The Sevan Podcast - Sugar 101 is Mandatory - Dr. Richard Johnson

Episode Date: June 21, 2024

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There we go. Can you hear me, Richard? Maybe, yeah. We can hear you. Oh, he's gone. Hey, good morning, guys. This is going to be a great one. Holy cow. Holy cow. This one's going to be amazing.

It's Dr. Richard Johnson, author of The Fat Switch. I was at a Starbucks with Greg, I don't know, maybe 2010. 11? In San Diego,ifornia out on the patio and there was a doctor there and greg and the doctor uh started up a conversation and in that conversation uh this book came up called The Fat Switch. Hey. All right. Oh, nice. Nice. Nice. Good job. Solid. Can you hear me, Richard? I can. I can. Can you hear me okay? Yeah, you sound great. You look

great. What a great setup. Great. So I was just telling the audience the story. I don't know, it was 2009, 10 or 11. I was sitting down at a coffee shop outside with Greg. We started a conversation with a random doctor sitting at the table. He told Greg about this book called The Fat Switch. It forever changed the trajectory of Greg's life. Um, and through just the fortunate, I don't know, circumstances in life. Uh, I met a friend of yours recently and he told me about you and I'm like, wow, you're, you're friends with Richard Johnson. He said, yeah, I said, I'd love to have him on the podcast. He said, I can make that happen. But I'll, but I've never heard Greg say about anyone, Hey, this guy should win the Nobel prize.

And, um, and he's a very smart man with a lot of, uh, really smart friends. And then I had the pleasure to watch the two of you interact and build a friendship a couple of weeks ago out here in Watsonville. What a great thing. Thank you, sir. Yeah, no, that's very, very kind of you. These are really nice words. But yeah, Chris King was the doctor that you met.

Yes, sir. He was a wonder. Unfortunately, he passed away, but he was a wonderful physician and scientist. And yeah, he was doing stuff with the Maori and the Maori people of New Zealand and trying to help them. And really, he was a champion person. This is the book that I started with. It's the fat switch. I listened to the audio book. Absolutely fantastic. I cannot recommend it enough. Everyone should get this book.

I promise you a money back guarantee from me. This, the value that this book will bring to you. Oh, we have a little bit of an echo. Okay. The value this will bring to you, your family, if you're a parent, if you care about your health, if you're not on a suicide mission, you should give this book a listen. It's been completely palatable for all levels of understanding. There will be some really important ideas and things explained in there. And we'll touch on some of the big ones hopefully today. And then more recently, and this is what brings Richard and I here today, our mutual friend was telling me about something called allulose. And then Richard has a new book

out called Nature Wants Us to Be Fat. You have to get these. And I don't tell you guys that about a lot of books, but people always ask me, what are you reading? What should I read? What should I listen to? These are awesome. Yeah, I just bought the audio version. Yeah, and Craig, please get back to me and let me know what you think because I think you're going to love these. I think you're going to absolutely be like, wow, I wish I would have read this or known this 10 years ago.

Okay. Richard, I want to go back to before you were born. A long time ago. Yeah. Where were you born and in what city? And tell me about the very beginning. Tell me about your parents a little bit. Okay. Well, my father was an academic physician and my mother was trained as a psychologist, but was a housewife. And I was raised in Madison, Wisconsin and had kind of a normal child life in childhood. And then ended up, we moved to Minneapolis. I went to high school there. And then I went back to Madison for college.

And originally I wanted to be an anthropologist. Actually, I wanted to be an archaeologist because I thought it was really fun to search for treasure. Yeah. Indiana Jones. Yeah, that was my dream and uh i actually i did major in archaeology and i actually love archaeology i still do work some work with archaeologists and with anthropologists as part of i've kind of gone back to my roots by trying to understand how it relates to obesity and um things like changing climates and so forth can affect evolution and biology.

But really what happened was I fell in love with, you know, the questions of trying to understand, you know, what causes disease. And so I ended up becoming a physician and going into academic medicine myself. I went to University of Washington to do my, well, I went to Minnesota for medical school and then I went to Washington for my residencies. And I did fellowships in kidney disease and infectious disease and general internal medicine. And I started out really trying to study kidney disease and what causes high blood pressure, because it's known that the kidneys have a very important role in blood pressure. And that we identified a pretty significant mechanism for how high blood pressure occurs. And then we were trying to, but we were doing it artificially in laboratory animals.

And what we wanted to do was how, you know, we could create hypertension that just looked like what you see in humans, but we were doing it through methods that obviously were not happening in humans. methods that obviously were not happening in humans. So we started wondering what could trigger the cause, you know, causing hypertension in people. And we realized that uric acid was often elevated in people with high blood pressure and correlated with the presence of high blood pressure. So we started studying animals when we raised uric acid and by gosh, they developed high blood pressure. And then we were trying to figure out how it happened, why it happened. We did a study in kids. We found that in adolescents that were developing high blood pressure,

that they had very high uric acid. And then in a really exciting study that we published in the JAMA, we showed that if you lowered uric acid, you could improve blood pressure, correct blood pressure in the adolescent. And that was huge. But what we found was that the uric acid over time caused low-grade disease to the kidneys. And once there was, the kidneys had this low-grade injury, kidneys and once there was uh the kidneys had this low grade injury so low grade that you couldn't pick it up by a blood test but that once that happened then the kidney drove the blood pressure so the uric acid was the initiator but not necessarily the the one the factor that was causing high blood pressure in the adult so in the adolescence it was in the adolescence it looked like was high uric acid that was doing it. But over time, the kidney would get a little bit of damage and then the

kidney would cause the high blood pressure. So then the question was, what causes the uric acid to go up? And what, you know, I was talking to Gary Taubes about this and some other people, and we were, we realized that, you know, you know that classically it's thought that purines, which can be in a variety of foods, is thought to be the main cause of raising uric acid. But there was this literature that people weren't really focused on that showed that sugar could raise uric acid, and especially a component of sugar called fructose. So we started giving sugar to animals as a means to raise uric acid. And we found that when we gave sugar to animals, that they developed high blood pressure.

We also did some studies showing that in humans, and that sugar is the big trigger for what causes high blood pressure. And then you become sensitive to salt later on. And then we found that even salt could increase the sugar in our bodies. And that was sort of how the salt was working, which was kind of, I guess, what people were thinking at the time. But we really found that the big culprit was sugar and then then suddenly we we began to look at how uric acid was involved in sugar and obesity and we found that this whole pathway was not just about blood pressure but that uh that the sugar

was driving metabolic syndrome and we started understanding the processes by which it was happening. And as we dissected it, it got bigger and bigger. Everything got bigger and bigger. Pretty soon we realized that sugar was playing a major role, not just in obesity and diabetes, but things like fatty liver and kidney disease. And then we found that it could drive cancers, and we and others, of course. And we also found that it could drive behavioral disorders like ADHD, bipolar disease, and even dementia. And so the thing has gotten bigger and bigger.

