The Kick Sugar Coach Podcast
The Kick Sugar Coach Podcast
Dr. Robert Lufkin: Exploring the Role Sugar Plays in Chronic Diseases
Sugar has become a staple in modern diets, but the impact it has on our health is far from sweet. Dr. Rob Lufkin, a respected physician and author, brings to light the dark side of sugar consumption and its pervasive role in promoting chronic diseases. From the onset of metabolic syndrome to its influence on Alzheimer's, cardiovascular diseases, and even cancer, sugar's impact is extensive and often underestimated.
Dr. Lufkin's personal journey of health enlightenment underscores the urgent need for medical curriculum reform. He points out the flawed nutrition wisdom ingrained in medical education, where the oversimplified mantra of "a calorie is just a calorie" fails to account for the complexity of metabolic health. His recovery from metabolic syndrome not only transformed his own life but also fueled his passion to educate others, particularly future medical professionals, about the intricacies of diet and disease.
The podcast episode delves into the science of glycation and the activation of the mTOR protein, both of which are closely linked to aging and are exacerbated by sugar intake. Dr. Lufkin's insights into how our bodies can switch from glucose to ketones as an energy source reveal a potential pathway to better health and longevity. By reducing sugar consumption and embracing intermittent fasting, we can encourage our bodies to use ketones, thus mitigating the detrimental effects of sugar.
Moreover, Dr. Lufkin discusses the pervasive prevalence of metabolic syndrome, a condition that's alarmingly common among American adults. He challenges the conventional view of type 2 diabetes as an all-or-none condition, advocating for a perspective that sees it as a gradual progression correlated with aging. This rethinking prompts a proactive approach to dietary choices, regardless of whether one has been diagnosed with diabetes.
As the conversation turns towards sugar substitutes and pharmaceuticals like rapamycin, the episode offers a balanced look at lifestyle modifications and medical interventions. Dr. Lufkin emphasizes that while medications can play a role, it is the dietary choices that hold the key to combating the onslaught of chronic diseases and aging. The use of sugar substitutes, for instance, while seemingly beneficial, can still trigger insulin production and may have unintended consequences on the microbiome and taste preferences.
In conclusion, the episode leaves listeners with a powerful message of empowerment. By understanding the profound impact of sugar on our health and making informed dietary decisions, we can take control of our well-being and combat the chronic diseases that threaten our quality of life. Dr. Lufkin's transformation and advocacy for change serve as a beacon of hope for anyone seeking to navigate the complexities of health and nutrition in pursuit of a longer, healthier life.
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Welcome everybody to an interview today with Dr Rob Lufkin. He is a practicing physician and he's also the author of over 200 peer-reviewed scientific papers 14 books that are available in six languages. He's a full professor at the UCLA and USC schools of medicine and he has given lectures and keynote speeches around the world. And he was named one of the 100 most creative people in Los Angeles by Buzz Magazine, and his latest book is a very shocking title. As a professor in the Faculty of Medicine, he has written a book called are you ready for this Lies? I Taught in Medical School.
Speaker 1:This book is amazing and we're going to deep dive into some of those insights that Dr Lovkin shares in that book. He is currently a clinical professor of radiology at the USC School of Medicine and he has an applied academic focus on the science of longevity. He's also the chief of metabolic imaging at a large medical network in southern california. And last not but least, dr lufkin has his own journey of recovery from metabolic syndrome and probably had his own journey with sugar. I don't actually know what, but we're going to find out together.
Speaker 2:so welcome, welcome, dr lufkin hey, florence, uh, thank you so much. I'm a big fan of your work. I'm honored to be on this summit. I'm really looking forward to our conversation today.
Speaker 1:Well, let's start with your journey, because I think that's when all the light bulbs started to go on that here you are, you're sick and you're realizing all the things you taught in med school weren't exactly helping you. So do you want to tell us a little bit more about your journey to wellness?
Speaker 2:Sure, yeah, I mean, I started out from a very young age being immersed in nutrition guidance. As it turns out, my mom was a practicing dietitian. She worked her whole life, full-time, as a dietitian at various hospitals and, as your audience knows, I'm sure, a dietitian dietitians are the people who are in charge of determining the diet for patients, and they're sort of the nutritional experts. So growing up I was, you know, I was taught to. You know, avoid saturated fats. You know. I avoided any food containing fats, high fat food. Instead, I went to low fat foods and I substituted margarine for butter, which had trans fats and seed oils in them. And I followed all all this advice and so far, so good.
