The Liz Moody Podcast - Why You Can’t Stop Sugar Cravings—And How to Fix It (Neuroscientist Explains)

Starting point is 00:00:00 When we started doing these studies, we found that over and over again, sugar was releasing dopamine like a drug would. Back then, we were starting to hear a lot more about there was an increase in ultra-processed foods, there was more sugar being added to foods. And so we started this whole discussion around, well, what if the food could be addictive? We designed a bunch of studies to see what sugar did to the brain. When you line up all the research studies, and this goes from clinical studies, pre-clinical studies across the board, all different areas. it seems that sugar acts more like a drug than a food when you look at the brain. For people listening who have heard like sugar is addictive as cocaine, that really came from your research initially, didn't it? Yeah, it did.

Starting point is 00:00:40 One of the things that we were doing was systematically test after test after test, just asking the question, can sugar produce this effect that we know drugs can? Do we see tolerance? Do we see withdrawal? Do we see craving? With these changes in the brain, we're just making it look like sugar should be lumped in. with these other drugs of abuse. Hi, I'm Dr. Nicole Levina. I am a neuroscientist, and I have a PhD from Princeton University. I'm also a professor of neuroscience at Mount Sinai and at Princeton. You have said that we are born addicted to sugar.

Starting point is 00:01:13 If that is true, do we have any hope? It's complicated. We were born to be addicted to sugar for a positive reason, and that is because in nature, things that taste sweet are typically safe. And so if you think about it, if you were like, you know, one of our ancestors foraging in the wilderness, looking for berries, let's say, the ones that taste sweet are going to be safe to eat. Those are going to be the ripe ones. The ones that are sour are bitter. They're not going to be ones you want to eat. They fell to the forest floor. You want to stay away from those. So we have this sort of biological propensity to like things that taste. Even once humans are born, the first thing that they taste is breast milk or baby formula these days. And that's sweet. And so we have this, like, like coating of sweet and safety. And that has allowed us to survive for, you know, thousands of years. But the problem in our modern food environment is that it's no longer the case that sweet automatically means safe. We have so many foods that are inundated with sugars, multiple forms of

Starting point is 00:02:14 sugars and sweeteners, that now things are really just too sweet. And when we eat them, they're not always good for us. And so that's why it can be hard to resist a lot of those urges that people have for that sweet taste. Is some sugar good for us? Oh, absolutely. Some sugar is fine. Some sugar's wonderful. The problem is it's never just some sugar, right? It's always multiple forms of sugar throughout the day all day long. And I think that's where we get into a lot of problems in our modern food environment compared to the way in which our brain was designed to interact with food. We're wired to like things that taste sweet because we're not supposed to get them that often. And when we do get them, they're good for us. And so we enjoy them. But if you think about the way things are right now,

Starting point is 00:03:03 it's not always the case. We have this like unlimited access to all these sweet things pretty much all the time. Let's get into some of the impacts that sugar has on our brains and our bodies. You've done a ton of research on this. Let's start with our brains. What does sugar do to our brains? So it's interesting. This was actually my PhD dissertation. So when I first started doing research at Princeton, I was a grad student. And the first day I met with my advisor, we started talking about what kind of project I would work on. And one of the things that had been an issue at the time, and it's still an issue, is this whole idea of obesity rates going up. And I'm dating myself, but this is 25 years ago, believe it or not. And so 25 years ago, I was saying to my advisor, it doesn't really make sense that, obesity rates are going up and it's the fault of the people who are struggling with obesity. What if it's something about the food? And back then we were starting to hear a lot more about how there was an increase in ultra-processed foods. There was more sugar being added to foods. And so we started this whole discussion around, well, what if the food could be addictive?

Starting point is 00:04:08 And so we designed a bunch of studies to see what sugar did to the brain. And one of the things that we found is that it's very much like what happened. when people use drugs. So when you use drugs, any type of drug, whether or not it's caffeine or morphine or heroin, it releases a neurochemical called dopamine in the reward system of the brain. That's what makes the drug so reinforcing and pleasurable.

Starting point is 00:04:33 And what we found with our studies is that sugar does the same thing. And it's very different than what's supposed to happen. Normally when you eat a food, it's not going to release dopamine every time you eat it. That's what kind of separates foods and drugs. But when we started doing these studies, we found that over and over again, sugar was releasing dopamine like a drug would. And it doesn't just stop at dopamine. There's other neurochemicals that are involved in the process. But basically, when you line up all the research studies, and this goes from clinical studies, preclinical studies across the board, all different areas, it seems that sugar acts more like a drug than a food when you're eating it when you look at the brain.

Starting point is 00:05:14 And I just found that to be so fascinating. And it really explains a lot as to why people struggle with it if they're, you know, trying to avoid it. And is this all sugar or is this like white table sugar? Would this be the sugar and fruit? Are carbs that turn into sugar in your body lighting up these parts of your brain that are lit up when you do drugs? Well, it's really the sweet taste that drives the response. Because people ask me this question all the time. They're like, okay, fine, I'll just stay away from the white stuff. Like, give me my monk fruit and stevia or whatever.

Starting point is 00:05:42 Unfortunately, it's the sweet taste that is doing this. And so that's why when, you know, people look for alternative sweeteners or these sort of like magical sweeteners that don't exist, I often say the secret to success is cutting down on the sweetness in your diet overall. So it's not like you can just swap in like honey or like something else and it's going to magically make the addiction go away. If you really, really want to cut back on the cravings and the addiction like component, it's important to just dial back. how sweet everything is. We'll get back into like the impacts of sugar on your brain and your body in a second. But I want to dive into that a little bit. So what you would say is perhaps things like Stevie or Monfort are not having the metabolic

Starting point is 00:06:27 component that's going to have all of these downstream negative brain and body effects, but they're going to increase your cravings for anything that might have that metabolic component. Yeah, I'm not saying there's no benefits to those sweeteners. I think depending on what your unique situation is, if you're not addicted to sugar, or you feel like you're in control, then yeah, those other sweeteners might be great if you're looking to cut back on calories or have something that's not going to impact your blood sugar in the same way. But the problem is that if you are one of those people who tends to have a lot of cravings and feels that they can't, you know, kind of rain in their appetite and they feel like they're binging and they, you know, don't really feel like they have that level of self-control that maybe they wish they did when it comes to sweets, that those alternative sweet. Eateners aren't really going to help. They're just going to make that craving and that addiction piece even worse. And we're going to get into the science of cravings later on in this episode

Starting point is 00:07:22 because I do think it's not just self-control. It's not just willpower. There's real science on like why this is happening and how we can stop this from happening. But the addiction component, I think it's really interesting for people listening who have heard like sugar is addictive as cocaine, that really came from your research initially, didn't it? Yeah, it did. One of the things that we were doing at the time, and we're still continuing to do, was basically just systematically do test after test after tests and publish these findings in the research journals, just asking the question, can sugar produce this effect that we know drugs can? And so we see binging. Do we see tolerance? Do we see withdrawal? Do we see craving? Do we see cross-tolerance where if you're

Starting point is 00:08:04 sensitive to one drug, you're going to be sensitive to another? Across the board, we were seeing not only these behavioral changes, but also these changes in the brain that we're really just making it look like sugar should be lumped in with these other drugs of abuse. Talk to me about the cross addictions. I find this really fascinating. If our phones are having this impact on our dopamine and our dopamine is impacting our cravings across the board, would the fact that we're scrolling on our phones all the time make us crave more dopamine flooding snacks and sugars and things like that? And then would eating those snacks make us want to like scroll on our phone more? And then would eating those snacks make us want to like scroll on our phone more. All that is so fascinating and I feel like, yeah, the scrolling has replaced a lot of the

Starting point is 00:08:43 sort of gateway drugs, if you will. So if you think about like, I remember when I was younger, everybody was warned like, oh, well, don't start smoking cigarettes because it leads to harder drugs. That was like the sort of lesson that you were taught in the 80s. And now we know that that's actually true. If you become addicted or dependent on one substance of abuse, you are more likely to be at risk for developing polysubstance abuse. So that's why when people become addicted to smoking, they often end up drinking a lot or they'll do those things together or they might do other drugs later on. You have a heightened risk because of the fact that you've elevated your dopamine system. Oh, that is so interesting because I've always thought that it was because like, oh, if you're

Starting point is 00:09:25 hanging out with a weed dealer, then they might just like give you other drugs or stuff like that. But you're saying, no, the way that your brain is wired is changing, which is making. you more likely to partake in other addictive substances or behaviors. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's where it gets interesting now because, you know, we have this sort of polysubstance abuse that can happen with drugs and alcohol, but then throw food into the mix, right? Throw sugar into the mix. If you think about it, if you know someone that's quit smoking or quit using drugs or quit alcohol, for example. Me, all of them. Yeah. What happens, people often gain weight. And it's because they turn to food to kind of self-soothe and to kind of, you know, be able to produce that same effect that maybe not to the same degree, but to some degree that they were getting from those other substances.

Starting point is 00:10:11 If you look back into the blue book, which was the Alcoholics Anonymous Guide back in the 1930s, the initial printing of it, it talks about how if you feel like you're craving alcohol, just have something with sugar in it as a substitute for alcohol. That alone kind of says, all right, well, if sugar can take away my alcohol craving, obviously they're similar in some ways that are like a bit deeper, right, than we really understand. Would you say that a non-obvious way then to deal with any sort of dopamine dependent state? So whether it's sugar addiction, social media scrolling, anything like that would be to actually work on your dopamine. If quitting sugar feels too hard or reducing your sugar intake, could you do other dopamine balancing activities and would that help you reduce your sugar intake?