And as we've studied it, we've learned that it isn't just the sugar we eat, but it's the sugar we make. And in particular, sugar contains glucose and fructose. So table sugar and high fructose corn syrup are your two major sweeteners that contain fructose. And fructose turns out to be the culprit. And it's sort of interesting, like when we think of fructose, a lot of people think of fruit, but fruit has very small amounts of fructose unless you're like eating a large amount or drinking fruit juice. And so, I mean, if you ate a bowl of grapes, you'd get a fair amount of fructose, but if you eat one natural fruit, you're not going to get the same load of fructose that But if you eat one natural fruit, you're not going to get the same load of fructose that you do with a soft drink. Fruit might have like three to four grams of

fructose, whereas many fruits do at least. Whereas a soft drink could give you 30 grams of fructose very quickly. And then we found all kinds of interesting things. So, for example, we found that it was related to the speed of ingestion. So if you drink a soft drink really fast, you get this big bolus. And so there's this big bolus of fructose that hits the liver. And that does a lot more than if you, I mean, like if you just sipped it slowly, intermittently over a day. sipped it slowly uh intermittently over a day so it you know so we we've been learning a lot and you know about the biology of what causes it and then we sort of linked it with you know with nature and with evolution and history i kind of went back to my anthropologic roots as i mentioned and we started studying it in in bears, you know, hibernating animals.

And there they want to get fat, but only certain times of the year. And they do it by triggering this biologic switch. And we realized it was a switch because when it's off, you can eat what you want and you will keep your weight. what you want and you will keep your weight. If you eat more one day, you'll tend to eat less the next. Or if you eat it, you'll turn it directly into energy where you're going to use it. But when you activate the switch, what it does is it shifts the energy you make into fat. So sugar turns to fat. into fat. So sugar turns to fat. Basically what it does is it initiates a process where the calories you eat get shunted into fat. And fat is sort of a stored energy, whereas active energy is

ATP, which is what we want, which is what the CrossFit wants. You want to be able to get out there and do your best. Everything's about how much energy you can produce that you can use to do your exercise and all the things you want to do. The ATP drives everything from thinking and reacting. Trying to keep high ATP levels is really important. But the way sugar works is it drops the ATP. It actually lowers the energy in the cell, which alarms the animal to think that there's not enough energy around. But there is. It's stored energy. It's fat, but you just can't use it. So when you have a low ATP, you get hungry and you eat more. use it. So when you have a low ATP, you get hungry and you eat more. And then the energy,

however, gets shut, the fructose shuts it through a switch. So the energy is preferentially stored as opposed to being used. So eventually the ATP levels come up, but after you've eaten way too much food. Richard, let me ask you a bunch of questions here. Yeah. I want to go back and ask you, I want to go back and ask you what, what inspired you to want to cure disease. But before I do that, is all of that that you described also the characteristics of what is this thing called metabolic syndrome? When all of these things start going the wrong way, that's metabolic syndrome. Yes. Shortage of ATP. A shortage of ATP.

Yes. That's exactly what drives metabolic syndrome. And metabolic syndrome begins as just a little bit of fat in your blood and your belly starts getting bigger because you're storing fat. Your blood pressure starts to creep up. You get a little low-grade inflammation. So it starts off, that's kind of like you're now in that storage phase. You're beginning to store the energy. But early metabolic syndrome is still, is like pre-diabetes.

It's like pre-hypertension. It's like pre-fatty liver. And because it's all building. So people can identify it as the process. But if you keep going, suddenly you have liver disease, kidney disease, hypertension, diabetes, and eventually all these other. So it's like you're blowing a balloon. And the Metabox syndrome is developing and it gets worse and worse. And when it pops, it's over. Let me ask you this really abstract question.

I'm going to make the presupposition that someone who's fit and healthy and strong walks the planet with less fear, someone who's capable, you know, like someone who can just jump over. Yeah, someone who can who if they hear a dog barking, they feel confident running away or if they're crossing the street and a car pops out of nowhere, they can run across faster. I'm going to make the presupposition that someone like that walks with more confidence and has less fear based thinking. And then if I take everything that you just said and I apply it to the psychological state of the United States right now, you're basically describing not only a physical incapacity, but something we don't hear about very often is a psychological incapacity. These people don't have the nourish that one, they're fear based.

And then on top on top of that, because they're incapable, right? They're incapable humans. And then on top of that, they can't think clearly because they have ADHD and their body is there. They're there. They walk their daily life fighting hibernation. Yeah. Is there is there is there yeah so because it feels like in the united states there's a lot of a lot more crazy people than ever just and just like yeah i i don't want to make it political but just like you hear things like two plus two is four would be the implications is it's racist because there's only one choice

and yet they can't explain it to you and you're like yeah yeah you're even out of your head around it and i'm wondering but these people and i'm generalizing the people who usually fall into that camp they look unhealthy they don't look like humans who have a a dna that's representing them as someone who could run across the street quickly yeah i think that there's a lot of truth in what you're saying. And for example, so when you eat sugar, you become hungry and you start foraging. It actually induces a foraging response. And so you start, you know, looking around trying to find food and stuff like that. And it can stimulate addiction and craving. So the craving of sugar, the craving of alcohol is linked to these pathways. And these are, you know, in the early

phases, it can be a good thing. It can help you find stuff, right? But as it continues, it makes you not be able to concentrate and start developing addiction type behavior and start having strong mood swings and not be able to concentrate and and so things like bipolar disease is associated with high fructose levels in the brain. And diseases like ADHD are strongly linked with the same footprint as fructose does. And dementia. God, we published a paper with David Perlmutter and Dale Bredesen on the links between sugar and dementia. And it's huge. It's huge. People with dementia, with Alzheimer's, have high fructose levels in their brain.

And if you give fructose to animals, they start having trouble getting through a maze. If you put them in a, it's sort of, it's not, it's sort of a little mean, but if you, if you put a laboratory rat in a, in a big tank with water, it will swim to a platform where it can get on the platform and, and, and protect itself. But if it's been eating a lot of sugar, it has trouble finding that platform. And so, you know, so what I can tell you is that, yeah, sugar is lowering the ATP in the cell. No one wants to have low ATP in the cell. Your brain doesn't want low ATP. Your muscles don't want low ATP. And yet that's what it does. And there's this whole world out there where people are looking at how to increase their energy, how to block aging. And what they've discovered is that it's all about the mitochondria.

A lot of people, I'm sure you have a lot of people on your podcast who say, you know, we got to improve our metabolic flexibility. We want to improve those mitochondria and the mitochondria are what make ATP. And, you know, I don't know if they all state it, but if you take a person with obesity or diabetes and you measure their ATP levels, they tend to be low, you know. And so, but a good healthy person will maintain a high ATP level. So it seems to be a lot of it is about the mitochondria. And that's why we exercise, right? One of the things when you exercise is you stimulate mitochondria to grow and you stimulate mitochondria to be healthy. And if you want to inhibit mitochondria, eat sugar, because it will reduce the, you know, the production of ATP.

And most of the ATP comes from the mitochondria. So how it works is the sugar or the fructose actually suppresses the mitochondrial function. So it's really about, and really today it's all about energy. We wanna try to keep our energy high as our energy starts to fall, it's associated with aging, dementia, obesity, diabetes. And what our group found was

that there's this switch where normally you try to keep good energy, try to be metabolically flexible. But if you eat a lot of sugar, and fructose in particular, it can knock that down. And you can also make fructose. And so when you eat a lot of carbs, like French fries, it doesn't have a lot of sugar. But the salt and the carbs and the grease act together to generate fructose and to drive food intake. And so that's really interesting. Man, you're opening up so many doors. Richard, what's happening with our audio is your speaker and your microphone are too close to each other. Because when I talk, do you have just a computer? Are you just on a computer with the speaker and the mic? Okay. I got rid of the mic actually. You probably can see it, but I,

when I had it hooked in, we couldn't hear me. Oh, oh, interesting. So is this better like this or? It's only when I talk because my voice is coming out of your speaker and then, and then through your mic, maybe it'll just force me to talk less. Okay, here we go. And you're saying so much good stuff. First things, I want to go back to what you said about the speed at which you consume sugar because I knew this guy. He was a professional arm wrestler. He had the most incredible physique.

