/@tanaamen   📘 Get Dr. Daniel Amen's new book, "Change Your Brain, Change Your Pain" https://www.amazon.com/Change-Your-Brain-Pain-Emotional/dp/0063426706   📗Get Tana Amen's book, "The Relentless Courage of a Scared Child" https://www.amazon.com/dp/1400220769/?bestFormat=true&k=the%20relentless%20courage%20of%20a%20scared%20child&ref_=nb_sb_ss_w_scx-ent-pd-bk-d_de_k0_1_18&crid=17LHPEFGKIT1S&sprefix=the%20relentless%20cou  

When a baby is exposed to high glucose levels in the room, inflammation in the brain goes up. And these cells are microglia, which are in charge of pruning neurons as they take shape during pregnancy. Scientists believe that they can become overactive when there's too much inflammation in the room, and they start pruning neurons that don't actually need to be pruned. And the leading theory is that that is the reason

why we see higher rates of psychiatric disorders in babies of moms who had very high glucose levels during pregnancy. Jesse in Chausbay, widely known as the glucose goddess, is a biochemist and best-selling author with a focus on nutrition and glucose management. She provides simple science-backed tips to help improve your health.

Sugar that comes from fruit is no different than sugar in a can of Coca-Cola. Different source, same molecules. The sugar in the Coke also comes from fruit. I didn't need a ton of sugar, but I eat a lot of bread. And in my mind now, bread is sugar. It's not exactly the same. Glucose, your blood sugar levels,

are impacted by two types of food, starches and sugars, anything sweet. In starches, you only have glucose, which is your body's energy and it's great. In sugars, here's the thing. Every day you are making your brain better or you are making it worse. Stay with us to learn

how you can change your brain for the better every day. There are days when I need to be at my best, whether it's back-to-back clinic sessions, long writing days, or just keeping up with life. That's when I take peak energy from BrainMD.

It gives me clean, steady energy without jitters or crashes. And I'm not the only one who loves it. It just won a 2025 NextE Award beating over 500 other supplements. If you want real energy that lasts, check it out at BrainMD.com and use the code, Podcast 20 for 20% off. So welcome. Change your brain every day. And today is very special because we're actually going to be talking about generations of people. We have Jesse in Chausby, who's a French biochemist. She's founder. She's a New York Times and international bestselling author. She's devoted her career to translating cutting-edge science. into easy tips to help people improve their physical and mental health. I have been on her podcast. We're a huge fan of her through her books,

Glucose Revolution and the Glucose Goddess Method, which sold over 3 million copies in 43 languages. She's reshaped the global conversation around blood sugar, nine months that count forever, her latest book, breaks down the complex topic of pregnancy nutrition. Jesse's the founder of the wildly popular social community, glucose goddess, where she reaches over 7 million people across all platforms. She holds a degree in mathematics from King's College, London, and biochemistry. from Georgetown University.

Jesse's new book, nine months that count forever, how pregnancy diet shapes your baby's future is out soon. So I love the title. Thank you. Of your new book.

Thanks. That women don't know. It's not their fault. They're not told. It's not part of the educational system. Yeah. But it's not just what you eat. when you're pregnant. It's what you eat before you're pregnant. When a little girl is born,

she's born with all of the eggs she'll ever have. And so her nutrition throughout her life matters not just for her, but for her babies and grandbabies. It's a lot of pressure. So tell me why you wrote this book. Well, I wrote this book because I had my baby boy last year. So he's now seven months old. And when I became pregnant, because scientific research is my job. I decided to research everything I could on the topic of pregnancy nutrition. And at first, this started as a personal endeavor. I made a little checklist for myself, okay, eat this every day, it's going to help the baby, et cetera. And then I started sharing what I had learned with my pregnant friends. The emotions ranged from disbelief to shock to empowerment.

