Scientist REVEALS Shocking Sugar Research That Changes EVERYTHING (Hacks That Heal!) | Glucose Goddess

25:37What happens to the brain, body, gut if you do that by itself without applying these hacks? Well, you're going to experience a very big glucose spike as you're watching the movie and eating the Ben and Jerry's. That's going to have impact on your brain. It's going to increase inflammation. It's going to mess up your sleep hormones. You're not going to sleep as well. Your sleep is not going to be as deep or as restful. You might even wake up the next day feeling hungover. You know, you never get hungover because you don't drink, but sometimes you can feel hungover from sugar. Wow. If you've had it late at night, you're going to feel a bit groggy.

26:09You might feel like your hands have swollen a little bit during the night. Your face swollen. Yeah, exactly. Interesting. And then with that glucose spike, you're also increasing glycation, aging. You're also increasing insulin release, which over time builds up to a diagnosis of prediabetes, for example. And whatever sort of health background your body has, if you've ever experienced symptoms from brain fog to psoriasis to fertility problems, that spike is going to make those worse. So let's say you're watching that movie eating the Ben and Jerry's. You have a few options. You can have a handful of almonds as you're having the ice cream to put some clothing on the ice cream.

26:48Interesting. Yeah. You could do a vinegar drink. You could also grab a book or a bottle of water. And after you eat the ice cream, maybe do some bicep curls as you're watching the movie to help your muscles soak up some of that glucose. There's always solutions. So if I've eaten the cake, the ice cream, the cookies, and I've forgotten to do all these things beforehand, but I can still do it afterwards a little bit? Yes. Even if the sugar is just in my gut already and just soaking down there, I can still have a couple almonds or have vinegar and it'll still help? The best thing to do afterwards is movement.

27:21Move. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So do them calf raises. You're sitting on the couch, calf raises for 10 minutes during the movie. That's going to help, actually. Okay. Yeah, yeah. And you can do that up to 90 minutes after eating. The movement, the muscles. Okay, cool. Do some push-ups, whatever it might be. Totally. Okay, so these are the four hacks in this book. Do you have other hacks that you recommend as well? Yes. So these are the four most powerful, important ones to start with. But in my first book, I have some other ones that are really lovely as well. So we talked about clothes on carbs. That's one I really enjoy.

27:53And another one is about snacks. So when you want to snack. Should we eat snacks? If you want. It's better not to. It's better to wait between your meals. But sometimes you're hungry. Sometimes it's 4 p.m. and you're hungry. So what are you going to do?

28:10Ideally, you would have a savory snack, as I explained. Not sweet. Not sweet. Keep the sweets for dessert, okay? Sweet equal dessert. Have some eggs, have a piece of toast with some avocado on it. Try to think savory always as much as you can. That's going to be incredibly helpful to keep your glucose levels nice and balanced. Because when you're hungry, when you want a snack, whenever you feel that hunger, that means your digestive system is quite empty. So if you feed it something sweet, the glucose is going to arrive really quickly into your bloodstream and create a big spike. Or if you could have a snack, should you have vinegar right before?

28:49If you want, if you can. You should use these hacks and compose with them as you wish. And then you know what? If you can't do any of these hacks one day, it's totally fine. I don't want people to stress out. It's not like something super strict you have to do all the time. There are weeks where I don't do a single hack because of XYZ reason. You can't fall off the wagon. This is not a restrictive diet. For me, these principles are things you keep with you for your whole life. Like, for example, if one day you don't drink enough water, you're not going to go crazy about it. Be like, oh my God, I fucked up.

29:18It's like, fine, just drink more water tomorrow. Or if one day you forget to brush your teeth, it doesn't matter. Right? We're here for the long haul. We're here to build these habits into our lives and to be able to call upon them like little fairy godmothers whenever we want. Yeah, that's cool. But the more consistent you can be with it, the better off you'll be. Absolutely. So is it possible then to eat more of the foods you love to lose weight and to live longer. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And weight loss is an interesting topic, right? I think often when people see something that has to do with food, their immediate, the first place they go is, oh, is this going to help me lose weight?

29:58And I've specifically never talked about weight loss, because I think that if you angle something as this is a way to lose weight, then it becomes a diet. It becomes restrictive. It becomes a fad. It becomes something that you attach a lot of anxiety towards. To me, these hacks, as I mentioned, they're principles of how your physiology works. And when you avoid the spikes, a few things happen. Cravings reduce, hunger reduces, and you burn more fat. And so as a result, about half of the people who do this naturally lose weight without trying to lose weight and even by eating more than they usually would.

30:36So to me, weight loss is a consequence of your body coming into balance. Getting in alignment. Exactly. Exactly. And I read in here, you did a 2 ,700 person experiment with this and a lot of the people did lose weight, but they just felt happier as well. Exactly. I think that's the key. It's like, how can you be happy doing something that you can do for forever? Yeah. And you said a lot of people were actually eating more than they were before. And some of them were able to lose weight by doing just the right things in the right order. Absolutely. And I think a lot of it, I mean, how much of stressing about what we eat, how we eat, how much we eat causes us to be out of alignment with our health and our hormones?

31:21I think a lot because when you overstress about food or anything else, that causes cortisol, that causes stress in the body that can have a negative impact. But does cortisol also create a spike in glucose? Yes, it can. Absolutely. One of the biggest spikes I ever got was when I was giving one of my first big presentations and I was wearing a glucose monitor and it was in front of like 300 people. And I was so freaked out. I was shaking, you know, but I did it. And then I looked at my glucose monitor and I saw one of the biggest glucose spikes I had ever seen. Yeah. And you weren't eating though.

