Auto-transcribed and lightly edited for readability; speaker labels added by LIV3. Timestamps follow the Buzzsprout player above. The show's sponsor breaks for Living Waters Wellness Center are omitted from this transcript. The views expressed are the speakers' own. Individual experiences described in the conversation are anecdotal, are not typical results, and have not been evaluated by the FDA.

00:00 Cold open: the energy debt

00:00David:So you're saying there's an energy debt. Can you further explain?

00:02Chris:Absolutely. So when fructose metabolism happens, it basically steals a phosphate away from your ATP. So an ATP is like a triphosphate. It has three, three phosphates and that is your, your energy currency. That's you need, you want flush ATP in your cells because that's what your mitochondria are making, they're making energy out of glucose. But the problem is that when you start pulling a phosphate out of it, then you lose the ability not only to make, you kind of can't make new energy anymore. Like you're, you're running the pool of ingredients that you need starts to drop away and so then you have this two sided thing where you're stealing the ingredient that the mitochondria needs and then you're degrading that ATP

00:50Chris:into uric acid, which is inflammatory and down shifts your mitochondria. So, so on both ends, your mitochondria, they get, they can't work as efficiently and they don't have the ingredients they need to make new energy.

(Break: Living Waters Wellness Center announcements and client testimonials omitted from this transcript.)

02:22 Welcome to the Whole Body Detox Show

02:22David:Good morning, everyone. David DeHaas here from the Whole Body Detox Show and Living Waters Cleanse.com. Today, I've got a guest on. We're talking about sugar and metabolism. We're talking about metabolic health. I think you'll really enjoy the show today because I think it's a very key piece for people to understand what's happening in their cells. And as we talk a lot about on this show, you know, the key at the end of the day is getting your cells well. And, you know, as I mentioned, I think a couple of weeks ago, the average person's eating something like 350 pounds of sugar per year. It's amazing. And so Chris Mearns is talking today with us. He's from LIV3. Chris, welcome to the show.

03:01Chris:Thank you so much for having me, David. It's great to be here.

03:04 From tech research to fructose

03:04David:I'm glad. Tell us a little bit about yourself. And by the way, did I butcher your name?

03:07Chris:No, that's perfect.

03:08David:Oh, good. Okay.

03:09Chris:I've been digging into sugar specifically regarding fructose metabolism for maybe five years now in the research space. We're trying to like position a bit of it as like translational research. So we're not doing like lab work, but where my mind is always on trying to find unifying mechanisms. I've been in that, in that kind of world for a long time. I came from the tech world actually. So I'm always trying to basically resolve puzzles. I don't know why that's just where my mind likes to go. But in the case of metabolism, it seems like there are so many converging things where people will complain of cognition and gut health and metabolic dysfunction and cardiovascular dysfunction kind of. And they all seem to travel together and there hasn't been too many great

03:56Chris:explanations as to why that happens. And our research into fructose metabolism is really uncovering a very unifying framework behind that. So that's basically what we've been digging into and it really kind of connects all back to fructose itself, not just as a sugar, but like the role it plays in its metabolism in our body. And as a result of that, it makes for a very interesting kind of story that starts to resolve a lot of our experiences along the way, why we feel this way, why our diet might look this way, all sorts of different things. So, yeah.

04:30David:Okay. You come from the tech world and now you're in the health niche. You just, that's kind of an interesting jump.

04:36Chris:Yeah, it's a jump, right?

04:37David:You hit fructose. So tell me about that as a business owner and basically a guy that's been unemployed since 1981, so he can't work for anybody else.

04:45Chris:Congratulations.

04:47David:Yes, I should get a 40, actually 45 years. The hell, I don't need my pen. Where's my pen? How'd that jump happen?

04:54Chris:So I worked in tech for a while. I worked in user experience. So in the research side of basically technology, so I had a pretty solid understanding of how things work, but then got more and more into how people use these different products. And eventually I found myself working on like prototypes or VR headsets in the realm of like, why should these things exist? Like it's a really cool technology. Does it have a place in our life? And then the research that we were doing there was trying to resolve. Like, is this a computer? Is this a gaming device? Why, how do we use it? How do we interact with it? Is it, is it key, is tapping a keyboard in midair going to be useful for anybody? All those kinds of crazy questions. But of course that's interesting. But when I had a daughter, I basically started looking at health in the same

05:40Chris:way as saying like, okay, I'm interested in this from like a holistic perspective, because I want to make sure that as she grows up, I'm healthy. I'm a little older starting out as a dad. So then what's that going to look like? And basically it tripped me into a rabbit hole, which unfortunately happens very often for me, where I get interested in a very interesting question that starts to grow and grow and grow, and we start to find all these different pieces that will connect. So that little foray into health basically resolved in digging into hundreds of research papers that started to show a picture of a puzzle that was not really well explained or well known. The biggest change for me came in reading a book by Dr. Richard Johnson out of Colorado State University, who is basically

06:28Chris:the authority on fructose and the mechanistic ways that he describes the metabolism of fructose blew my mind, because it traces back to basically all animals and the role of this simple sugar in sort of functioning as a survival molecule. So in that enables all animals, including humans, perhaps even more so, to basically enter like a conservation mode where we burn less fuel, we store more fat with this idea that this might be good for us because now we'll survive a difficult time. So that's kind of how I ended up in this little picture of digging into fructose metabolism.