And I thought, hey, we need to make this more widely available. It is insane that the essential scientific information on how to eat when you're pregnant is not widely distributed to pregnant moms. I feel like this book should be almost prescribed the moment you get a positive pregnancy test because there's easy things you can do that literally shape your baby's health for life. But when you're pregnant, you're kind of told, just wait around, don't stress, just come back for the next ultrasound. There's this myth about you're just an oven, a bun in the oven when you're pregnant. So you have no control.

just passively, you know, make sure you stay at the right temperature and just wait. That's completely wrong. Your diet when you're pregnant co-creates your baby's genetic plan. Just like when you plant a seed to make a beautiful apple tree, if you have the choice of planting that seed in a gravelly driveway or in a nice fertilized plot of land in the back of your garden, you choose the plot of land in the back of your garden, right? So as a pregnant mother, you have quite a big responsibility.

to give your baby everything that he needs. And today, 90% of moms are missing essential nutrients that shape their baby's brain in the room. So that's why I wrote this book because it's very important that everybody knows about it. I love that so much. That's so interesting. I actually remember feeling very much like that.

And it was so interesting because I had a hard time being pregnant. I had PCOS when I didn't know I had PCOS. It took me four years to get pregnant, got pregnant. No one really talked about nutrition with me. and I was a nurse and I was very into fitness, but didn't realize that fitness doesn't always equal health, right? And I thought I was doing fine because I wasn't overweight and nothing was wrong, per se.

And all of a sudden, I was told, oh, you need to come into, like your blood sugar's high. We want to make sure you don't have gestational diabetes. I'm like, what are you talking about?

So it's very interesting that you say that because it, even for people who have more knowledge than average, it's not, it's just not that accessible. I feel like it's more accessible now with social media, but it really wasn't something that was widely talked about. What was your gestational diabetes test? Did you have it?

I did. They did the glucose tolerance test. And did you have diabetes? I did not. Okay. But I was, my glucose was high. My blood sugar was high. And so that should have been my first clue that I had PCOS, right?

I mean, there was something wrong. But the point is it just wasn't, no one really said, hey, this is what you should do. You know, I was super active during my. pregnancy so I thought I could, you know, just as long as I eat healthy, you know. Yep. But what does that mean? Which means the food pyramid. Exactly.

Nine servings of carbs for day, right? Right. No, don't do that. Well, and they just upended the food pyramid here in the United States. And it should have been upside down a long time ago. Absolutely. Absolutely. And that's a great outcome.

On the topic of glucose and pregnancy, I think one thing that we don't realize is that our blood sugar levels as the pregnant mother is mirrored. in our baby's blood sugar level. So there's this other myth, so many myths around pregnancy, by the way. There's this other myth that your baby will get what he needs from you. Yep. And there's a myth.

They're just selectively going to pull out. It's like, don't worry, your baby will take what he needs and leave what he doesn't need. That's totally not true. So when you're pregnant, you're building a baby and you're also building the placenta, right? This temporary organ that brings in close contact your bloodstream and your baby's bloodstream to exchange nutrients and waste.

Now, the thing is the placenta is not a, strict filter. The placenta is kind of like, if it's in high concentration in the mom's blood, it probably should be in high concentration in the baby's blood. The placenta trusts that what is in your bloodstream belongs in your baby's bloodstream, which is why, you know, if you do drugs are exposed to cigarette smoke, et cetera, during pregnancy, it's also going to go through to your baby's bloodstream. But for glucose, it's the same. The higher mom's glucose level during pregnancy, the higher her babies' glucose levels. And they do these incredible. incredible studies, one in Oslo University, they took 200 moms who were going to have a C-section.

