Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - BITESIZE | How To Control Your Blood Sugar, Cut Cravings and Get Your Energy Back | Jessie Inchauspé #470

Starting point is 00:00:00 Today's Bite Size episode is brought to you by AG1, a science-driven daily health drink with over 70 essential nutrients to support your overall health. It includes vitamin C and zinc, which helps support a healthy immune system, something that is really important at this time of year. It also contains prebiotics and digestive enzymes that help support your gut health. It's really tasty and has been in my own life for over five years. Until the end of January, AG1 are giving a limited time offer. Usually they offer my listeners a one-year supply of vitamin D and K2 and five free travel packs with their first order. But until the end of January, they are doubling the five free travel packs to

Starting point is 00:00:51 10. And these packs are perfect for keeping in your backpack, office, or car. If you want to take advantage of this limited time offer, all you have to do is go to drinkag1.com forward slash live more. Welcome to Feel Better Live More Bite Size, your weekly dose of positivity and optimism to get you ready for the weekend. Today's clip is from episode 358 of the podcast with French biochemist and author, Jesse Inchanspe. Jesse believes that how you feel right now is often directly linked to your blood glucose level. And in this clip, she explains that if you want to feel better, you don't necessarily need to change what you eat, just how. Please note that the advice in this episode

Starting point is 00:01:45 may not be suitable if you are suffering with or recovering from an eating disorder. If you have an existing health condition or are taking medication, always consult your healthcare practitioner before making drastic changes to your diet. A lot of us, when thinking about improving our health, we are thinking about what foods we should be eating or avoiding. Very few of us are paying attention to how we should be eating. And I know one of the hacks that you recommend to people is to think about the order in which you eat certain foods. I wonder if you could explain to us, why is food order so important? Absolutely. And this is probably the easiest hack to start with, because it doesn't require people to change, as you said, what they're eating. So when you're

Starting point is 00:02:36 faced with a meal, the meal will have a very different impact on your blood sugar level, also called your glucose level, depending on the order in which you eat the constituents of that meal. And the studies show that you can reduce the glucose spike of your meal by up to 75% by just changing the order of the foods in it, which means fewer cravings, less inflammation, less inching towards diabetes, etc. The correct order is vegetables first, proteins and fats second, and starches and sugars last. And the main reason this is so effective is because vegetables contain fiber. And fiber, when it arrives first in your digestive system, it has time to do something amazing, to do sort of like Transformers vibe. Fiber deploys

Starting point is 00:03:26 itself onto the wall of your upper intestine, forming a protective gooey mesh that stays there for a few hours. That mesh then prevents your body from absorbing too much glucose too quickly from any of the food coming down afterwards. So very simple place to start. And for anybody listening, at your next meal, try this. Veggies first, carbs last, and see how you feel. You might have a completely different experience of the rest of your day. It's a very simple tip. And what I love about it is that it doesn't require anyone to change what they eat. That's a tip that you can utilize whatever diet you follow. Whether you're a vegan, whether you're a paleo, whatever you are, you can use that.

Starting point is 00:04:14 Yeah. It's really interesting. For several years, one of the things I do with my kids, if I'm feeding them dinner, is I will actually do that, right? I remember with my daughter a few years ago, I figured out that if I give her, let's say, the broccoli first, then the salmon, and then the sweet potato wedges, actually often she's so full she doesn't even eat that many of the sweet potato wedges. But if you serve them all together, the kids will automatically finish off those sweet potato wedges first, and sometimes they'll leave the salmon. Often people will say that. They'll say, oh, if I start with my veggies, I actually end up eating fewer of the carbs at the end. But while that's often a consequence, that's not the goal,

Starting point is 00:04:52 and that's not needed. Even if you eat the exact same meal, same quantity, same amount, just by switching the order, the food will have a vastly different impact on your body, you know? And you'll help your body process the meal in an easier fashion. Yeah. Very, very practical. Now, one of the things that's really drawn me to your work, Jessie, is the approach. So as a medical doctor, what I've always tried to do with patients is to figure out or help them figure out what is the root cause of your symptoms. Don't get too sidetracked with the symptoms. They're important, but really trying to understand what's behind this, what's driving this. And I think one of the reasons I think you've blown up