07:10 Is fructose the "better" sugar?

07:10David:That's fascinating. You know, years ago, there was a product that in the nutritional supplement world that we got and, you know, people were starting to become more cognizant of sugar and the company said, because once this has got so many grams of whatever, he's oh yes, but it's better because it's fructose. Yeah. Is that true?

07:28Chris:Well, this is where I run into a hard wall because if anyone's heard of sugar, well, they say, well, then the glucose is the important part because it spikes your insulin and that's why we have glucose monitors in its, yes, it functions as a fuel in your body, but too much is going to be bad for you. And honestly, that logic doesn't hold for me. It's like saying that too much fuel is bad for your car. And we all know that that's not what happens. If your car doesn't work, you pop the hood, you figure out what's going on with the engine. And so that argument that sugar is that glucose is bad for you if the fuel part is bad for you is sort of weird. And the, the chemistry sort of backs that up and you look deeply enough, but that's the interesting part is the other half of sugar of sucrose, a table sugar is fructose.

08:14Chris:And because it doesn't necessarily spike insulin because it's just like a basic calorie than for the most part, for many, many decades, we've sort of ignored it and kind of said, well, maybe it just doesn't, maybe it's inert. Maybe it's just this other sweet half that we just don't really have to worry about.

08:31 Fructose reclassified as a signaling molecule

08:31Chris:And the latest research, and I'm talking like April, like not long ago, where there have been major names in metabolism, they put out a, a major review of fructose that reclassified it effectively and called it a signaling molecule that, and I quote, regulates metabolic health and disease. And so the suggestion is that more than just a calorie, it's actually acting as a signal for ourselves. And because it works in such an interesting way, it basically then pairs with the glucose side to almost work as a pair where you have a fuel glucose, and then you have a fuel conserving signal, fructose that goes together.

09:16Chris:And that actually makes a lot of sense when you think about the natural world. It's like, if I'm going to inject, if I'm going to eat something that is going to help me to survive longer, I want to hang on to that as much as possible. And so then if you create a bias towards fat storage and not using as much of that energy when that opportunity is available, that means you're going to stretch the opportunity even longer. You're going to take advantage of more of the opportunity and you're going to basically run a little longer on it. So basically at the bottom of this is saying that fructose may be the most important mechanism in our biology, because if it allows the body to switch in and out of a survival mode, then that's huge. That's like saying, OK, my body is always

10:02Chris:thinking that winter is coming every time I eat sugar. What's that going to do for me? It's going to say, I'm going to hang on to as much fat as I possibly can. I'm going to upregulate my appetite and craving so that I can eat more of this opportunity and hopefully I'll survive winter. But then winter never comes because we live in the modern world where we can eat whatever we want. So it starts to show a very, very large role in our biology.

10:26 Seasonal fruit: stored or burned?

10:26David:So it's summertime, watermelons are coming off the vine, peaches, apples and so forth. In the olden days back when I was a young lad, 60 years ago, you know, we canned peaches, we canned pears, we canned beans, we canned all these things, right? So if I'm eating today, of course today we don't want to do that because we get the story time we want. But my question is, so if I am following the seasons and I'm eating a bunch of fruit now, is some of that being stored as fructose, what's happening or am I eating it and burning it? What's happening to the body?

10:54Chris:That's a really good question. And it's important that we clear this up because if anyone has any knowledge of this and they say, well, then you can't villainize fruit because fruit is good for me. And I actually am not arguing against that. I think that fruit is great, but you're right because fruit is basically the major source of dietary fructose in the wild. And then we have to say, well, then is it bad for you? It's super complex. That's the truth of it. Fruit, I love to talk about fruit because it tells this picture from a natural perspective. So when fruit starts to appear, it's dull in color. It does not smell like anything. It's fibrous. It's hard. It's full of polyphenols and fiber,

11:39Chris:basically things that would help your body to burn fat if you were to eat it in a totally unripe state. Now that's all discouraging the animal from eating it, including ourselves. But as fruit ripens, it goes through this incredible transformation where all of a sudden it's softer, it's brighter, it smells delicious, it's juicy, and it's sweet because it's transforming basically in order to tell the animal, okay, now it's time to eat it because I want my seeds distributed. And the animal, from their perspective, will say, oh, that's delicious. And the reason that we might actually enjoy eating it is because we get a stronger survival signal out of it. Where you then look at a bear, which will binge on Oregon grape berries and eat hundreds of thousands of them in a few days if the opportunity is