Right before the C-section, they measured the mom's circulating glucose level. And right after the C-section, they took a sample of the umbilical cord blood of the baby. And the umbilical cord blood basically mirrors the baby's internal blood composition. And they saw a perfect correlation. Low and healthy glucose levels in the mom, baby has low glucose levels. very high glucose levels in the mom, the baby has very high glucose levels and has had them all throughout pregnancy and at birth. And high glucose levels, as you guys know very well in an adult are bad and also in a baby, they're not optimal. A baby when he is exposed to high glucose

levels in the room, experiences inflammation, has to turn that glucose into fat to protect himself. And things don't stop at birth. If a baby, baby has been exposed to high glucose levels in the room, he is more likely to also have diabetes as a kid, a teenager, an adult, and to have obesity as a kid, a teenager, and an adult. The level of glucose in your blood as a mom during pregnancy shapes your baby's metabolism for life, which is wild because if you look at the surveys, most pregnant moms are told, eat for two. Don't stress, eat whatever you want, you know, make sure you eat enough. And so today, most pregnant moms eat more sugar during pregnancy.

than when they're not pregnant. That's crazy. Yeah. Do you think it's because they give themselves the prohibition because I'm pregnant and I'm eating for two and I'm stressed? That's part of it, but also the brain changes when you're pregnant. There's a study on rats that shows that when a rat is pregnant, she gets more dopamine from sugar than when she's not pregnant.

Oh, how interesting. Yeah. And so we don't have that data in adults, but it's possible that it's... It's the same thing. So it's more enjoyable. So that cookie, when you're pregnant, it tastes potentially much better than when you're not pregnant. So it's that. But biologically, it makes sense, right?

When you're pregnant, you want to eat more sugar because back in the day it was good to eat fruit. Historically. Yeah. We needed it for survival. Exactly. But we don't. But today it's backfiring. Yeah, it's solely backfiring.

So it's possibly that, the sort of permission, oh, you know, some of my friends have said, oh, I'm going to get fat anyway. So I might as well eat lots of pancakes, you know, because there's all these problems about body image and weight, et cetera. I think dopamine has something to do with. also. So we're in a situation today where many moms are eating an amount of sugar during pregnancy that correlates to higher rates of diabetes in their baby. And since you both are experts in the brain, there's something else that's really interesting. So when a baby is exposed to high glucose levels

in the room, inflammation in the brain goes up, right? And these cells are microglia, which are in charge of pruning neurons as they take shape during pregnancy, scientists believe that they can become overactive when there's too much inflammation in the room and they start pruning neurons that don't actually need to be pruned. Oh, no. And the leading theory is that that is the reason why we see higher rates of psychiatric disorders in babies of moms who had very high glucose levels during pregnancy. Oh, interesting.

Yeah. I mean, the science is just mind-blowing. So the stat is if you had gestational diabetes, your baby is 25% more likely to be diagnosed with autism. Isn't that insane? So the rates are still small, right? Three and a hundred kids with autism versus four and a hundred kids if you've had gestational diabetes. What happens in the womb shapes the brain. There's so much stuff going on.

I'm not saying it's causal. I'm not saying that gestational diabetes causes autism. But there's a link there with inflammation and high glucose levels and how the brain shape. There's so many different associations. I feel like we just guilt took every mom on the planet. So we have to like give them. That's really important. So guilt is a big thing, right?

when you're pregnant there is a sense of responsibility because you're building another human. And this information is not meant to guilt-trip. It's sort of meant to help people navigate. Educate. Help people navigate the pressure, the innate pressure. So for example, if you just focus a little bit on reducing your added sugar intake, you can get that to a level that's lower than it might have been before. Not saying that you're going to cause or not cause autism, but there's a link there. The amount of sugar you eat seems to impact your baby's brain and people have to know this. Did you know that physical and emotional pain run on the same circuits in the brain? And they fuel each other to keep you in pain.

In my new book, Change Your Brain, Change Your Pain, I'll show you how to break free from what I call the doom loop and step into a healing loop that can transform your life. Less pain, more joy. It's absolutely possible. pre-order my new book now and receive special bonus gifts at change your brain, change your pain, book.com. So what are the things we do that I think what I was getting at is what can we do that make it better? Like let's talk about what do we do that makes it better? So one thing about pregnancy is that you have bigger blood sugar swings than when you're not pregnant because of the change in hormones. So if you eat something that's high in carbs, your blood sugar will go higher than when you're not pregnant and then will crash lower.