Speaker 2:I became interested in nutrition and medicine. I went to medical school, I stayed on, I became a professor and everything was fine. I had a couple of kids, my life was going great. And then I came down with four diseases that at first glance I thought were very different. One was something in my joints called gout, and another one was hypertension and another one was abnormal blood lipids and one was prediabetes. And I went to my doctor and I was prescribed medicines for each one of those and I started taking the medicines, but I realized that those were diseases that my father had died of.
Speaker 2:But my father was in his 80s, almost 90 years old when he died, and I was much younger and I realized that getting them early like this, this wasn't going to end well.
Speaker 2:I had kids who weren't even in high school yet or middle school. So I began to, out of self-interest, look at the literature and began researching this whole area, and it was shocking that there's been so much work done now, that there's so much more we understand in this field of nutrition and lifestyle, and there were many things that I'd overlooked and I was, frankly, was teaching incorrectly and are still being taught incorrectly at many medical schools, in my opinion. So I basically, long story short, I took these recommendations about my nutrition and lifestyle. I implemented them myself. I went back to see my doctors and they couldn't believe it. They said what happened to you? What are you doing? You know what's going on? And they basically all the diseases were reversed and I was off all prescription medicines and so it was just a wake up call for me and I, you know, I'm trying to share this information with other people.
Speaker 1:Incredible Did you. Were you a sweet tooth guy Like do you feel like you might have been? Did sugar have a little hook in you?
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, I'm a I am a recovering process food addict. And yeah, I'm I. You know I, despite my mom, you know, telling me what not to eat, it was still okay to eat sugar and, you know, certain types of candy, because they didn't contain fat. You know, fat was the evil but sugar was okay. So we substituted sugar in the low-fat yogurt for the fat and that became the healthy substitute. So yeah, and to this day I still, you know I love junk food. I can't keep it in the house Because you know I'll break down and eat it. So I'm, I'm constantly fighting that battle that you're very experienced in with your work.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's such a relief to hear that. I mean, misery should not love company, but I'm like that's so interesting that a doctor gets it, yeah, that you literally can't have it in your house. So now that this is kind of really exciting that you're a professor in med school, because you're actually teaching the upcoming generations of doctors how to approach, you know, these metabolic related diseases Are you having an impact on the curriculum of medical schools?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean the curriculum is gradually changing, but it's not in my opinion. It's not changing fast enough and the way medical school is taught there's silos in different areas and my specialty in medical school is not nutrition, so I'm actually not the ones teaching the kids nutrition. And to this day, leading medical schools still teach that a calorie is just a calorie. If you want to lose weight, you exercise more and you eat less, which I disagree with for a number of reasons. But yeah, it's been a great journey.
Speaker 2:I mean, one thing I learned to speaking to your work was that and I'm still learning this now that I learned that a lot of things were bad, in particular, sugar and glucose were bad, in particular sugar and glucose. And I realized it was bad and I think a lot of people are more and more realizing it's bad. But what I came to understand in my experience was that at first I thought we'll just have to tell people Once they see the evidence, you explain it to them. Hey, sugar's bad, people will stop eating sugar. But I realized that didn't happen at all. Very intelligent people would know that sugar's bad, but they would go back to eating it and I understand much more now that it's a compulsion, it's an addiction. It's not enough just to educate people, but they have to be. Most people have to be engaged in an active process of treating the addiction and dealing with it a number of ways, and I know your program addresses it in some really innovative ways.
