Gut Check: The Hidden Dangers of Acid Reflux — and How You Can Fight It

23:19They're all generic now. So you're not going to really see commercials on it where, you know, the guy's at a barbecue and he's eating, you know, rib after rib. He's got barbecue sauce coming off his face and he obviously looks like the pin of the what exactly the the health that we don't want to exude and then the whole thing is like just you know take this pill and you'll be good you can go back same way the next day and uh and it's just that just i mean again like i you know we the pharmacy industry i'm not going to get into because we you know there's a lot of amazing things they do but but if you're selling yes somebody a pill instead of trying to convince them of a lifestyle and putting in the work, you're going to end up with this giant blanket or at least a cover-up of what really is done, which is putting in the work.

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28:02Man, I got you here. You know, bestselling author, multiple books, such a wealth of information. You've said twice about sugar addiction. And I'll preface this by saying, of course, that the addictive hormone is dopamine. If you're hungry and your body thinks it's starving to death, one of the things you have to do is turn up some kind of reward hormone, right? To say, I got to do something so that this pain goes away in my gut. And what's the fastest way to do that? Simple sugar. So talk to me through that. So what do I do instead of my sugar addiction? how do you focus an acid-friendly or reflux-friendly diet so that we can turn our lives around?

28:44That basically gets get off your acid and get off your sugar, your two books into a 90-second. Tell me what to do, then go buy the book, everybody. Yeah. I mean, sugar pumps up your dopamine eight times more than cocaine, which is actually one of the craziest stats I've ever heard. As I said earlier, it's a drug. It's become America's drug of choice. one thing I've learned is that, you know, sugar addiction, which so many of us have. And if you don't know if you have it or not, just try not to eat for five hours to see how you feel. The cravings come crashing in, right? So what we need to do, my whole approach now, it's not about deprivation, it's about moderation, but more importantly, not about giving up the foods you love more.

29:23So how can I make this food that I love that might be really bad for me? It's acidic, it's inflammatory. How can I make that a better version of that food? So it's really about adding and not taking away. Because a lot of people, when they're really dealing with a health crisis, yes, medicine is a godsend. I mean, save both my parents' lives, save my life. But PPIs are never meant to be taken for more than 14 days. I mean, you look on the box, it says 14 days. And the research shows that from a PPI standpoint, 54 % of the time, it doesn't even give them the symptomatic relief. So I'm all about someone doing something to walk them off the edge of the cliff, which is important.

29:57I wish my dad had that back in the day when this was found out. But it's all about looking at those foods that can actually strengthen our gut, strengthen our microbiome, lower inflammation, soothe and calm. So we have to avoid things that are very acidic. When I say acidic, citric acid foods, spicy foods, onions, garlic, chocolate has a substance called methylxanthine, which basically will soften or relax that lower esophageal sphincter, which we don't want. So instead of doing something like a cocoa, let's do more of like a raw cacao, which is high in minerals, low in sugar, and that will have a different effect on the body.

30:31Let's stay away for now for the alcohol and the coffees. No, don't say coffee. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on a second. Here's what I'm going to say. It's not about giving up coffee. Oh, thank God. And I'm not here to pitch my price or anything like that, but we have an amazing, which I basically created this because Kelly Ripa back in 2015 went on her show and she's like, you know, this, you put me on this seven day detox and alkalized my body. I feel great, but I'm still drinking my coffee. Didn't tell him. So when she said that, I'm like, all right. It's not about trying to fit into this lifestyle.

31:03How can we fit this into your life and your lifestyle? So I created this powder, which I'm going to send to you, Doc, which you add to your coffee and it neutralizes all the acid in the coffee. Because the reality is there's a lot of upside to coffee. But the one huge downside is it's so acidic. It's 100 times more acidic than this water that I'm drinking. So for people with reflux, they love their coffee. A lot of them don't give it up even though they suffer through it. And we don't want to do that white knuckle approach with sugar or coffee. So you add this powder to it. And basically now you get the upside minus that downside.

31:33And I have so many patients and clients that have severe acid reflux. They're doing this and they're still drinking their favorite cup of coffee. So not about giving it up. Well, I was going to say, we have a segment that this goes right into for all of my guests called, am I going to be okay? And I think now's the deal is that, right, I have a huge coffee. I'm sorry, a huge coffee drinker, but I, you know, I have two cups in the morning. And then before I work out, I do that boost. And the thing about coffee, first of all, it sounds like you're going to tell me, you're probably going to, well, I'll let you, I'm not, I'll let you be my doctor for a second here, Dr.