Starting point is 00:05:39 so quickly, you have hit on something that is very, very important. By focusing on one metric, blood sugar, you're able to help people with all kinds of things. Yes, weight loss, their immune system function, their hormones, their energy, their fatigue, their sleep, their skin, their aging, right? All these kind of downstream consequences their aging, all these kind of downstream consequences simply from focusing on one thing. Yes. Right. So tell us a story. How did that come about? And when did you figure out that actually blood sugar and a stable blood sugar matters to all of us, not just for those of us with type 2 diabetes? Yes. So my health journey started when I was 19. Before that, I had a very healthy, happy childhood. No big issues, physical and mental. 19 years old, I go on vacation. I decide to jump off a waterfall with my friends. Spoiler alert, it was not a good idea. I break my back. One of my vertebraes explodes. I have intense surgery and I have a bunch of metal in my spine. And physically, I recover quite quickly because I was rather young.

Starting point is 00:06:46 But then mental health issues start popping up for me. So anxiety, depression, feelings of being dissociated from myself, not feeling in my body anymore, just a lot of suffering. And I remember so clearly, I told my mom one day, I was like, mom, nothing matters more than health. If you don't have your health, it doesn't matter what job you have. It doesn't matter what you're studying in school. Like you just can't live your life fully if your health is not okay. And I was so broken. I was just, I didn't even want to live anymore.

Starting point is 00:07:16 I mean, I was really not okay. So I decided sort of out of this anguish to go figure out how my body worked and how to reconnect with it and how to heal and how to feel good and happy in the morning when I woke up. So I went on a quest. I moved to the US to go study biochemistry in grad school. Did that, was very interesting, but still I had not figured out how to talk with my body. I still felt a bit lost. I felt like I didn't understand what to do to feel good. Then I moved to Silicon Valley to work in the field of genetics. Again, fascinating topic, but I learned that your DNA is actually not that predictive and you can't ask your DNA what you

Starting point is 00:07:55 need to do in order to feel good in the morning. It can tell you your risk of, you know, long-term disease, but it's not great if you're trying to figure out today, how do I feel better? How do I avoid this fatigue, this mental health problem? But what happened was amazing. While I was there in Silicon Valley, I had the opportunity to try on a continuous glucose monitor, which I know you're wearing one on your arm right now. And doing that completely transformed things for me. So that little device is measuring in real time your blood sugar level, your glucose level, and sending that data to your phone. And it's a device that was made for people

Starting point is 00:08:31 with diabetes who need it. It's a matter of life or death, basically. But for me as a non-diabetic, I didn't think I would really learn anything from it, but actually it completely changed my life. I was finally able to communicate with my body that had become such a black box since my accident. I was able to see, oh, wow, when I eat this, there's a big spike that happens underneath my skin. And actually, the days where I feel my best are when my glucose levels are steady. And then something else that was amazing happened. One day, I felt one of these mental health episodes coming on of like the sort of dissociation, anxiety, depression thing that I had been dealing with since my accident. And I scanned my glucose monitor and I see one of the biggest spikes I had ever seen.

Starting point is 00:09:15 And I started linking the two. I was like, oh, these glucose spikes could be one of the triggers for these really challenging episodes happening in my brain. All this to say that I became fascinated with the topic. And as a scientist, my first inspiration was to go on Google Scholar and try to read everything I could, all the scientific studies I could. So I was sitting on my couch and I had like a thousand tabs open on my computer, just like learning everything I could. And I discovered some very key important things. First, that I wasn't alone. that even if you don't have diabetes, you can still be experiencing these big glucose spikes

Starting point is 00:09:51 on a daily basis. Second, that these spikes have consequences. And it kind of depends on your health history, your body, who you are, but these consequences can range from cravings and fatigue to infertility to mental health getting worse etc so i was like okay i gotta avoid these spikes right the problem is i love sugar and i love pasta and i did not want to give those up at all so i had to figure out how do i still eat all these glucose containing foods yeah in a way that doesn't create the spikes. And then by looking at even more research done by amazing scientists across the world, I synthesized all the research into these hacks that I started applying to myself, that I started sharing with my friends and my family. And now they've helped millions of people across the world. And I'm so freaking proud of