31:55I wasn't eating. Come on. Yeah, and the reason is that, so back in the day, when we saw a lion or whatever, we had to run away from a predator or danger. Our body would release all this glucose from our liver into our bloodstream to give energy to our muscles, to give immediate, quick glucose so that our muscles could track and we could sprint. Now, in today's day and age, a lot of the stress we experience is actually not something we have to run away from, but rather something that is just a stressful social situation. But your body still releases this glucose to help you run away if you have to.

32:31And that's why you see this spike. So it's like chronic anxiety will also cause glucose spikes as well. I mean, I think like very acute events of stress will cause spike, right? Chronic anxiety, probably, maybe, I don't know. But we have to remember, food is still 90 % of what causes glucose spikes or doesn't. But you will see in very, very stressful social situations, sometimes you can get one of these spikes. Wow. So how long were you wearing a monitor for when you were studying a lot of this for yourself? Non-stop for two to three years. Non-stop? I mean, you take it off for a couple hours or whenever.

33:09Yeah. I got really into it. I was going through my own health journey and figuring out my mental health and how I was connected to food. And so, yeah, it was my absolute passion. And I did this nonstop for almost three years. And now, because I understood so many of the principles, I don't need to wear one anymore. It's intuitive now. Yeah. So I do it maybe twice a year, but I don't think people need to wear a glucose monitor to get the benefits. That's really key. What was your life like before you got into these experiments for yourself? There was such a big disconnection between my lifestyle and my everyday choices and my health.

33:43For many, many years, I had a lot of mental health problems, depersonalization, anxiety. And I just never connected those to what I was doing. What did you connect those to? I had no idea. I was like, oh, maybe it's because I had this accident when I was 19. I broke my back and my brain has been broken ever since. And I thought I was just going to have to live with this my whole life. What was this feeling? What was the experience like? What did it feel like for you living like that? Well, it's scary. I could never be alone. I felt really sad about the outlook of my life. I felt like, man, this is going to be tough.

34:16I felt like this is going to be a tough life, you know? I was like, oof, it's going to be heavy. Is it because you were just thinking and feeling like negative thoughts? Or you're just feeling insecure? Or you're feeling anxious? What was the feelings you were having? I was having actual episodes of this thing called depersonalization, which means that... What is that? it's a it's a situation in which all of a sudden you feel like you're not like your body is not yours like i would look at my hands and be like whose hands are these really yeah and i feel a split between i would call it splitting that's what the term i used and it's quite common actually and it's a split i felt like one part of my brain would split off from the rest and just kind of look at myself from above when i looked in the mirror i was terrified i would have panic attacks I'd be like, who is this person?

35:03No, it was terrible. Really, it's the worst thing ever. Is this like split personalities? No, it's basically a stress response. So when I was 19, I broke my back, jumping off a waterfall. And then I had super intense surgery where I thought I was going to die. Like it was terrible. You have like metal and plates in your back. Yeah, loads. Yeah, loads in my spine. And the stress from that event, I had never processed it. I didn't know how to process it. I was living in London. No doctor had ever told me like, hey, Jesse, you went through something really stressful. Let's shake it out. Let's help your body move the stress out of your cells.

35:41Nothing, right? So all this stress created this sort of PTSD-like symptom of depersonalization. But then it stayed with me because I had no idea how to fix it. I had no idea what was causing it. Why did I have an episode Monday and then nothing for three weeks and then three this week. I had no clue. I was lost. I felt completely like the victim of these episodes. I could not like stay in a hotel room by myself for one night. I was too stressed to be with myself and existing had become the most scary thing ever. And I think it's because I thought I was going to die before that operation that part of my brain just didn't process that we stayed alive.

36:20You know what I mean? So you thought the operation, you weren't going to survive. Oh, yeah. Really? Yeah, because I was 19 and I had waited three weeks between the accident and the surgery. And they had told me what they were going to do. What did they do? Well, they opened you from the side. So I had this big scar on my waist. They take out the broken stuff. They close the side. They flip you over. They open from the back. They put a metal cage. They drill stuff into your spine and blah, blah, blah. And I lost lots of blood. I mean, just like I was so scared. I was so scared. And I thought to myself, if I wake up, it's going to be a miracle.

36:53Oh, my gosh. But for these doctors, it was a routine operation. But I was like... Hopefully I live. Yeah. And so I think that event, having been completely unprocessed, then led to this terrain of mental health problems. And the issue was, I didn't understand how I could make sure these episodes didn't happen. And I didn't understand what was triggering the episodes. But for eight years, they were just... Eight years? Yeah. They would just happen. Randomly. Like once a week, once a month, once a week. Yeah, dependent. So you look yourself in the mirror and what would you see? I would not recognize myself.

37:29Holy cow. Yeah. It's a very strange experience. And I think unless you've experienced it, it's very hard to relate. Yeah. But it's just, it goes, it affects that very core deep part of yourself that is just telling you, I am Lewis, I am alive. That thing becomes broken. and so it precedes every other experience you see what i mean like the core of just being a human being in a body is broken so it sucks so how did you okay so so what happened yeah so what happened then how did you learn to find this how did you find the solution after eight years of suffering well i had a crazy experience i wore a glucose monitor for the first time as part of a pilot study.