Starting point is 00:11:02 Oh, absolutely. I think so. Exercise is a perfect example because people will talk about how, you know, once they get into a routine and they start to actually feel good from exercising, that that becomes a source of dopamine to them. That's like replacing the dopamine that they were maybe getting from binging on chips or whatever it might be. So yeah, figuring out a way to get your dopamine from a healthier source is the best thing that you can do, especially if you're struggling with something, you know, like overeating or trying to get your sugar amounts reduced because you have to get it from somewhere. And I think it's just got to come from a source that's going to be positive and pro-health as opposed to negative. Well, and I would imagine that that type of

Starting point is 00:11:42 dopamine wouldn't be as spiky. Like it's not cheap dopamine. You're kind of gently introducing it into your system and it feels more balanced. Exactly. And I think that word spiky is exactly the word to use, because that's what happens when you take a hit of sugar, when you use nicotine or whatever it is. It produces it at literal spike in your dopamine levels. It's not this gradual increase. It's literally like a shot that goes up. And so those spikes are not good because that causes all these other alterations in the brain in terms of like the receptors, the gene expression. All of these things happen in response to the spike that don't happen in response to the gradual escalation. We want to really avoid the spiking and go with the more sort of slow sustained approach.

Starting point is 00:12:30 Other than exercise, what would fall into that category? Well, I think it's just like coming up with something that provides you with entertainment, provide you with something that's stimulating yourself. Like, I don't know. For me lately, it's become crocheting, which I know sounds like an old lady thing. If you told me that you were going to replace my cupcake cravings with crocheting, I'd be like, absolutely not. Or my cigarette cravings back when I was smoking.

Starting point is 00:12:56 You're like, have you tried crochet? She's just trying to crochet yourself a cupcake. It's really about just trying to find like something that you can do to stimulate yourself and to engage yourself. And it could be something that's, you know, more socially oriented where it's like, you know, doing things with friends. It just has to be something that I feel like is really personalized to you. And I think a lot of times people don't take the time to kind of investigate these sort of like out-of-the-box ideas. does like crochet. And, you know, they kind of just think that, oh, okay, well, it's either like I exercise or that's it. There's nothing else. But there's lots of different things to do. It's just really about occupying your time and, you know, getting pleasure from things that aren't necessarily going to be serving you in a negative way.

Starting point is 00:13:40 This is a weird question, but I used to have a cold plunge. And I felt like on days that I cold plunge, which does have an impact on your dopamine, I would scroll less. I would eat less sugar, et cetera. And I don't know if that's because I had put into my brain early in the day that I could like do hard things and then that carried on throughout the day or if it was some sort of dopamine impact. Do you know why that would be? Well, did you cold plunge like first thing? Yeah. I think that that is so important because I think if you set your dopamine tone for the day, that can be really critical for how the rest of your day is going to look. If you cold plunge, you're right off the bat soon after you wake up, kind of, you know, setting the threshold of where your dopamine level is, right? And so then all the decisions you make from there on out are going to be built off of the reward you're going to

Starting point is 00:14:31 get is going to come off of the baseline dopamine level, right, that you've already established as the day has gone on. Think about, you know, people who wake up and exercise or wake up and run before they go to work or whatever it is that they might do, meditate, all these different things. I think that the benefit that people see when they do something early in the day is because it does set the tone for the rest of the day. It's not just dopamine. I also think it sets the cortisol tone because when you wake up, our cortisol levels are high. That's really the peak because that's what cortisol does. It's one of the things that signals, okay, it's time to wake up. So you're going to have that hormone be elevated. And if you can do something to kind of bring your cortisol levels back down to a baseline level,

Starting point is 00:15:15 I feel like that helps to really establish how you react to all the different stressors are going to face throughout the day. So would you say that front loading healthy habits is sort of a life hack to feeling the way that you want to feel all day? I absolutely do. I think that this whole idea of like these 5 a.m. club people that like get up early and whatever it might be, like do the exercise or, you know, sit there and read a book for a half an hour, something that's basically just setting them up so that they're basically

Starting point is 00:15:44 establishing the baseline of how their body's going to react to other things throughout the day is like the easiest biohack you can do. And I will say you don't have to wake up at 5 a.m. to do that. You could, you know, end your shower with a minute or two of cold. You could set aside 10 minutes to read something, but it's just about doing something that sets your dopamine baseline, correct? Absolutely. And I think, you know, a lot of us find ourselves in these kind of bad habits that we don't realize you're bad. So I know people who will wake up. And if they have their phone next to their bed, basically the first thing they do is look at their phone to see, you know, what's come in while I was sleeping. That's not good, right? Because that's basically just right off the bat. We're starting to scroll and, you know, look at things that maybe are just going to kind of like set us all over the place.

Starting point is 00:16:30 As a neuroscientist, can you explain what scrolling on our phone's first thing in the morning does to our brains? Oh, boy. It does a lot. If you think about it, our brains are really busy while we're sleeping. Like people have this idea that, you know, our brain is shut down. while we're asleep. And there is nothing further from the truth. That is not true at all. Our brain is super active while we're sleeping. We're consolidating memories. We're kind of doing this synaptic pruning where we're just basically like reorganizing a whole bunch of stuff in our brain. And so our brain has been busy all night. And then if the first thing you do is like show your eyes this artificial light and all these different colors and then, you know, bombard it with. like positive things, negative things, like news that maybe you didn't really want to read yet,

Starting point is 00:17:21 work emails, like all this stuff coming in. It can be so just detrimental not only to our mental health, but also just to the way in which our brain can react to all that. So we're trying to, you know, process all these things at one time when our brain really, just like our bodies, like we need to kind of slowly wake up, right? You wake up, you stretch a little bit, it, you go downstairs, you get a coffee, you know, you kind of like work yourself into your day. And we don't let our brains do that. We just like instantly bombard it with all of this stuff when we start scrolling. So I always say, let's leave the phones downstairs or in another room so that at least you have some distance between waking up and taking a look. I've heard that there's something about

Starting point is 00:18:04 like the brain wave state you're in when you wake up that makes you more susceptible to internalizing outside information. So if you take in negative information, you're more likely to. to feel depressed, to feel really negative, you've taken positive affirmations or whatever, those are more likely to stick in the morning. Is that true? I think that there's a lot of validity to that. And if you think about the research that has been going on around like meditation and just sort of like mindfulness, when people do that in the morning, they tend to be happier. They tend to have this sort of way in which they then evaluate the information in a different way than if they don't kind of ground themselves when we wake up, if we're not kind of sinking in with those different

Starting point is 00:18:48 brainwaves that we have in response to waking up and we're just, you know, disrupting it with all this like chaos, of course, then we're going to, you know, emotionally react differently than we would if we were coming into the situation with more alignment. There are so many different healthy things that people are told they should be doing every single morning. It feels like a lot. It feels really overwhelming. As a neuroscientist, if somebody wanted to pick one thing they could do in the morning to optimize their brain health to make them feel really good all day long. What's the one thing you would pick? So the number one thing I would say would be, and I'm a bit biased because I'm a neuroscientist, but I focus on nutrition, is to have a

Starting point is 00:19:25 healthy breakfast. And I know there's a lot of controversy around, you know, when breakfast should be, right, the breaking of the fast. And so when people who are doing intermittent fasting, wait until like noon to have something to eat, it's great. I'm just continuing. that when people do that, it does have a lot of physical benefits, right? And it can help if you have a sort of a limited eating window. But in terms of kind of setting yourself up for how you're going to interact with these other stressors throughout the day, your brain doesn't have any fuel. So you're going off of whatever you had, you know, last time you ate the night before. I would say start off with a breakfast that has healthy fats, that has fiber in it. The fiber is critical because

Starting point is 00:20:10 that's what's going to make you feel fuller and feel like you actually have something of substance. And also, a lot of times people don't really talk about this, but you have to like it. You know, you can't force yourself to eat something for breakfast just because it's healthy. You have to, you know, figure out something that's enjoyable and eat something that you actually like because otherwise you're just setting yourself up to feel deprived. How soon within waking up do you recommend eating? I am a big advocate for eating when you're hungry. The majority of people who are not hungry until later in the day, it's because they're suppressing their appetite with caffeine or other things, right?

Starting point is 00:20:48 So I don't know anyone who is able to kind of wake up and just consume absolutely nothing and then make it until, you know, noon and then say, okay, now I'm hungry. So I think that people are artificially making themselves not hungry by consuming these appetite suppressing things, energy drinks or coffee or whatever it might be. And so I would say, ideally, it would be within like one to two hours of waking up, would be having something to eat. And it doesn't have to be a full-blown, you know, like diner meal, right? It can be something small, even if it's a hard-willed egg. Something, though, to get you going, get your body fueled. You have this primitive brain when it comes to food.

Starting point is 00:21:28 And so if you don't have anything to eat, at some point, your brain is going to go into this sort of like survival mode of, okay, well, haven't had anything to eat in a really long time. So, you know, the other systems are going to start to be affected by that. What other systems? The immune system. If you think about it, we were hunters and gatherers. If you had gone, you know, a while without eating, you're going to want to conserve your body's resources. And so in order to do that, we have to, you know, make sure that all of the access we have to, you know, energy in our body is being directed to making sure that we survive, right, and keeping us a lot. alive, maybe trying to suppress the hunger if it's, you know, something where we don't know when we're going to get our next meal. And so in order for that to happen, you know, something has to give and it's often the immune system. We hear a lot about people who are doing yo-yo dieting or like, you know, just not eating a healthy diet. You put yourself a risk for getting sick.