And this lower crash can increase your desire for more sugar. So I have these, what I call these glucose hacks, which are really simple nutrition tips you can put in place to keep your glucose levels more steady and not trigger more cravings. For example, have a protein rich, savory breakfast. So you start the day with a nice big dose of protein. You avoid anything sweet in the morning except whole fruit for taking. taste, for example. If in the first trimester like me, you're incredibly nauseous, which is a very difficult experience, you can try to do what I call put clothing on your carbs. So if you want a cookie, a piece of toast, if you want those carbs, try to add a bit of protein, fat, or fiber

to them to reduce the glucose spike they create. And this can help you regulate your glucose levels a little bit to not exacerbate even more cravings for sugar. So give us an example of a couple of the class on carbs. Oh, breakfast. People. Well, my favorite breakfast is always around eggs. So a nice omnet with feta and tomatoes, some sun-inside-up eggs, scrambled eggs with leftover eggs with leftover meat and vegetables from dinner. If you're not a big egg fan, what about a nice full-fat, Greek yogurt with some berries,

unsweetened nut butter, for example. I'm also a big fan of dinner leftovers for breakfast. Just put it in the pan, crack some eggs in there. Who has time for all that? Exactly. Make four servings out of it. Totally. It's the best.

It's really good. And eggs are also awesome because they contain chlorine, which is a very important molecule for a baby's brain. Yeah. So, coline is in the egg yolk. So if you can't eat a lot of eggs because you don't like them, focus on the yolk. That's where the most brain building nutrition is for your baby. So I wonder if that can help prevent pregnancy dementia. What's pregnancy dementia?

I say that I got pregnancy dementia and it never went away when I wasn't pregnant anymore. So you mean you go to memory? women complain of cognitive impairment after they have the baby. Now, part of it is their progesterone levels drop like a rock. Part of it is they're tired. Part of it is their sleep dramatically changes. But of, well, probably. Diets related to virtually everything. Well, for colin, for example, so your baby needs a lot of colonel to build his brain. And so your colon needs during pregnancy go up. And if you don't eat enough coline, your body's going to take from your reserves. And there's a limit to that.

Your body will always prioritize your own colonel levels versus your babies. And so your colon levels are going to get depleted. The problem is your baby needs chlorine for his brain, but the mama also needs calling for her brain. So if your baby is taking all the colonel that he needs and you're not eating any to balance it out, it's possible it impacts your brain. I mean, if you look at low colonel levels in adults, they're linked to all sorts of mental health issues.

So yes, Colleen's super important. You want 450 milligrams per day. One egg has 125 milligrams. That's why I just had four eggs every day and I was like, done. It's a good one. I actually start every day with three poached eggs. Yeah. It's interesting because a lot of what you're talking about is how I manage my PCOS

and my tendency towards insulin resistance is I stopped eating carbs at all for breakfast. And I remember people criticizing me and going, oh, that's disordered eating. I'm like, why is it disordered eating that I'm like, why is it disordered eating that I'm, I'm paying attention to my blood sugar. I'm not doing this because I don't love carbs. I love carbs. They don't love me. So whenever I eat a lot of carbs or a carb-rich breakfast,

I just genetically am prone to get insulin resistance and PCOS and have all of those side effects. But it's just so funny when you start doing something like that. People are like, that's disordered eating. Did you ask your mom what she ate when she was pregnant with you? My mom, that's a whole discussion. I was a latchkey kid. We were very poor. My mom smoked cigarettes.

Like there was no diet. I had Captain French, Lucky Charms, and Frosted Flakes my entire childhood. And her grandmother had diabetes. What was the most surprising thing? You know, as an author, and I decided to tackle a new topic like pain. I have a new book out on pain. And it just shocked me that 80% of people my age have abnormal. back MRIs who have no pain at all. And I was like, shocking. Like, I think about that all. It's like,

it's not the abnormal MRI. It's how my body sort of works around things. When you wrote this book, which I think is just so important. And I think teenage girls should read it. Before you even think about getting pregnant, you should read this book. And you should be working on this for, like you said, a year before you get pregnant, I think. What was, some of the most surprising things for you. Some studies really blew my mind. I was, I think, overall, shocked at the amount of evidence that existed on this topic that I had never come across and that nobody had ever told me about.