Starting point is 00:10:41 that because this information, this this science it needs to be common knowledge people need to know this because it can really transform your life and avoid a lot of suffering yeah i appreciate you sharing that and going through your story there's so many little bits there um for me just to pick up on one One was how you could see the correlation between your blood sugar level and how you were feeling. I think it's a bit in your book, actually. This is what you say, early on in my journey, I had the profound realization that how I feel right now is intimately linked to the spikes and dips of your glucose. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:11:27 Right? Now, I think let's just pause on that for a minute because unless someone has been paying attention to their blood sugar, it is likely that they are having or have had blood sugar spikes, right? So most people, when they think of that, think about type 2 diabetes. Unless I have type 2 diabetes, I don't need to worry about it, but you're beautifully explaining why it's relevant for all of us. Now, if we're taking in the same volume of food, so our meal or snack is not changing, the same amount of, let's say, sugar is coming into our body. You're saying to us that

Starting point is 00:12:07 actually by doing various things, we can stabilize the sugar. So instead of it going rapidly up and rapidly down, it can be stable for a lot longer. Yes, you can have maximum pleasure from the sugar with minimal impact on your health. So someone's going to be thinking, okay, Jesse, but if the same volume of sugar is coming into my body, does it matter if it's coming in slowly or it's coming in rapidly? Yes, bingo. That's a wonderful question. Yes. We know from the studies that it's the increase in your blood sugar levels, the rapid increase

Starting point is 00:12:43 and the variability, which is more damaging to your cells than a sort of steadier, more stable glucose level. So imagine you're playing Tetris and I give you two ways of playing Tetris. Either everything, all the little blocks come down super quickly or the same amount of blocks come down, but over like five times the time. Which one do you think you're going to be able to manage better? The second one, same amount of blocks, but you have more time to organize them, put them away, deal with them. If everything comes down too quickly, you're overwhelmed and you lose the level.

Starting point is 00:13:14 You know, it's kind of that idea. It's the same stuff, but your body has a much better time dealing with glucose when it arrives more slowly. And specifically, so this idea of glucose spikes, if during a meal you deliver to your body too much glucose too quickly, that creates what we call a glucose spike. Now, if you're wearing a glucose monitor, you can see that on the graph, but you don't need to wear a glucose monitor to be able to understand you're having a spike. to wear a glucose monitor to be able to understand you're having a spike. The most common symptoms of glucose spikes are number one, unsteady energy levels. So maybe it's 10 a.m. and you're just

Starting point is 00:13:53 tired or it's 3 p.m. and you need a third coffee because your energy is completely unsteady. Second most common symptom, cravings. So scientists at Yale found out that during the drop that happens after a spike, the craving center in your brain activates and tells you, find some cookies, find something sweet. So if you're having cravings during the day, it's very possible that they are due to being on this glucose rollercoaster. The majority of the population is on this rollercoaster. You cannot have a healthy body if you're on a glucose roller coaster. It's just not possible. You can manage, maybe.

Starting point is 00:14:29 You can be a high-functioning glucose roller coaster, but it's just not going to work. You need that baseline. I love that. There's a lot of people at the moment who are high-functioning glucose roller coasters, right? I love it. I love it. Yeah. But you walk around, you will see that. And it kind of will correlate with the 11 o'clock snack.

Starting point is 00:14:54 Yes. The extra coffee that's needed, the bit of chocolate to keep you going. After dinner, sugar, you know, the just scrolling on Instagram to reduce your stress. Like there's so many of our habits that could be linked to trying to function on a glucose rollercoaster. And also, most people don't know they're on a glucose rollercoaster. So it's not their fault. They're trying their best. They're trying to survive with all these symptoms, thinking the symptoms are normal, that if they can't handle them, they're weak or they don't have enough willpower or feeling ashamed or guilty. I want people to know that in most of us, those symptoms can be linked back to these glucose spikes.