32:04Darrell. But it does, you know, alcohol, coffee, again, it relaxes that lower esophageal sphincter. And so it's not only about the acid, but it's containing the acid in an organ that's meant to see acid, keeping it away from an organ that's naive to acid. But tell me, do I get two cups a day to be okay? Or tell me how I'm going to be okay and still be able to drink my coffee and prevent Alzheimer's and diabetes and depression and all the things that you were saying, alluding to that coffee has some pretty good data for? Yeah, I mean, listen, there are a lot of upsides to coffee. Let's not deny that.

32:34My major concern with that is that it's just so acidic. There's nothing wrong with having two cups of coffee. But my suggestion is everybody do your best when you can to try to drink organic coffee. me who has a history of mold toxicity where I literally almost died four or five years ago from it I have to be very careful about mycotoxins and mold so I also drink mold-free coffee as well it's safer because coffee beans are probably the most contaminated bean with pesticides herbicides fungicides but not to mention they become incredibly moldy and mold is very dangerous to the body so it's really again not about giving up that coffee but how can I neutralize that acid And you just do that one little packet in there, or we have a flavor version.

33:13And we have one for alcohol too. You put five drops in your alcohol because alcohol is even more acidic than coffee. I mean, last year, the surgeon general stated as the third cause of preventable death in this country behind obesity and obviously smoking. So something like beer is a fermented grain. Obviously, that's bad. There's gluten. There's other things that we have to avoid. So that's like the one that I never go to. So sorry, beer drinkers. the middle of the road is your wine, which is 10 ,000 times more acidic. But like the best alcohol, if you're going to go this route, guys, is going to be something like a gin, a grain-free vodka, or a tequila.

33:48It's just about, you know, never better best. So we know that people are going to make these choices, whether we like it or not, Doc. So how can we help them make better decisions with the choices they're making? You almost killed half our audience. And I think you just brought them back with tequila. So that That was a hell of a pivot. That was a hell of a pivot. There you go. Well, let's talk. You've danced around it. I was going to go into something different, but now you just said the G word. And so, yeah, walk me through. I mean, again, as a guy that went through medical school years ago, I remember one of my classmates came back after a little bit of an absence, and he was about 40 pounds lighter, and he said he was diagnosed with celiac.

34:28And I even at that point, it was probably my second or third year medical school, and I had to go back to my gut physiology to even understand what celiac disease was. And now fast forward, you know, it seems as if at least whether it's gluten sensitive enteropathy or whether it's gluten aversion or just walk me through what is going on with gluten. I mean, I don't even know where to start. So I need somebody to organize my journey. And how do I counsel guys on difference between true celiac allergy or gluten allergy, celiac disease, and just, you know, gluten free lifestyle? Right. I love this topic.

35:04And the first thing I always say is there's nothing free about gluten-free. I want to explain what that is. Is it okay if I spend 30 seconds just getting two or three quick hacks to help people with reflux to soothing calm? Because I don't want to leave them hanging with that. So real quick, guys, Slippery Elm tea is phenomenal because it soothes and comforts and lowers inflammation from the mouth down the throat all the way down the esophagus into the stomach. I have no ties to these companies, but Yogi makes something called Throat Coat tea. traditional medicinals makes throw coat tea because you know it's just an easy way to get a packet throw it in a cup of hot water and boom drop to the races i love that you can get some local honey and just take a teaspoon two or three times a day local honey is very powerful um it's got strong healing effects even though there's a little bit of natural sugars in there but what i also like to get is some propolis or propolis however we call it and i put three drops of propolis in that honey which you can get from a local honey producer propolis has incredible um healing effects to the esophagus and the stomach lining.

36:03Research shown they can actually heal ulcers. Very powerful anti-inflammatory. So I love that as well. You just reminded me of something I haven't thought about for a while. When I did a surgical residency, but I did a full year of research in the lab up at University of Colorado Boulder with a guy named Norm Pace, who's a National Academy member. He was a guy that actually discovered bacteria in rock, you know, millions of years old. And one time we had a lunch in the lab when he got done with lunch and he was brushing honey on his teeth. And I said, you know, Norm, Dr. Pace, what are you doing?