And you're a biochemist. I know. And I'm a nurse. Exactly. Exactly. I think one of the most shocking things is, for example, the studies on supplementing with omega-3s during pregnancy and how when you supplement with a grandma and how, of omega-3s per day in the third trimester, scientists are able to measure a four-point increase

in IQ in the kids at four years old. Isn't that crazy? What? This is wild. So these kinds of studies really blew my mind. And kudos to the very patient scientists who are really looking at how small shifts in what you eat when you're pregnant can be measured years later in the children. For example, on coline, so coline supplementation.

during pregnancy is linked to a measurable increase in this very specific test, which is how quickly a baby reacts to images on a screen in the first year of age. And this test is used, you probably know about this, this test is used because it correlates to adult IQ levels, right? And so they see with just one supplemented day during pregnancy a measurable difference between groups and the babies. I mean, it's shocking. And then I understood something else that I found really interesting.

So all the myths sort of cracked open for me. And I thought, okay, my child in my room, my son, he is adapting to the nutrition I'm giving him. And he's also using this nutrition and the food that comes to him through the placenta as a way to understand what kind of world he's going to be born into, especially the studies on protein. That's interesting. The studies on protein really took me by surprise.

So in the case of protein, it seems that a child uses the amount of protein. that you eat as a message or as a way to understand how much protein will be available in the world to him. So it's almost like a survival thing. It's like a postcard. Am I being born into a world of famine or a world of deprivation? Exactly. And actually, there are historical famines that have taken place.

And from them we learn a lot. And we see that babies who are in the room during famines have adaptations in their body that makes them more vulnerable to things like diabetes or heart disease, etc. See? That's probably what it is. It's fascinating. I'm just saying. It's just so interesting. Did you not get enough protein? No, my grandmother. Like I'm just saying, it's very interesting. On that topic, so when I learned about it, I was like, Mom, okay, ring.

I know, see, it's so interesting. So maybe you can have more empathy for your mother. I have a lot of empathy for my mother now. I was just, it's maybe that's why she was a little crazy. It wasn't just the red hair. But I have a similar story. So when I was 25 years old, I was on the cusp of pre-diabetes. And I didn't really understand why. And so as I'm reading, all this book, I mean, learning about these studies and writing this book, I call my mom. And I'm like, mom, what did you eat when you were pregnant with me? She said, I had special K every morning with like 10 teaspoons of sugar on top and a big orange juice and a diet cook. It's like, hmm, did you eat any eggs? She said, no eggs. Oh, man. So, you know, I always wonder, like, maybe, would my experience in my brain today be different if my mom had eaten enough coline and omega-3s while she

was pregnant with me, would I, would my experience of life in my brain be different? Would I feel better? I don't know. It's fascinating. We have no idea. But what happens during pregnancy? But probably yes. Probably yes. Probably yes. It shapes your baby's brain. So that's the biological. I mean, we always, you know, talk about how you shouldn't be, have stress. But then you probably wouldn't have written this. Totally. That's true. But we talk about how you shouldn't feel stress when you're pregnant because that translates to your baby. But when you think about what you eat might actually affect how they see the world and how they. interpret the world. That's just a very unique. And it's also found it's like the actual building blocks

of your baby's body. It's like it's structural. It's the biology and we can't measure everything. These amazing scientists, they've measured, okay, IQ, reaction time, blah, blah, blah, but so many things we can't measure. There's no test for like how it feels to be inside your own brain. We don't know. So it really is, is mind-blowing. And then what I wanted to do with this book is put everything on the table and say, here are four easy things you can do that have a measurable impact. So the first one is keeping your blood sugar steady and trying to stay under 25 grams of added sugar per day. That is the World Health Organization recommendation.