Speaker 1:Yes, exactly, and it's such a relief for people to go yeah, this is just, this is the nature of these foods. They hook us, they hij. This is just this is the nature of these foods. They hook us, they hijack our brains, right. And that when you understand that you're going to stop trying harder, you're going to just do things differently, trying to smart it, and then eventually, your body at first will resist because it's fallen in love with it and it thinks it can't live without it. And then, over time is, the longer you are walking the path of whole foods, the more your body becomes an ally. It's like oh no, you were right, this is better. These foods taste better. I actually prefer my life better, right, and the body becomes an ally. It's just such a journey you need so much support to get to that epiphany. So what exactly is the problem with sugar? Why is sugar such such a detriment? Why does it drive chronic disease and contribute to aging and mental health issues? The whole shebang.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was a real revelation for me that you know, as a physician, as a professor, I knew that sugar was associated with certain diseases like diabetes, obviously associated with certain diseases like diabetes, obviously. But what was real wake up call for me was that sugar and the mayhem that sugar causes in our body affects us at a very fundamental level. That drives not just obesity, not just diabetes, but it also drives the joint pain I had the gout. It also drives the number one killer that's going to determine most of our longevity, which is cardiovascular disease. It drives that. It also drives cancer. For many, many cancers, sugar is a factor there. And then, finally, the one disease that at least mainstream medicine has no treatment for Alzheimer's disease. Sugar also drives that in many forms of Alzheimer's disease Not all, but some forms you can have very dramatic results just with nutritional changes. And its association with diabetes is now it's sometimes referred to as type 3 diabetes because of the strong association there. So the wake-up call was that sugar and other types of refined carbohydrates which are converted to sugar in our bodies are a root cause for various different types of diseases that in the past I thought were completely separated and, you know, had different treatments for. But, as it turns out, by improving my nutrition and addressing the sugar issues, it's possible to improve the risk factors for all these diseases across the board. And it turns out on the longevity side.
Speaker 2:There have been a number of breakthroughs in this last decade about longevity. There are literally some drugs in our understanding now that can make animals live significantly longer, and these are even being applied to humans now, and one of the basic mechanisms for for longevity is a is a protein called mTOR, which is uh as it is. It's it's turned on by glucose, and you can affect mTOR and make it worse on our bodies by consuming glucose. And the drug rapamycin you may have heard about, which is this miracle longevity drug, actually works by turning down mTOR and turning down the effects of glucose on that. So glucose has, first of all, it has a tremendous effect across all these various diseases.
Speaker 2:So what's the problem? What's the problem with glucose? Glucose is it's fundamental to our bodies, right? A lot of our many of our cell, or some of our cells, require glucose to run. Most of our cells will run on glucose, but they can also run on alternative fuel called ketones, so you can either run on ketones or glucose. Today, most of us run on glucose all the time, and that's the mTOR switch is switched to the glucose side, which is the aging side, by switching to ketones. There are a number of advantages and we can do this through our diet. When we decrease the amount of glucose we consume or if we do intermittent fasting, we can switch our diets to where we consume more ketones, and this is a much more healthy state. So what's wrong with glucose? Much more healthy state. So what's wrong with glucose?
Speaker 2:Glucose although it's necessary for some of our cells to survive, high levels of glucose in our body or even moderate levels in our bloodstream have damaging effects. Glucose has a reaction called a glycation reaction where, unlike almost any other chemical, it binds with proteins and other molecules and sort of gunks them up. In fact, you've probably talked about the hemoglobin A1C blood test. That measures glycation damage to red blood cells and it's used as a diagnostic criteria for diabetes. And so the higher our blood levels of glucose spike, the more of this glycation damage is done by the glucose. Glucose has a number of other effects driving mTOR, driving the glycation damage and overall, most people in this space agree that it's better to keep the spikes of glucose down and when we eat foods containing glucose we get spikes in our bloodstream. It's better if we keep those spikes lower. Certainly everyone agrees for diabetics it's better that we keep those lower, because diabetics are vulnerable to those spikes lower. Certainly everyone agrees for diabetics it's better that we keep those lower because diabetics are vulnerable to those glucose spikes.
Speaker 2:One revelation I had that my thinking has changed about diabetes is that I used to believe and most of my colleagues still believe this that type 2 diabetes, which is the 90% of diabetics now, are type 2 diabetes. It's a number one cause. It's caused by sugar intake and insulin resistance, where our body has to produce more and more insulin and the HA1C levels keep going up and up and up. This type 2 diabetes. I used to think that it was either something you got or you didn't get. You're either a diabetic or you're not, and that's the way the healthcare system is set up. Basically, your HA1C levels keep going like this, but you're not diagnosed a diabetic until it crosses a certain threshold right, and then your doctor can prescribe insulin and metformin and they can charge for the visit. But if your HA1C is lower than that, you're not a diabetic, but it could still be abnormal, as it goes from its very low levels, which we have in childhood, to higher and higher levels.
