You Will STOP SUGAR Forever After Watching This!

 How different is sugar addiction from any other substance or drug addiction or sorry or drug addiction in general Well you know the reality is, it's not all that much different from the addiction that people can experience when it comes to things like drugs and alcohol. And my lab has actually spent a significant amount of time studying that and we really got interested in this whole idea. Probably about 20 years ago when we were wondering, "why so many people were struggling with obesity and overeating." Despite the fact that there's all this information and public health warnings about the dangers of overeating. People still seem to really feel compelled to overeat and when we ask them, "what kinds of foods do you overeat?"

 Sugar was by and large the one that so many people had problems with. So, we've done lots of research in this area over the years and what we've been able to discover is that – Sugar can result in the same type of changes in the brain and the same type of behaviors that you would see with addictions to drugs or alcohol. It's really I think a matter of the fact that what we're seeing in our modern food environment is that there's so much sugar are being added to the food products and we're putting so much sugar into the things that we eat, that we've created something that's very different than the types of foods that maybe our grandparents had you know 50 years ago. When we have dessert it's loaded with added sugar! When Grandma had a cookie or dessert probably had half the amount of sugar. So, our food environment has changed and I think that's what's really been contributing to a lot of this addictive eating and the sugar addiction that we're now seeing, that we haven't seen in the past. So, I don't know if you know we can kind of go there but you know, I do have a question and I'm trying to understand. How is this permitted to kind of permeate into our diets in a sneaky way? Like I just found out that ketchup is is like 80% sugar. So, how is this happening? And maybe this is a political question that you don't want to go into. But, I'm just curious to see, to hear your take on it. Yeah, so I think it is very political. I do think that, you know part of the problem is that sugar has been around for so long, right? It's not like sugar just showed up or it was something that was just invented. And I think what the problem has become is that it's not sugar per se that's causing people to be addicted but it's the amount of sugar that people are consuming. And so, you know it in moderation, yeah it can be fine but the problem is there is no more moderation and once you cross that threshold where you're consuming sugar in the amounts that the average American is consuming it. Telling someone to consume it in moderation is just ridiculous, because basically you've created a situation where they are addicted to it. It's like telling somebody who's a heroin addict to just do heroin in moderation. It doesn't work that way, that's not how addictions work. They affect the brain in a biological way that makes doing something in moderation almost impossible for most people. So, why it hasn't been banned and why it's it's not regulated? I think is something that will continue to hear more about as more people develop diabetes, as more people die prematurely from diet related conditions, and as more people get cardiovascular disease. Let's move on past you know, past the politics and talk to me about – how does sugar work in the body? What is the kind of biological and physiological effects that sugar is having? How does this work? Well, one of the things that's different about you know what sugar's supposed to do? Which is essentially to provide our bodies with fuel and energy. We need sugar in order to make sure that our brains can function appropriately, that we can basically have fuel for ourselves. Now the interesting thing about sugar is that we don't need to have excessive amounts of sugar and even people who don't eat any sugar can still live just fine and happy. Because your body will make its own sugar. Your body will create its own fuel if necessary. But what happens when we talk about sugar in terms of the addiction piece of it, is it's a little bit different in the sense that what we're seeing is that when people consume sugar it causes a rise in the release of a neurochemical in the brain called dopamine. A nd dopamine is a neurochemical that's associated with reward and reinforcement and pleasure and it's also the same neurochemical that gets released in the reward regions of the brain when somebody uses alcohol or does drugs or has sex and it's a chemical that's highly tied to behaviors that can lead to addictive type of behaviors. And so one of the reasons why sugar is so addictive is because it's doing many of these same neurochemical things in the brain as what happens with other addictive substances and so that repeated release of dopamine is a big one. And another big one is the withdrawal component. When people stop eating sugar. Let's just say you know usually after January 1st everybody decides, "Okay, I'm gonna you know clean up my diet cut out all the processed food." And people cut back on sugar! But, you know a couple days into it a lot of people quit because it's really hard. Because you're irritable, lethargic, angry, and a lot of times people think that's because their blood sugar has dropped. But that's not what it is. That's sugar withdrawal. You're in withdrawal. And so those are the same types of behaviors that you'd see when someone tries to quit smoking cigarettes. And so, you know these behaviors are causing changes in the brain that kind of create this vicious cycle that leads us to then just want to consume more sugar to alleviate those withdrawal symptoms. Is there Better or Worse types of sugar? So for example, you mentioned fruit and again I'm no doctor. I'm like the furthest thing from but my understanding is that in Fruit there's something called glucose. Which is a is a form of sugar, is that correct? So fructose, and yes fructose is one of the sugars that you'll find in Fruit and among others. And you know a lot of times people will say well, "if I want to quit sugar, do I have to quit all sugars including fruit?", and my answer to that is no. And the reason is because when you eat fruit, you're not eating just sugar. You're eating an amount of sugar that's in proportion to the fiber and the other nutrients that are in that piece of fruit. So, if you compare like an apples bar to let's say a granola bar, right? An apple is something that is you know from nature it's going to have sugar in it. But it's also going to have all those micronutrients that are important for our body. It's also going to have that fiber, that's going to mitigate the effects that the sugar has on us.