Starting point is 00:22:27 And it's really because you're compromising your immune system. As a neuroscientist, what is your go-to breakfast? Well, I love eggs. I'm a big egg person. We eat so many eggs in my house that we actually had to get chickens. So we have chickens in our yard. But yeah, I love eggs because they're a good source of protein. I think that they're very, very satisfying in terms of making you feel full. And they're this kind of sustained satiety. Same with my kids. Like I'll throw two hard boiled eggs in my daughter's lunchbox. And that's what she has for snack, when she gets to school. And it really really, helps for her to focus. I usually try to have some sort of green, so a little bit of salad, if we have like leftover salad or some sort of vegetables, even if it's just, you know, something small. I don't really do many toasts and bagels and things like that. We kind of got away from buying commercial bread just because it's just got so many additives in it and it just became a thing in our family where we don't need it. And so like I'll bake bread and we'll eat that. So maybe I'll

Starting point is 00:23:34 a little bit of bread that, like, I made that has literally, like, four ingredients in it. But that's usually it. I'm not a big, to be honest, a big sweets person. And that includes fruit. I just don't feel like I need to, like, have that sweet taste all the time. I think it's probably because of the work I do. I've kind of trained myself away from it. But, you know, depending if it's in season, like I love strawberry once in a while or blueberries. So, you know, I'll throw those into the mix, too. I think this is a big, it's not quite a hack, but it's something that people don't talk about that much, which is a breakfast salad, you're like, oh, I have some greens on my plate. I think we think of like salads or like some roasted broccoli or like any type of greens

Starting point is 00:24:10 is a later in the day thing. I will often have, if I'm having eggs, I'll have like a little salad on the side where I put a little olive oil. I put a little sea salt, something like that, a little lemon zest. I love it. And I think it's a really wonderful way to start the day. And like to go back to your earlier point, fiber is so, so important. And so many of us are missing that in general.

Starting point is 00:24:29 But I would say especially at breakfast. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, if you think about, you know, the kind of American definition of breakfast, it's usually a lot of stuff that has a ton of added sugar, like cereals and things like that. And not a lot of fiber. Pretty much everyone now is not getting enough fiber in their diet. It's becoming a huge problem. We're starting to understand a lot more about these like gastrointestinal issues that people are having. We're not getting enough fiber. The data are like alarming when we take a look at that in terms of, you know, especially among children. So yeah, I love the breakfast salad story. because that is definitely what I'm doing. I think having greens or even just like if I'm cooking the egg, if I'm maybe if I decide to like make an egg in a frying pan, like I'll just take some spinach and kind of just throw it in there and like saute it up and like just do it all in one pan.

Starting point is 00:25:15 Throw some veggies, throw some salad into your breakfast mix. That's just like a really easy, simple life hack. Absolutely. Going back to your sugar study, there have been some critics of that study who say that sugar isn't nearly as destructive as things like cocaine or alcohol. alcohol addiction or things like that. And it almost is insulting to the addictiveness of those things to say that sugar is addictive in the same way. What would you say to those critics? Well, first of all, I would

Starting point is 00:25:42 never want to insult anyone who has any type of addiction at all. So that obviously is not the intention. But I will say if you take a look at a couple different things about sugar that are different than things like alcohol or cocaine, one is the pervasiveness. It's really hard to get cocaine unless you know somebody who can get you the cocaine, but you don't need my sugar dealer. Like, you can go get all the sugar you want. If I said, go right now, Liz, get me as much sugar you can, come back in 10 minutes. You come back with armfuls of it because you can go to any store and just get like tons and tons of it. It's easy to get. It's pervasive. Whereas to get access to other addictive substances like heroin or morphine or cocaine or whatever it might be, there are barriers in

Starting point is 00:26:30 place. You have to, you know, be able to procure them. And it's very easy to get access to sugar. So that's the first thing I'd say is pervasiveness makes it highly addictive and very different. I would also say you're not allowed to advertise heroin on television, but you are allowed to advertise sugary cereals. Exactly. Like, could you imagine if all the people who are struggling with, you know, recovery from substance use disorder or heroin use disorder, and we had billboards, like, advertising, like, you know, drug paraphernalia? Like, we don't. do that, but that's not the case when it comes to food. The advertising is just everywhere. So in addition to pervasiveness, it's hidden in so many things. Can you imagine if there was like a little bit of cocaine

Starting point is 00:27:13 sprinkled in like the pasta sauce that your kid was eating or, you know, there's a little bit of, you know, nicotine that you didn't realize was in there in that, you know, healthy drink that you bought because it said it was like, you know, high in fiber and you thought you were doing something good for your health. It's just that sugar is everywhere. It's in things that we don't expect it to be in. It's in English muffins. It's in frozen pizza. It's in the things where you expect it, right? Like, yeah, we know that there's sugar in juice. We know that there's sugar in soda. But it's in the things that we don't expect it to be in, too. So how are you supposed to avoid it when it's often just simply like placed into all these products where you wouldn't expect it to be.

Starting point is 00:28:01 So could you imagine if somebody was struggling with alcohol use disorder? You know, you can avoid the bars. You can avoid most stores, depending on what state you live in. You know, there's like sections where the alcohol is. You can kind of stay away from it if you need to. And that's, I think, one of the things that makes sugar almost more dangerous because you can't avoid it. You don't know where. it is. It's lurking in all these places. And again, it's just the pervasiveness and the toxicity for not only our physical health, but we're now learning so much more about how it affects our mental health as well. The mattress that you sleep on is one of the highest exposures that you have. Like, if it's off gassing, you're breathing that in for basically a third of your life. And most

Starting point is 00:28:44 conventional mattresses are loaded with synthetic foams, flame retardants, microplastics, and more. Plus, if it's not comfy, you're going to be tossing and turning. You're going to be really hot. And sleep is the foundation of health. It is so important. Because of all of this, if I were not going to invest in any other part of my house, no other things in my house, I would invest in my mattress. And in fact, I have four years well before I had much money to spend on any of these things because it is such a big needle mover.

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Starting point is 00:35:27 code Liz Moody. Can we define what we mean by sugar? Because you're like, it's in English muffins. It's in pasta sauce. It's in all of these different things. Do you mean fructose? Do you mean glucose? Do you mean carbs that are converting themselves into sugar in our bodies? Do we mean things that are naturally in Like, what is sugar? When I talk about sugar, when I talk about avoiding sugar, I really am focused on the added sugar piece. So the thing is, if you ate zero sugar in your entire day, your body would still make sugar. If you were just like, you know, eaten meat and vegetables, your body will still make sugar. That's how all of these carnivore people and the, you know, really strict people who are, you know, following keto, that's how they're still alive. because we have this ability for our bodies to make sugar for us

Starting point is 00:36:19 because we do need sugar as a fuel for our brain, but we don't need to eat sugar. So we have this process called gluconeogenesis, and it's glucosugar, neoneogenesis, create. And so our bodies are able to take whatever it is that we consume and whatever stores we have in our body and make sugar so that our brain can get the glucose it needs to get into the cells,

Starting point is 00:36:45 that the cells can do all the stuff they got to do so we stay alive and happy. So you don't need sugar per se to be consumed in order for sugar to be in our body and have it circulating around our blood. I'm focused on added sugar. And so the thing about added sugar, though, is there's, I think the last time I checked, there was like 350 different types of sweeteners that are considered added sugar. 350? Yeah, I think that's actually a conservative estimate. I think that the number has gone up since then. What are we looking for in the label that might be sugar that we wouldn't recognize as sugar? So you're not going to just see on the ingredients list sugar or you're going to see, you know, the things that we know of commonly like high fructose corn syrup.

Starting point is 00:37:28 It's gotten a lot more cryptic. And so, you know, fruit juice concentrate, for example, that's added sugar. Agave nectar, that's sugar. Malt is one of them, right? Yep. Maltz like barley malt, too? Yes. There's rice brand extract. like all of these things that kind of sound healthy sometimes, but you're like, I don't know what that actually is, but it's often sugar. And so that's why it's important to familiarize yourself with all these different ingredients so you know what they actually are, because it's really this kind of little dirty trick that the food industry is able to get away with that, you know, we don't necessarily have to indicate that it is an added sugar. I think that one of the things

Starting point is 00:38:10 we could do if we want to make some changes from a government standpoint is on the label of products. Yeah, it's great. We have like percentage of added sugar now, but it'd be nice to know for each of the ingredients list is it considered an added sugar. Like it should be bolded or there should be some way in which we know that this is one form of sugar or another. Because if you look at a product, you might say, oh, okay, well, yeah, it says sugar, but okay, well, it's towards the end of the list. So maybe there's not that much sugar in it. But there could be five other things before it, different fruit juice concentrates or whatever they might be, that are actually added sugar. They're just not called sugar on the label.