So 25 grams or less. Most pregnant moms are eating 80 grams. So trying to get under the WHO recommendation. Very easy. Colleen, American Association of Pediatrics says this is very important. And failure to provide chlorine during pregnancy can lead to irreparable damage. Right. Nobody tells moms about this. So 450 milligrams of coline, four eggs a day gets you there.

Protein, 70% of moms and are eating enough protein during pregnancy, because your needs go way up as you're building another body. And then omega-3s. So 300 milligrams a day, which works out to two servings of fish per week. These, to me, are the four most important building blocks. It's what I did. So I was overwhelmed. It's overwhelming the information. But that's what I did, And that's what I believe to be the biggest bangs for your buck that you can have as a pregnant mom. I think that's great. So I think, you know, making sure that because moms, when we get pregnant, most moms want to do the right thing for their babies. They just don't really know what to do.

And then they have this stressful. Then they feel guilty. So I think making it really simple like this is a really important thing. Just like, it's like, just start doing the best you can. Start somewhere because it can feel overwhelming. And I think that that's really great. You just give them a simple plan. to follow and explain why.

And what do you think about... So bread versus sugar. So I know I didn't need a ton of sugar when I was pregnant, although I wasn't as careful as careful as I could have been and should have been knowing what I know now. I didn't know then. But I ate a lot of bread.

And in my mind, now bread is sugar. It's not exactly the same. It's not. No. So glucose, which is your body's energy, your blood sugar, This is where it gets confusing, the blood sugar, glucose. So glucose, your blood sugar levels, are impacted by two types of food.

Starches, bread, pasta, rice, potatoes, oats. Those are starches and sugars, anything sweet. From a cookie to an apple pie to a banana. Like an added sugar. Starches and sugars, yeah. So in starches, you only have glucose, which is your body's energy and it's great. In sugars, here's the thing. There is glucose, but there's also fructose, 50-50 glucose.

glucose fructose. Now, you as a human and your baby does not need any fructose, zero fructose. Your baby and you need glucose. So eating bread gives you just glucose. Fructose is damaging. We want to reduce it as much as possible. In whole fruit, it's fine. But in other sweet foods like desserts and stuff, it's for pleasure. It's not for your health. So when you're pregnant, your baby needs about 70 grams of glucose per day in the very end of the third trimester. That's about a cup and a half of rice, at the very end of pregnancy when he's the biggest he's going to be because he's about to be born. Previous to that in pregnancy, you need much less. And so it's much better to get this glucose from starches that contain just glucose versus getting that glucose from sugars,

which also contains this detrimental fructose. So eating bread is much better for you, for your baby, for everything, than eating a cookie. They're not the same. And should you still be, if you are, let's just say you're someone like me where blood, you tend to react very quickly, your blood sugar is not, you know, is not ideal all the time if you eat a lot of carbs. Should you be checking your blood sugar and basing it on that? This is up for debates, right? It depends. I wore a glucose monitor 24-7 during pregnancy, but I do that all the time anyway.

And I don't get anxiety from it. I find it useful. No, I actually like it. It's like a food nanny. Okay. Well, you have to be careful. Like, these monitors are useful as long as they don't become a source of anxiety. I just find it so information.

Cool. Then in that case, I would say it's useful. but if it creates stress, then it's not very useful, I would say. Unless it's the right stress. And do you find that they're actually... A lot of people come to me, I'm a psychiatrist and they go, I don't want to be anxious. And I'm like, no, that's not the goal. We want to take your anxiety maybe zero to 100 from 80 to 15.

Because you want to certain. But you want some anxiety because to help you make the right decisions. And when I wore glucose monitor, oatmeal, completely out. It just spikes my blood sugar, even steel cut oatmeal and cherries. I love cherries, but they really do a bad thing to my blood sugar, and so I had to break up with cherries. Or you could have almonds with the cherries. There you go. And then I notice is if I ate certain things, like if I put almond butter, I'll do a half of an apple instead of a whole apple, and I'll put almond butter on it. It didn't spike it the same way. Yeah. So what about all the

Women who believe that fruit juice, going back to the fructose argument, is you're doing something good for yourself. It's like a big voice. They want, and then if your children will drink their glass of orange juice, that you're really doing something good for them. We're not fans. Did you really want to ask me that question? Yeah.