Speaker 2:My thinking has changed on this, in that I no longer believe that type 2 diabetes is something that some people get and other people don't get, just kind of randomly or based on their genetics or their nutrition. There was an interesting study that came out recently from a large population of non-diabetic adults in America, from the Framingham study and then NHANES data. They looked at HA1C levels this marker for glucose damage and they looked at the average levels in these non-diabetics versus age and what they found was the HA1C levels kept getting higher and higher over time with aging with normal aging and eventually they'll cross and these people will be in a diabetic range. So what I now believe is that type 2 diabetes is not something that you either get or you don't get randomly. I think we're all on the path to it. It's sort of like gray hair, in other words, if I don't die of something else before, then I will eventually get type 2 diabetes. Just like you know, we're all going to die of something and it's, you know, maybe one of the diseases I mentioned.
Speaker 2:But the point is, I think we all have to be on the alert for glucose damage and the effects of glucose in our diet. Even though we're not diagnosed as type 2 diabetics. In my opinion, we're all on the route to it and it's a factor in aging for all of us. Even if we don't cross the line for diabetes, elevated glucose can cause these aging changes, these advanced glycation end products, ages, that you probably talked about. So the point is that I think, in my opinion, everyone should watch out for the glucose in their diet. Everyone should choose a diet that regulates the amount of sugar and refined carbohydrates, just because they're on that path to diabetes if they live long enough, and that's kind of a different way of looking at it than oh, you're not diabetic, okay, you don't have to worry, eat whatever you want. I don't think that's. I don't follow that anymore.
Speaker 1:Got it. So it's like, basically we're all on the spectrum. It's just a question of how quickly you're headed to falling off the cliff. Right, can you slow that down? Or maybe even never ever reach the edge of the cliff? You can die someone who's not been diagnosed with these dangerously high levels of sugar and a malfunctioning metabolic system.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:You know, I recently just finished watching a five-part series I think it was a five-part series on Blue Zones. It was on Netflix and I can imagine have you seen them. Have you seen it yet?
Speaker 2:I haven't seen the series. I'm familiar with Dan Buettner's work and I'm going to be at a conference with him on Saturday.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2:Rad fest, yeah, coming up, a conference coming up, yeah.
Speaker 1:Okay, okay. Well, he I mean, I read his book years ago and loved it, loved his work. What such earnest. Such earnest and good intention to help the world live longer, and not just longer, but happier, truly healthy and happy. And in his five-part series he just kept stressing, stressing. It's carbs, it's like look at the in Japan it's the purple potatoes that they eat, the sweet potatoes, and in Costa Rica it's the ground corn. And he keeps stressing how you know how important these starches are in these whole grain, whole food, plant-based. Now they're all whole foods, which is great, but many people are going to hear what you're saying and go. But I just watched that documentary series. Now I'm so confused. Can you speak to that?
Speaker 2:Well, I love a lot of the Blue Zone philosophy and the messaging, especially things about community and working together and family and friends. Things about some of the dietary things are really valuable. The science I don't necessarily agree with. There's been a lot of controversy about the blue zones recently there because they're typically poor socioeconomic areas and you don't expect health care, good health and longevity with poverty. Sometimes it can happen, but in general that's not the case.
Speaker 2:And what the critics have the critics of the science behind the blue zones is they've talked about that part of the problem with poor socioeconomics that contributes to long, long long lived people is poor record keeping on the birth dates and they've gone back to some of the blue zones. And as the blue zones have moved into you know, they become better economically and they have better health care programs, better record keeping. The artifact of the number of centenarians and super centenarians people living over 100 and 110, actually decreased. And then someone looked at the statistics of the centenarians and the super centenarians and when they looked at the statistics of the centenarians and the super centenarians and when they looked at the statistical changes in the birth dates of the people who were at the greatest ages in these populations, they found that the birth dates tended to fall on the first of the month, or they tended to fall on certain days, which was different than the rest of the population, which suggested that they might be, you know, selected in some fashion or, you know, just as a result of poor record keeping and all.