Starting point is 00:38:49 So we're going to go back to talking about the health effects of sugar on your body in a second. But when we're talking about this long list of health effects, are you not talking about carbs that turn into sugars in your bodies like pasta and potatoes and breads and things like that? Our research is really focused on the sweet stuff, the added sugar. But I will say, and I talk about this a lot when I'm lecturing on this topic and my books and things like that, that the addiction can sometimes really be difficult for people who not only just crave the sweets, but also crave the things that turn into sweet right away. So, for example, when you eat pasta, it doesn't taste sweet, but it can cause that spike

Starting point is 00:39:31 in your blood glucose. And that spike in glucose can affect your dopamine levels. That's why you might feel high when you have a little bit of positive, right? You get that rush. And for some individuals, and I think that there's probably a genetic component that maybe differentiates people, but most people kind of identify as having a sweet tooth or a bread tooth, right? And I find I'm more on the bread tooth category.

Starting point is 00:39:57 Like, I would rather have bread any day over like a bowl of ice cream. But there are people who kind of fall on the other end of the spectrum where they're like, ah, you know, I really like the sweets. That's what my problem is. It's not saying no to breads and pasta. Like, I can limit that. So there's those two categories. And then there's the unfortunate people in the middle who have both, right, who find that not only when they, you know, avoid sweets, it's not going to do it.

Starting point is 00:40:19 They have to avoid the breads and the pastas, too, because that can trigger their cravings for other types of sweets. We just have to know which type of person we are. We do. That's annoying a little bit. It is. I have a quiz about it to figure out, like, who you are. because I think when you ask yourself some specific questions about your dietary habits and your cravings and your sort of patterns of eating, it can become a little bit more clear where you fall. But I think, you know, identifying yourself around that is important because it can help you to figure out, you know, maybe why you're having a hard time, you know, getting control of your cravings. Because a lot of times people will say, I haven't been eating the sweets, but I'm still just, I can't get over this. I'm craving these things all the time. And it turns out it's because they're having, you know, very heavy carb things, like tons of sweet potatoes and tons of breads and pastas.

Starting point is 00:41:09 And that's actually perpetuating the cycle of addiction in terms of, you know, affecting the dopamine system. I actually think this is one of the tricky things, though, is people are trying to figure out, okay, if I cut Oreos out, will that change my cravings? And then I won't have these sugar cravings. And then I won't have all these detrimental effects of sugar on my body. And then they're like, okay, well, does that have to include alcohol? Does that have to include sweet potatoes?

Starting point is 00:41:35 Does that have to include bread? How are we meant to be sussing out what we need to limit or remove from our diet to avoid all these negative health effects that we're going to get back into in a second? I think that the key is to go slow. And I know that's not always the popular way to do things. But I do think it's important to start off with the ones that we know are just off the bat, not good for our health, like juices and, you know. you know, other beverages that have a lot of added sugar in them. Because you have to start somewhere. And the problem with a lot of these platforms that advise, okay, you've got to just cut all the sugar out immediately, like throw everything away. That whole all or nothing approach,

Starting point is 00:42:16 like cold turkey mentality, from a psychological perspective, it very rarely works. I mean, it can work for some people, but for the rest of us, it doesn't really work. Isn't the thought there, though, that if you're having any sugar, you're starting that dopamine cycle that we talked about, which is making you crave more sugar. So that's why you should just just get rid of all of it so you can kind of get off that dopamine train. Yes, that's the idea behind it, but in practical reality, it doesn't work. We have to reestablish our habits. And so it's not like, you know, let's just say you decide to go cold turkey and you throw everything out that has sugar in it in your house and you decide I'm never going to have sugar in a restaurant ever again.

Starting point is 00:42:55 You don't have a plan, though. Like, what are you going to have for dinner? You have to kind of lay the groundwork where you can incrementally make these changes and actually stick to them. Because I think everybody has all these great intentions when they go cold turkey. But then what happens? They get in a jam where it's like, oh, I'm hungry. I'm really hungry. And I didn't think ahead. And I don't know what to eat. So that's where I think people then fall off the wagon and end up binging or eating something with a ton of sugar in it. I advocate more of a learned approach that's maybe a little bit slower, but it's going to allow you to establish these behaviors and these new habits that are going to make you be more successful. You're not going to be set up to fail if, you know,

Starting point is 00:43:38 suddenly come home from work and you're dying to eat something and, you know, you don't have anything prepared. You're going to have like a arsenal of ideas and a plan in place. If you start your beverages, that's kind of the low-hanging fruit. And it's also the biggest source of added sugar for most people. Do diet beverages count and do kind of like the healthy diet beverages count, like ollipop, poppy, et cetera, because they have that sweet flavor, which is wiring your brain in a certain way. I think that we have to get away from the all or nothing mentality, right? And I think that's what's hurting a lot of us. So I tell people, if you need to use the diet beverages or these sort of like healthier diet beverages as a way to slowly reduce your dependence on sugar,

Starting point is 00:44:19 then great. The ultimate goal, though, should be to move toward very low sugar or one diet beverage a day or whatever you're like, you know, guardrails are in terms of where you want to be. Do you do fun little drinky drinks throughout your day? Like I feel like that gives my life meaning. Yeah. Oh, no, I absolutely do. Okay. So what are you drinking throughout the day? One of the things I love is the fact that we've gotten to normalize the like mini cans of like soda beverages. So, and I don't do this every day, but I would say a couple times a week to get me through like the mid-afternoon slump, I'll have a diet, Dr. Pepper. I think that's actually very helpful for people to hear, though, because they hear,

Starting point is 00:44:58 for me, my macho, which is lightly sweetened, but it does have a little bit of sweetener in it is just a source of great joy in my life. Absolutely. Look, you have to live life. The whole idea is you have to enjoy what you're eating, and you have to be intentional about it. So I don't sit there drink a diet, Dr. Pepper, all day long, but when I feel like I want to have one, I'll have one. And I know that, okay, well, you know what? I've been eating healthy. You know, I exercise. I, you know, pay the bills. I do whatever I'm supposed to do. Like, I'm going to have this. It's okay. And it's okay.

Starting point is 00:45:30 I think that's where we get into this whole like, again, the all or nothing mindset. Like, I titled my book Sugar Less because it's really just about reducing it. It's not about not having it ever. That's not fun. That's like not sustainable. So, yeah, having what you want, when you want it, but being intentional about it. And enjoying it when you have it. Like don't mindlessly consume. Okay. So you heard it here. The Princeton neuroscientist has a few Diet Dr. Pepper's a week. Right. So I'm not sure Diet Dr. Pet will be sending me some diet dropper. Do smoothies or types of drinks that have sugar but also have fiber or fat in them count?

Starting point is 00:46:05 So my take on smoothies is twofold. The thing about the fruit smoothies is that if we made a smoothie together and we laid all the fruit out that we were going to put in it, and I said to you, Liz, instead of us making the smoothie, just eat it all, like eat all the fruit. it would take you a while to eat it, right? Much more time than it would for you to drink the smoothie. And you probably would not want to finish all that fruit because it would kind of get aversive. You'd get tired of chewing it. Like, you might get full faster.

Starting point is 00:46:37 So the thing is you end up consuming more fruit than you would if you actually just eat the fruit when you throw it in a smoothie, which, again, it can be beneficial because fruits got lots of antioxidants. But you're kind of like force feeding yourself, those antioxidants, which I'm just, I don't love. Some of these smoothies can be really calorically dense. If you start to add in, you know, oatmeal and yogurts and all these things, there's tons of research studies that have shown that you will drink liquid calories to a greater extent and drink more calories when they're in liquid form than in solid form. So you're much, much more likely to overdrink when it's a liquefied version of a food, then if you had to actually sit there and, like, eat the oatmeal and, like, eat the yogurt?

Starting point is 00:47:25 That makes sense. Because doesn't chewing create a microbiome process that starts to signal satiety? Exactly. I'll imagine, like, what our ancestors, hunter-gatherer ancestors. Like, if they came back, like, what it would be like for them? Because if you think about it, you know, when we were hunters and gatherers, what did we drink? Water? I'm like, I don't know. It's a good question. Not diet, Dr. Pepper. Yeah, but we drank water. Okay. That was it, right?

Starting point is 00:47:51 I mean, yeah, rainwater, right? Like we weren't taking our limited supply of berries and turning that into grape juice. Right. And so we kind of evolved, like when you drink something, it's usually zero calories, zero nutrition. It's just like hydration, like in liquid form. But now, you know, we're drinking a ton of calories. And yeah, it's great. It's got like extra nutrients in it that, of course, our body is going to use.

Starting point is 00:48:17 But we don't get the same satiety right. response to it. We're not chewing it. I mean, you know, having your mastication happen, like your mouth chew on something is part of the appetitive process that tells you like, oh, guess what? You're, you're going to be full soon. You've been chewing for a while. It's just kind of part of the process. So would you say if somebody wants to continue to consume smoothies? One, don't add a ton of stuff in. Two, maybe make sure there's some fat, some protein for satiety. And three, chew them so that you're actually signaling your brain for satiety. Did I miss anything? Would you change? anything there? I think that that's a good way to think about it. I think that smoothies,

Starting point is 00:48:54 like, it's the same with anything else. I think once in a while, they're great, but I just think people need to be mindful. I think that they've gotten this, like, halo of health around them, that when you look into it every single day, you know, what am I putting in my smoothie, like, actually how many calories are in this thing? How fast am I drinking it and am I getting full from it? Because you could have a 500 calorie smoothie and be starving, you know, in 30 minutes, Whereas if you sat down and ate that 500 calories worth of contents in your smoothie and actually chewed it and did the work, right? You had to maybe got to peel it, maybe all this stuff. Then it's going to be a different situation.