38:13And I saw one morning as I was experiencing one of these depersonalization episodes, I saw on my glucose monitor that I was also experiencing a massive glucose spike from the breakfast I had just had, which was a sweet breakfast. And in that moment, I was like, oh my God, is there a connection between what I'm eating and my mental health? Wow. And I was like, what the heck? And that's when I became fascinated. I thought, wait a minute, like maybe the spike, I think I had just eaten a donut for breakfast. Maybe that spike is causing something in my brain that is causing the symptom to come out again.

38:52And then I dove into the research and I found, wow, I'm not alone, actually. Even if you don't have diabetes, you can have these spikes and they can impact your neurons, brain fog, mental health, anxiety, your hormones, your energy, your mitochondria, your cravings. And I found these hacks in the scientific studies. I applied them to myself and then I finally felt like I had a first tool to improve my mental health. Wow. And then I created this baseline of feeling safer in my body, feeling better. And then on top of that, I built, you know, EMDR, therapy, emotional processing. Like it was not all fixed with the glucose hacks, but it gave me a foundation upon which I felt like I could build myself back.

39:32Wow. Yeah. You still had to process and integrate the lessons you were learning from the traumas and the years of traumatic experiences you were... continuing to have from this situation. But I understood that the way you eat and the way you're living your life is so connected to your brain and how you feel. How much of our food determines the way we think? What do you mean by the way we think? Can food that we eat cause us to have thoughts that are not our own? Thoughts that are directed towards mental health and negative side effects of mental health? Well, the way you eat can impact your neurons.

40:17It can create inflammation. It can slow down the speed of signals between neurons. It can impact your gut, which then in turn impacts a lot of different hormones and molecules in your brain. So yes, absolutely. The studies are fascinating, showing that if you put two groups of people who have mental health issues on different diets, one of ultra processed foods for example lots of carbs lots of spikes and another group on a whole foods diet with without so much sugar that group on the whole foods diet their mental health improves the processed food diets group the mental health gets worse wow so i don't know exactly about like specific thoughts but the chemicals in your brain are 100 impacted by what you're eating so if you already have a terrain of poor mental health like you're gonna be impacted by that stuff For sure.

41:07And that was my experience. And I never found a single study on depersonalization in food, but I found loads on anxiety, depression in food. So maybe in the future, we'll have a depersonalization one, but I think now it makes so much sense. I'm like, well, of course, of course my food was an important thing to fix in order for my mental health to get better. When did you start to feel like you were back in your own body and you were seeing yourself, recognizing yourself, accepting of yourself and loving yourself again? I think as I was writing the first book, it all kind of came together, you know, because in order to write a book, you have to really process and integrate information.

41:43And as I was writing it, and in my first book, the introduction, I read my story of the accidents and everything. And that was a real, a very emotional moment. I was like, wow, I'm actually writing this down. I'm processing, I'm, you know, putting it in this chapter and talking about the after and i'm no longer the girl who broke her back you know because i was defining my life that was your identity totally totally because i was still broken from it oh gosh yeah you got it healed emotionally no no no no and what's wild you know is i saw all these physios after my accident and they were like make sure you can walk and blah blah blah but not a single person address the emotional, spiritual, you know, trauma part of things.

42:28And I really hope that one day when people have a very intense, for example, spinal operation, that there's somebody who's in charge of saying, hey, your body went through some crazy stuff. Let's help you move some of that stress out. Let's have a little ceremony. Let's shake to move and help your nervous system integrate, you know, like let's do some tapping. We need more of that. Absolutely. We need so much more. Yeah. I mean, the book, The Body Keeps the Score continues to just take off because it's about, you know, the traumas that your body has felt. If you just go on like it didn't happen, your body's going to remember and it's going to cause a disconnect.

43:05I mean, you know that too, right? A hundred percent. And I feel like when you start to process those things emotionally through any type of therapeutic experience, it allows you to integrate lessons, reflection, and kind of speak it aloud. You know, you writing it down was you acknowledging it. Like, this did happen. Let me process and move through this and try to not eliminate it or disassociate, but integrate the lessons. And it was a part of me, but it doesn't define me. And I think that's a beautiful thing. Yeah. But some people go their whole lives not being able to process stuff. We don't have enough education on that in the world yet.

43:41And I think it's so powerful. I'm curious about your thoughts. Maybe you haven't done any research on this yet, but I'm curious about your thoughts of being in the wrong intimate relationship or in a toxic relationship and how it affects your glucose spikes and your health. Oh, cool question. There's one study that comes to mind that kind of shows the reverse. So they did this incredible study in the US. They recruited, I think it was 100 couples, married couples, okay? And they gave each person in the couple a voodoo doll representing their spouse. Oh, my gosh. And the researchers, bless them, they asked the participants to put a pin in the voodoo doll every time their spouse annoyed them.

44:26Come on. I'm serious. And then they also measured these people's glucose levels. What did they find? And they found that the people who had the most irregular glucose levels, more rollercoaster, well, they had put more pins in the voodoo doll representing their spouse. And now we can - So they had anger and resentment towards their spouse more. Yep. And they had more glucose spikes. Yep. Holy cow. And so one of the hypotheses of the scientists was that glucose spikes impact this hormone, this molecule in your brain called tyrosine, which is in charge of regulating your mood and keeping you calm and cool.

45:03And when you have lots of glucose spikes, that thing does not do well. And it's not at its normal levels. And that can lead you to being more vindictive, more irritable. Yeah. So that's the only thing I know. But then in terms of what happens if you're in a toxic relationship, well, you know, if you're in a situation where you don't feel well and you're trapped or you're in a very difficult situation, your nervous system is going to respond. Your nervous system is going to be in fight or flight, cortisol levels are going to increase, you're going to be seeking out dopamine to counteract the very difficult emotions you're feeling.