36:34And he said, you know, honey is a natural antibiotic. There is no bacteria that synthesizes the sugars in honey. And it actually said, this is what I do instead of brushing my teeth is honey. But I think what you're saying too, is if you think about some of the other things we didn't really talk about, one of the big, big issues with ulcers, of course, is the H. pylori and the bacteria. to wonder if some of the other aspects of honey are just the natural antimicrobial properties of it too. So that triggered me, but I love this. All right, I didn't mean - Yeah, no, I love that. I love that. I love how we're going down these little holes because H.

37:06pylori, it's a commensal form of bacteria that 95 % of us have, but when it becomes elevated, it becomes very damaging. And H. pylori lives in the stomach. Why or when, when there's low acid? Because acid kills bacteria, like you said with E. coli before. So if you see H. pylori in there, and I see this all the time with our GI map testing. It's a really powerful stool test that we do. It means and confirms that there's low acid in the stomach. And this little bugger is so smart, it'll literally burrow into the lining of the stomach. It'll secrete its own enzymes to block your stomach's own production of hydrochloric acid.

37:40So this thing will actually increase the biologic terrain that's conducive to its own longevity. Yeah. So one of the best things we can do is, if you could withstand it, a little bit of apple cider vinegar in some diluted, in some water, Warm water about 20 to 30 minutes before your biggest meal of the day. It'll gently increase the acid in the stomach. It'll also kill off the H. pylori. And there's other things to go about it. But this is what we're saying is that there's so many different underlying things that happen when someone has reflux, which is why you can do things like slippery elm or the local honey or a peptide like BPC-157.

38:14You can open that in a little water and drink that because that heals ulcers. But ultimately, we've got to get to the root cause. We have to test our gut. test not guess is my mantra because when you look at the entire microbiome then you can actually figure out the entire picture what's off what's out of balance what's driving up inflammation what's causing leaky gut and then when you address that root cause it's incredible how the body knows how to heal itself because we are self-healing we are self-regulating but we have to just kind of help that body get to that state yeah gluten is a big part of this one because so many of us are eating it on a daily basis yeah no i i would say as as a surgeon i always tell my patients It's, you know, this, I have an easier job than a BMW mechanic because mechanics have to get everything exactly perfect because there's no self-healing in your engine.

38:58But, you know, if your incision has a little work to do, it's amazing what it can do to heal itself if you give it the right tools and set it off with a good operation to begin with. Right. So, no, I love it, man. We're talking the same language. Tell me, tell me about gluten. Yeah. I want to hear your spin on this. So gluten's a toxin. I mean, yes, 1%, which the research shows of the population will get this celiac disease, which is really an autoimmune disease based on high sensitivity to gluten. I think that number is actually higher. So I would love to talk on what's really happening with autoimmune disease because it's really tied into the gut.

39:30But the reality is that we should really all be trying to avoid gluten because even if you don't have celiac, gluten is what I call a weapon of mass destruction for the gut. You know, it increases the zonulin, which is a protein in the gut that will basically, Zonulin controls the opening and closure of the tight junctions of the gut. So when there's gluten, it's basically like creating little Swiss cheese holes in the gut. We can make that simple. It doesn't quite work like that, but you know, you, you gotta look at your gut and in between your gut and the body, the blood is this barrier. It's like a dam.

40:01And that dam, when we eat our food should basically break down, absorb, take in nutrients and kick out all the bad stuff out. When we have leaky gut, which I'm going to tell you a hundred percent of the population has, albeit different degrees. The research says that number is much lower, but I also do something called live blood cell analysis, where I can actually see in the live blood sample, different sorts of things creeping in or leaking in from that gut into the blood. So it's something that we all have to deal with. And why is that? It's because the gut is our first line of defense. The gut has become a literal minefield.

40:33I mean, we are all subjected to so much toxicity from the foods that we eat, the water that we drink, the air that we breathe. And the gut is really what's that first line of defense that's stopping all that bad stuff from entering into the body. So gluten, it's kind of interesting when we say gluten, it's like glue. It's like glue to the gut. That's what binds these foods like pasta and breads. But the reality is that if you really want to heal your gut, if you want to lower inflammation and decrease the level of leaky gut, we have to get it out of the diet. Now, listen, if you have it here or there, we're not going to beat you up, right?