Speaker 2:But be that as it may, putting the science aside, the values of the blue zone, I think that we can affect our longevity with family, with lifestyle, with diet and these factors. I think is true and I agree with it and it's totally true. So it's exciting that they're doing that. And, you know, we're getting more and more data all the time and we're learning all the time. So, you know, I wish them the best results. I'm looking forward to seeing the new stuff and I want to. I want to watch that, that special as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I, as I was watching it my husband, because he knows me so well he's like you. Tell them, florence, I'm like Dan, it's not what they're eating, it's what they're not eating. There's no sugar, there's no processed foods, there's nothing, there's no junk in any of it. So it don't. Don't make those whole foods look like they're the secret. The secret is that what they're not eating and he didn't. I don't think he put enough focus on that piece. So people are going to go out and buy purple sweet potatoes thinking this is the secret food. No, no, it's. The secret is be active, be connected, eat whole foods and if you haven't damaged your metabolism, you can probably handle a high starch diet because you're not damaged. Your body can deal with it. But most of us are damaged and we have to have a different. We have to be more mindful of the kind of nutritional intervention that we're using to try and reverse metabolic syndrome. So that's my two cents on that.
Speaker 2:I agree, I agree, beautifully said.
Speaker 1:So talk to us a little bit about metabolic syndrome. So it sounds like there's this these processed foods and the stress and all those things kind of come together and create a whole cascade of different health issues. Tell me exactly how the metabolism is tied in with that and what are the symptoms?
Speaker 2:Yeah well, your audience. You've probably spoken about syndrome X or metabolic syndrome, gerald Raven at Stanford.
Speaker 1:I haven't had anyone mention it too much yet, so feel free to go.
Speaker 2:Okay, well, this was mentioned many years ago by a researcher at Stanford and other people began publicizing it, but it emphasized an interesting association of symptoms that people had, which was literally waist size or girth and high blood pressure, and then also abnormalities in certain lipids as well and glucose abnormalities, and they coined a term for this, called syndrome X or metabolic syndrome, and it was one of the earlier times where people were putting together this idea that something like high blood pressure is related to sugar, you know, and that abnormal lipids is related to abdominal girth and things like that.
Speaker 2:So they began putting this together and characterizing it, and it was very controversial in the beginning because everyone at that time was eating a low-fat diet which was high in carbs and low in fat, based on the food pyramid at the time, the USDA food pyramid, and still today people, many people, continue to eat this kind of diet.
Speaker 2:But the idea with metabolic syndrome is that there is an underlying metabolic factor that was driving basically all these diseases, these very diseases that was separate from the prevailing hypothesis of the time, which was that you get a heart attack because you eat egg yolks and the cholesterol clogs your blood vessels or saturated fat. Now, to this day today. Even the American Heart Association agrees it's okay to eat eggs and they're probably one of the healthiest things. You can eat as many as you want. Dietary cholesterol doesn't affect serum cholesterol and serum cholesterol may or may not be a highly significant factor in heart disease. So it was going against the idea that fat was driving cardiovascular disease and it sort of opened the window that other factors that were driving metabolic syndrome and things like glucose metabolism and sugar intake and carbohydrate intake. That was the interesting thing about that factor and our thinking about it is still evolving today.
Speaker 1:And I think there's so many people too that think, oh well, I'm not overweight, I don't. All my blood work seems fine, I'm probably good. But you probably fell into that category until, all of a sudden, you wound up with four diseases. Although, were you, you were a little bit overweight, right.
Speaker 2:I was, you know. I had a dad bod, you know, but not not noticeably overweight. And it's interesting there's a I had a dad bod, you know, but not noticeably overweight. And it's interesting, there's a famous study from a couple of years, a few years ago, on metabolic syndrome, where they took the five symptoms of metabolic syndrome the things that I was mentioning and they looked at a large population of adult Americans and they tracked how many people had at least one of those diagnosed by their healthcare provider, and it was a staggering 88% of Americans had at least one factor in metabolic syndrome and thus were metabolically unhealthy. So that was really an eye-opening study that's still quoted a lot today.