12:25Chris:there, and then we know that he spends six months in a complete fast without food or water, and he has to be able to survive that. So if, and when you look at the timing of fruit, it's typically ripening as we get closer and closer towards fall or in the tropics, it's before dry season, for example. And so it's typically ahead of a season of scarcity, where if the animal was to take advantage of that, then they would be able to survive a little bit longer through that season of scarcity. And so then the ebb and the flow of fruit in the natural world is beautiful. It's like it helps the animals to survive a little longer when times get tough. And then, of course, we look at ourselves and we have to change this picture entirely.

13:10Chris:Now we have trade that allows us to eat whatever fruit we want, whenever we want, and whatever quantities we want, we don't have to can it or preserve it through the winter. And we even breed it to be sweet. We've got honey crisp apples and nectarines and all these like there's a clue in the name that we made these to be sweet, right? And basically the trouble is that you'd go even further. And now we've got added sugars that are in everything. So this same once beautiful survival signal is just pervasive across our diet. Now we have got sugar and everything and it's not fruit anymore. That's the problem. Fruit is great. It still has those even when it's totally ripe, but still has those polyphenols and the fiber

13:55Chris:and the water and all those things that would otherwise buffer this the signal. But instead what we do is we juice our fruit and we dry our fruit and we basically turn it into candy of which we can eat like a couple dozen at a time the same fructose. And now suddenly we're off the rails. So I hope that makes sense. It's not saying fruit is bad at all. It's just saying let's recognize the context here because it is the same signal.

14:18 Do we need fructose at all?

14:18David:OK, so when it comes to losing weight, I guess that's where we're going next is we want to lose weight. Do we cut out not only the sugar, we cut out the fructose. We've got to have some, don't we?

14:28Chris:That's a good question. So fructose is not a macronutrient. There's no reason that you need it. Glucose might be different in the sense that we know our body runs on glucose for the most part. I mean, we've got ketones we could talk about, but for the most part, like we run on glucose. It's our fuel. And so but we don't need to be getting that from sugars. We get that from carbohydrates. Complex carbohydrates and that nice steady stream of glucose into our bodies that we can kind of manage nicely. So then basically it's interesting because we kind of like we treat sugar and carbs as the same, but they're not. And the difference is the fructose. It's I mean, there's there's more to it. But really that when we look at the simple sugar, it's like one has glucose, the

15:13Chris:carbs as glucose, but the sugar has the glucose and the fructose. And it seems that if you were to down regulate the amount of exposure that our cells get to fructose, then things start to improve. Basically, it might it might make sense to try to talk about sort of its function in the cells because we're really talking about metabolism. We're not just talking about diet, but it might help that way.

15:36 Inside the cell: ATP, uric acid, and mitochondria

15:36Chris:So fructose, when we metabolize it, it converts our available energy ATP into it basically degrades it into uric acid. And so within the cell now, you have an inflammation signal, this uric acid, and you burned a battery to do it. So then that inflammation signal then kind of causes mitochondrial fission where our mitochondria start breaking apart and becoming less efficient. And I don't mean that it kills the cell. It just makes it all less efficient. It's like maybe drops it by say 20 percent of its efficient energy state. And so then you end up with this cell that doesn't it's not producing enough energy to do its job well. And then that sends a signal to the rest of the body and says, we don't have enough energy going on here.

16:22Chris:Can you please help us? And then there's a hormone connection with the brain where we then develop cravings and we get less satiety. And so then we start eating more of the same signal, this sugar. And then because there's no regulatory break on this system, it just goes and does the same thing again. So then we get less and less available energy inside our cells. We get more and more inflammation inside our cells. We get less and less efficient mitochondria in our cells. And eventually you can imagine that this will cascade to whatever system it's supporting. And so then you have like a fragile liver or a fragile vascular system. So then it kind of creates this compounding loop.

17:03David:So slowly clearing inflammation in those, in the organs.

17:06Chris:Exactly. And it's easy to kind of recognize why. So from an, from like an observed standpoint,

17:12 Food noise and the craving loop

17:12Chris:what this feels like for

17:12Chris:people. So then we feel achy, we feel tired, we feel cravings, and we don't feel like we can ever eat enough oftens and we, and then it compounds. So it's, it's like, it describes so much of our general experience that where it's like after dinner, I'm fine. I had a good dinner. And then two hours later, I'm suddenly hungry again. And I'm rummaging through the cupboards for a snack, right? There's, there's nothing in your biology that's actually hungry, hungry there. But if we're constantly sending this energy deficit signal to our body, then we're always going to be reaching for more. And we're always going to be compounding that signal even harder.