45:37So as a result, I can totally imagine how that would lead somebody to eat lots of sugar, have more regular glucose spikes, et cetera, for sure. Wow. This is fascinating. And for that, you mentioned diabetes a little while ago. If someone's not going to use a glucose monitor, they're not going to monitor themselves. what would you say are the top three signs of understanding if your blood sugar is out of balance or unhealthy? Well, first of all, your doctor should probably once a year test your fasting glucose levels. So that's a pretty standard test. And that will tell you, do you have prediabetes or diabetes?

46:13But once that happens, it's kind of like, well, okay, now you do something about it. But before that, I would say the most common symptoms are cravings for sweet foods. I I mean, that is just such a sign, especially if you have the multiple times during the day. That means you're on the roller coaster. And then second one, which we haven't really touched on yet, has to do with energy levels. So let me explain to you something physiologically. You know how I explained that your body burns glucose for energy? Now, there's one little organelle that does this conversion of glucose into energy. It's your mitochondria, the powerhouse of your cell, etc.

46:48Your mitochondria, their job is to grab glucose molecules that you just ate and transform them into energy for your body to use. And your mitochondria are super happy when they receive a steady supply of glucose. They're like steady, transform into energy, steady, all good. Now the problem is if you give your mitochondria way too much glucose at once, a little bit like if you gave a plant at home way too much water at once, your mitochondria are going to stress out. They're going to sort of go on strike. They're going to go too much, too much information cannot handle like I'm just going to go have a nap.

47:26And they're going to stop converting glucose into energy as effectively. You as a human feel this as chronic fatigue. Playing with your kids is exhausting. Waking up is exhausting. Going grocery shopping is exhausting. It's 3 p.m. You need five Red Bulls and two coffees to stay awake. And then at night, you can't fall asleep and you don't feel well. Oh, man. Right? So there's a problem in your energy capacity in your body. Your mitochondria are damaged. With every glucose spike, you increase that damage to your mitochondria. And so chronic fatigue is a telltale sign that your glucose levels are out of work.

48:00So I would say cravings and chronic fatigue. Oh, my gosh. You're like, whoa. Oh, my gosh. This is amazing. There's something that you triggered in my mind to ask you about. smoothies, juices, and coffee. Can we have them or do they cause too much of a glucose spike that cause more damage than, I guess, healthy benefits? First of all, you can have everything. I'm always going to tell you if it's 2 p.m. I like it. Don't restrict me. Come on. Yeah, I'm like, if it's 10 a.m. on a Sunday and I want chocolate ice cream, I'm going to have it. Okay, yeah, eat it. A hundred percent. Okay, so. But what happens to our glucose levels when we have smoothies juices or coffee okay so first of all coffee fine just don't put any sugar in it no sugar yeah or some stevia or something well then have the sugar but you have to have something else before yeah try to have if you have sugar in your coffee have it after breakfast instead of before breakfast don't just drink coffee with sugar by itself big glucose spike big one yeah what about coffee with like a milk or a creamer or something like that fine oat milk is going to be the worst for your glucose levels.

49:04Oats milk is like making pasta juice. Oh, man. So you cook some pasta, you put it in the blender with some water, you blend it until it's liquid. That's pasta milk. Base bite. When you make oat milk, it's the same. What about oats by itself with a little bit of protein? That's better. Yeah, that's good for breakfast. You can have that. Listen, if you love oat milk, have it. I'm just telling you the different stuff. So oat milk, not my favorite. Favorites would be like whole fat dairy or nut milks. Almond milk. Unsweetened. Unsweetened almond milk. A little bit of that is fine. A little bit of stevia.

49:36Yeah, why not? That's fine. Okay. Okay, let's talk about fruit. You ready? Yes. Okay. What's the worst fruit to have? Ah, there's no such thing as worst fruit to have. What causes the greatest spike? Fruit juice. Juices. Okay, yeah. Let me explain. So, you know how humans bred gray wolves into lots of different breeds of dogs, like chihuahuas? Chihuahuas is not a natural breed, right? We've, for thousands of years, we've been breeding different wolves and blah, blah, blah to make all these different breeds of dogs. Well, we haven't been doing that just with dogs. We've been doing that with plants and with fruit.

50:09All of the fruit you find today at the supermarket is not natural, not a single one. They are all, yes, they are all the results of thousands of years of selective breeding to make fruit that are juicy, full of sweetness, not too much fiber, not too many seeds okay all the fruit that we have today is a human invention they're all human inventions if you compare let's say today's banana to an ancestral banana ancestral bananas are full of seeds they're tiny they're tart and they're really hard to eat so remember this fruits are a human invention today's fruits are a human invention now the thing is if you want to eat something sweet having a piece of fruit is still the best thing to do because fruit contains fiber and fiber, as I explained, helps to slow the glucose spike.

50:56Which fruits have the best fiber? Because fruit juice, you're saying has no fiber, very little. Yeah, listen, I don't want to call out specific fruits. I think have the fruit you like best. I don't, I mean, okay, fine. If you want me to call out specific fruits, I will. Berries are probably the best option. Tropical fruit, like mangoes, even apples these days are super sweet. I mean, have whole fruit. I don't want to demonize whole fruit. But what happens is that if you juice fruit, you're throwing away the fiber. That's the stuff that goes into the garbage bin. That is the fiber. That's the good stuff.