Starting point is 00:49:32 You're not necessarily going to be hungry right away after that. So the first step that you would say, if we're feeling overwhelmed by like, well, there's sugar and everything. What am I doing? Get rid of liquids that are, we're just mainlining sugar into our bodies. What would be the second thing that you would recommend? So after the beverages, I usually recommend. recommend that people start with the breakfast. And so this is where it's, you know, trying to figure out, okay, how am I going to start my day? How am I going to, you know, bring my brain and my body, like,

Starting point is 00:50:03 back to life with fuel? Because that's essentially what the food we eat, the first thing we eat is doing to set the stage for the rest of the day. So again, this is where it comes down to figuring out, you know, what kinds of things you'd like to eat for breakfast. Now, for some people, this is easier because they're already eating like a super healthy breakfast. So maybe it's just making a couple tweaks here and there. Maybe instead of having syrup on their pancakes, they're having a little bit of syrup or less syrup than they were having. Or adding in protein, like having a pancake with like an egg on the side or something like that. Would that also help? That would help. Yeah, because that's going to help boost your satiety. It's going to, you know, create this difference in the balance of your

Starting point is 00:50:44 body that maybe is going to make it so you don't feel like you need the sweetness or have all that added sugar. If we eat simple carbs in the morning, like a pastry or a lot of different types of cereal, are we more likely to crave carbs all day long? Yes. You're setting the tone of, you know, this dopamine spike from that sugar. And it's really allowing your body to then expect sugar, right? You're upping the threshold. You're up in the game of, you know, what we want in terms of what's going to make us feel good. So it's something that's going to have like a more sustained release of glucose in our bodies, something that's going to allow us to, you know, feel full, but also feel satisfied. So, you know, something that's like savory. One of the other things, speaking of

Starting point is 00:51:26 eggs, because we were just talking about eggs, I've gotten into this like kind of like kitchen sink egg frittata situation where we'll take eggs and I'll basically just add in whatever leftover vegetables. I'll add in different spices, like salt, time, all, like, whatever I have line around. and you could make this like very flavorful, savory egg dish for Tata, bake it in the oven. That's going to leave you feeling satisfied. I think that's really the key is to find something that you can have in the morning that's going to leave you feeling satisfied, but not in the way that sugar does. Sugar's like a bad boyfriend.

Starting point is 00:52:00 It like it gives you this like feeling like, oh my gosh, this is so great. But then when you realize it actually wasn't that great, like this is not good for me. I really should avoid you. Same with sugar. I feel like we need to just come up with like. an alternative, so it's still going to make us feel happy and good, but not in the way that sugar can have those negative side effects. Okay, so we're getting rid of sugary beverages. We're remaking our breakfast to be something that's one delicious, which I really think is an

Starting point is 00:52:26 important point that I haven't heard people talk about enough to satisfying, which means we're going to chew it. It means there's going to be protein. It means there's going to be fiber in it. I think it's also having variety. You know, one of the things that people tend to do, which I don't think is a good idea is to be monotonous with their food. If they're trying to, like, eat healthy, they'll eat the same thing over and over again. That's not a good idea. You really do need to try to change it up and have some variety because that's the best way to get all the different nutrients we need to, you know, stay healthy for one. But also, you get bored with it, right? And I think that's really part of this is stimulating yourself with food in a way that's going to be exciting and

Starting point is 00:53:04 different. So you're not going to fatigue from it. I think food fatigue is like a real thing. And that's why it's important to change it up. So you have to come up with a couple different breakfast ideas. And maybe rotate them. Absolutely. And just kind of, you know, get like a quasi-menu going that you can sort of pick and choose from. And also another point you made is to have it be savory because, again, the flavor of sweet is going to kick off those neural processes that are going to make you crave more sweet all day long. So having a savory breakfast with all these different checklists. What would be the third thing that you would have people do if they were trying to reduce sugars, but they were overwhelmed by where to start.

Starting point is 00:53:39 Well, the third thing I would recommend would be to focus on the snacks. The snacks are where people tend to just kind of say, oh, let me grab this or let me, you know, pop in the store and grab a quick snack. I suddenly am hungry. I didn't bring anything with me. And so I think, you know, planning out what kinds of snacks you're going to have and whether or not you're going to be that person who's like carrying their snacks with them everywhere just in case or whether or not you're going to be able to then figure out, okay, if I

Starting point is 00:54:06 have to like pop in a convenience store because, you know, I'm just suddenly very hungry. I need something to eat. Like, what am I going to pick in this store to eat where there might not be a lot of healthy options? So figuring out where you fall when it comes to snacks and figuring out the healthy snack options is extremely important because that is what I think a lot of people end up struggling with is, you know, getting in those like sort of last minute moments where they're unprepared and then not having a plan. What's your go-to in a convenience store? Usually it's like a bag of nuts, but you have to watch because a lot of them will have sugar in them. So you have to just check the label. It's because I just maybe let too much time go between meals or I got delayed and now I'm not

Starting point is 00:54:50 going to get home until late for dinner. It's about making it so I can sustain myself until I can have my healthy meal. I feel like that's the point of the snack. I look at snacks like that. They're like a bridge to be getting to the healthy meal that I'm going to get. I think a lot of people look at snacks like it's like fun time. Like, come on, let's have a snack. Like, let's have cookies. Let's have chips. If you're looking at snacks that way, that's great.

Starting point is 00:55:13 But figure out a way to make them have less sugar in it so that if your fun time snacks are what you want to have, just try to have it so that they're not like loaded with added sugar. How do you suggest people approach nutrient-dense foods that have a lot of sugar in them? Things like berries, bananas, sweet potatoes. We think of these foods as really. really, really good for us, but they clearly have sugar in them. They have sugar, but they don't have added sugar.

Starting point is 00:55:37 So they have sugar, but they also have fiber. They also have other nutrients that balance out the effect that the sugar that's naturally occurring in them is having on our body. And they're also packaged in a way that they don't have this ridiculous ratio of sugar to other things in them, which we see with all the processed foods that are out there. I think you should be eating them, not drinking them. So that's why I think it's important to make sure you're not like doing too much of that with smoothies. It's also important to make sure you're not juicing them because again, when you juice something, and I know a lot of people like juice and it's great because it tastes yummy, but guess what? It's also just stripped out all the fiber and a lot of the other nutrients that you would actually get from eating the whole fruit. And so you're really just kind of left with the sugar that's in the fruit. and you kind of threw away all the good stuff. So you're not demonizing all of these delicious pieces of produce

Starting point is 00:56:38 and naturally occurring foods that have sugar in them in any way? Absolutely not. I actually elevate those things because I think that for people who are struggling with a sugar addiction, for people who are, you know, craving the added sugar and the sweets and the cakes, those can be the best help for them. if you're craving, you know, ice cream, and I know, I know it sounds like, okay, if I want my ice cream, all my ice cream, right? But if you're really looking to just kind of take the edge off

Starting point is 00:57:07 of a sugar craving, if you have, you know, a bowl of berries, that's going to help, right? Because it's going to have some sugar in it. It's going to release the sugar in your bloodstream. It's going to get to make you feel good. Maybe not to the extent that the spike of sugar would from an ice cream. But again, it can help you. It can really serve as a crutch, I think, for people who kind of just need a little bit of something that's sweet in order to feel satisfied. I think what you just said is so important. So these foods are going to have the sugar, but they're not going to have the spiky dopaminergic effect. They're not going to have the spiky metabolic effect. They're going to be much more sustained. So it's going to literally impact your brain and body differently.

Starting point is 00:57:44 Absolutely. Think about something like Pop-Tarts, for example, right? If you buy like Pop-Tarts in the store, yeah, they have a ton of sugar in them. But you have to keep in mind a lot of these foods with added sugar, they also have all of this extra stuff in them that's making the sugar even like sexier. So they have, for example, Pop-Tarts, they have caranuba wax in them. That is something that has no nutritional value. It's literally added to the product so that it'll melt in your mouth when it hits your tongue. And so you have this like mouth feel so that it like that sensation of like, oh my gosh,

Starting point is 00:58:19 this is literally melting in my mouth. This feels so good. That's why it's put in there. So that's going to make the sugar even more delicious. And then you layer onto that, the colors of the, you know, different sprinkles and the dyes that are put in to make things look a pretty way. That all plays a role in the pleasurable aspects that we get from sugar. So it's not just, you know, a packet of sugar, right? It's the window dressing around it that even makes it more desirable.

Starting point is 00:58:48 And that's part of a process that we need to be aware of. And you don't get that with a banana, right? There's no like, it's just a banana. It's literally a banana. You peel it. It's over. There's nothing beautiful about it other than it's just a banana. But when we look at these other processed foods with the sugar, it's not just the sugar.

Starting point is 00:59:06 There's all this other stuff that goes along with it to make the sugar even more potent. So let's go back to the impacts of sugar on our body and our brain. How does sugar impact ADHD? There's been some controversy in the literature around this. And there's been some studies that have been conducted in the, I would say they were done years ago. We probably need to do some newer studies to really get at this that basically showed that sugar didn't produce hyperactivity in children, right?