17:53David:So that's what would be the term of food noise that we're having.

17:56Chris:Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And it's interesting that it's just popping up recently, but it's, it's something that I think we're starting to recognize more and more where we're, we're craving for no reason at all. It's interesting.

18:08 Two reasons we crave sweet

18:08Chris:There's a,

18:08Chris:one of the research there's that behind this work actually identified that there's two different reasons that we crave sweet. And most people think it's a discipline thing. And I can tell you it's not. So what they did is they, they use mouse models and they inhibited the sweet receptors in your mouth for, in one group. And they found that they still craved sugar, like big time. They really wanted it. But they recognize that that signal was basically coming from this energy deficit that was happening from fructose in the liver.

18:43David:That's interesting.

(Break: Living Waters Wellness Center announcements and client testimonials omitted from this transcript.)

21:20Chris:And then separately, they also inhibited that the enzyme that controls fructose metabolism and they found that yes, they still had a preference for sweet things that was basically now identified as coming from your taste receptor. So there's like two very different things. But one was way more powerful than the other and it wasn't in our mouth. It was basically that there was like a biological driver for them eating sugar because they were in this energy debt this whole time. And so when we translate that to humans, then it makes sense because we can have agency over our food choices. We can say like, no, I don't want that and make a choice and say like, I'll say no to the cake. But it's a lot harder to do when that's not being driven by taste but it's being driven by an energy debt.

22:05Chris:Then you lose control. Then you become that person where it's like, I can make good decisions, I can go to the gym, I can eat healthy foods and all that. But I can't say no to those cookies that are right in front of me.

22:13 The energy debt explained

22:13David:

22:13David:So you're saying there's an energy debt. Can you further explain?

22:17Chris:Absolutely. So when fructose metabolism happens, it basically steals a phosphate away from your ATP. So ATP is like a triphosphate. It has three phosphates and that is your energy currency. That's, you need, you want flush ATP in your cells because that's what your mitochondria are making. They're making energy out of glucose. But the problem is that when you start pulling a phosphate out of it, then you lose the ability not only to make, you kind of can't make new energy anymore. Like you're running, the pool of ingredients that you need starts to drop away. And so then you have this two-sided thing where you're stealing the ingredient that the mitochondria needs.

23:03Chris:And then you're degrading that ATP into uric acid, which is inflammatory and downshifts your mitochondria. So on both ends, your mitochondria, they get, they can't work as efficiently and they don't have the ingredients they need to make new energy. And so basically what that means is that the cell can drop in its performance, say 20% or so, and then it starts freaking out. It's like, okay, I'm running on fumes here. I don't have the ability to do my job as well as I used to. I've got inflammation. I'm not making as much energy. And then you can start to imagine how that'll compound across the entire organ. So if that's like, maybe just a few cells in your liver, like no big deal. But the problem is that those cells support that entire system. And then when the entire system

23:49Chris:is now in this like weakened, low energy state, then it's going to not do its job as well. And then it makes sense as to why this might be a really, really early, like preclinical precursor to actual disease. Like basically, it's like we've got, we've got this system that is getting an insult. And if it doesn't get enough time in between those insults to recover, then it's just going to keep degrading faster and faster. And that's why like the amount of sugar and how often we eat sugar seems to matter a lot. More than just saying like, it's not a poison. It's not going to kill your cells. But if we allow it to insult our bodies continuously, we're going to run into trouble eventually.

24:32 David's sugar story

24:32David:Okay, I'm going to go back to my early days when I was a sugaraholic. A learned thing when I was a young lad, but you know, we had root beer, root beer floats, Snickers bars, big kind of stuff. Okay, as a kid, I go swimming over, I take my dimes and nickels and buy myself some sugar. And I'm with a sugaraholic, six cokes a day, two Reese's peanut butter cups, two Snickers. I love sugar. And it wasn't until I started doing deep tissue cleansing through what we do here at Living Waters. That, well, one, I had cancer too. So I had to like change my ways, but it's not easy to change your ways. And the body's still screaming, hey, feed me, feed me. And David fed it. And as I, when I came to learn and understand, because I've had other people with addiction, like smoking and heroin, and when they do the deep tissue cleanse,

25:17David:our 10 day cleanse, we're peeling, we're a lot of chemicals, a lot of stuff coming out. So we do a liver cleanse, and then we dive into the emotions. And when we break that, that's what I see. That's what I experience myself. I see others. That really breaks that down. So today, although I still like chocolate, the sugars aren't something that is on a big priority list, even though there's so many foods, as you know, a lot of sugar in it. But today, I don't know, I don't buy them, because I know what I know now. Almost paid with my life, you know, from what I did on the early days. Okay.

25:51Chris:Yeah.