51:33Yeah. For your gut. Yeah. It helps the spice to go down. Yeah. And then if you make a fruit juice, it's just water and sugar. Without the fiber. Without the fiber. So what if you had the fiber in some other food first, and then you had orange juice? Sure, if you want. Is the spike going to be lesser? Yeah. I mean, you could always be very ingenious about stuff, but I would recommend people see orange juice as dessert. If you want a juice, it's for pleasure. It's for dessert. It's not a good way to get your fruit in. You're still not telling us don't have it. No. You're just saying it's not going to be the optimal way to do it.

52:06I'm never going to tell you don't have something, but I'm going to say - But that's a dessert. Yeah. It's not a breakfast food. It's not a good way to start your breakfast or your day. So if I wake up, first thing I do is have a little bit of water and then a tall glass of orange juice. or a tall glass of apple juice or whatever juice, what happens to that glucose spike? What happens to my body? All of the sugar in the juice is going to arrive really quickly into your bloodstream, make a big, big spike. Inflammation, aging, mitochondria being tired, cravings rollercoaster kicks off, neurons get inflamed, signal of neurons slows down, hunger hormones go haywire.

52:44You're creating a day for yourself that is going to be full of cravings and fatigue. Wow. Yeah. So what is the first thing I should be eating in the morning to set me up for success that day for my mental health, my hunger cravings, everything, my hormones? A savory breakfast built around protein. Eggs. Eggs, some yogurt, some leftover fish from last night, tofu, meat, a smoothie with protein powder, some nuts, something that, and I have loads of recipes in the book, but something that's built around protein. That way you're going to keep your glucose nice and steady because protein does not turn to glucose when you digest it.

53:19So we talked about juice, but what about smoothie? You just mentioned smoothies. So smoothies would be a better solution with protein. Slightly better. Yeah. So if you, for example, if you smoothie a banana, okay, you're not going to get rid of the fiber, but the blades of the blender are going to pulverize it. So it's going to become less effective and you're going to drink that banana smoothie so quickly versus eating the banana. So smoothies and juices are just less good if they're made of fruit. But if you have a smoothie in the morning with like protein powder, you know, some nuts, some milk, a little bit of fruit for taste.

53:51It's fine. As long as you're balancing it and putting some clothing on those fruits. Protein in there. Yeah. So if you have peanut butter in there, is that a good thing? It's going to be better for your glucose spike. Yeah. It's a better thing. Okay. You're trying to make me say things. Well, I'm just trying to understand better. Yeah. You know, for the women that I feel like struggle and the men that struggle with their body image, they're needing to look perfect, either needing to look super skinny in a certain way for women or for men needing to look, you know, shredded and ripped or whatever.

54:26How can individuals with maybe an addictive personality or a personality that they just really haven't figured out how to accept where they're at with their body, or they just feel like they're bought into their friend group that's telling them to do certain things, what can they really do to start to heal and integrate better around their lifestyle, the way they view themselves, when they look in the mirror, how they look at their body and how they eat so it's not so toxic for themselves? I'm not an expert in the psychology of things, but I can tell you a few things that I've observed and learned.

55:06I find that sometimes when my readers or my community members come to me, they're like, oh, Jesse, I really want to lose 10 pounds. Like if I lose 10 pounds, I'm going to feel so much better. Actually, what they're saying is I want to feel better in my body. You know, it's not really about the number on the scale. It's about do you feel good in your clothes? Do you feel happy when you wake up? Do you feel beautiful? You know, do you feel energized? Do you feel good about yourself? And often what might happen is that somebody will try the hacks and they might not lose weight, but on the inside, their biology is going to be working well again.

55:37And all of a sudden they feel happy. The hormones in their brain are rebalanced. They have energy, their mitochondria work. They feel good about themselves. They sleep well. They have motivation to go and work out. And they realize, oh, it was not about the 10 pounds. It was about feeling good and feeling healthy and feeling like myself and feeling empowered and feeling like I have agency and energy to go after my dreams. So often when we're after, you know, a specific weight loss, it might actually hide another desire because sometimes you get the weight loss and you still feel sad. It's not enough.

56:12Yeah, it's not enough. Interesting. So, and listen, I think this is, you know, the realm of psychology and therapy, et cetera. But I know for me, my relationship to my body completely changed. I grew up in France being bombarded with diet messages, lose five pounds, of course, all over the place, you know. and body dysmorphia. And you're like, oh my God, my thighs are so big. And it's like, thighs are not big, you know? But we're bombarded with these messages and it's a way to control women. It's so effective. What is the difference between the messaging and the health and wellness world in France or in Europe versus in America that you see?

56:47Because you've grown up in both cultures. The messaging and the marketing is quite similar. The same stuff is trying to be pushed, But in France, there's a bit more of a culture of eating. Like we take an hour for lunch. We eat with our family. People cook. Every day when you come back from work, you stop at the butcher, at the cheesemonger, at the produce guy, and you buy fresh food, right? And then you cook at home and you actually take time. And I think that's the main difference that I see. And so we're less victims to the big food industry. Because it's such a deeper culture of cooking and eating together.

57:23but listen you know nobody is immune to this crazy marketing to diet culture it is everywhere everywhere french women are also obsessed with being thin it's not yes of course yes yes yes and so that's one of the reasons i never talk about weight because i think it's really deflecting the real objective here which is to help people be healthy you can be skinny and be really unhealthy on the inside right right so and it's also just a way to control women it is such a powerful controlling mechanism you know i when i was a teenager i was obsessed with how i looked how much i weighed i would weigh myself every day etc and that prevented me from actually thinking about other stuff like what i wanted to do what were my passions what did i want to learn you know how i felt so it's kind of a prison and i'm trying to help women understand it's not about the weights like diet culture diets losing five pounds before summer that is toxic right and the diet industry is making so much money off your back by making you believe that's going to make you happy and worthy.