41:05Some people can actually tolerate it more than others. If my gut's stronger, I can typically tolerate something that comes into the gut that's going to cause damage, whether that's gluten, sugar, a seed oil, an artificial sweetener, or something stronger like a stealth pathogen like an E. coli or a pseudomonas or a klebsiella or a parasite or an active virus. So again, that gut wall is critical basically because when we have a strong gut wall, things get contained in the gut. They get eliminated out of the body through our stool. But when we have leaky gut, now things that should never get through that gut wall, which is what gluten causes, now enter into the body.

41:43And once they enter the body, things like inflammation, yeast, fungus, mold, bacteria, different forms of toxins, now it becomes a systemic highway to the rest of the body. Now it's where's the least or the weakest link in the chain. It could be the reproductive system for some people, the thyroid gland, one of the first glands that gets hit by leaky gut, the liver, and of course the brain. When we see people suffering with anxiety, depression, ADD, ADHD, there is an intimate connection to the gut because there is something called this gut-brain connection, all connected through the vagus nerve.

42:16So again, gluten is one of those foods that ideally none of us should be doing. And the problem is, is that when you go into the aisles of these supermarkets and it says gluten free, well, the good news is they took the gluten out. But the problem is, is that now that food tastes like cardboard. So in comes to the rescue. They bring in the sugar, the artificial sweetener. So they're basically just swapping one really horrific ingredient for another. So don't be misled by that. And the other thing, when I said before, there's nothing free about gluten free. To be gluten free, it has to be free of this protein called gliadin, which is found in wheat, barley, and rye.

42:51But I could take something like a gluten-free oatmeal, which does not have gliadin. It has another protein just as damaging as the gliadin found in gluten. It's called avenin. And that avenin is going to cause the same destruction in the gut that gluten will. So even though it says gluten-free, there's over 400 different proteins in the gut that can actually do this from foods. Right. I'm glad you touched on that because I think that is critical is that gluten is just one of multiple things that can trigger people that. In fact, there is gluten-free wheat that's imported from Italy that can still trigger people with gluten sensitivities because it's not truly a gluten sensitivity.

43:29But boy, this is coming from an Italian from New York. So what, like, man, I can't even imagine the cultural betrayal that you are dealing with to say this. And so, okay. And I also love the fact, one of the things that drives me crazy in nutrition is when you try to do these uncanny recreations of something that shouldn't exist in nature. And I go back to like the snack well craze of, you know, when you're probably a couple of years younger than me, but sort of when everybody's like, we got to get rid of all the fat. There's no fat. So these are no fat cookies that have seven times the sugar in them, but there's no fat, right?

44:09So you're thinking, oh, this is so healthy for me. because I'm not eating. And now you're saying the same thing. People look at gluten and gluten-free products as healthy because they're like, gluten-free, gluten is killing me, but they're replacing with things that are going to kill them just as fast anyway. So yeah, it's such a fascinating topic where the sugar industry basically came in the rescue because they demonized and villainized fat as the cause of why people were having more cancer and cholesterol and heart disease and things like that. But if you look back, I think there was actually three Harvard scientists that were paid over$50 ,000, which at the time was a lot of money to actually manipulate the study showing that the fat was the cause.

44:46And we have to understand that there are fats that heal our bodies and fats that kill our bodies. So the fats that we don't want to put into the body are those seed oils, literally more damaging, more destructive than sugar, because sugar will get burned off by the body because the body recognizes this as a fuel needs to burn to get rid of. But the problem is that the seed oils can't be burned off. They have a half-life of at least seven years. So they literally rust and rot you from the inside out. They go to the brain because the brain is 60 % fat, has an affinity. So now you're competing. These omega-3 fats, which are like salmon and fish oil, which are anti-inflammatory versus these seed oils, like canola oil and sunflower and safflower and peanut oil and all these other bad oils, the list goes on and on.

45:28Those are the ones that drive up inflammation in the body. And if you look at Dr. Atkins back in the late 60s and 70s, I mean, his research was incredible. so ahead of his time, but he was talking about sugar and carbs. The interesting thing is if you look at historically the last 50 years, sugar has actually been less consumed. I'm talking about the white sugar, but what's gone massively increased in our diet is the seed oil. So I think when you remove all those bad foods from the diet, the baked goods and the chips and all that stuff, yeah, you lower the sugar intake, but you also lower these damaging seed oils, which are so destructive to the human microbiome and the brain.