25:52 A delayed signal: why short studies miss it

25:52Chris:It's a tough one, huh? It's, it locks us in. And it's because it's, because it's a delayed signal, we don't really feel it happening. Like, if you imagine how that's working, like you're stealing a phosphate out of a pool. So then, and then you're just tearing your mitochondria apart so that they're not sufficient. And like, those are, those are slow burns. And it makes sense as to why like, that's even reflected in the research. Like if you do like a study on fructose for like, a high dose of fructose for like 30 days, you're like, hey, nothing happens. Great. Interestingly, though, you do the same study that lasts six months, and everybody's super sick. Like, so it's, it's a very, there's a time and pressure element to it, where if we continue with that same pattern for too long,

26:38Chris:eventually it's going to break. And it does seem to be this, this time between challenges concept that makes the biggest difference. And it's funny, you mentioned like that as a kid, like we have this concept of like, you get a sugar high and then you get a crash, right? Oh, yeah. Actually very, very established in the biology too. Like the glucose is going to give your cells energy, but then the, the fructose part of it is going to then steal that energy away from your cells. And so you can even map it out that way. It's like, you've got this, you've got both sides of the coin when you're eating sugar.

27:14David:That's interesting.

27:15 Alzheimer's and fructose metabolism in the brain

27:15David:Well, another thing we've seen on the rise in the last 40 years is dementia Alzheimer's. And now they've concluded, okay, that's type 3 diabetes. And where you go into assisted living center, dementia center, and what are they giving them? Well, we're going to give them some fruit juice at every meal. Or in one case, I was like, so they give them diet sodas, little four ounce cans of diet sodas at every meal. Well, what are you doing?

27:37Chris:It's tough. Yeah, you know what? This, I'll just put it this way. The leading researcher behind fructose metabolism, I recently listened to a podcast with him and he said that he expects that a fructose metabolism inhibitor to be the first real treatment for preventing and treating Alzheimer's disease. So this is very connected here.

27:58David:Wow, that's amazing.

28:00Chris:Yeah. So I'd love to dive into how that works because you don't necessarily expect that that'll work. So I'll be very clear to start off with, fructose does not cross the blood-brain barrier. So then how in the world would it have anything to do with the brain with Alzheimer's disease, with dementia, with any of that stuff? So there is another side to the story where, yeah, we can talk about sugar, but there's a reason why I focus on fructose metabolism itself because the body makes fructose. And we need to do more research on this, but there is significant evidence there that it might not be insignificant. Like, it seems to be a big deal.

28:40 The body makes its own fructose: the polyol pathway

28:40David:Our body makes fructose. Yes. So I eat a steak, if I eat a potato.

28:44Chris:Depending on what you eat. But yes.

28:46David:Okay. That's interesting.

28:49Chris:Yeah, so the mechanism is called the polyol pathway. And diabetics might recognize that because it's been associated with diabetes for a long time. But really, what is happening is a spike in glucose levels. So elevated glucose levels allow that glucose to be turned into fructose. So it uses aldose reductase to convert glucose into sorbitol and sorbitol into fructose. And basically, that means that any time we have a high glucose level, some of that will be turned into fructose. That might sound weird. And it's like, okay, so I wheel us back to that car analogy. Like, too much fuel is not bad for your car. Unless the fuel goes bad, right? Then it might be actually causing some mess in your engine. The same kind of principle

29:34Chris:might sort of apply here, where it's like, if we've got too much glucose, then why not store some of it? Why not like turn the body? Like, it's telling the body I've got this excess of energy. So why don't we like down-regulate our use of it so that we can prepare more for survival again? And so basically, it all hinges on this excess glucose signal. But it also is connected to high salt levels. It's connected to alcohol. It's connected to umami foods. It's connected to stresses like dehydration and hypoxia, which we know when we get sleep apnea and we get hypoxia. So suddenly, it's like there is a way and all of that requires this glucose pathway.

30:20Chris:But it's like the body has this mechanism of using so many different stress signals or otherwise uncertainty signals to allow the body to make fructose, which actually sort of makes sense when you think of it as like the survival system. It's like any good survival system should have multiple redundancies. So it's like, I don't have enough water. Well, then we better conserve water. Where do we conserve water? In fat stores.

30:44David:Interesting.

30:45Chris:And it attracts again and again and again.

30:47 Energy triage in the brain

30:47Chris:And so then back to the brain. If the brain only runs on glucose, then what happens when you have too much glucose in the brain? Well, basically, what we start to see happening is there's evidence of fructose metabolism happening in the brain in certain targeted areas. And the targeted areas are identical to what we see in Alzheimer's patients. It's like think of it from a survival perspective. If your survival is at risk, then you need to preserve your vision. You need to preserve your movement. We see that in Alzheimer's patients. They need to be able to find food. But do you need higher reasoning? Do you need short-term memory? In fact, if you didn't have short-term memory, you'd be a little more risky. Wouldn't that help with trying to find food? And so then the pattern

31:33Chris:starts to resolve very neatly where it appears that fructose metabolism in the brain is actually downshifting neurons in certain targeted areas in an attempt to triage energy in the brain, saying we're going to preserve this. We're going to turn this one down because energy is unstable right now.