Starting point is 00:59:33 And that kind of started to debunk that idea that, oh, sugar leads to ADHD. Anyone who's ever been around a kid who's had sugar knows that if you give a kid sugar, it's going to make that kid bonkers in many cases, especially if we're talking about the amounts of sugar that are in most of the kids. kids products these days. If you've ever had a birthday party at your house where you served kids sugar, you know that that's like a recipe for disaster. So I think that when it comes to sugar, we're now realizing that sugar does affect our behavior. It affects our mood. It affects our ability to focus. And so for people who are struggling with ADHD, I think that changing your

Starting point is 01:00:16 diet by removing sugar can be one of the most important things that you're going to. can do. Why do you think the study showed that it wasn't connected to ADHD? I think that the studies that were done that I'm aware of were an attempt to kind of do a sort of controlled setting where they had children come into a room and then they gave some kid sugar and other kids didn't have sugar and then they had outside observers rate which kids seemed more hyper than others. And so there's limitations because if you think about it, like if you haven't met my kids, so you wouldn't know if they were like bonkers or if that's just their baseline normal, right? And so having sort of third party people judging the behaviors was kind of a limitation.

Starting point is 01:01:00 They probably should have the parents do it or people that know the children well. So I think that for the longest time, there was a lot of pushback by our society and by the food industry in particular to make it so that sugar was a healthy part of your diet. It was okay to have sugar. You should eat all the sugar that you want, sugar-rich cereals, all these foods with sugar in it. if you, you know, remember back in like the 90s and the early part of the 2000s, it was like fat that was bad for you, right? We had that whole like revolution of like fat free, which meant that all of the food products that had the fat taken out had sugar put in them. Otherwise, it tastes like cardboard, right? Nobody wants to eat something that doesn't have fat in it or sugar.

Starting point is 01:01:39 So they put sugar in all these food products. And so there was this period of time where sugar was sort of in the safe space. And I think that we're now learning that that actually wasn't the case and that it could have a negative. impact on all these different aspects to our behavior, including, you know, our mental health and our ability to focus in particular for people who are struggling with ADHD. To clarify, I think that ADHD is a complicated condition that probably comes from a genetic component. I think that sugar can exacerbate the symptoms. So then you are talking about sort of an in the moment thing. Yes, absolutely. You're not saying if you eat cake today, a week from now,

Starting point is 01:02:19 you're going to have more intense ADHD symptoms because of some sort of mechanism of action that's changed your brain. I think it's more in the moment in the sense that if you have a diet that's rich and added sugars, it's going to exacerbate those symptoms right now. So if you can change your dietary intake and change your habits around food to minimize sugar, reduce it, it can have an impact. When we take a look at the research and you look at, you know, what sugar does to the brain in terms of, again, spiking dopamine, it's going to have a negative impact on your ability to focus.

Starting point is 01:02:55 If you're spiking dopamine, that's going to make it so that your brain is going to become dysregulated in a way that isn't going to allow you to be able to focus in a way that if your dopamine levels were sustained. We often think about dopamine in terms of addiction, right? And in terms of learning, it's also something that can be extremely important in terms of focusing our attention. So the thing that makes food and drugs of abuse different is, as I mentioned, that drugs of abuse released dopamine. Well, it turns out the very first time you have a new taste. So the very first time you eat a new cuisine, you actually release dopamine like you would

Starting point is 01:03:34 if it was a drug. There's an orienting response. You have to focus because if you think about it, this is the first time you've ever tasted this type of food. It's different. It's novel. you need to focus because if that food makes you sick, you want to avoid it at all costs, right? So if we go out to a restaurant and we have something that we've never had before and we suddenly get sick from it,

Starting point is 01:03:56 it's a survival mechanism that we've taken with us from our ancestors. And so you're going to remember the food that made you sick. I mean, anyone who's had a conditioned taste diversion. I don't know if you ever experienced that. I had that happen to me when I was a kid. To this day, I got sick from buffalo chicken wings. I didn't even get food poisoning. I literally got, eat the buffalo chicken wings and then got this like awful, awful flu.

Starting point is 01:04:20 The two are not related in any way, but because I ate the chicken wings so close to when I got sick, my brain thinks that they made me sick. And I, to this day, like if you paid me, I couldn't eat one. And again, we have this like emotion, focus coping piece that's tied again back to the survival mechanism that we need around food. Because if you think about it, food used to be one of the number one killers of us. If you ate bad food, rancid food, it's not going to be good, right? You have to know which mushrooms to eat when you're foraging for mushrooms. Because if you eat the wrong mushroom, guess what? You're dead. So it has this piece that allows us to focus, too. So that's one of the

Starting point is 01:05:01 things about dopamine that I think is unique when we think about it. We don't often talk about the focus piece. And also, a lot of the drugs that are used to medicate, individuals that have ADHD affect the dopamine system. They're dopaminergic drugs. That's really interesting. How does sugar impact depression and anxiety? This is something that we're starting to see a lot more research on and trying to understand how sugar can regulate our mood because I think especially in the field of psychiatry for the longest time, it was really never looked at that food could have an impact on our mood. It was thought that your mood, if you're depressed or you're anxious, that's due to some other things that are going on in your life or some other things that are happening in terms of

Starting point is 01:05:46 your genetics. So we're now learning that sugar can have a negative impact on our mood. So when you have sugar, one of the things that happens is that it's going to activate these neurotransmitter systems and it's going to cause alterations in these systems in a way that can basically mess with your mood. We have these like inhibitory neurotransmitter systems like GABA, for example. We have the excited in our transmitter system, glutamate, all these things are connected. So when we talk about, like, yeah, sugar affects dopamine, sugar affects the brain opioids. Well, guess what? The dopamine level then affects the glutamate levels, which then affects gabble levels. So it's this almost like a domino effect that occurs. So when our brains are dysregulated due to what we're eating, it's going to have an

Starting point is 01:06:31 impact on these other brain systems that in many cases are there to regulate our mood. In addition, the glucose piece is so important. So remember when we eat something that has added sugar in it or we consume something that's a carbohydrate, it turns into glucose in our body. And when we have those glucose spikes, that's going to have a negative impact on some of these mood systems in the brain, like the serotonergic system or, again, the GABA system. And so it's also interconnected. And that's why I think one of the things that I've been very excited to see lately is a lot of

Starting point is 01:07:06 functional medicine doctors or psychiatrists who are, you know, in tuned with lifestyle changes as being an important part of treatment and important part of, you know, preventing mental health issues, is to look at your diet and say like, okay, well, what can I do to maybe change this in a way that's going to be protecting my health, not putting it at risk? Love it. If somebody wanted to have a positive impact on their anxiety or depression levels, how long would you say they would need to reduce added sugars in their diets to experience that effect? It can very very. certainly depending on the individual, depending on how much added sugar they've been eating, depending on how severe their depression or how severe their anxiety might be. But I would say

Starting point is 01:07:49 you've got to give it at least a week or two. One of the big things that we've been talking a lot about when it comes to sugar in terms of the barrier of giving it up for a lot of people is that people will experience withdrawal. So they'll get headaches, they'll feel lethargic, they'll get irritable. it's like the same thing that happens like a couple days into, you know, January when you're like, okay, I was eating super healthy, but now I feel like, I don't know, I'm not feeling so great. That's the withdrawal. And so there's been studies that have been published recently that say that that peaks usually by day like four to five. And then if you get past that point, the withdrawal symptoms seem to dissipate. It's to me suggesting that that's when the neurochemical reorganization has happened. So that's why I tell people, give it. give it about a week and see. And you should start to feel something. If you don't, then maybe you're not coming at this from the right angle. Maybe you need to cut back even more or maybe you need to cut out some other things that you were eating that could be causing you to still, you know, feel that way. I'm genuinely confused how master class gets literally the absolute top people in

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Starting point is 01:15:03 That's a good question. When it comes to the effects that, you know, sugar has on our skin health, I don't really know where the research falls on that. I don't really quite know if there's actually been good studies that have been done. I feel like a lot of that is coming from, you know, anecdotal reports or kind of case reports. of people having feel like their skin is much clearer after they give it up. I would say, though, you know, if you think about it, when we eat a lot of added sugar and all these processed foods, you know, it's causing our bodies to then have to compromise in some other way. And I would imagine that it's going to release cortisol. It's going to, you know, cause us to have these sort of like stress responses because your body's dealing with a stressor when you're eating all this junk food, it is a stressor. Your cortisol levels are going to be higher. And that can then translate into, you know, breakouts and things like that. I was just going to say via the inflammation

Starting point is 01:16:03 pathways that that's why I would think it would have an impact. Yeah, absolutely, too. I would say that's so true. And I think that when, you know, people cut back on added sugar, if they do notice these sort of like beauty benefits associated with it, it also can be because they're replacing the foods that they were eating that had a ton of added sugar in it with, healthier things. So they're experiencing more nutrient density in their diets, which is showing up on their state. Right. And they're going to have more anti-inflammatory foods and they're just going to then notice these benefits kind of as a side effect of giving up sugar. What impact does sugar have on how we age? Well, when we eat sugar, it's going to, again, it's going to be pro-inflammatory, right? If you're

Starting point is 01:16:46 eating sugar, you're not eating other stuff. So you're not going to be eating maybe some healthier things that are going to have the antioxidants and the nutrients that are going to be protecting your body as it ages. There's also oxidative stress. And so when you're going to eat something that has a high amount of sugar in it, it's going to cause more stress on your cells. In terms of how it could potentially impact how we look for aging, if sugar is producing, you know, all of these inflammatory responses, if it's going to increase oxidative stress, it's increasing cortisol, all of these things are going to then have a negative impact on our cellular responses. if it's going to increase oxidative stress, it's increasing cortisol, all of these things are going to then have a negative impact on our cellular health. And, you know, that can translate into reduces elasticity, you know, having all of these