And he, every morning, started with a bottle of of Coke and he sips it all day. And I would film with him all day when I would make these documentaries and he would drink one Coke all day. As opposed to someone who drinks a Coke to, let's say you just ran five miles and you drink a Coke to quench your thirst and you pour the whole thing down. Is there are there some real significant implications in that? Yes, actually. And we did a similar study where we gave apple juice, which is basically sugar as well. It's fructose, but concentrated fructose. And we had people drink it fast or sip it very slowly. So here's how it works in terms of this switch, okay? The way it works is that when you eat sugar or fructose,

it gets absorbed in the gut and goes to the liver. And what's really important is what happens in the liver. That's where the switch initiates. And then when it initiates in the liver, there's a communication from the liver to the muscle, from the liver to the brain, from the liver to the fat. The liver is kind of like the king. It's the king. It's the king of metabolism. And it has all kinds of ways it

communicates. Communicates through the blood, through the nerves, everything. So when you eat fructose, it goes to the liver. If you drink a huge amount of fructose in a very short time, the liver sees a high concentration of fructose because it comes in like a bolus. It comes in like a wave. And when the wave comes in, it's the concentration that triggers the stress to the mitochondria. There's this thing where you get this, what we call oxidative stress. It's like an electric impulse. Basically, it's something that will activate and injure what it hits.

It's like getting a lightning bolt. And so when you drink a huge amount of fructose in a short period of time, this is why soft drinks are so dangerous because we tend to guzzle it. We tend to drink it fast because we're thirsty. And so what happens is when we're thirsty and we drink it and the sugar that wave comes in and it triggers this oxidative stress that damages the mitochondria. Now, if you're super athlete, if you're like, you know, a monster, I mean, a super athlete with and you're on the Tour de France, and you're on the Tour de France, your mitochondria are super strong. They're super good. And you can drink a soft drink, and it will not seem to have much effect on hurting the mitochondria because your mitochondria are so strong.

But if you did it every day, even if you're the Tour de France winner, you are going to hurt your mitochondria over time. You're not going to be as good as you would be if you didn't drink it. Okay. Still might be incredible, right? Now, your friend is this super athlete, probably has very good mitochondria, and he's sipping the fruit juice. And so only small, it's trickling in. And because it's trickling in,

it may not reach the concentration to damage the mitochondria. In which case, what happens is it's just turns into low amounts of glucose. It can go both ways. Fructose can be in the big wave, it will hit as fructose and boom. But very small amounts of fructose, this was shown by a guy at Princeton, who's a friend of mine, Josh Rabinowitz. Josh showed that if you drink just tiny amounts of fructose, it gets converted to glucose. And, you know, in low levels, glucose is obviously good. Well, not obviously, but low levels, it can be good because what really makes glucose bad is when you eat large amounts and the blood levels go up and insulin stimulated and large amounts get converted to fructose. But if you keep your blood glucose levels relatively normal,

what you're doing is you're providing a low level of glucose that does not actually convert to fructose, does not cause oxidative stress, et cetera. does not cause oxidative stress, et cetera. So anyway, so if you were able to eat a piece of cake over a 24-hour period, it will be much less damaging than if you ate it all at once in one big moment. And so it's an interesting thing. This is just how biology works. And so it's an interesting thing. This is just how biology works.

Now, one of the things that I tried to do, what I got interested in, and I don't know if it's okay to start talking about this, is that when we started studying this and looking at these things, we wanted to know how you could increase glycogen levels in the liver uh and muscle without having to raise it in the in the blood and because theoretically you might be able to increase your energy levels that way without suffering let me ask you this really quick but before you go on about glycogen um

because i think we need to talk about mitochondria real quick mitochondria are little tiny engines in every cell and it's what animates us and makes us alive is that correct absolutely okay so we would be an anaerobic amoeba without them you know right and then mitochondria need fuel and there's a couple kinds of fuel that they can use but the the carb version is they can only use glucose well yeah so so uh mitochondria can use pretty much any nutrient including ketones okay so you know diet you can use ketones to help drive the mitochondria. And so almost all these different sources of energy, of calories, can stimulate mitochondria to produce ATP. There's only one, well, there's two, that actually lower ATP. They increase the total energy in the body, but they're doing it by really working on fat.

And they increase the fat and they suppress the mitochondria. And that's fructose. And the other one's alcohol. And they both can kind of suppress the energy produced by the mitochondria. But ketones and fructose. Really quick. Sorry, Richard. So if you eat fructose, your body has to convert it to something else before the mitochondria can use it as fuel. Is that correct? ATP, right? But it will suppress the overall level of ATP by blocking the mitochondria.

So yeah, there is some ATP made from any calorie, but what happens is it tends to have it, fructose tends, there's two ways you can make ATP, right? There's one way is through the mitochondria that makes like 90% of it. Okay. And there's another way, which is we, we call anaerobic ATP production. It's called glycolysis. And we use glycolysis when we, when we, you know, when we, when we can't keep our oxygen levels to the level that we need for the mitochondria to make enough ATP. Or if the mitochondria become resistant, then we'll tend to switch to glycolysis. And so glycolysis is another way to produce energy. And, and what,

what happens is fructose tends to stimulate a little bit of energy production more from the glycolysis pathway, and it tends to suppress the mitochondria from making a lot of energy. So the mitochondria production goes down. And so the mitochondria, the total ATP in the cell tends to fall because the mitochondria is, is the, is the big guy that makes most of the ATP. Sorry, I think you answered this, but I'm going to push anyway at the, and sounds stupid my understanding is that mitochondria has two gas tanks one you can put ketones in and that will get them working right and the other one is glucose but if you eat sucralose or fructose or high fructose corn syrup it has to first be converted somewhere like in the liver or kidney into glucose am i understanding that

right and then it gets yes yes that's that's more or less right yes okay okay okay um and then and then so so you were talking about how can we get it uh um a sugar i don't uh i don't remember which version of sugar but into the muscles as um directly so that the mitochondria and the muscles can use the fuel as opposed to having it swim freely through the bloodstream, which is bad. OK, yeah, it's it's it does. It is sort of confusing the way the way to think about it is. the way to think about it is, um, yeah, you know, glucose is, uh, is a major fuel system for producing energy. Right. Uh, but you can do it with ketones and, and, and so forth. And, you know, and even fats can be used to, to, to make, uh, energy of course. So, um,, the, the issue is like when you have metabolic syndrome is you become insulin resistant. And so when you become insulin resistance, you have trouble

getting glucose into the muscle. And people, so many people have that, that, you know, keto diets and so forth can help reverse that insulin resistance and also stimulate production of ketones, which can be used as a fuel as well. So, you know, low carb diets have a lot of benefits, right? lot of benefits, right? So low carb diets have a lot of benefits because they remove your exposure to fructose because fructose is a carb. And so, and you can get fructose mainly from sugar, but you can also get, you can make fructose, but you only can make fructose from carbs. And so a low carb diet tends to reduce the amount of fructose that both that you eat as well as you make. It tends to, this tends to reverse the insulin resistance, which improves energy delivery to the muscle. And at the same time, you generate ketones if you're on a ketotic diet, which can also provide an energy source.