31:53 How do I know if this affects me?

31:53David:Okay. Well, so how do I know if it's a problem for me?

31:56Chris:That's a good question. What is challenging about this is that we don't have too much in the way of lab work to measure all of this. High uric acid levels might be a good starting point. Liver enzymes, different things like that. But I would say that probably the best signal that we can have is not in the lab. It is, do I feel achy? Do I have cravings? And do I have fatigue? Because all of those are a sign that you're not running in, let's call it sport mode, right? Your cells are not firing on all cylinders right now. They're in conserving mode. And so it's a very felt experience where it makes sense as to why we would have all this focus on like rebuilding our mitochondria

32:41Chris:and improving our energy and we've got so many tools for that. Like get good sleep, drink more water. It all entirely applies. But this is just suggesting that on the other side of that equation, we've got a hole in the bucket. Like we're filling our bucket with all this goodness. But fructose has punched a hole in it. And unless we stop that, then we're always going to be sending this like energy draining signal into our cells.

33:06 The Mountain Dew question

33:06David:Okay, let's just say I've got a Mountain Dew addiction. Type 2 diabetic now because I've been sucking down a gallon of Mountain Dew for the last 10 years. Yeah. What should I be doing?

33:17Chris:You know what I would say? Just switch to diet. If it's that big of a thing, then switch to the diet version. Because as much as like synthetic sugars might not be good for other reasons, they're not fructose. And at least that's, that might be the bigger thing to pay attention to. But in any case, I would say cut down on your added sugars across the board if you possibly can.

33:39David:Yeah, we had a fellow that came in. He was doing just that. And by going, you know what, he kicked it by the end of the cleanse. You didn't know cravings for it. Went off of it. Lost over the next three, four months after that. I think he lost 30 or 40 pounds. And we got him hydrated for the first time ever. Right. Or for a long time. Yeah, amazing transformation. You know, getting those, that toxicity out of the body they've been taking on.

34:01 SugarShield, and why restriction is so hard

34:01David:So you've got a product called Shield. Tell us about that.

34:04Chris:It's called SugarShield. And basically, the reason that we developed it was I sat on this information for like three years or so without really knowing what to do about it. Because if we think about what we've just described, we've said fructose is causing this conservation signal. But then where do I encounter fructose? I get it from sugar. I get it from fruit. And now I get it from high glycemic carbs and salty foods and alcohol and umami foods. And it's like, what do I get to eat then?

34:34David:What's umami foods? What did you say?

34:36Chris:The savory foods. So savory foods are high in uric acid, which is basically, it's kind of sidestepping the fructose side of it, but it's giving the same inflammatory signal.

34:47David:What's a savory food?

34:48Chris:Well, you know what? Beer is an interesting one because beer is savory, it's alcohol, and it's high in carbs. So it's like, no wonder that we have trouble with this.

34:58David:I love beer, but what are you gonna do, right?

35:00Chris:That's exactly the problem. It's like, we've got, so if you're trying to handle this with restriction, it's really hard. People that have an alcohol dependency, they cut alcohol, and it's well-documented that they go and they now start eating sugar like crazy. So this might even resolve that little behavioral thing. So it's really hard to try to say, okay, you need to cut out all the sugar in your life, all the alcohol, all the high glycemic carbs, and it's like, yeah, just hang up. Forget this. This is stupid.

35:30 Fructokinase, drug trials, and essential fructosuria

35:30Chris:So what I started to realize is that the reason that these researchers are paying so much attention to fructose metabolism is because they're recognizing it as a targetable drug point. And Pfizer and Eli Lilly have actually done major trials on fructokinase inhibitors. So the enzyme that helps to metabolize fructose, to turn fructose into this conserving signal is called fructokinase, or KHK. And it's basically, if you do not have that enzyme, there's actually a portion of our population that don't have that enzyme. It's just a genetic condition, but it's completely benign. No one knows that they have it. They call it essential fructosuria, which means effectively

36:15Chris:that there's fructose in your urine, which is the only way they ever find people that have it. But what's interesting is that they don't get metabolic illness. They basically live their life skinny and healthy. So it's kind of a wonderful natural experiment because it shows that we don't need that enzyme. We can be healthy without it. It sort of validates that fructose has this specific purpose in our body. And then it sort of suggests that this might be a great intervention point.