Starting point is 01:17:28 aspects to damage our cells, including the cells on our skin. How does sugar impact our cancer risk? Well, this is another thing that we've been hearing a lot about lately in terms of, you know, sugar feeding cancer cells. Again, I think sugar feeds all cells, including cancer cells. So that's a little bit misleading, I think, for a lot of people. But I think when it comes to looking at specific cancers, certainly diet plays a role or can increase risk. And so there have been links to certain cancers and increased risk for developing those types of cancers in individuals who have a diet that's rich and added sugars. So if you're increasing your diet to have a diet to have a a lot of added sugars in it or a lot of processed foods in it. Think about it. You're doing a couple things. You're also increasing your body weight, which is a risk factor for cancers. Also, you are, you know, if you're eating a lot of processed foods, which is really the common

Starting point is 01:18:28 denominator of sugar, right? We find it in a lot of processed foods. We don't really eat sugar alone. We eat it via all these highly processed foods. And, you know, maybe they're okay in moderation, but in our modern environment, we're really like not eating these things in moderation. You've mentioned a few different pathways by which sugar is negatively impacting our health. So what I have heard is it can cause direct cellular damage. Is that true? Cells need sugar, right? But what happens in our food environment in many cases is that people are over consuming added sugar and that's contributing to this sort of dietary regimen that we find ourselves in that is causing us to have excess amounts of added sugar that we're consuming that ends up harming ourselves as opposed

Starting point is 01:19:13 to hurting them. Okay, so too much added sugar is causing cell damage, and that's one of the reasons why we're seeing skin and aging effects. That's one of the reasons why we might see increased cancer risk, et cetera, is because too much added sugar has been shown to damage ourselves. I would say it contributes to damaging ourselves. The second pathway we've talked about is that added sugar is impacting your neurochemical processes, including your dopamine, your gab, it's impacting the way that your brain is essentially firing off its neurochemicals. Yeah. Opioid system, for sure. Yes. And then the third way in which sugar is impacting your body is via your metabolic health. So if you have too much sugar and you're also eating other additives and other

Starting point is 01:19:58 processed food and things like that, then that's going to have a metabolic effect, which is going to have downstream effects that are going to lead to all of these different conditions that we've talked about. Yeah, absolutely. Fourth is that we're taking at valuable space that other nutrients would be in and those nutrients, and those nutrients would benefit our health. Yeah, and I actually think that the fourth part is probably the lesser talked about, but maybe the most important part is that we're letting sugar and these processed foods occupy the space that should be occupied by healthy, wholesome foods.

Starting point is 01:20:29 And I think that's where we only have so much space to eat so much food. And if we're filling up on these foods, we're not filling up on foods that are actually pro-healthful in our bodies. And then fifth is that sugars are often in ultra-processed food, so they're being eaten with things that are having their own negative effects. Yes, in terms of the other ingredients that we tend to define in processed foods these days. Like the carnubo wax or whatever. Yeah. And the various different, like, you know, things that are put in there, like, preservatives. And even now, like, we have to talk about, like, the packaging of those processed foods. The microplastics.

Starting point is 01:21:07 Yeah. And then microbiome, we haven't talked about that, but I've been under the impression that one of the reasons that sugar has negative health effects is because it alters your microbiome, both orally and in your gut, which then has downstream negative effects. Do you know anything about that? Yeah. So I haven't personally studied the microbiome, but I actually just came back from speaking at an event where one of the other speakers was a microbiome expert. And it was a fascinating discussion. And he talked about, you know, how we have all of these different microbes in our body, that are basically talking to our brain. And I really truly do think after hearing the lecture and just knowing what I know from the research that I have read about the microbiome, that it's driving the car.

Starting point is 01:21:51 It is telling our brains what to do. And I don't think that we are fully aware of how much it is doing that right now, but I think the next five years we're going to see tons of more studies that are going to elucidate that for us. And so what you're feeding your gut is then having an impact on how your brain,

Starting point is 01:22:08 brain is going to respond in terms of behavior, in terms of, you know, just our reaction to things. So, for example, some of the studies that he was highlighting were showing that depending on if there was dysregulation in the gut microbiome based off of what someone was eating or not, someone would have a different response to a facial cue. If you see somebody with this look of fear, horror, most humans recognize, oh, my gosh, that person is fearful of something. thing. It's this sort of like biological, like, recognition that we have. And that can be altered in terms of, you know, how fearful you think the face is versus less fearful based off of the gut microbiome. So that tells us the gut is talking to the brain and saying how you should react to what's going

Starting point is 01:22:58 on in your environment. So if we're scrolling, for instance, and we're feeling anxious and depressed and, like, everything's really scary and fearful, fear-inducing, that could be in part because of our microbiome at that moment. Yeah. It's not because your brain is telling you you're scared or you're fearful or you're feeling anxious. It turns out it's because your gut told your brain that you're feeling that way. So I think it's so important to look at the microbiome as another mini brain or actually

Starting point is 01:23:29 maybe like a major brain because I think when you think about the gut microbiome, it's not just the gut microbiome, it's the oral microbiome too. It's like the minute it hits your mouth is when your microbiome starts. And so we have all these different things that are happening. And that can impact how our brain responds to other things in our environment. Sugar, does that feed the bad bacteria in your gut? And like in the same way, we know that fiber feeds the good bacteria in our gut, and it gives them something to eat so that they can flourish.

Starting point is 01:23:57 What impact does sugar have on our gut microbiome? Yeah. So this is where we have to be careful about how we use the term sugar, right? Because not all sugars are the same in terms of how. they're going to affect these different, you know, aspects of our gut microbiome. When we think about the added sugar, standard American diet, you know, the junk food, whatever we want to call it, that's going to negatively impact our gut microbiome for sure. And, you know, we see that across the board.

Starting point is 01:24:23 Study after study is showing that things like fiber, things, you know, like healthy sugars that are coming naturally, you know, in the forms of fruits and vegetables that are packaged with fiber, that type of sugar is not going to have a negative impact on. our gut health. So that's why it's important that, you know, we kind of understand which aspect of sugar that we're talking about. Are there any other things you've come across in your research that you feel like more people should know about? Well, we've not personally studied this, but one of the things that we've been hearing a lot about, and I've been reading some really interesting studies about, has been the link between sugar intake and actually diabetes and then risk for dementia later in life.

Starting point is 01:25:04 And so there's actually some people and some medical professionals that have been talking about some forms of dementia as almost being like a type 3 diabetes because studies are finding that the way that sugar can affect the brain in terms of how it is reacting when we eat too much sugar, but also in terms of situations where people develop diabetes and then that dysregulates your insulin levels, your body's ability to produce insulin. that has been shown to play a role potentially in dementia later in life. And so... Yeah, I've heard that people are saying that Alzheimer's essentially type 3 diabetes. And I think that we're now, fortunately, we're living long enough to see that. That was the thing. I think, you know, the average life expectancy has been, you know, slowly getting, you know, higher and higher. And so now we have enough people, thanks to modern medicine, that aren't dying of a heart

Starting point is 01:25:58 attack or dying of other things earlier in life. And so we have enough people now that are living to the age where, unfortunately, they are developing dementia, but we can now see, you know, well, how does this relate to other things and other conditions that maybe people had earlier in their life? So potentially, if somebody was worried about that down the line, that would be yet another reason to reduce their added sugars in their diet. Oh, absolutely. I mean, it's protective to your mental health. It's protective to your brain health. It's to just protective to your overall health. to try to reduce your intake of added sugar. And the longer you live, the more important that's going to be. So if you're hoping to live to be 100, which I think most of us are, you really want to make sure that that 100-year-old brain is as protected as it can be. And that's going to start, unfortunately, when you're like in your 20s or your 30s, you really don't want to wait too long to start, you know,

Starting point is 01:26:53 taking care of that brain. How does sugar impact our fertility? That's an interesting question. So I would say, that the direct link between sugar intake and fertility hasn't been quite as explored. Again, I think it comes back to, you know, where do we see the sugars? And so we see sugar in, again, processed foods and things like that. Those can lead to increased obesity rates, which we know can harm fertility and not be so fertility-friendly. So when people are advised if they're trying to conceive and they're having difficulty, you know, taking a look at your diet can be.