46:02Yeah, you're right. And I think that my problem is that, you know, the seed oil data, I think the issue is, is that it is an ultra processed food in the sense that you would have to eat an acre of seeds of sunflower seeds of anything in order to, to get the amount of oil that comes into one tablespoon. Right. And so what you're trying, what you're doing is it's all, and I think you do such a good job of talking about this in, in, in your books and in your talks about everything in moderation. And there are some things probably shouldn't at all, but, but certainly when you dose response, something, you overwhelm the system with something that never occurs in nature, that's where we get in trouble.

46:38And I think that's certainly what we're seeing is that, you know, I always go back to, you know, if you eat an apple, you're right, you've got the skin, you've got everything, you've got the juice. If you had five apples, nobody could sit down and eat five apples at the same time, right? But you can easily drink. I hate that. You're like, there are five apples in this apple juice. I'm like, well, that's terrible. That's not a good thing. That's a terrible thing. And it's the same thing with any of these ultra processed foods, seed oils. All of it is that you're taking something that in very small doses is probably nowhere near as toxic as if you're putting it into something that you rip out of plastic.

47:15And it's so easy. It's so cheap. You know, these oils are so cheap to manufacture levels that you're replacing things. Salmon is not cheap. And so the good the good omega three is, you know, there's no cheap source of those. And so it's hard to figure out how to formulate a diet that's accessible to everybody. But I mean, again, everything you said, it really makes sense in terms of this is ultimately excess, lack of moderation, and lifestyle driven. So yeah, man. And touching bases on celiac, you know, real quick, you know, there is a genetic predisposition with people that have celiac, and there's nothing we can do about that.

47:54It's like your gene is your gene. Epigenetics means that we can actually change gene expression by how we eat, how we think, and how we move. And two other things that we can actually change with someone that has celiac or any autoimmune disease, I don't care if that's Hashimoto's in the thyroid, MS in the brain, rheumatoid arthritis in the joints, there's two things that we have to address. Number one is a dysbiosis or out-of-balance gut, leaky gut, where you have more of the, look at your gut like a garden. You want lots of flowers, your good healthy bacteria like your probiotics. you don't want the weeds.

48:26And for most of us, the weeds are overtaking the garden and they eat their way through that gut wall, causing that leaky gut. So there has to be that in place. And number two, an environmental trigger. And the list is very small. I'm talking about a food toxin like gluten or dairy. It could be a pesticide, an herbicide, a fungicide, or glyphosate, or it could be a stealth gut infection like an inflammatory bacteria. We talked about those before, parasite and active virus. So basically when you have those two things in place, you have dysbiosis and leaky gut. And now this environmental trigger that is going to cause a hyperimmune response.

49:03Those things will actually leak through. They'll attack a specific organ, whether it's the gut or the thyroid. So now your immune system comes into the rescue with its first line of defense. It's like a blowtorch, right? It's the innate immune response. It starts to blow up all these bad guys. But the problem is that while it's blowing up the bad guys, there will be friendly fire. There will be collateral damage. Your healthy cells will get blown up. Your proteins will get blown up. So now the more smart part of your immune system comes in the adaptive part, your B cells and T cells. And you get these like little Pac-Man style cells called macrophages that eat up all the bad stuff that have been killed.

49:36And they say, here you go, B cells and T cells. We're going to give these to you so you can actually make an antibody to this bad guy that we just killed. So if ever we see this guy again, we're going to know the second entrance of the body high alert, we can kill it. But the problem with autoimmune disease is that there becomes an accidental presentation of these healthy cells that got killed off in friendly fire to those same B cells and T cells. So now your immune system is making antibodies to your own body's tissue. So it's not the immune system going haywire and one day just saying, you know what, I'm going to rebel on this body.

50:12I'm going to just decide to go after the thyroid gland or go after the gut. It doesn't work that way. It's going after something that's foreign, something that's bad that shouldn't belong there. It's getting rid of that, which is what it should do. It's creating this hyperimmune response. So ultimately, if we start to get that gut back in balance, increase our probiotics, get foods in like leafy greens and omega-3s and more fiber and bone broth and things like that, that can heal the gut and eradicate some of these bad guys, then these are not going to infiltrate the body. We're not going to have the hyperimmune response and autoimmune disease is reversible through these ways.