36:43 From the research to a supplement

36:43Chris:And so you asked about SugarShield. Well, basically years later, after not knowing what to do about this, I found in some of the initial research that there are polyphenols that are already on the shelf that actually work as fructokinase inhibitors. And so we started digging into that like crazy and eventually developed a supplement that helps to focus on that pathway. So I'm not saying that the supplement that we developed is proven to be a KHK inhibitor, but we have really strong evidence in preclinical models and liver cells and whatnot that basically show that this is what this does. And we're really interested in that mechanism because it seems to unify so much of what we're seeing.

37:29 What customers report

37:29David:So this is an outbreak

37:29David:a couple of years? You've been doing for a couple of years? Clearly. What are people saying to you?

37:33Chris:We are finding that approximately 80% notice a dramatic reduction in cravings and an improvement in energy in about a month.

37:45David:So dramatic.

37:47Chris:Yes, huge. I'd say it's a big one, definitely.

(Break: Living Waters Wellness Center announcements and client testimonials omitted from this transcript.)

40:13 Chris's own experience

40:13Chris:Obviously, this is just observed but it's shocking, really. Like when I first started taking it, like I just grabbed something off Amazon because I didn't have any other option at that point and I started self-experimenting. And about three weeks in, it's like I woke up and felt this feeling of euphoria that I've never had before. It was like, wow, like the lights turn back on in my energy and right around the same time I stopped craving like anything. Like I could, I basically had total agency over my food. Like I didn't want sugar. I didn't want carbs. I didn't want alcohol. It just became all optional and I eventually lost about 25 pounds over the next six months or so just without really seeming to do much. So that was my personal experience but the cool part is that we're seeing just confirmation after confirmation

40:59Chris:from people that are taking it of the exact same stories. It's really cool.

41:03David:That's interesting. How do they get the product?

41:05Chris:On our website, liv3health.com.

41:09 Dehydration, salt, and the blood vessels

41:09David:Okay.

41:09David:What else have we missed today in terms of this fantastic product?

41:12Chris:I think that this is really exciting because it seems to resolve so many questions that we have about metabolic dysfunction. Like we could talk about dehydration is an interesting one. Like it all connects back to these survival signals. So like in the endothelial cells for example of our vascular system or our blood vessel linings, they're very energy sensitive tissues as well. And the interesting thing is that they respond to hydration. Like a relative hydration. It's called osmolality where I liken this to like a sauce and a pan. So if you like reduce it, then it gets relatively saltier. Or if you put in more salt, it'll get relatively saltier. And so that basically says that when we eat salty foods

41:58Chris:or we get dehydrated, it's sort of the same signal sending to our bloodstream. And so then that is interestingly a trigger for fructose metabolism. And it resolves that why that would kind of make sense. Where it's like when fructose metabolism happens in those cells, nitric oxide is then pulled out of the cell as well, which then makes the whole vascular lining tighter and less flexible, less able to dilate. And so then it makes sense in a short term where it's like if hydration is a problem, we might need to tighten things up to preserve blood flow so we don't die. So it's like every single time we come across this signal, it has this amazing adaptive lens in the short term. But unfortunately,

42:43Chris:it becomes maladaptive if you leave it on too long. And so it sort of suggests like what if heart disease is just an expression of that too. And so now we've talked about cognition. We've talked about heart disease. The liver is like the first casualty of fructose metabolism because all the dietary stuff goes straight through the liver first. So it's like all it, I love that it kind of gives this unifying picture of so much of our experience and so much of our biology and shared history all at the same time.

43:17 Water as a tool

43:17David:Well, it's no doubt because of great marketing the last 130 years, we don't promote water. We've promoted diet sodas and sodas and other drinks. And today people are so dehydrated. I was one of those people. The joints don't work as well. Brains don't definitely work as well. And when you start giving people water and especially on our 10-day retreat because we want them to drink, we really start getting them to drink the water. And of course, as they start cleansing, the toxins go away, you know, cravings start changing. But just watching the brain come back, watching their motion come back, um, but dad, so this is another great tool to have in the toolbox.

43:57Chris:Exactly, yeah.

43:58David:For the Mountain Dew and the root beer drinkers like I was.

44:02 Cutting sugar without the crash

44:02Chris:Yeah, that's true. Yeah, and here's what you want. If you want a dietary way of handling this, I would say cut your sugar as much as you possibly can. But here's the tricky part. If you try and do that, most people freak out within a couple of days. So it's like you, your body like wants, it's, it's, if you think of how that would work, if you cut sugar, that means you're cutting fuel, you're cutting glucose, and you're cutting fructose, which means now you're not sending that cellular energy pinch to your cells. So then your, your fuel needs are increasing. So less fuel, more fuel needs. No wonder we freak out, right? No wonder we are like even more desperate for sugar. It's like we're, we're running on even less than we would be otherwise. So then the strategy really should be cut sugar,

44:48Chris:but replace the lost glucose with complex carbohydrates. That makes sense? Now we're like feeding the machine that's getting hungry and hungrier now, which is a great thing. And then hopefully after about three weeks or so, that seems to be on average, then the cravings start backing off because the cells are producing more and more energy. And then it's like, okay, if you want to start reducing carbs, fine. You can, you then sort of have a little bit more power to do that. So that to me is the most effective way of, of handling this with diet. And yes, get your sleep, get your water. If we rewind to that little bit of the ways the body makes fructose, we included high glycemic carbs. So high glucose levels, hypoxia.