58:25You see what I mean? The hacks that you've been talking about, researching, studying, and applying, like you mentioned, are a lot of things that have just been around for a long time. And it's bringing them back with new science and showing here how this supports the glucose spikes going down, helps you feel more healthy, all these different things. when people skip out on the, the healthier hacks and they go for a quick hack or a drug, something like Ozempic that's been, you know, kind of taken over and they live by that versus kind of grounded principles on health and nutrition, what tends to happen?

59:09Even if they lose all the weight they wanted to lose, even if they, you know, look better in the mirror, what happens when drugs take over common sense? Listen, I understand. The food environment we live in is so confusing. So much of the food we eat is so bad for us, so toxic. We're all lost. So I understand why these drugs have taken over because we are profoundly lost. And interestingly in France, those in pig is not a thing. Really? Nope. Well, it's just cigarettes instead, right? No, I don't know. But people are like, what do you mean it's drugs so you're not hungry anymore? It's just like, what?

59:48Why? Because I think in America, because there's so much more processed foods, all of our hunger hormones are deregulated. So we do feel hungry all the time and we don't know how to eat better. So there's no exempt or these drugs in France that you're aware of? It hasn't taken off at all. It's not in the media. It is in the media, but I don't know a single person in France who takes it. Really? Yeah. So they're pushing it in marketing there. Of course. Yeah. But people aren't buying. No, they're like, what? Wait, what? What? Yeah. Isn't that fascinating? Yeah. So what happens? Well, listen, first of all, I think it gives people a sense of control.

1:00:22And that's that can make you feel good. But the problem is with Ozempic, for example, now we're starting to see studies about what happens when you stop. And so with Ozempic, you lose a lot of weight, but you also lose a lot of muscle. And then when you stop taking Ozempic, you're going to start eating like you normally would again, and then you get all the way back, but you just gain fat back, you don't gain the muscle back. So you end up in a worse situation, right? And the way Ozempic and the other GLP-1 agonists work is that there's a hormone in your body called GLP-1. And it's one of the hormones that tells you, Lewis, you've eaten enough.

1:00:54You know, when you have a big family dinner and your aunt is like, Lewis, one more slice of pie. And you're like, Aunt Mary, I really can't. I'm just like, you know, when your stomach is really full. One of the reasons you feel that way is because of GLP-1. And Ozempic tricks your brain into thinking there is more GLP-1 than there actually is in your body. So your brain is like, oh, I feel super full. I'm not ready to eat. I cannot eat. Exactly. Some people even forget to drink, right? It's crazy. And this is not great because there are natural ways of increasing GLP-1. But these drugs trick your body into thinking there's more than there actually is.

1:01:33So we don't know yet what all the after effects are going to be. But I think it says something really disheartening about the state of our dietary habits is that we're so lost about what to eat and the food around us is so bad for us that we need a drug to help us not eat the food. Oh, my gosh. And for Big Food and Big Pharma, I mean, match made in heaven, right? It's making a lot of money to a lot of people. Wow. So... But whether or not you take one of these drugs, it's important to understand physiologically how your body works, because otherwise you're just going to be just as lost in six months when you stop.

1:02:07Right. So what is it? GLP? Is that what you said? GLP1. GLP1. So what are the natural ways to, I guess, create more GLP1 without a drug? Eating fiber. Or, and this is one of the reasons I created Anti-Spike, my new capsules, is that there are plants that help your microbiome produce more GLP1 naturally. So for example, after 6 to 12 weeks of taking anti-spike, you see a natural increase of 15 % in GLP-1. It is an actual increase. It is not tricking your brain into thinking there's more GLP-1. It's actually helping your body create more of this satiety hormone. And using a lot of my hacks is also going to naturally increase GLP-1.

1:02:46Vinegar too or no? I don't think so. I don't think so. No. It's more about specific nutrients that you eat. So protein and fiber and fats, et cetera. but it's just a normal hormone, you know, that you have on your body all the time. It's not this crazy new thing. It's just acting on something that's already there. Yeah. So like we were saying before, like vinegar is one of the best things you can do to have in water before a meal that will help you decrease the spike of glucose of the meal, no matter what you're eating. Well, you have to be eating carbs because if you're eating just broccoli, that's not going to help because broccoli doesn't really make a spike.

1:03:22Got it. But if you're having sugar, carbs, that'll help you decrease when you have vinegar. Exactly. A lot of people don't want to drink vinegar every day. Yeah. And they don't want to travel with a bottle of vinegar with them wherever they go. And so this is something you've been developing, anti-spike. So what is this? What are the ingredients that support you? Yeah. Similar to what vinegar does, I guess. Well, the reason I developed this product is because I was seeing pop up on the market a lot of these vinegar gummies. I won't name names. Interesting. But a lot of companies have made vinegar gummies.

1:03:52That taste good? That have lots of sugar in them. Oh, okay. that are really bad for you and that have no science supporting them. So my readers were like, hey, can I take a supplement instead of the vinegar? Yes. Can I take a vinegar capsule, vinegar gummy? And I did a lot of research and I realized there's a lot of stuff on the market which at worst actually contains sugar and makes a glucose spike and at best doesn't have any scientific studies backing it and doesn't really do much. So I thought for the people who want a pill when they can't do the hacks, okay when they're traveling or whatever they want a little extra help is there stuff that could actually function so after several years of digging into all the scientific research i found these four very interesting plants now these are plants that have been around since forever okay but recently scientists across the world have found that they have an amazing impact on our glucose levels and i put them all into anti-spike so the plants are mulberry leaf lemon extract cinnamon, and antioxidants from green vegetables.