Starting point is 00:15:32 And when you flatten your curves, like it really feels like you're having a completely new experience of your life and of your days. It's transformative. And those symptoms, you don't have to live with them. You can actually reduce those symptoms and they will go away. The first place to start is to study your glucose levels. And you'll have such a different experience of your life. Instead of feeling controlled by these impulses and these symptoms that you can't do anything about, you can become reconnected with your body, with yourself. I mean, it's just a much more, it's a much nicer place to be. Yeah. Let's talk about some more hacks. Okay. So

Starting point is 00:16:04 at the start of the conversation, you mentioned food order. And I really hope people put that into practice straight away because it can be transformative. Just switching a few things around. Movement and blood sugar. This is quite an easy hack for people. What is the relationship between movement and blood sugar? And how can we utilize movement to mitigate the effects of what we've eaten? In our muscles, we have a lot of mitochondria. And they turn glucose into energy so that your muscles can contract. So when you're walking, when you're dancing, when you're lifting weights,

Starting point is 00:16:41 you know, playing whatever team sports, your muscles are using glucose to power themselves. And so we can use that to our advantage. And here's the hack. After a meal, use your muscles for 10 minutes. Now this can be just walking. It can be cleaning your kitchen. It can be doing my new favorite thing, which is calf raises.

Starting point is 00:17:01 So you just sit at your desk and you just like put your feet, plant it on the floor, and you just raise your feet up on your toes. So only your toes are touching and you do these calf raises or calf pushups for like five minutes. In any way you want to use your muscles, it's going to be helpful because as you're contracting your muscles, the glucose from the meal, as it arrives in your bloodstream, is going to be soaked up by your muscles and used for energy. So you're going to reduce the glucose spike of that meal without needing to change what's in the meal at all. So yes, we can try and eat better quality meals to stabilize our blood sugar. We can change the food order, but let's say we don't want to make any changes and we've had a meal that we know possibly isn't the best for us in terms of blood sugar spikes. You're saying if we do 10 minutes of movement after that meal, we can mitigate the effects.

Starting point is 00:17:55 Exactly. So within 90 minutes after the end of the meal, use your muscles a little bit. And really it can be super simple. You can be sitting on the couch watching a movie after dinner, grab a bottle of water and do like some bicep curls with the bottle of water. Anything basically. Anything, anything, anything. And really the calf raises are a really easy place to start. Your calf actually has a muscle called the soleus muscle, which is specifically excellent at soaking up glucose from the bloodstream. So the calf raises are a good option. Now that's what I love about all your suggestions. They can be applied by anyone in any situation, no matter what diet they're following. Yes. Little hacks, little tweaks just to make things a little bit better

Starting point is 00:18:34 than they would have otherwise been, right? Exactly. We're not talking like big overhaul of your life, of your food habits. No, no, no. Small tweaks, big impact. Yeah. through the habits. No, no, no. Small tweaks, big impact. Yeah. Thank you so much for listening. This episode was the last bite size of the season.

Starting point is 00:18:52 If you are a longtime listener of my show, you will know that every summer, I take a break from the podcast for six weeks. Why do I do that? Well, my wife produces each week's show. I spend a lot of time researching and having these conversations. And you know, over the summer, it's really important for us as a family to take some time off so we can really spend some quality, undistracted time with our children over their summer break.

Starting point is 00:19:16 There is one more long form conversations come next Wednesday. We finish off the season with a very special episode. Of course, I'll be back at the very start of September with the Wednesday full length conversations and the Friday bite-sized ones. If you have enjoyed my podcast, if you've enjoyed these bite-sized episodes, I'd really appreciate your help in spreading the words. My request to you this summer is if you found my podcast useful, if you found it valuable in your own life, would you consider sharing an episode of this podcast with five different people? My goal with the information on the show each week is to inspire and empower as many people

Starting point is 00:19:58 as I possibly can. And you guys can help me do that. If you help me spread the word together, And you guys can help me do that. If you help me spread the word together, we can help spread this message of positivity, compassion, and health. Thank you so much for your support this season. I hope you have a good summer and I will see you at the start of September, ready and raring to go.

Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - BITESIZE | How To Control Your Blood Sugar, Cut Cravings and Get Your Energy Back | Jessie Inchauspé #470

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