 Now, if you compare that to a granola bar which is you know highly processed, maybe it has little bits of fruit in it, but it's mostly sugar. You're going to see a very different picture emerge and it's not going to contain the ingredients that are essentially put there by Nature by Design to make it so that it can provide us with a benefit as opposed to just a sugar high. You've answered a lot of my questions and you've answered the question of what makes sugar so addictive. You talked about dopamine, I understand that. So, I do understand what makes it so addictive. Let me ask you this, in terms of kids as I mentioned I have three kids. They're young, they're nine, seven, and almost four and you know what is the risk to small children? Small children can regulate themselves. I mean adults have a hard time regularly. Like I have a really hard time saying no to dessert when I'm out for dinner. With kids they they have no self-control what is the what is the what is what are the short-term I see the behavioral problems associated with with sugar with you know when they're going up on the sugar high and definitely when they're coming down what what are the detriments or dangers specifically to small children yeah that's a really great question and you know something I talk about a lot I have kids too my kids are around the same age of yours I have two so one of the things that I think is so important for parents and you know anyone who's living with or with any little kids is to realize the effects that sugar has on children are not only immediate but they're also long-term in the sense that when we give our kids sugar in excess what ends up happening is we're causing them to develop this addicted brain right and so some people argue well what's the big deal if your kid eats sugar a lot if they're playing soccer and running around and you know they're thin and they the doctor says they're healthy just let them have it that's part of being a kid but I think that that's a really very dangerous attitude to have because what we're doing is we're essentially setting these kids up for a lifetime of struggles and when these same kids who are now essentially being trained to overeat sugar when they're children become young adults and middle-aged adults they're going to pay the price then and you know we've already entrained these habits early in life and it's just going to make it all the more difficult for them to have to give up sugar 

when they're suddenly diagnosed with cardiovascular disease when they're in their 30s and so I think that you know the long-term impact of sugar is something that more and more parents need to be aware of and again it's very hard to you know be concerned about something that might happen 30 years from now but I think we need to also be aware that immediately when kids have sugar it affects their cognitive functioning it affects their behavior their ability to focus and overall it affects how they feel throughout the day just think about how you feel if you're kind of going on the up and down of the sugar roller coaster well could you imagine somebody half your size doing the same thing it's not going to feel good so I don't understand so this is happening to them they don't understand it why it's happening at least I understand but they you know exactly yeah and the kids you know depending on their age it's really a difficult thing because

 I know my daughter's seven and she's finally at the point where you know she kind of gets that you could delay gratification that like you don't have to have dessert like you could have something the next day instead and it will still just be just as rewarding but a lot of kids you know take a while to get to that point and they don't understand that you know you're gonna say no to something because it's not healthy to say yes to it and you know again it's part of our biology is that sweet stuff tastes good especially with kids I mean breast milk baby formula those are the first things the kids consume and they taste sweet and that's because that's supposed to taste sweet but let me ask you this let me ask you this and I'm you know I'm not even going by the questions I've written down because I just found this this conversation is so intriguing but let me ask you this like what do you do because you know with kids and even with ourselves that dessert after dinner or that um you know going for ice cream how do you stop our kids right from consuming how do we stop ourselves from consuming what is the alternative to these this cultural um you know kind of things that we do that allow us to consume sugar like 