1:04:57So you take the capsule before eating, and it reduces the glucose spike of the meal by 40%. 40? Yes. Come on. Yes. And it's not bogus. We have tons of clinical trials on this. It's amazing. And it's because anti-spike contains this molecule called DNJ. DNJ is awesome. And what she does is she lets 40 % of the sugar from your meal pass through to your microbiome without being absorbed into your bloodstream. That means your bloodstream doesn't register it. There is less of a spike, so less impact on your health. And your microbiome is so happy to feed on these sugars, and it creates all sorts of positive hormones, including increasing GLP-1.

1:05:38So it's honestly, I know it sounds a little bit like a magic pill, and I don't want people to think, oh, I'm just going to do this and not do the hacks. It is an extra tool. Do the hacks. Do not replace all the hacks that are free and easy and food-based with Anti-Spike. But if you want something to have in your purse for when it's a birthday party, you're traveling, you want a little bit of help, you're going to eat carbs and you want less of a spike, this is 100 % the best thing on the market. There's nothing like it. It's incredibly powerful, 100 % plants, vegan, a lot of clinical studies on it.

1:06:09And it's the only thing I recommend today. Anti-Spike. Anti-Spike, baby. Where do they get it? Your website? Yeah, anti-spike.com. decided i can't wait to have some and try it out that'll help me with my sugar cravings that's for sure so it's kind of like a guide it's like this this uh you know usher taking the sugar through your body without it going in the bloodstream less of the sugar and just kind of peeing or pooping out going to your microbiome and feeding your nice bugs the good bug the good bacterias but is that good i mean this does microbiome want bad carbs and sugar it won't it It wants the undigested carbs.

1:06:44It creates short-chain fatty acids. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. So it wants that in the gut, but the challenge is when you have sugar without these other things, it goes in the bloodstream first. Exactly. Is that what happens? Exactly. Which causes the spikes. Exactly. Which makes you gain weight, inflammation, age faster. Cravings. Age faster. Glycation. Mitochondria damage. Yeah. Oh, your face. You're like, oh, God. what else do we need to know about this that we haven't covered yet what what are you worried about that's coming over the next couple of years with society with wars with you know pandemics all these different things that have happened what else do we need to speak about that hasn't been said well you know i work in a very narrow field which is science of your body and of food and i think in this space the stuff i'm concerned about is kind of what i experience which is a more and more of a disconnection between symptoms you feel and finding the root cause so more and more plastering of a medication over a symptom instead of asking yourself what is this symptom actually trying to tell me symptoms are actually messages coming from your body, right?

1:08:06The cravings, the brain fog, the acne, the infertility, diabetes, they are your body's way of speaking to you and saying, Lewis, there's a problem here, help us fix it. Your body is not asking for a drug to suppress the symptom. It's asking for you to pay attention. So I'm concerned that we're going to keep going further and further down this path of treating a symptom completely disconnected from understanding what it's telling us about how we live. And we see this in all areas of health, right? Not just in glucose spike symptoms, but mental health symptoms, right? Anxiety, depression, panic attacks, all this stuff, all these autoimmune diseases popping up.

1:08:49I mean, it's everywhere. I want to help people reconnect the dots, the symptoms with how you need to live your life to make the symptoms go away. Symptoms are messages from your body. Your body is screaming at you. Your body is trying so hard to communicate, but we just don't know how to listen. We don't have the language, right? So if you're listening and watching today and you have the symptoms and you've had them for a long time, flip the script. Ask yourself, hey, maybe this is my body speaking to me or trying to speak to me. What if I listened and tried to fix the underlying issue instead of suppressing, medicating, feeling bad about it, not talking about it, you know?

1:09:30Yeah. I mean, I'm all for tracking data because I love to track the data and know what's underneath everything. But in a world of extreme biohacking cultures, what it seems like, wearables, glucose monitors, heart rate monitors, blood drawing every month. whatever monitor you have, you know, aura rings, sleeping and like tracking everything. Is that also, like, I think it's good to have the knowledge about your specific body and how your body works, but is that sustainable long-term to keep like every biohacking thing possible to tracking data? Could it be more stress? First of all, it costs money.

1:10:10Yeah. Like not everybody can afford these trackers and the people who need this information the most are the people who cannot even afford my book so i don't to me it's like a moot point it's like sure track it if it motivates you if it's cool if it helps you understand but really the public health crisis we face is not going to be solved by these trackers it's going to be solved by giving people free information online accessible easy to digest understandable that doesn't even require you know high literacy rates to understand that's what i'm passionate about i don't care about the biohacking stuff i'm like if it makes you happy if it helps you feel more connected if it helps you motivate like go for it don't become already stressed out about it but go for it but i have friends for example they wear sleep trackers and they've told me that in the morning it's almost like they don't know how they feel yet until they've looked at the sleep data you didn't sleep well oh man now i'm tired and you know what this reminds me interesting it reminds me of back in the day where it still happens where people women weigh themselves in the morning and depending on the number of on the scale they would then say i'm going to have a good day or i'm going to have a bad day and feel bad about myself.