50:45It's a lot more extensive than that, of how we go about it. But my whole point is that we can help the immune system fight the real fight by getting to the root cause. Yeah. And I think you touched on, you know, we sometimes call it the two hit hypothesis that you have this predisposition, genetic, whatever we want to say that has an innate predisposition to something. And then, you know, it's an environmental trigger that sets us off. And so, right. I mean, I think the nice thing you did there is you gave us a little bit of a roadmap on how to start healing ourselves and how to, how to partner, you know, with a good healthcare provider to, to get us to that level, which is really, you know, what we're all about with all the passion and enthusiasm you bring.

51:25I'm, I'm super pumped to, to heal my own gut and to get out and maybe still drink my coffee, but now you need to have like the powder that you can put over a pizza so that you can, you might be responsible for the next big, Oh boy, here it comes. All right. No, you got it. It's all about kicking your coffee's acid. That's what you got to do and then enjoy it. Right. Listen, we got to enjoy our life. That's one thing. You know, I've always been an extremist where, you know, when I was a sugar addict, I would kind of go one way off the rails and try to heal my body. And then I would go all the way off the rails the other way.

51:56It just doesn't work. We got to find a rhythm. We got to find a flow. As I said, you don't have to give up everything, but just start adding, even though it's one thing at a time, it could be a green smoothie. It could be a green juice. It could be a salad. It could be a probiotic or magnesium supplement. Pick one thing, master that, do it for seven days and go to the next. Yeah, it might take us a little longer to get to where we want to go, right? And there really is no there. It's all about optimization, but we're going to get there. It's about progress, not perfection. As long as we can put in steps every single day to get us closer to our goals and know what your goals are, we're going to improve the health of our body.

52:29Love it.

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56:29all right so i always have this on my segment too what is the one must have for dr darrell what do you have to do every day what do you get up and say i have to do this to to center myself to ground myself to bring the fury and passion that you bring to your practice what is your i can't i I have to do it. I just got chills when you say that because this is my kind of morning routine. I wake up and I pray. You know, I'm very grateful for being alive. I'm grateful for my family. I'm grateful for the people I get to help and serve. I'm grateful for living in this amazing country of ours. I just have so much gratitude in my life.

57:05And I noticed that there are periods of fear in my life when I think about my father and I think about some other things that have happened, traumas in my life. Fear is just false evidence appearing real. When I start to have gratitude, gratitude will crush fear in any sense. So I start with a prayer and then I do some meditation. It doesn't matter if it's five minutes or an hour. There's some days my meditations are awful. There's some days they're great. But just having that time to abide in silence and just breathe and really get my parasympathetic nerve system in check and kind of create that flow, it's important.

57:36And then the third thing is I just want to always move my body. Yeah. I've had some pretty serious injuries where I broke my neck and low back things. So even if it's going out for a brisk walk or going on a field and taking off your shoes and doing some walking in grass and doing some grounding. You know, you live by the ocean there in California, nothing more charging than putting your feet in some salt water. So for me, grounding and just moving my body is critical. And then I always want to nourish my body with something very healthy in the morning. So I always start with a green juice, whether I'm making fresh green juice in my juicer or a green smoothie or taking a scoop of my acid kicking greens, throwing that in the water and just mixing that and drinking that.

58:12So I really just try to infuse positivity, strength, and life into my body. I don't watch the news. I don't read the papers. I just don't because I don't want that negativity stuff because it's all about sensationalism if it's going to be on the news. So I don't want it there. I'm aware of what's going on in our country, in our world, but I want to take care of myself and put the right things into my mind, the right things into my body, physically, emotionally, chemically, and spiritually. Wow. That's a win. Chills right back. I mean, you hit me there with the message of gratitude and all we have to be thankful for.

58:46And yeah, there's really nothing going on in the news anyway, man. So you're not missing anything at all. You can trust me and I'll let you know if something big happens. Other than that, dude, just keep whistling. Keep doing what you're doing. You've managed to keep my producer speechless for 50 minutes as well. So Jordan, what's up over there, my man? What are we missing? I mean, the guy, obviously, like, again, I mean, the passion, I can't tell you how just pumped I am after spending this time with you, Daryl. This has been so cool. But Jordan, what are we missing from the common guy? Yeah.