Speaker 1:I know, and you think, who are the 22? Like, who are the 22? Is that right? Did I do it? No 18. Or whatever it is, forget the math. But you know those rare, rare percentages that are people who are not metabolically unhealthy and I wonder if they're people that were and thought I can't do this, it's going to kill me. Right, they had the awakening and they got back on a better path no-transcript.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you know there are outliers. You know people on a carnivore diet. It's interesting. This is a it's sort of like the vegan diet, with only vegetables only, it's only meat. And it's interesting studies on the carnivore diet. Almost to a person. They can reverse type two diabetes just by going on a carnivore diet. For for many, many people, and if you're a diabetic you should always do this with the care of a physician, but it's remarkable to think that type 2 diabetes can be reversed just by eliminating basically sugar and carbohydrates from your diet, which is what a carnivore diet does.
Speaker 1:And I will just put in a shameless plug that I've seen people reverse diabetes and not go on a carnivore diet. But, yeah, I've seen people be on a very moderate diet. I, through my 12 step years, I saw people come in obese, depressed, multiple 10, 10, 15 different kinds of medications, 30 years of being diabetic, and I've seen them go from off all their medications. Just, yeah, just balanced meals, three meals, no snacks. They had protein, veggies, healthy carbs, some fruit, like all the food groups were included, and I've seen them, over and over and over, reverse diabetes. So it really just depends on your body, which is where your doctor and your CGM can be, your, your buddy. Talk, talk to us about sugar substitutes. Not a lot of people do. Um, I still feel like there's a lot of keto uh doctors and advocates who still say, oh, don't worry about those. What's your opinion on them?
Speaker 2:Yeah, um, I mean, after I figured out sugar was bad, then I became a diet Coke junkie and I would eat, I would drink a lot of diet Coke, telling myself I was healthy. You know how bad can it be. All the supermodels drink it, you know, and they're skinny. It wasn't for weight, though it was, it was for metabolic health. And I think Jason Fung I don't know if he's on the program here, but he's someone who I respect greatly he deals a lot with fasting and nutrition and he's a nephrologist who specialized in kidney disease and, no surprise, the number one cause of renal failure and dialysis in this country is type 2 diabetes, as well as amputations and blindness and other things. So he's an expert in that area and he speaks very eloquently about sugar substitutes.
Speaker 2:Well, first of all, there are a number of effects depending on the sugar substitute. Some of them affect your gut microbiome, which basically messes up the bacteria and the organisms in your digestive system so that things are absorbed differently, or you may get leaky gut, so that can be a negative effect, kind of independent of glucose regulation. You know there's some of them, you know they're talking about cancer risk and you know the evidence is not that strong. But anytime people talk about cancer risk, you know it gets my attention no matter what. So if it's something that I don't really need and there's at least even a shred of cancer risk evidence, I pay attention to it. But I think the overall problem with sugar substitutes is much more global and that has to do with the fact that our bodies recognize sweetness, what we, what we perceive to be sweetness, and whether it's from sugar or a sugar substitute. That's how sugar substitutes work. They fool us into thinking it's sweet and once we anticipate that sweetness or actually taste it, it triggers certain reactions in our bodies to deal with the sugar, things like insulin going up and you know bad things. Insulin going up is a bad thing in our body because it drives insulin resistance and it drives aging. It drives mTOR, it it. It's not a good thing. It's one of the bad effects of glucose.
Speaker 2:So if I drink a diet soda sweetened with whatever it is, the sweetness will drive metabolism in my body with things like insulin and other things, as if I was taking sugar, even though there's no glucose or fructose in it per se. So I still get the negative effects on my metabolism of the sugar, negative effects on my metabolism of the sugar. So with that in mind, there's almost nothing you can eat that if it tastes sweet, it's going to have this. They call it a cephalic effect or brain effect on sweetness.