So there's a lot of reasons why a lot of people like low-carb and keto diets, not just, you know, primarily to help reverse insulin resistance and to try to switch off from that situation of metabolic syndrome where you're suppressing the mitochondria to stimulating mitochondria. And exercise is also a really good way to stimulate your mitochondria. And it's not just about making the muscles stronger and you look better, but it's actually improving your biology inside your body. And so if you can keep your mitochondria healthy, you know, you're going to live longer, you're going to age slower and everything. And so, you know, there are different approaches to try to improving

mitochondria, but exercise remains probably, or it's, it's probably one of the main benefits of, of regular exercise. Uh, Daniel Garrity, holy shit. This guy's been cited 120,000 times.

Richard, I'd like to tell you another story. Uh, there was a CrossFit games champion named Rich Froning. He was the fittest man alive uh four times in a row and i had the pleasure of on two different occasions hanging out with him for like 10 days straight and the most i ever saw him consume at anyone sitting was a glass of chocolate milk but whenever i saw him eat it would always be just one like heaping

a spoon tablespoon full of like egg salad or tuna, or he would just take a bite of something. And he always fueled himself when I was around in really small portions, like really small. He fueled as needed. That's really a great insight. It is true. You know, when you eat a lot of food at one time, the odds of raising your blood glucose go way up, right? The odds of getting a fair amount of fructose, you know, increases the more that you eat in general. I, I mean, if you're not, not, if you're on a ketotic diet, but, but, but, and he was eating a lot of protein, which is so good. Uh, yeah. And very

small portions. Yeah. And just frequently. Yeah. That's sort of interesting idea. The, it would be fun to, to, you know, study that kind of dietary habit. There's a lot of push to do intermittent fasting right now where the benefit is to help you burn fat. But this person who actually was in great shape and didn't have to burn fat, just fueling low levels throughout the day is sort of an interesting idea because it might keep everything kind of metabolically stable, right? Right. Yeah, that's brilliant. Yeah, I wonder.

Yeah, it would be interesting. It would work best in people who are really, really healthy, right? It would work best in people who are really, really healthy, right? You don't want to be eating constantly over the day if you really have a lot of excess fat because it's going to keep you in that state for sure. this type of body and you're, you're really ideal, you know, just low, low, low grade fueling throughout the day might be a good move. It would be interesting to study. I want to derail you a second and go back when you said in the very beginning that you, there was, you wanted to know what causes disease.

Do you remember what caused what the, why you wanted to know what causes disease do you remember what caused what the why you wanted to do that yeah as a cure disease i think a lot of doctors want to like learn information and then use that information to help the world whereas you wanted to find like it seems like you were actually an archaeologist um you wanted to find something new. Yeah, actually, you know, so when I was on the wards, I really enjoy seeing patients very, very, I love the practice of medicine. And, you know, I would see these people with diabetes or obesity or kidney disease, and everything is about treating the disease. But I began to think, you know, it's much, much more interesting to understand what causes the disease, because if I could prevent the disease or reverse the disease,

it would be so much better than just treating high blood pressure if we could reverse it. It would be so much better to reverse obesity completely rather than to be treating the complications. And so very early on, I became much more interested. And I started doing this trick, like I became interested in why people think that this treatment or that treatment is good. So I would start reading about the treatments, but I would go back to the first papers and try to understand

how did they discover that this treatment worked. And then I became even more interested, and I would go way back in the literature to understand when they first recognized the disease. And, you know, here's a really interesting thing. You know, obesity really wasn't common until like 1970s. But if you go back in the literature, you can see that obesity was increasing in the United States as early as 1900. And the early scientists, when obesity was only present in

three out of 100 people, when it's kind of an uncommon disease, it's much easier to look for the associations. And there was this guy back in the 1920s who was really, he was the New York City Health Commissioner. His name was Haven Emerson. And he was very interested in what was causing diabetes. And back then it was like five cases per 100,000 people. I mean, it was like really uncommon. And when you look at it, when it's uncommon, it's easier to pick out the associations. And he found a dramatic association with sugar intake. And so, you know, later it was much harder. It's much harder to, you know, show associations when everybody's eating sugar to different degrees. But back then, sugar was so expensive that only the wealthy could afford it.

You know, and like the African-American back then did not have an increased risk for diabetes. They had a lower risk showing that it isn't genetics. It's probably diet that drives diabetes. And so we see this reversal now. And it's been shown that, you know, like the African-American tends to eat more sugar on average. Same thing with Hispanic population, Native American population, and so forth. Hey, there was a Clint Eastwood movie he directed. It was a Western. It was really long.

It was one of his more recent ones, maybe like 10 years ago. And him and Robert Duvall are going for the final fight scene. And they go to the store to buy some supplies. And one of the things they buy is a candy bar. And right before they get in the gunfight they each take a bite and it was really expensive back then right it was a it was a lavish exactly so what i'm hearing you say is and i'm making some leaps here but the african-american uh sugar it when there was only like three and a hundred thousand people were fat sugar was really expensive and

the african-american community couldn't afford it and so therefore they weren't fat and now sugar is one of the cheapest things you can get subsidized by billions of u.s dollars a year okay interesting yeah so if you it let's say if you're if you're unfortunate enough to have a lower income uh instead for what you do for on your holiday is you can have a you holiday is you can party at home and bring in cakes and all these things, which we all love. People love sweets as opposed to flying to Europe if you're really wealthy. So, you know, the tendency is to when it when when sugar is cheap, if you don't have that much money and you want to try to do things that are enjoyable, you know, they'll end up spending more on that. I went to Disneyland a couple of years ago and I don't think anyone can convince me differently, but Disneyland is not an amusement park. It's a place where people go eat sugar in safety.

There was just everywhere you walk sitting along the side of the pathways, plopped up on walls were obese people scooping ice cream into their mouths. Oh my gosh. Ice cream, the big cinnamon rolls, you know, dripping in sugar. Yeah. Yeah. It's really true. And same with cruise ships. I think that's what cruise ships are too.

It's for, they're for sugar addicts because I would see the food halls would be just full of people 24 hours a day. All you can eat buffets. Yes. So we need sugar substitutes or things that people can eat that they, you know, if you do have a sweet tooth. I mean, the best, of course, is to avoid sugars, right? And to try to really reduce your sugar intake. But there's a whole world of low sugar substitutes.

And many of those low sugar substitutes aren't so healthy themselves. They can be associated with problems. And like aspartame has been linked with problems concentrating. And so in general, I've not been a big fan of low sugar substitutes. But about a year or two ago ago i started reading about allulose richard will you hold on will you hold on one second uh vittorio seve tell him there's an echo don't be scared scared richard you might not like this part of the show vittorio uh you don't need to preface it with don't be scared you jackass i've already talked to him about it three times

we've accepted it as a flaw in the show shut the fuck up sorry mr johnson okay and one more thing um uh caller hi did you want to ask him a quick question before we get to the sugar substitute go ahead savvy hi do you have a question for the doctor yes yeah i just got done work working out with dave castro Castro doing Helen, and I told him that the people want behind the scenes. Okay, that's important. How about – do you have anything for the doctor? No, I didn't know there was a doctor on. I just got home from the gym with Colin in. All right.