59:18What are we doing? Like, Jordan is our voice of the guy that's out there living his life in his mid-30s. And I saw him taking notes. So I already know the things that he's going to do different action items wise. But speak to us, brother. Well, I love your passion as well. I am equally as passionate, unfortunately, about sugar, that I have the dietary habits of an elf. Yeah. We got to bring Dr. Darrell back. And you're going to tell him you have homework, Jordan. We're going to bring him back in a few months. And we're going to say, dude, what are you doing differently? But all right, hit us. Oh, that's what I wanted to ask you.

59:51I cannot tell you the number of times I've tried to do, you know, what I'll refer to as sugar detoxes. And, man, I've detoxed off a coffee. I've detoxed off a lot of things. It is never has there any been anything that has felt that hard. Yeah. What are just like really going through those first couple of days? What's some advice you could give? Jordan, here's what happens. So we get to January 1st. Most of us are sick and tired, right? And not feeling well. And then we set these resolutions. Let's resolve today to make a change. Make one change, not, not a hundred percent off sugar, but then the research shows by January 17th, 92 % of people fail with the resolutions.

1:00:29one of those top three being getting off sugar. It just doesn't work because what most people do, and this is, you might not like the answer, but this is the answer I'm gonna give you, and I'll give you some other little hacks. Most people associate changing their health in their body with the flip of a calendar. The problem is it doesn't work. They just changed and said, I'm gonna do this, and it's all based on pain. Oh, I gotta go to the gym. I gotta give up sugar. I gotta do this. And it's funny because what do people do? They start counting down the days, whether it's sugar, smoking, or whatever the vice is.

1:01:00I've been off sugar 16 days. I've been on sugar 21 days. They just count so that they can tell people, I made it 33 days until I got back on the wagon, right? I could have written that book, Get Off Your Sugar in One Page, which is, yes, the map, the massive action plan, the strategy, the biohacking, the little things you do. Like if you have a craving, you can take some cold ice water, put your face in the cold ice water. Literally, it's like a cold punch, shocks your nerve system, increases your endorphins, your encephalins, and basically reset your nerve system. So that'll help as something that you can do.

1:01:30Getting your body into parasympathetic state by vagus tone. I mean, you can just hum, you can gargle water in the shower, but that book could have been written in one page by saying it's all about your why, your purpose. If you have the why, you comply. Because I can tell you for me, I've tried every single detox. I've made every single sugar detox. They're great, but a lot of them are very, very tough because we're not really getting to the root cause, which is this up here. It's the big thing between the two years, which is our psychology. And if your why is big enough, your why, your purpose, your reason, why you're doing something, your how will find a way.

1:02:06So what I think you need to do is spend some alone time, five minutes, 10 minutes, 20 minutes, and just start to write out, like, what is your purpose in life? And I mean, it's like, get deep with yourself. Like, it could be a superficial why, like, I want to lose some weight, I want to have more energy. But like, what is something deeper than that? Like, what's something that's so compelling? When you think about that thought, it moves you down to your very soul. It gives you goosebumps. For me, when I couldn't get off my sugar for, you know, two months off the wagon back on it, 12 months back on it, two days back on it.

1:02:37I mean, literally, I was the yo-yo for many, many years. And finally, I just had to kind of dig deeper and say, you know, this is about my dad. This is about my children. This is about wanting to be around my kids so that when they're older, I want to be a healthy dad. Like I really got deep. It was about me to some extent, but it was more about the people that I love. So I don't know what that is for you, but I can promise you this. When you have a big enough why and you're going through your day, you get a sugar paving. You have that written down right there. You have a picture of something that matters to you.

1:03:05It could be your mom, whatever it is. I don't know, but I'm committed to this right here. I'm going to do whatever it takes to honor this person or whatever that is that you're committing to with that. Why I promise you, you are not going to shake. You will not shake. And that ultimately was how I got off of sugar. Now also remember that sugar changes your taste buds every 14 days. So they become desensitized. So your taste buds will be new taste buds in 14 days. So if you start to do things that will cleanse and detoxify, you could do like a, uh, an olive oil, you get one tablespoon of olive oil, half the juice of a lemon, mix that together, drink that.