Okay, I have so much to say about this. Okay. So do you guys have pets? Do you have a dog? No. Yeah. You have a dog? What kind of dogs?

What kind of dogs? Shepherds. Okay. So all the dogs that exist today... Now we have to show your pictures. Absolutely. Please. Let's take a break.

All the dogs that exist today, they're all descendants of wolves. And humans have been breeding wolves together to make like shepherds and chihuahuas, et cetera. So humans design different breeds, right? And in the same way, humans have been breeding fruit for centuries in millennia to make them extra sweet and extra juicy. So when you look at it, for example, an apple today and you look at an apple a million years ago, very different fruit. Very different.

All the fruit today are super sweet, juicy desserts. So that's the first thing. So when people say fruit are natural, like, uh-uh. Mm-mm-mm. Absolutely not. Did you know that oranges are made up fruit? They did not exist in nature. Humans made up oranges by breeding two other species of fruit.

So the fruit we eat today is not natural. I have to scream this from the rooftop. However, fruit in its whole form contains fiber. Therefore, the sugar in the fruit is still done by the fiber and you get less of a glucose spike. So whole fruit, always fine. have nothing against whole fruit. Now, what happens when you juice a piece of fruit? You throw some stuff away. That stuff is the fiber. The good stuff. Yeah, the good stuff. So you end up with... What happens when you juice seven of them to make a glass? You get rid of all the fiber and you end up

with water and sugar. And here's the thing. Sugar that comes from fruit is no different than sugar in a can of Coca-Cola. Yeah. Agreed. The same molecules. Different source, same molecules. In fact, sometimes in Coca-Cola, the sugar comes from beets, sugar beets. That's also a fruit. The sugar in the Coke also comes from fruit. So it doesn't matter what the source of the sugar is. What matters is its delivery vehicle. In water, bad for you, bad news, no fiber, big spike. In a piece of whole fruit, it's fine. So fruit juice is not a health food. I do not recommend drinking it ever. I do not recommend giving it to your kids ever. It's for pleasure. It's a dessert if you want. Haven't you seen studies showing that kids are more obese because of the increase in how much we give them juice,

but also non-alcoholic fatty liver and crazy things we shouldn't be saying in young people? Yeah. Yeah, the consumption of sugary beverages, fruit juice, soda, is a big link to childhood obesity, 100%. And there's been incredible marketing campaigns trying to convince us that food juice is very healthy. So kudos to those advertising geniuses. But today we have to set that aside and understand. fruit juice is not a health food. It's just sugar water. We agree with you. We just were curious if I'm so glad. We were curious if you like, okay, so I was in this podcast when I'm talking with the

French guy and he said, oh, but my kids, they love fruit juice. I can't not give them fruit. They ask for it. And I go, Matthew, if your kids came to you and said, Daddy, I really want a cigarette. Would you give them the cigarettes? So tell them what you say. He always says, if they really ask for cocaine, would you give them cocaine? So very similar. Exactly. So, I mean, I'm hoping we're unpacking this as a generation. But yeah, fruit juice is... I'm not serving my son for juice. Right.

Same. We didn't either. No. Yeah. It just wasn't... It just wasn't going to rebel and his 18. This is a multi-generational impact book. So we want to really help a lot of people get it.

Nine months that count forever how your pregnancy diet shapes your baby's future. I'm convinced that if I had had... something like this a year before I got pregnant, I would have had way less issues because I think if you focus on it, this preconception medicine, if you focus on it a year before you get pregnant, you just get your body so ready. And I just, even as someone who had more knowledge than average, there's just so much that you can prepare for and it just makes your whole pregnancy experience very different. And it could make conceiving easier to. I took me four years. So, Colleen, for example, so low colon levels in a mom are linked to more brain defects and so more risk of miscarriage.