what do you do in your home yeah great question so what I often suggest is that you know depending on what level of addiction people have just start with the basics start with the beverages get the sugar out of your beverages drinking sugar sweetened beverages is the number one worst thing you could do for your health and there's been lots of clinical studies that have been done showing that consumption of sugar sweetened beverages will reduce your lifespan and it's linked to mortality how about the aspartames of the world and the the stevias of the world and and these uh what do you want to call it synthetic sugars The Diet Cokes whatever whatever the heck's in there is this a feasible alternative I don't think it is I think I view them as methadone I think that if you're really in a bad spot with your sugar intake and you need something as a crutch to help you to wean yourself off then yes these alternative sweeteners they can be a benefit but it shouldn't be the answer it should be a short-term temporary Band-Aid the reason is is because we've seen in research studies that those sweeteners are still releasing dopamine they're still causing that addiction process to happen in the brain and so a lot of people are falsely under this impression that if you simply just swap out one of these zero calorie sweeteners instead of real sugar then you could just eat as much of it as you want and that's not the case it's going to make you still have that compulsion and those addictive Tendencies and it's not going to be the solution long term here's the question I think that everybody who's viewing this video wants to know okay and I want to know I want to know how do you stop I don't know how to stop how do you stop that's I want to know how to stop yeah that's a great that's the question right and I think the answer is stop by starting somewhere right we have to decide you know where are you going to start where are you going to start I always suggest the beverages people start by just making the decision that you're no longer drinking soda anymore and yeah it might hurt but you know what you're still eating cake so that's fine if you still have to do that and it really

 just incrementally making these changes in your habits and finding ways you can replace the things that have sugar with something else now the problem is is that you know we have all these triggers like you said people get stressed at work or they're you know got a lot going on at home and then what do we do we turn to the sugar right it's a way that people self soothe they self-medicate with it and I think when you start to become aware of the reasons why you suddenly want to have sugar the light bulbs tend to go off and people start to realize wow I'm not eating this because I like the taste of it even or I want it I'm eating it because it's temporarily helping me manage my anxiety or you know it's temporarily making me feel better after I had an argument with my boss at work and so I think that when people really start to reflect on their diet and why they're eating certain things why they're you know quote-unquote craving sugar a very different picture starts to emerge and when you think about those things you can start to make some changes and hopefully you know make them for the better what are the long-term veteran detriments that we can expect to see I mean I think shortened lifespan is one of them right short and left hand there was a study that came out of Harvard University a few years back linking sugar specifically sugar sweet and beverage intake to increase cardiovascular disease increased risk of premature death and mortality so that's certainly one we can expect to see when you over consume sugar and again this isn't no one's going to drop dead from eating one cookie this is something that happens over the course of many many years of people using sugar just like tobacco people could smoke usually for like many many years before they develop lung cancer or some of these conditions related to their behavior it's not like you know my first pack of cigarette 

I died from it so this is over time now the other things that can emerge are increased risks for certain types of cancers certainly increased risk for type 2 diabetes increased risk for metabolic syndrome increased risk for developing mental health conditions I mean really the list just goes on and on and when we take a look look at how much of this suffering can be prevented simply by changing our diet it's amazing to me that you know we focus so much on Pharmaceuticals to treat all of these different diseases that emerge that we actually could have prevented if we just changed our diet in many cases so long term those are some of the things that can happen nothing positive is going to come out of a lifetime of eating sugar first let me ask you this so on to question number two um what changes can we expect to see after the sugar has left our systems and sometimes yeah time has gone by what can we yeah so this has actually been one of the more amazing aspects of my career has been to talk with people who have gone through the steps in my book who I've you know worked with over the years 

who have decided to dramatically cut back on sugar and talk about how much they've changed and so yes in the beginning a lot of people struggle because they're going through that withdrawal phase and they're dealing with you know the social aspects of it and the Str the stressors and the triggers and how they you know manage them without turning to food but once people can get that stuff situated which could take a couple weeks people will talk about how not only do they have more energy but their energy is more even Keel they don't have these like spikes and dips all throughout the day in terms of energy levels people will also talk about how food tastes very different in particular fruits and vegetables which people used to say tasted Bland and they needed to add a bunch of sauce to them or you know some sort of dip to make them even possibly edible people will talk about how now suddenly strawberries taste sweet and it can taste the sweetness in other fruits when in the past they had no idea that those things even tasted sweet and so that's because our brain is adapting and our body is adapting to now be able to you know have a lower threshold for detecting sweetness when we're used to consuming candy bars and you know sweet treats all day you know this the natural sweetness is going to kind of get washed out another thing is the weight loss people will talk about how you know their body weight effortless basically effortlessly just changes and I think that that is one of the benefits that you know a lot of times people are seeking and they think is going to be the thing that's going to be very difficult for them to achieve but really when 