Speaker 2:The other thing that I like when I cut out sugar and you're an expert in this, of course I'm sure you've seen this is that when I eat less sugar I become more sensitive to it, so that when I was eating junk food I'd eat an apple and it would taste like you know, it tastes like cardboard. There's no flavor to it because I'm constantly bombarding my system with all these flavors and sugar and everything. When I'm, when I'm off sugar and I off sugar and I'm in a healthy metabolic state, if I eat an apple, it's like wow, you know, it's sweet, it's rich, it's flavorful, it sort of reset my body and I may get a small insulin spike but it goes down very quickly on my CGM. So that's my two cents on sugar substitutes. I wish there was one that worked without a cephalic response, but I want to be able to enjoy natural sugar when I get it in small amounts in my daily life and by having sugar substitutes I find in my case it suppresses that.
Speaker 1:Totally. Oh my gosh, thank you for mentioning that, and I I think the other thing too is that they are still chemicals and they're toxic to the body. If they're not nutritious, I mean, how can they be good? And I, I I have had people come on my summit and say, oh well, as long as you're not, as long as you're not gaining weight and your weight's managed, don't worry about them. And I think, wow, that's just such a narrow, that's just like looking through a little lens, like broaden it up a little bit. Right, microbiome, what's it doing to our taste buds? What's it doing in our bloodstream, like yeah. Anyways, thank you for your courage and coming on.
Speaker 2:All people who are metabolically healthy aren't obese. You know there are. There are skinny people who are very metabolically unhealthy, who will die of heart attacks and get Alzheimer's and cancer and and these other diseases, and they, they, they may not get diabetes, they may get something else. But the point is you shouldn't say I'm not fat, so I don't have to worry about any of this stuff. I think we all have to worry about it if we want to live a long and healthy life.
Speaker 1:Right, right, and let's talk about the impact of sugar on aging. So I understand it impacts wrinkles, our skin, our eyes. What else does it impact, like? How else does sugar age quicker?
Speaker 2:Well, there's an interesting thing. Remember I told you about this protein called mTOR. That is basically it's a fundamental biological protein. It was only discovered 20 years ago but it's present all the way from yeast to human beings. It's one arguably the single most important survival protein. But basically it detects nutrients in our body and then tells the body to grow or not grow. And when it detects glucose, it tells the body to grow and this has deleterious effects related to aging. And the example of that is there's a drug called rapamycin, which is it turns mTOR down. It suppresses the effects of glucose on mTOR.
Speaker 2:And when you give rapamycin to you put rapamycin cream on humans. In a matter of six months, following skin biopsies in these brave people, they actually had reversal of some of the skin damage and the collagen improved. It was really a dramatic response. You give rapamycin to mice their hair grows back, their gray hair goes away. Their hair grows back. Their gray hair goes away In the mice model. It's now being looked at in humans with rapamycin shampoo.
Speaker 2:It's also affecting things like hearing loss, age-related hearing loss in the animal model. You give rapamycin, you turn mTOR back, you stop the glucose effects of the mTOR and the hearing actually improves in these. But it's all these phenotypes of aging, not just. You know other things periodontal disease as we get older you get it. Rapamycin reverses periodontal disease in the animal models and they're now studying humans with it. Even menopause menopause is a disease of aging, right? Only half the people get it, but it's still a disease of aging. When you give rapamycin to animals, it actually slows down menopause. It delays menopause, increases fertility, and now it's being used in humans in trials to show this. So it has all.
Speaker 2:Turning down mTOR and the effects of glucose has all these dramatic effects on the appearances of aging. All these dramatic effects on the appearances of aging. But let's get real. I mean, nobody dies of menopause, nobody dies of baldness or nobody dies of wrinkles, right? So what determines our longevity? It's basically those five diseases we talked about earlier. 80% of us will die of diabetes-related complications, cardiovascular disease and stroke, heart attacks, cancer and Alzheimer's disease. Those are the big ones. So if turning down mTOR and reducing the effects of glucose on this with this drug called rapamycin, if it really improves longevity, if it really has a significant effect, it should also work on every single one of those diseases, not just gray hair and wrinkles and everything.
Speaker 2:So when we give rapamycin to people with heart attacks and atherosclerosis, which is narrowing the blood vessels, rapamycin is actually FDA approved to coat the stents that are put in the blood vessels when you get a heart attack. Because the stents don't really treat the heart attack, they just keep you from dying. They don't change your longevity or your lifespan because the underlying disease that's driven by metabolism and sugar, is narrowing in the blood vessels and that narrowing continues. But when you put rapamycin on these stents, which are little things that open up the blood vessels, it actually slows the atherosclerosis. So it works for those Cancer. Rapamycin is FDA approved to treat several cancers because of its slowing effect on the cancers Renal cell cancer, metastatic renal cell cancer, the number one kidney cancer rapamycin is FDA approved for that and a number of other cancers.