All this stuff in here helps pre-pregnancy as well. But in particular, this book is really focused on the nine months of pregnancy when your bloodstream and your baby's bloodstream merge and you're in charge of being your baby all these nutrients that nobody tells you about. How could mothers know all this stuff? Nobody, nobody tells them. They think if they take their vitamins, it's what they need to think about. But I want to remove the pointing the finger.

It's not the mom's fault. Right. No. It's not for the moms to feel guilty. It's for the system that's not giving this information. And the stuff in here is not groundbreaking stuff. I mean, global health agencies have been recommending this for years and decades, but somehow it just hasn't made it through to people. It hasn't made it through the noise. Wait, we often talk. We wrote a book together called the Brain Warriors Way because we believe you're in a war for the health of your brain. Everywhere you go, someone's trying to shove bad food down your throat that will kill you early. And large corporations spend billions of dollars not to heal you, but to hook you.

And information like this is so important because I believe everybody wants to do the right thing for their children. But they've been brainwashed that here, take this fruit juice like substance, give it to your children, put it in their lunch, and somehow it's good for them. But it's a lie. Could be anymore.

So, and just to give you an idea, I mean, the age of social media can be double-edged sword for sure, but at least there's more information out there. You just now have to figure out what is real and what's not. But when I was pregnant, I think I was overly concerned. being a nurse and seeing what I saw in the hospital, I was so freaked out that I, you know, it's like so many, I'm like, how does anybody have a healthy baby? Like, so many things can go

wrong. And I remember reading everything, going back over all my textbooks. Oh my God, my baby's going to be born with this. They're going to be born with that. They're not, I mean, how does anyone have a normal healthy baby anymore, right? Because there's just so many things that could possibly go wrong. I worked in a high risk hospital where, so I was like so freaked out. And I remember my doctor telling me, stop reading, stop it. Like, stop reading your books. You need to just enjoy being pregnant. Take your, just, I mean, take your, you know, your vitamins and just knock it off and just enjoy being pregnant.

So she really didn't want me like doing that. And, but I never really got any more information than that. So, so there's a balance, right? You don't want to stress yourself out, but you do want to be armed with the right information. Yes. And I would say two things about this. From my experience and my friend's experience, it's very rare to be pregnant and have zero stress. It's very rare to be pregnant and not worry about anything. So in, since you're going to

be worrying about probably something and feels some sense of pressure, I think my book helps you navigate that with knowing what to do. My doctor also told me not to stress. So I had a miscarriage in my first pregnancy, a very late one at three months. And so when I was pregnant with my son, I was a ball of stress. The whole pregnancy. Day zero to day 280. I was stressed. And my doctor was like, stop stressing. It's bad for your baby. I was like, F you, that's the worst advice you can ever give me. So I was very stressed, but I'm hoping that the, the coline and the omega-3s and the nice blood sugar levels have helped buffer a little bit of that. But it's confusing. It's a difficult experience. It's difficult, and I hope this brings a bit of... So to add on to this,

it's like how to manage stress during pregnancy, how not to believe every stupid thing you think, how to guard your mind. But the one question that keeps coming back to me is, is this good for my baby's brain or bad for it? And is, is this good for my brain or bad for it because it's the same thing? Right. High blood sugar levels, blood vessels become brittle. They start to break.

Healing becomes impossible. It's like, no, you don't want high levels. And inflammation is a cornerstone. Because then you're going to make all sorts of bad decisions. And inflammation is the cornerstone of every chronic illness. Yeah. So. All right.

Well, we have to stop. But what a joy. Thank you so much for coming. Nine months that count forever. You can get this anywhere great books are sold. And we will do whatever we can to support it. Thank you so much for having me. At Aeman Clinics, you're not just seeing one doctor.

You're getting a tea with over 50 specialists, including psychiatrists, naturopass, nutritionists, and therapists, we treat the whole you. Learn more at amenclinics.com. I hope you enjoyed this as much as Tan and I did. Please subscribe to the podcast, leave a comment, question, a review. We would be so grateful.