I love you. Bye, son of a – Bye. Okay. I want to know about sugar substitutes in a second. One more question before we go down that avenue because I'm very curious about allulose because I've just started – been introduced to it a few months ago, and I can already see the benefits. Why, when I want to have a drink at night, if I take three bites of an apple, my craving for alcohol completely goes away? Is there an explanation for that? I just don't want alcohol. I can just eat fruit instead of

drink alcohol. Yeah. So, you know, so, uh, I haven't studied that, but I can tell you that, It's known that fruits in small amounts can actually have some satiety effects. And one of the teachings is that if you do have a craving for sweets, and sweets and craving of alcohol are very much linked, that a small amount of fruit can help block that. And it provides a little bit of fructose in the apple when you eat a small amount. But it also has a lot of other good things like fiber and vitamin C and so forth, epicatechin, flavonols, that help neutralize the effects of fructose. So you kind of get a little bit of that sweetness that you're looking for with alcohol, you know, the craving component, but in kind of a safer way. So one argument is that if you do want, if you do like something that sweet, you know, a natural fruit is a good alternative. But there are, one of the exciting things

about allulose is that this is a low-calorie sugar that is not neutral. It's actually beneficial, has metabolic health benefits. And, you know, admittedly, I'm a scientist who's spent his life doing science. But when I started looking at allulose, I realized that this was the first low calorie sugar that actually confers metabolic benefits. And it also, and stimulates satiety and make you feel full. So it sort of acts a little bit like a few bites of fruit, but you know, if you eat a lot of fruit, you're going to get a fructose load. And with allulose, you tend to, the allulose tends to lower blood sugar, but while still increasing glycogen stores. So it keeps the blood sugar really under great control.

We have these, we're doing these studies where we're giving allulose to diabetic people and it's reducing their insulin needs. And we want to do a clinical trial on it where we can prove it in a rigorous way, but it's very convincing. And we're working with scientists from the Diabetes Institute, the Sampson Institute in California. And, you know, here is a low calorie sugar, you know, basically it's a natural sugar. And and yet it's you can eat it as a chocolate, yet it lowers your blood sugar and actually makes you feel full. And so does it do that? What's the mechanism in that that lowers your blood sugar and actually makes you feel full. And so does it do that? What's the mechanism in that, that lowers your blood sugar? Yeah. So what it does is it's, it causes a rapid uptake of the glucose into the, into the liver and, and probably into the muscle, but for sure

in the liver. And so it, it concentrates the energy without raising the glucose in the blood. So the glucose in the blood actually goes down. They say it stimulates insulin, but it doesn't. I mean, I take that back. It's very similar to what semaglutide and Ozempic, these drugs do, semaglutide and ozempic, these drugs do, because they stimulate a hormone called GLP-1. It's a terrible name, but this hormone is, when you give large doses of it, people lose weight and their blood sugar improves, but it's very expensive. So there's this, as you know, there's this probably 10 million people in the world that are now taking semaglutide, Rigobi, Mugerno. These are these major drugs that cause weight loss, and they work by stimulating this GLP-1. Well, what we found is that allulose also stimulates GLP-1. And it used to be thought

that the way GLP-1 works was that it stimulates insulin. Well, GLP-1. And it used to be thought that the way GLP-1 works was that it stimulates insulin. Well, GLP-1 doesn't really stimulate insulin very much at all, a little bit. And allulose may have a tiny bit that's a little bit like that, but basically allulose lowers insulin over time. And, you know, maybe at five minutes, there's a small stimulation, but basically allulose lowers insulin and moves glucose into the liver, which is what these GLP-1 agents do. So it's basically mimicking what these expensive treatments are, but, you know, it's doing it in a gentle way and, and with the meal. So when you stimulate this GLP-1, it's stimulates, allulose stimulates it for a couple of hours. Whereas if you take the injection, your GLP-1 levels are high all day long. So when the GLP-1's

super high, you're going to lose weight more rapidly, but you're also going to get a lot of side effects. And allulose has the benefit that it may cause a little bit of abdominal discomfort in some people, but in the vast majority, it's very well tolerated. And so it's now being put into foods and so forth. And I became interested from the scientific standpoint. So I actually joined a company called RX Sugar that's marketing allulose in the U.S. And my job is to try to look at all of its benefits and potential issues, any issues with it. And is it safe? Blah, blah, blah. But it looks very safe and it looks like it's beneficial.

And so we're we're kind of pro. I am pro allulose. And yeah, these are some of the products that are out there. Richard, how do you if you're part of the company and then you're also studying allulose, how do you, how do you keep true to yourself? You know what I mean? How do you make it? Yeah, my friend, this is what I'm about. I, I have always, first off, I, you know, you divulge and you point out that you have a conflict of interest. And I have a conflict of interest now because I'm actually working with the company. But what you do is to stay true, you design studies, you help people,

and then you're not actually running the study. You're not in charge of analyzing the study. You have it done by a third party, someone who's not a member of the company, runs the study. And they can publish it, and you publish it positive or negative. You just have to be true to yourself as scientists. You have to be true to yourself as scientists. You have to be upfront. But, you know, it looks really, it does really look promising. It lowers blood sugar.

For sure it does. And, in fact, you can just, there's plenty of videos on this, I think. But, you know, what we really want to do now is we want to do a clinical trial, ideally at one of these diabetes institutes like the Sansa, to actually in a rigorous way with placebo control, do the study and publish it in a top journal under peer review and everything. So if any of you have any interest in investing in the research of allulose or in investing in the company, you can reach out to me. But yeah, I have started a research institute that is a nonprofit and all the funding is going to go to do research on sugar. It won't all be allulose. I would like to, for example, prove how these GLP-1 agents work and why is it that semaglutide works.

And I think it's because it's interfering with the fructose pathway. We have some evidence for that. And so I would like to further this. The more I can further the science and further the treatments, you know, the more I can help people. So that's where it's at. As far as your journey as a scientist is gone, you stumble across allulose. Tell me about when you first heard about it. Were you skeptical? And where does this rank amongst the exciting things you found in your career?

I was skeptical initially. I do, in my nature wants us to be fat. I do talk about allulose and say that it looks, at initial level, it looks very promising, but that it needs more studies. And so, but as I've studied it more and gotten involved with it, I'm becoming more and more excited by it. Gosh, you know, it's always best to do things if you can exercise and have a wonderful, you know, if you're very careful with your food selection and you're really healthy, you know, you may not need allulose, right? But if you're overweight and diabetic and you want to try to, you know, and you have a sugar craving, it's very hard to get off sugar. And so you may find yourself relapsing or you may have very big problems with your blood sugar. So then, you know, a keto diet is great.

You know, there are these other approaches, drink more water. These are all great moves, but maybe you need a little more help. And so when I found Allulose has these benefits, it's the only low calorie sugar that is actually beneficial. You know, I'm pro. And so I ended up joining the company. My goal is to try to figure out how it works, why it works, what's the ideal amount that a person should eat, and so forth. It's part of that same path, trying to figure out how to help people. You want to understand the science. You want to understand the best approaches.

It's not the only approach, but it's something that looks very promising. So that's why I'm doing it. I just need to be upfront about it because I'm in the company, but I'm also still at the university. I'm a professor. I still have grants. I'm still doing a fair amount of research. These bars, I have a bunch of them. I got them from our mutual friend, Dan, and I don't have good control.