Starting point is 01:27:30 one way to do that, especially if we're talking about people may be struggling with their body weight too. Also, I think it goes back to what we were talking about earlier, which is that if you're having these foods with added sugar, you're taking up the space of the fertility-friendly, fertility boosting foods that, you know, are going to contain these nutrients that, you know, we're not necessarily going to find, perhaps, in a lot of the ultra-processed foods that people tend to overeat. You wrote an entire book about managing your food intake to essentially increased your fertility. Yeah, so I wrote what to eat when you want to get pregnant. It actually came from my own personal struggles with having secondary infertility. I couldn't get pregnant with my

Starting point is 01:28:12 second daughter. We just, well, wasn't working. There was no reason why. And so I was pretty tuned in to what I was eating and I felt like by proxy, so it was my husband. But it kind of caused me to do this bit of a deeper dive to just look at, you know, nutrition and how it plays a role. So the one thing I'll say that I would say is a key takeaway from that is don't wait until you want to have a baby. Because it can take a while. It's not like one of those things where you're, you know, I want to lose 10 pounds. So I'm going to start now and then in a month I'll be there now. It's a process. Because again, you know, if we're talking about increasing your fertility and looking at how nutrition can support that. It's typically something that can take a while. It can take months,

Starting point is 01:28:55 if not longer. So I often recommend that, you know, people start early if they're, you know, wanting to go down that journey and thinking about ways in which they can boost their fertility. When we are in the middle of experiencing a sugar craving, is there anything that we can do to quell that? When you're in the middle of a sugar craving, the best thing you can do is to just distract yourself. It's going to pass. It could be something as dumb as like playing with your bracelet or like the spinny fidget rings that people tend to have, whatever it is. It's just a matter of distracting yourself and then the thought eventually will leave you or something else will happen to kind of take you away from that moment. So I think distraction is key. Something that I do when

Starting point is 01:29:36 I have a sugar craving is I'll eat a spoonful of a fermented food like sauerkraut or fermented carrots. I don't know why I started doing this. It works really, really well. And I was wondering if you know why this works. I have speculations about like the algutamine in fermented foods or something like that or the taste bud situation, but I'd love to know from your neuroscience perspective, if there's any reason that would work. I would say it may be what you're alluding to where it's kind of the you're kicking in sort of like the opposite taste response, right? If it's like a fermented food, it's definitely not going to be sweet. So maybe that like kind of negative contrast just sort of like put you in a different like nutritional mindset. Or an oral microbiome thing too, I'm also wondering.

Starting point is 01:30:16 It could be. Okay. But I think that that raises an interesting point about like, like kind of, you know, what are the foods to eat to like stop your cravings? If you have craving ice cream, like have a piece of fruit, this might be sort of like another mechanism that could be acting on different systems in the brain that could help to kind of reverse the craving, right, so that you're no longer like interested in sweet because now you have this like different type of taste in your mouth. What are the top foods we should eat if we want to have less sugar cravings? I would say if you want to have less sugar cravings, focusing on things that are savory.

Starting point is 01:30:51 is key. And so I feel like we underutilize spices in the United States. Like people are like afraid that it's going to be too spicy, but like you can have it not be hot spicy. You can have it be savory spicy. And that's going to provide a level of enjoyment and, you know, just making it taste good that often we only get from sugar. And I think that's one thing I would definitely recommend. Don't be afraid of the spices. Don't be afraid to like add those to things. to jazz up whatever meal it is that you're having. I also think that if we're looking to avoid our sugar cravings, focusing on the things that, again, are the healthy fats that are going to leave us feeling satiated and full, cravings come about when we get hungry. I mean, we have like

Starting point is 01:31:38 these biological, like, desires to eat things when we get hungry, and we want the quick fix. We want the calories. We want something that's going to really sugar right away. So that's why we tend to crave things that are sweet when we're hungry. But we also have hedonet craving. But we also have hedonic cravings. So, you know, you might just want to feel good because if, let's just say, you had a bad day at work, or you just feel overwhelmed, you might not be hungry, but you know that the sugar is going to make you feel good. So that's the hedonic craving part. So that's what makes sugar craving so difficult because it's, they're triggered by two very different things, by our actual biological desire to eat food and also by just our desire to feel good and to make ourselves feel

Starting point is 01:32:18 better. So how do you deal with both of those differently? So I think that when you have a craving for sugar, you have to really stop in your tracks and ask yourself, okay, am I hungry or am I trying to self-medicate some other problem in my life? Is this because I'm stressed out and I just want like something to make me feel good for a minute? Or is it because I legit, I'm hungry and I need to eat something, and this is my brain's way of tricking me to just eat something that's going to give it the quickest, fastest amount of calories, because that's our brains learn what we teach it, right? And for many of us, that's what we've been teaching our brains, is that eat these ultra-processed foods, we'll get a couple hundred calories, it'll have all this stuff in it, and there you go.

Starting point is 01:33:03 So I think that, you know, understanding what kind of craving it is is is critical, and then feeding it accordingly, right? If it's a hedonic craving, don't do it. Just try to, you know, wait it out or do something else that gets to the root like a stress relief activity, a connective activity. Like what is the comfort that you need in that moment? Exactly. And I think that can be so helpful because a lot of our consumption of added sugar tends to be done passively. Like people don't intentionally eat the sugar. They're just passively consuming it. And it can be because they're self-medicating with it or they're using it to self-soothe or to just make them feel better. And it's so much easier and better for you in the long run to get to the root of what's actually causing you

Starting point is 01:33:46 to distress or causing you to be anxious or causing, you know, whatever it is and not just putting the food bandaid on it. Can you leave us with one homework assignment, something that anybody listening could do as soon as they turn off this podcast to start to crave less sugar and get control of their sugar addiction? I would say the homework will be to write down everything that you eat for the day and actually go and find out how much added sugar is in it. And you got to really do it, though, because it's hidden in it. Like there are some things that contain added sugar that, like I said, you'd be shocked. Like, we don't expect there to be sugar in it.

Starting point is 01:34:27 And when you do that, it can really be eye-opening. Because a lot of people I talk with will say, oh, I don't hardly eat any sugar. Like, I've really barely touched stuff. but then when they go through the list of the pasta sauce that they're using or the condiments that they're using or the salad dressing that they like and they actually like add all these things up, it can really add up really quickly. A lot of healthy products are loaded with added sugar. So even if you are eating healthy and you're doing your best, that's all we're doing. We're all trying our best. But if your goal is to cut back on the added sugar, you can't just go by looking at the healthy products.

Starting point is 01:35:04 You've really got to dig deeper. And so that would be my homework assignment for you all would be to just figure out where you are in terms of the sugar spectrum and then figure out where you want to be. Some of us are fine with the amount of sugar we're eating and it's okay. But I think most of us could benefit from cutting back. And certainly for down the road in terms of our future health, it helps to start now. Is there a number? I mean, ideally I assume the number would be zero for added sugar, but is there a number that you would realistically like to see people below in terms of grams consumed a day? Well, when we got the guidelines for the first time in 2015 about what's the recommended

Starting point is 01:35:42 amount of added sugar each day, it was 7 to 9 teaspoons is what's recommended. The average American consumes more like 16 teaspoons a day. So we're all pretty much eating way more sugar than is recommended. I would actually, if I was on the panel for those recommendations, I would have made the recommendations even less. Yeah, I'm curious, like, what are the studies trying to see the negative health impacts at in terms of added sugar? Like, what's the dose that starts to see the negative health impacts we talked about? I don't even know if we know the dose. Like, that's the studies that need to be done.

Starting point is 01:36:16 What is the minimum amount of sugar that, or the maximum, I should say, that will allow us to then, you know, start to not have increased risk of depression, not have increased risk of cancer, whatever. We don't know that yet. No. And I don't know if we're going to know it for a very long time because it's really tough to do those times. of studies, especially because those tend to be more like longitudinal studies where you're following people over 10, 20, 30, 40 years and will not be able to do that with this generation or the generations that are here now, because if you think about it, we're all kind of born into this world of like tons of added sugar. Yeah. So it's an important question. And from a research standpoint, we really need to be able to get there. But for now, I mean, the best advice I could give is the less,

Starting point is 01:37:02 the better, but it's got to be realistic. I love food. I love eating. And we can't like let that get away from us. I think we congregate as humans around food. Food is a part of the way we socialize. We always have done that. And there's a role for sugar in that, but we just have to make sure that it's not the only role. We have to make sure that we understand and have like some, you know, restraints on that. Can you tell us a little bit in your own words about your book, sugarless and anything else that you want to spotlight? Yeah. So my book sugarless, it's out in paperback. now. I really am proud of the book because, again, I didn't start off as a person writing books. I

Starting point is 01:37:38 was, and still am, like, a research scientist, just doing these experiments and interested in the brain and trying to understand, you know, how does, will we eat affect our health? How does this affect our longevity? And I wrote the book because I felt like a lot of this information just needs to get to people who are out there that, like, want to learn about this stuff. Not everyone's reading the journal articles and like, you know, sifting through these like boring science papers. I wanted to write it so that people could understand the science and have access to the science and just really use that to decide how they want to live their life and decide what kinds of changes they want to make. Because we all have to have this personalized approach to our health.

Starting point is 01:38:20 We all have to be our own advocate. And so I think the only way you can really do that effectively is if you have the information. So you need to know about these research studies and know about what's out there so that you can make evidence-based decisions on what you want to do for yourself. Amazing. Thank you so much, Nicole. This was wonderful. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for tuning in to this episode of the Liz Moody podcast. If you enjoyed the episode, go ahead and follow on Apple or Spotify or subscribe on YouTube and hit that notification bell so you never miss a new episode. And if there's somebody in your life you think would benefit from this episode, send them a quick link. It is the best way to support the podcast and it is so, so appreciate it. And if you're

Starting point is 01:38:59 watching this, drop me a comment. I would love to hear your thoughts and what resonated most with you. Thanks again for being here. I feel so lucky that I get to grow and learn and share with you, and I will see you on the next episode of the Liz Moody podcast. Oh, just one more thing. It's the legal language. This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. It is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, a psychotherapist, or any other qualified professional.

The Liz Moody Podcast - Why You Can’t Stop Sugar Cravings—And How to Fix It (Neuroscientist Explains)

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