you are cutting out the added sugar and replacing it with healthier Alternatives the body weight just seems to come off which is something that could be very advantageous and can help especially if people who have pre-diabetes or you know who even have diabetes themselves are able to in many cases reverse it and take back some of the medications that they have amazing amazing okay so let me ask you something else how do we in modern society okay with all of these triggers how do we actually decrease this so I'll you know let me give you an example people go to restaurants all the time or you know we can't control this so how can we possibly fend for ourselves in a scenario in a restaurant where the 10 people who got this food on my plate they didn't even know the sugar in it so what what do we do what's the solution well you know I think that the default assumption is that there's sugar in it right so anytime you go to a restaurant stay away from things that have sauces pasta dishes that have some sort of sauce even tomato sauce guaranteed there's sugar in that tomato sauce you might want to fool yourself into thinking it's just tomatoes and basil and whatnot no there's sugar for sure in there so I would suggest avoiding sauces avoiding things that look like they have a lot of ingredients I mean you could go to a restaurant and say I want a steak with you know a side of broccoli and a salad with the dressing on the side dressings are another one much like sauces odds are they have a ton of sugar in them and so you could say give me the dressing on the side so you could control how much of it you eat or you could say I just want oil and vinegar can I get some oil and vinegar on the side um I think it's really about you know having a plan I always have a plan when I go to a restaurant or meeting friends I need to know where I can't do anything last minute because

 I need to know what I'm going to order before I get there because I don't want to be sitting at the table and just seeing the menu and then have to kind of make this like last minute decision so planning it out making sure that you're avoiding the sauces and then when it comes time for dessert I mean there's nothing that says that you have to order off a dessert menu if everybody's getting dessert you can ask for like fruit and cheese platter or something else so that you could still enjoy something while people are having a dessert but it doesn't have to be loaded with sugar I have one final question so I heard okay because knowing that I'm a layman in all of this I heard that carbohydrates certain carbohydrates like breads it's the same thing you eat a loaf of bread it's like you know it's like you're pouring white sugar down your throat so my understanding what I heard is that bread specifically bread and pasta eventually turns into whatever the same thing as sugar is once it's in your body so he's eating bread and pasta the equivalent of eating sugar is that correct not exactly it's I could I've heard this too and this is a common question that comes up so let me try to clarify it so basically when we talk about sugars we talk about Breads and pastas they all fall under this category of carbohydrates and so sugars are a type of carbohydrate and many Breads and pastas contain carbohydrates sometimes they're added sugar sometimes they're not and so 

when you digest carbohydrates like pastas and bread what happens is that they get converted into sugar much more quickly than let's say you would have happen in your body when you eat a piece of steak and so our body's going to make sugar no matter what it's just a matter of the process in which it has to go through and so it takes a lot of time and it's a slow moving process when you're eating you know higher fat healthy fats and you know proteins to make sugar you're not going to store sugar right you're probably just going to make what you're going to use that's why when people are eating a lot of carbohydrates and they're not burning them off they're making all this sugar but the Sugar's got nowhere to go so it gets stored as fat and that's why people who have a lot of carbohydrates often will carry around a little bit extra fat and so that's really the bottom line is that it's not so much the fact that it's just like sugar in the sense of you know eating you know something that is a dessert and pasta they're both carbohydrates but they're a little bit different in terms of how they are made into usable sugar in our body and beyond that how we're going to store that Sugar because if you don't use it you got to store it right we don't excrete the excess sugar that we make and unfortunately that would be the the best right if we could manage to do that Dr avina thank you so much this has been really informative

can you please tell us where can people uh find your book yeah absolutely so why diets fail because you're addicted to Sugar it's available on Amazon and if you want to learn more about our research and just different articles about not only sugar but just General Health and Wellness