If I open up a bag of m&ms i don't eat three but for these things i never eat more than one like i eat one and i'm like wow okay i'm good yeah it's kind of weird i think it's because it's stimulating glp1 so it really has that bad though when i hear you say that because i think of o Ozempic as like, I just hear all the bad stuff about it now. Well, so, you know, they're being shown to help people with obesity and diabetes and so forth. But the big, you know, so they can really help people for sure. People are losing 30% weight. This is all like a wonderful thing.

But there are three bad things with it. One, it's super expensive. That's not good. Secondly, if you stop it, the relapse rate's very high, so it's kind of like they got you and you're paying this huge amount of money. But for some people, it's doing wondrous things. But the other problem is when you have the GLP-1 level super high and all the time it makes a lot of people get bloated.

They're burping. They're having abdominal discomfort. And then it can be associated rarely with, you know, bad outcomes. So, you know, they're doing this. They're taking a hammer and they're hitting it as hard as they can. And to drive a nail and and, you know, there's a lot of consequences. You know, the nice thing about stimulating GLIP1 a little bit is if you just do it with a meal, then the levels come down afterwards and you don't have these big high levels. Then the levels come down afterwards and you don't have these big high levels.

So the idea is that it may help control blood sugar and help prevent weight gain and probably cause some weight loss. But it's not like hitting a person with a hammer. So, you know, when you're taking Osepic, you're you're getting the hammer, but but it can knock the weight down. But the consequences are getting beaten up. And it's interesting, you said the end of the meal. So I'll do that. That's usually when I have it. I'll have like a really small meal and I'll have like in the middle of the day and I'll have one of those. And I'm and I feel like I feel I feel really full. Seema wants to ask this question. What does the doctor think of the study of vinegar before a meal reducing glucose curve by 45 percent? You know, I haven't seen that study, but I'm very intrigued about apple vinegar and in these kinds of things.

And I do believe that they have benefits. I, you know, I've done a ton of research, but I haven't studied that. So, but I do think that what I've read, you know, is it suggests to me that there really is a biologic benefit. I don't exactly know all the way it works, but, um, but yeah, I'm intrigued. I don't know that particular study though. Um, uh, and, uh, I apologize, but the, let's address some of the skeptics. Is there a multi-level marketing strategy by chance? There is not, right? Could you explain what you mean by multilevel marketing? Basically, is this is this like a pyramid scheme?

Like, do you sell it to me and I sell it to someone else and then all the money trickles up? No, it's not like it's not like that at all. And what's more, I'm not a salesperson. Right. I honestly I'm the chief science officer. My goal is to try to figure out how it works, why it's beneficial, make sure it's safe. I mean, it's already viewed as safe by the U.S. government. It's already out there. People have been taking it for years. So I think the safety part is pretty clear. So I think the safety part is pretty clear. What about just a handful of raisins or a couple of figs? Does that have that? Will that give you the allulose you need as opposed to?

Allulose is in figs, but figs are really concentrated with fructose. They're the richest of all the fruits. They have the highest fructose content. I love figs. I know. A really ripe fig that's like broken open. Maybe a bird's already pecked at it. And I just like, it's not like juice.

If you eat a fig, it's great. If you eat a hundred figs, it's really bad. I usually eat about 80. And what about, and raisins, I've always heard. I used to eat a lot of raisins. I haven't eaten one probably in 10 years, but I heard raisins aren't so good for you either. Dried grapes are just. Oh, gosh, it's it's so bad. You know, so when you dry it, when you get dried fruit. Yeah. It tastes so good. But what tends to do is when you dry the fruit, all the good things that are taken out.

And what you're left with is kind of the fruct, all the good things that are taken out and what you're left with is kind of the fructose and the fiber that's left. You know, people used to use figs and dried fruit to back in the... Seduce women, just seduce women. Well, yes, sugar was always and figs were always used for that. But for people who are hiking long distances, you know, it's common to eat figs. Back in the 800s, they would wear these fig strings when they would cross the desert. They could eat the figs off the string. And today we use gourd with raisins and stuff like that when you're hiking.

And I think it's actually good. I think that it is this, you know, in small amounts, you know, probably does provide some source, you know, when your energy levels are really, I know, when you're, when your energy levels are really, uh, I mean, when you, when you're trying to hike long distances, it's good to eat salt and a little, a little bit of fructose, uh, and water, uh, you know, probably, it probably is good, but, um, but as I mentioned at low concentrations, fructose gets turned into glucose. Um, but at high concentrations, that's when you see this drop in ATP levels that you don't want. So, uh, I wouldn't eat large amounts. When I, when I grew up, these were always in my house. We always had figs on strings.

I never knew it was for hanging on your neck. Like, I didn't know that that was like the history of it. But I grew up in this Armenian household, and we always had. And it was the most unappealing looking food, but it was so good. But I mean, it looked horrible. Yeah, no, I actually, you know, my archaeology interests, I would see that way back in the 800s, way, way back in the Middle East, the fig strings were very commonly used in people who are traveling. Yeah, that's fascinating. I didn't even know that. um when you eat allulose um where does it so so if i eat high fructose corn syrup it has a certain pathway that's bad right it like it it does it go to the liver first is that where

it goes yeah yeah so high fructose corn syrup is a mixture of glucose and fructose at very high concentrations, right? Like 55% of a high fructose corn syrup, you know, it will be like fructose and 45% is glucose. So when you add it to foods, you're really sweetening foods. When you put it in soft drinks, you really can get a large amount. It's one of the easiest ways to get a lot of sugar in and it's liquid and it can mix into food real well. So they can even add it to foods in small amounts and to make it just a little sweeter, which makes it more attractive. But the problem is, is that you're really getting a fair amount of fructose, you know, it turns out like high fructose corn syrup and table sugar to combine make up about 15% of the average diet in America. And so that's a huge amount of sugar.

people are eating like, you know, 150 grams, you know, I would say 75 grams of sugar a day probably. And so that's a fair amount of sugar. And when you eat it, the fructose, a small amount of it is inactivated in the intestine to convert it to glucose, where it's used by the intestine. But much of it will get past that at high doses. And then that gets to the liver. And it's that wave that causes the oxidative stress and the damage of the mitochondria. And if you eat a lot of glucose, your blood glucose will go up and the glucose concentrations in the liver can get very high.

And when that happens, the glucose gets converted to fructose. So it turns out that really high carb diets and diets that have a lot of high fructose corn syrup, foods that have it, will generate a lot of fructose. And then that will, if you get to a critical amount, it will drop that ATP. And then your energy level is low. It makes you hungry. It makes you forage. It may increase your activity for a brief period of time because of the foraging, but basically it's making you hungry, driving, activating these processes that lead to insulin resistance and all these bad things.