Speaker 2:Alzheimer's disease when rapamycin is given to a mouse model of Alzheimer's disease it actually improves cognition so significantly that now the University of Texas, I think, other studies, other locations are now looking at rapamycin to treat Alzheimer's patients as a model for Alzheimer's. And we know that. You know, putting people on a low glucose or ketogenic diet for some patients can literally reverse Alzheimer's disease. So we know it has all those effects there. So turning down mTOR and negating the effects of this glucose that's hitting us all the time can have dramatic effects on all these diseases of aging and literally in the animal models for longevity. It can increase the lifespan in mice Well, actually everything from yeast, fruit, flies, worms and mice 20 to 30%, and it's now being used in humans as an off-label use from people that are investigating it.
Speaker 1:So, gosh, it sounds like a wonder drug. Is there any side effects? I always feel like there's fine print. So it sounds like everyone. If I was listening to this, I'd be like, oh, I'll go get stocks in that company Because it sounds like a wonder drug, Is it like? Or is there side effects? Like what would be the benefit of going on rapamycin and allowing ourselves to just eat like a normal mainstream diet, versus doing what you're suggesting, which is do the hard work of breaking up a sugar, keeping it out of the house and eating mostly low carbohydrate diet?
Speaker 2:Well, one thing rapamycin is prescription-only, so you need to get your physician to prescribe it. And using rapamycin for longevity is an off-label use, so your physician may not want to prescribe it. He goes hey, this is a cancer drug, this is a atherosclerosis drug, why would I give it to you? You're healthy. Blah, blah, blah. So if they don't understand rapamycin, so the dose has to be tightly controlled. The side effects, though, are very small. But the problem is we really don't understand longevity. We don't understand these diseases. You know, I've been doing this for 50 years and this is what I do all day, every day, and we still don't understand these diseases. And rapamycin is very new. And there are things we don't even understand about rapamycin. If you combine rapamycin with another diabetes drug called Acarbose that's FDA approved for diabetes you get an even greater longevity enhancement in the animal model for longevity, which goes beyond what rapamycin does. So we don't even know that rapamycin is the end all. There's probably other things. There are other things we don't understand.
Speaker 2:Now, as you mentioned, you can simulate the effects of rapamycin by turning down mTOR by your diet reducing glucose, reducing carbs, intermittent fasting, exercise all these things also turn down mTOR with lifestyle. So the question is why not? You know, why not just take the pill? Why not do the lifestyle? Well, because probably, one, we really don't understand the pill and two, you're probably going to get much bigger effects with a combination than you will with either one.
Speaker 2:And right now, if you're of a certain age, you have to think that aging is 100% fatal and you're on track to die of aging. It's just what it is. So if you want to do everything you can, you should do lifestyle too. And go ahead, take rapamycin. You know that's fine too, but I would not cut out the lifestyle effects, the dietary, the nutritional things like you work with the junk foods, cutting that out and the other factors. So I would cover your bets to everything, but I don't think. No, rapamycin by itself is not the solution. If you don't do it with a lifestyle, I think you're going to possibly lose a lot of its benefits.
Speaker 1:Got it. Got it Amazing. Is there any final words you'd like to share today on the topic of sugar?
Speaker 2:Amazing. Is there any final words you'd like to share today on the topic of sugar health lies that you taught medical school my colleagues, my friends. It's not enough just to know that sugar is harmful, but for many of us it's important to be engaged in a program where we can get support, maybe coaching other things, where we're in a community and we can. You know we can fight this battle together and make our lives healthier that way.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much, thanks for your work, and if you guys haven't got a copy of his book yet, it goes through. Each chapter has, like a different topic, heart disease and high blood pressure, diabetes, obesity and just really eye-opening science and insights into those. So be sure to grab your copy and thank you again, dr Lufkin.
Speaker 2:Thanks, florence, appreciate all the great work you do.
Speaker 1:Ditto.