1:11:18It would determine their attitude. Absolutely. Absolutely. Because that stuff has such a big impact. Yeah. So, I mean, there's great sides to it. You know, I discovered all these things to a glucose monitor. So far from me to say glucose monitors are not useful. It changed my life profoundly. But now I understand that there's so much work to be done in just giving this information for free without an expensive device. Yeah. And you show like, okay, when you eat this specific meal, you show the science on the other pages that say, okay, when you eat this, when you have something before, here's what happens with the glucose spike.

1:11:50So you're showing already what's going to happen to most people. Exactly. Yeah. So as long as you see it visually on my data, I think it makes sense. And these hacks are based on scientific studies, on clinical trials. They're not just me testing stuff and making up. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just using my data to illustrate the scientific studies. I love the emotional support water bottle. That's in the vinegar week. That's one of the ways of having your vinegar hack. And so in the method, in the glucose goddess method, I have had a great time just creating all these easy recipes and making it fun and easy to start with.

1:12:21It's a very colorful, joyful book. And I'm obsessed with design and copy. It's beautiful. And how do you help people change their behavior as simply as possible? And as you see in the pages, for example, all the ingredients have a little photo of them. Yeah, it's beautiful. It feels very friendly. It's really beautiful. Yeah, it's always been hard for me to look at a lot of recipe books that just have like, you know, the words. Yeah, the list. It's just like, it's not inspiring. No. But when you see it visually, like this beautiful image and you see the images of the foods. And you feel like, oh, I can buy that.

1:12:57It's easy. I'm obsessed with simplification and helping people. Yeah, it's beautiful. Actually take the first step. That's what I love. You've got great design. Thank you. Which I appreciate. I love great design. It's like half cookbook, half a coffee table book, you know? Exactly. I'm so excited for you, Jessie. Thanks, Louis. I'm so happy to hear that you've been transforming your own personal life and you've been healing from the reflection, from all the different therapies you've done, but also by taking back control of your life. Yeah. By monitoring these things and by applying it. So I'm really glad that you've done the work because you've given so many people hope for their life, for their health, for their future in a world of diet culture or just confusion of like what to do.

1:13:44So I really acknowledge you, Jesse, for being on this journey of being a servant of wisdom from bringing back the ancient things that our great-great-grandparents knew and applying it to a world of confusion and chaos and uncertainty. So I'm really inspired by everything you're building. The Glucose Goddess Method. The four-week guide to cutting cravings, getting your energy back and feeling amazing. Make sure you guys grab a copy or two. Give one to a friend. Again, if you know someone in your life that's been struggling with nutrition or food or body image, give them this book. Give them this gift and send them this episode.

1:14:22I think it'll really inspire people. I'm inspired. So I'm grateful for you. and check out antispike.com. If you don't like vinegar like me, I'm a very picky eater. Check out antispike, something you can take before you eat foods, whether you're traveling or at home, if you don't want the vinegar to help decrease the spikes in glucose. I think it's really cool. All plant-based antispike.com. I can't wait till I can get my own stock. Where else can we send people to? to support you and be of service to you. You've got a great social, I mean, your content on social media is amazing. It's always inspiring, but what else can we do?

1:15:01I think the Instagram is where, is my hub where I talk about everything. So glucosegoddess.com. And I think something really simple too is that I make lots of free content. And so if you have, for example, a parent that has diabetes, you know, get onto my Instagram and send them some of the posts and the simple graphs. And that has a huge impact to helping them understand what's going on in their body. So use all of my content as much as you want. It's free. It's there to be shared. If you're a health practitioner, use it with your patients. Like we're all on the same team. Let's help people understand their bodies better.

1:15:31Yeah, it's beautiful. Okay, final two questions. This is one I ask everyone towards the end. It's called the three truths. So imagine a hypothetical scenario. You get to live as long as you want because you've decreased your glucose spikes. So you're living way into the hundreds. But it's your last day. Your last day, you're fully brown on the inside. You're fully... I love it. Glycated. You're fully glycated. But you've lived an amazing life. You've accomplished every dream, experienced every experience, felt all the love you wanted to feel. You did it. It's a celebration, but it's the last day.

1:16:07And for whatever reason in this hypothetical world, you have to take everything with you that you've created. This book, this interview, anything you've ever shared online, it's gone. Okay. From our world. and you get to leave behind only three things, three lessons. I call it the three truths. Okay. What would those three truths be for you? Symptoms or messages. Have a savory breakfast. Actually. And focus on personal growth. Grow as much as you can. Take challenges as lessons. find the teaching in every difficult thing that happens to you and grow, grow, grow your soul, your spirit as much as you can.

1:16:56Those are beautiful. Symptoms are messages. Have savory breakfast and focus on personal growth. Final question, what's your definition of greatness? Being fully in your power, finding what your specific unique power, passion is, and inhabiting it as much as you can. Because that's what your soul is here to do, you know? Your passion is what your soul wants you to go towards. And I think being able to live in that place as much as you can, whether you have a passion for drawing or horses or biochemistry, trying to live in that space, to me, is really great. I hope today's episode inspired you on your journey towards greatness.

1:17:44Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a rundown of today's show with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me as well as ad-free listening experience, make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel on Apple Podcast. If you enjoyed this, please share it with a friend over on social media or text a friend. Leave us a review over on Apple Podcast and let me know what you learned over on our social media channels at Lewis Howes. I really love hearing the feedback from you, and it helps us continue to make the show better. And if you want more inspiration from our world-class guests and content to learn how to improve the quality of your life, then make sure to sign up for the Greatness newsletter and get it delivered right to your inbox over at greatness.com slash newsletter.

1:18:29And if no one has told you today, I want to remind you that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great. Thank you.