And what is the path that allulose takes? Does it take a different path? So what's incredible is allulose looks just like fructose, but there's a little modification in the structure. So it looks like fructose when you just look at it, but it's got a modification, and that modification turns out to be critical because it does not activate the switch where you drop the ATP. GLP-1, a hormone that actually has effects to help control blood sugar and has effects to make you feel full. So, you know, a lot, as I mentioned, if you eat sugar, you're going to stay hungry. But if you eat allulose, it's going to make you feel full. And it's because of the, this GLP-1 effect. And at the same time, it looks like fructose and it's sweet, but it doesn't activate the switch that drops the

ATP level. So you maintain your ATP levels. And at the same time, you know, control blood sugar a little bit better. And, and then you have this satiety thing where you where you feel a little bit more full. So you're going to tend to eat less. So, yeah, I think that there's some real benefits. Before before I met Dan, before I'd ever even heard of allulose, when I finally started talking to my wife about it, before I'd ever even heard of allulose when I finally started talking to my wife about it um she's like oh that when I when I bake for the boys I I've been using allulose so so it had already had popped up on her radar where does it where does it fall under in the in the group with the stevias and the uh what's the other one called like the xylitol or xylitol. Where does it fall under that group?

So it it's actually a natural sugar. It's not artificial. It's a natural sugar. It's in that group. We call them rare sugars because they're present in in regular foods, but in very small amounts. present in regular foods, but in very small amounts. And this, so it looks like fructose, but it doesn't activate. So when you eat it, you do absorb it. And then you pass it out, you excrete it unchanged in the urine. So it kind of goes through the body. it kind of goes through the body. And, and so things like sugar alcohols, like xylitol, maltitol, you know, these are, these also are sweet, but they, they act differently. This is an actual rare sugar. It's not a sugar alcohol. Stevia is a derivative from a plant.

It's what we call a glycoside. And this is not a glycoside. This is an actual sugar. It looks just like fructose, but it just doesn't activate the switch. It's about 70 percent as sweet as table sugar. So it's not as sweet as table sugar. It's not as sweet as fructose, but, um, it's still pleasantly sweet. Um, and a lot of people, you know, do like it. Um, Yeah, I think it's, I think it's plenty sweet. I think the bars are amazing. Yeah. Thomas DeLauer just did put out a video on this pretty interesting. Yeah.

He just did a great video on it. Yeah, he did. Wow. Yeah. And what he did was he focused on the clinical studies that have been published that definitely show that it tends to be a beneficial sugar. How about that? A sugar that might be a little beneficial. I know. It's so hard to get my, it's,

I've just been programmed that anything with the S word in it is wrong. Right. Tell me about switching subjects here. Tell me about beer and yeast. Is beer just an absolute no, no. Oh gosh. You know, I'm in a generation that I think every generation we have a lot of people who love beer and especially on a hot day after working out or something. It can be very pleasant to drink a beer out of the patio and a lot of people drink a lot more than one beer. and a lot of people drink a lot more than one beer.

And we've always known that, you know, if you drink a lot of alcohol, it's not great. But it turns out that of all the alcohols, this is so disappointing. I'm sorry to tell you this, but of all the alcohols, beer is the one that generates the most uric acid. And remember that uric acid is part of how sugar works. And so beer is by far the most powerful at raising uric acid. And part of it is from the brewer's yeast. So yeast generates the most uric acid of any substance. So yeast generates the most uric acid of any substance.

And so when you have brewer's yeast, it tends to raise uric acid more. And in fact, non-alcoholic beer also raises uric acid. And so it's sort of bad news. activates a process to make fructose and generate uric acid through that pathway, but also alcohol itself raises uric acid. So you have the effects of alcohol to raise uric acid, plus you have the parts like brewer's yeast that also raise uric acid. So beer turns out to be probably the equivalent to a soft drink. The way to think of it is if you drink a beer, it's probably equivalent to drinking a soft drink in terms of its impact on your body. Having said that, you know, if you are like your friend and who sips very slowly and takes time to drink it, that would be a much safer than to drink it all very rapidly. And likewise, we know that hydration, drinking water is very beneficial.

And, you know, so, but anyway, it's probably, if you're not a beer drinker, you're probably in good step. It's probably a good thing. If you are a beer drinker. Quit. Yeah. Either quit or or, you know, try to reduce. But I know how people love beer. I disappoint all my friends at parties. I go, no, you really don't want me to say this in front of everybody, right? Because everybody's but it is

better not to drink. Richard, do you have any thoughts about nuts in general? Like pistachios, almonds, macadamia nuts? I do love nuts. And I do think it's possible to eat too much cashews and things like that. Some of these things have enough fat in them. And especially if you're not on a low carb diet, you know, sugar and peanuts can probably add to each other. But by themselves, nuts generally are very good.

And I'm pro nuts. So nuts, I try not to eat salted nuts because I've discovered that in our research that salt potentiates the effects of sugar and carbs. So like that salted pretzel in the bar is going to be converted into more fructose in the body than a pretzel without salt. into more fructose in the body than a pretzel without salt. And a French fries that has a lot of salt on it is much more dangerous than a baked potato that has no salt on it. And then one of the interesting things is when you eat fructose, you actually start to crave fat. Once you start developing leptin resistance, then your craving for fat goes up. And what's interesting is fat is the calories that really drive weight gain. So it's like sugar or fructose makes you hungry.

And then if there's a lot of fat around, then you'll gain weight more rapidly with a high fat diet. So like the, like French rice is dripping in oil and fat. So it's interesting if you're on a low carb diet and the fire is not, and you don't have left to resistance and you don't have craving and your, your desire desire your um your food your your hunger is less then uh you can be on a high fat diet or a carnivore slash high fat a keto diet basically um and you won't gain weight even with the high fat because uh you need those carbs to actually make you hungry. And so that's why a low carb diet works because you're removing the stimulus, even though the high fat diet's there. Whereas if you're on a high carb diet and you increase your fat, you're going to gain weight faster because you're going

to eat more of it. And that's going to, and your appetite regulation has been altered. Does that make sense? A hundred percent. Hey, tell me about leptin really quick. Tell me about leptin and leptin resistors because I, when, when in 2020, I started digging around about T cells, and one of the things that I discovered – and there's not – wasn't a lot of literature on it – is that in the body – I didn't realize how complex really the body was – is that leptin receptors to dispatch T cells to fight disease. And so that if you were leptin resistant, your immune system would be significantly compromised because one of the other components of the leptin receptor was to put NK cells and T cells into action, natural killer cells. So, and I was blown away by that. I was like, oh shit, I bet you we have a lot of leptin resistant people and the implications of what that does to your immune system is probably not studied very well. Can you tell us about what leptin is? Because people always talk about insulin, but no one ever talks

about leptin. Yeah. So this was a big discovery years ago that there's a hormone that actually kind of regulates food intake and energy expenditure. And it wasn't insulin. It was this hormone called leptin. And basically if you knock out leptin so that the animal cannot make leptin, they eat more and they tend to exercise less and they become very, very fat. And a leptin knockout is one of the best ways to make an animal fat and tired. And so everyone thought that this should lead to a Nobel Prize because the treatment of obesity was going to simply be to give leptin to people because if you lack leptin to people because if if you don't if you lack leptin uh you become fat so and because because it signals your body that you're full right when

you produce leptin it tells you to stop eating right okay and and also because it affects energy metabolism and the immune system and all these other things. It's a very, very complicated hormone. And, but, but it's, it's the thing that everyone talks about is that it regulates food intake. So, so, and if you gave, if you knocked out leptin in a mouse and you gave it back leptin, it would lose weight. So then what happened was everyone started giving leptin in experiments to people with obesity and they didn't lose weight and they said well why is that well it turns out that the mechanism causing a weight gain in in people is associated with a resistance to leptin. And if you measure leptin levels in a person who's obese, they're high to begin with. And so, you know, there are a few people who do have a genetic cause of obesity where they don't make leptin. And those people do respond to leptin, but it's like 0.1%.