1:03:38That's an amazing thing you can do. You can get apple cider vinegar, throw in a little sea salt, a little cinnamon, drink that. I mean, it's a bunch of different hacks that are my get off your sugar book that you can access. Probably my biggest thing is that when the craving monster comes, just sit with it for a second and don't go for the snack, right? The very first thing that you want to do is you want to move your body because motion is emotion. So get up out of your chair, do some jumping jacks, walk around, do a little yoga, do a brisk walk, do it for five minutes. Again, it's stimulating your endorphins, your encephalons and all those good feelings of hormones.

1:04:10And then wait a few minutes to see how you feel. Many times that's enough. Number two, I'll drink a big glass of water. But water's neutral. I want to kick its acid. So I'll get a lemon slice, a lime slice, scoop of my greens. I'll put that in there. I'll drink that because that's going to alkalize me, which neutralizes the effects and the cravings that sugar has. So I'll do that, wait a few minutes, and I'll see how I feel. If I still have that craving, then I'm not going to go to a Snickers bar or something really toxic or acidic for my body. I'm going to go for a healthy snack. I'll get a green apple.

1:04:39I'll slice them up. I'll get some cinnamon on there, which helps insulin instability and helps manage blood sugar. I'll get a little raw almond butter and I'll dip them in the almond butter and I'll eat that. It's satisfying. It's crunchy. It's going to fulfill your sweet craving, not maybe like a Snickers bar. But my point is this would be a good swap for something that we were maybe doing that wasn't serving our higher purpose. Heck, yeah. Pick up your guitar, man. Do a little slow jam word, brother. A thousand percent. Yeah. Smile. Like something that stimulates you and makes you happy because it's all about peak state.

1:05:09Anything that can change your state is going to help you. So I love guitar. I play the ukulele, by the way. Probably not as good as you are, but I just will go in there. I'll jam some reggae tunes or some Hawaiian tunes, and that's kind of what gets me out of my stressful state. And anything that's going on, whether it's sugar or anything bad, I just start to strum that guitar, man. It just brings me to that PTC, present time consciousness. I love it. Yeah, boy, and we marked the passing of Jimmy Cliff recently, one of the legends of reggae music. Legend. Wow, so yeah, now you're going to make me pull up some Jimmy Cliff.

1:05:38Love it. Well, you know, Dr. Darrell, Jordan, we really should not be allowed to have this much fun or have this much information in this time. But that's the beauty of what we're doing. Dr. Darrell, I'm so grateful for your time, your expertise coming on and really breaking it down into what guys can do for themselves, as well as what you can do for them through all of your outreach work. It's just been it's been a joy. And I look forward to working more with you over over the years to come. Thank you so much for your expertise. Thank you so much, guys. Appreciate you so much. Thanks for having me on.

1:06:11Heck yeah. It's been an awesome time with you guys. And I love to see you guys having so much fun telling the story, helping people get better. You're just you're amazing. Thank you for having me. It's all about the story. All right, my brother, be good. Keep doing good out there. Be good, guys. All right. Thank you so much. All right, y 'all. We'll see you next time.

1:06:37Let's talk about it.

1:07:01The Mailroom with Dr. Jesse Mills was a production of iHeartRadio. It was executive produced by Jordan Runtog. It was edited, mixed, and mastered by Bahid Frazier. And the theme was provided by Long Transit. If you liked what you heard, please subscribe and leave a review. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, check out the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. This program is intended for educational and informational purposes only. It is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Consult your health care provider for any medical or other related questions or concerns.

1:07:40The views and discussions aired on this podcast are those of Dr. Mills and do not represent the official positions of UCLA or UCLA Health.

1:07:56When people turn to healthcare for weight loss, they're looking for real support. That's why more people are choosing orderlymeds.com. Orderly Meds connects you with real doctors and access to proven GLP-1 medications like semaglutide and terzepatide. No guessing, just a more supportive experience. And all shipped directly to your door in discreet packaging. Do your research. Ask questions. Then visit orderlymeds.com slash podcast for an exclusive offer. That's orderlymeds.com slash podcast. Individual results may vary. Not medical advice. Eligibility required. See site for details. When you manage procurement for multiple facilities, every order matters.

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