So most people who have obesity make leptin, they make plenty of leptin. The problem is, is they don't respond to leptin. So the question was, what is responsible for leptin resistance and could that be the cause of obesity and uh our group actually was worked from my my lab and another guy that we collaborated on were able to show that fructose is the primary driver of leptin resistance and um and it's the leptin resistance from from sugar and from fructose that is critical for weight gain. And what happens once you become leptin resistant, you start craving fat. Normally, our taste receptors on our tongue are for sweet, salt, umami. There's not a fat taste receptor on the tongue. But if you become leptin resistant,

you'll start craving fat, fatty foods. And the fatty foods have nine calories per gram. So you can gain weight much easier with a high fat diet if you're leptin resistant. So how do you get rid of leptin resistance? You go on a low carb diet or keto diet, and that will remove the fructose. And it takes like three or four weeks, but are two to three weeks. But eventually what happens and athletic are leptin sensitive. And the majority of people who are overweight are leptin resistant. So leptin is really important, but you can't cure it by giving leptin. What you have to do is you have to make the tissues way to do that is to cut back on these foods that raise fructose or contain fructose. And the big ones are sugar and high fructose corn syrup. And again, it's like, it isn't just the amount, it's how rapidly you eat it and all those kinds of things. rapidly you eat it and all those kinds of things. So I'm a big fan of low carb diets. I'm a big fan of keto diets. I think they really do work. I also think intermittent fasting

has some benefits if you're overweight, but your point, Bob, if you're in super great shape. Maybe, uh, maybe the alternative strategies of how you eat may be important. And, but yeah, but that's my little thing about leptin for you. Richard, how did your dad come up with your name? Anytime someone sees your name, they, they giggle. I'm sure you've had it your whole life. How did your dad, you have two, two, uh, Richard is, uh, Dick johnson is the slang term for penis how did you get this richard johnson name did your dad know he's like oh i'm gonna make it my boy's gonna be fighting a lot in school well my father's name was was uh jay richard johnson and his nickname was dick okay so his nickname all his life was Dick and he is Jay Richard and he made me Richard Jay.

But I was smart enough to not pick Dick is my nickname. Yeah. So my as a kid, I was Ricky and then I became Rick as as an adult. So people call he know. Did you ever ask him where you're like, dad, how about Peter Johnson or like Mike Johnson? Like, what are you doing, dad? What are you doing? Did you ever ask him? No, I never did, but we did laugh. We, we, we would laugh about it, but we, I never said, why did you do this or anything like that? Yeah. I mean, because he was,

this or anything like that but yeah i mean because yeah he was a he had a great sense of humor and uh would love to joke and tell stories and uh like what if he would have called you flaccid johnson what if he made your first name flaccid or hard john that would have been bad now um yeah what about big what about big johnson That would be good. Or just Hugh. Hugh. And people would think Huge Johnson. Yeah, yeah. Well, I would be proud to have a name like that. Yeah.

Richard, do you have kids? Yes, I do. I have two kids. And my son's name is Ricky Johnson, too. Oh, that's a good name. That sounds like a race car driver or something. Ricky Johnson. Yeah, he's great.

He's into theater and creative writing. I started late, so he's still in high school, but he's about to graduate. So I started late in life. And my daughter, Tracy, her name is Tracy Johnson, and she's really loves theater too, but she's also trying to do some finances. She's at the University of Wisconsin. When did you have your first kid? Oh, well, I was like 49.

Your first one? The baby was born when I turned, you was born just after I turned 50. Because I had my first one at 43, and I always thought I was older. I got you beat. That's the only thing I got you beat on, Savan. Hey, and you know, Greg, I can't remember how old Greg is. Greg's 68, and his wife's about to have a baby. Well, he has us beat.

Yeah, right. We've got a hierarchy there. Richard, I would love to have you back on again. There's so much to talk about. I appreciate you tolerating the audio and coming on here and just giving us a big, big picture. just giving us a big, big picture. I did reach out to Dan and I think he's going to give us, I think he's going to give us a discount code for the listeners that we're going to share on our big Saturday show. You're always welcome on the show. It's so palatable what you share and I appreciate what you're doing just for all of humanity, man. Thank you, my friend. It was

great talking to you and it was really fun this last hour. Cool. All right. Uh, we, we shall stay in touch. Hey, I'm going to share with you my phone number in the email. Yeah. Yeah. Great. And, um, and, and maybe if you feel trustworthy, you'll share with me and then I could text you and it'll be easier to get in touch with you. Yeah. Yeah. Let's do that. Let's communicate that way. All right, brother. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Have a good day.

Same to you. I ain't going to lie to you. I consume one of those chocolate bars every day, the RX ones. They're tiny, but it's crazy. What is interesting is my kids aren't into them, but I'm so into into them but i'm so into them oh wow david nice everyone wow crazy crazy thank you i am sorry about the audio we'll fix that next time i could have i could have been like hey bring your mic back up and go into your settings but like fuck it i was just like hey i shouldn't even talk this guy's got so much to say.

I hate it. Victoria, where are you? You douche canoe. I hate it when you guys are like, don't be scared. Or like, you preface it with something like, you know me. Go fuck yourself. You don't know me. Yeah, they're pretty gay.

The bars are pretty gay. But when you're as masculine as me, you gotta like, you gotta, I guess there's a lot of masculine gay dudes. Uh, my goodness, David, the new profile pic is outrageous. Uh, let me see.

Oh my God. Holy shit. Jeez Louise. Uh, Tom Landry. Good interview. Someone. Yes.

Keep, keep it coming all right i'm taking the kids to surf camp oh my goodness so that's two days in a row bad audio uh bad audio last night with jack dala madelena so bum me out and then this show mickey Mouse fucking operation last week on the kill Taylor Tyler Watkins at his fucking mom's house

all these bad we're too good to have bad audio all right I don't want to go I want to hang out with you guys but I got to go I really i want to hang out with you guys but i gotta go i really do want to hang out with you guys oh great thank you my sister texts me i hear feedback thank you great i hear it too oh shut it rosie your shows oh nice real. Oh, nice shirt, Rosie. I like that. Nice tummy. Alright.

No, it's soft. It's soft. It's not crunchy. And it's really chewy. It's like caramelly. I think you'll like it. And you know what's crazy? It's like, you won't eat them. You won't eat two in a row. There's no fucking way you'll eat two in a row. And's no fucking way you'll eat two in a row And I am a huge gorger I'm like

Yeah, and they can and and it's crazy. It's weird. I don't really know how to explain it I didn't like the comparison to smell you to but Anyway All right. Uh, what's next oh tomorrow Alex Perez tomorrow's gonna be good come on guys watch the show tomorrow morning it's gonna be great we'll go back go to ESPN plus

or go to YouTube and watch Alex Perez's last fight it was the main event last week even if you don't want to watch fighting he had a fucking crazy knee injury during the middle of the fight Jesus Louise you can't tell me how much i can eat i know i know but but i'm telling you like these you'll be you'll eat one of these and you'll be like uh-uh i'm good all right i better i better go i'm i gotta tell my wife i'm coming i'm taking the kids to surf camp greg's kid and my kid uh i am coming

all right see you guys soon bye-bye it's a seven podcast show it's a seven podcast show everybody's welcome peace and love it's a seven podcast show