45:34Chris:And what's the other one relevant to this? I lost it now. But basically with obesity, we end up with that same state. Like obesity is kind of synonymous with high glucose. We know that it's also synonymous with dehydration. That's the one I was trying to remember. Because your glycogen stores are full. So it's pulling water out of your system. And it's also synonymous with getting hypoxia because we end up with sleep apnea. And so it kind of resolves why, even when we're trying to eat really, really healthy, we don't really, we're not really able to move much to get to move the needle much because our body is now producing fructose on a regular basis. And so it's hard to get off of that mechanism. And that's why I'm so excited about SugarShield, for example, because it gives us

46:20Chris:a different angle on how we might be trying to target the same thing. So do all of the goodness of lifestyle changes. They're all super good. I do not contradict any of them. But if we add this ability to kind of like downshift our fructose metabolism, that'll give us a significant advantage.

46:39 Sorbitol and alternative sugars

46:39David:I want to, I should have asked this earlier, but so many products today, you mentioned the word sorbitol. That's part of the product. But there's a lot of products with that in it. They stick that in there.

46:47Chris:That's true. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

46:49David:So another alternative sugar, right?

46:51Chris:We do need to be a little careful with them. Sugar alcohols can be converted into fructose sometimes. But for the most part, I say my lens is that the alternative sugars are still going to be better generally than fructose, because at least we're not getting that signal. And ironically, the organic sugars, the coconut sugars, the beet sugars, blah, blah, blah. It's still fructose. It doesn't actually change that story very much. You're still getting that survival signal.

47:19 So why is sugar bad for us?

47:19David:Well, motivation is interesting as human beings. We tend to not get re-motivated until we're sick or have a death-defining moment, like we discovered we got cancer or finally we're tired of our diabetes. And so it's interesting how we just don't cut these out earlier, but we can start reading labels sooner. Now we have apps that can actually look at the label for you and decipher it. It's easy to get caught in that because there was a product I was buying. I was so upset. It had a seed oil in it. I didn't really pay attention. It said organic. It's got to be good, right? Folks, read your labels deeply. There was canola oil, which is I call it the killing fields. You know, they're just pumping up inflammation in your cells. So yeah, we've got a fine mess. We've got to put ourselves into with all this great technology we've over the last 130 years.

48:05Chris:It's funny. Everyone knows that sugar is bad for us. Like I should eat less sugar. Like you ask any kid and like, yeah, I'm not supposed to eat too much sugar. And it's so funny. I find it crazy that I get so much pushback against it because it seems like a natural question to have. Like why then is sugar bad for you? Like let's resolve that. Is it glucose? Because you say that eating sweet potatoes is fine and chickpeas and whatever it might happen to be. That's glucose. So then why is sugar bad for you? And I think that this actually resolves that reason. Because if we're constantly and relentlessly exposed to this, and it's doing this downshift of energy,

48:52Chris:then it becomes highly relevant. And it's funny. You look across like, you could ask any doctor, like, should I reduce sugar? And they would have already told you that. Like it's suggested for cancer, for fatty liver, for like cardiovascular disease. Like it doesn't across the board. It's like you won't find a doctor that will say, yeah, you should eat more sugar. You should probably eat less.

49:14David:But you go to a hospital, Chris, and what's on the menu in the cafeteria? Oh, everything's loaded with sugar. Everything. It's nuts.

49:22Chris:I think we have a really crazy, I don't want to call it misinformation. I think that we have not had the picture until now. We haven't had the puzzle until now. And I think that understanding it really will help. Because there are two sides of this camp. Well, they'll say, well, then you're saying that fruit is bad for you. I'm like, no, I'm not. I'm just saying you have to understand the context here. It's like it's a very nuanced thing. But the problem is, if we keep doing this relentlessly, and over time, something's going to break. It's the too much of a good thing turns into a bad thing kind of scenario.

49:57 Industry, history, and the disease of kings

49:57David:RFK Jr. brought this out thankfully in the MAHA movement. But what's really interesting and telling in 1996, I was in a convention. And you're going to find this interesting. So what had cigarette tobacco done? They started buying up food companies, right? And Paul Zane Pilzer was a consultant to both the food guys and the medical cartel. And he was telling a story. And you know, I'm one of probably 16,000 people in this audience, right? But it's burnt a hole in my brain at the time I've never forgot. He says, you know, in those days, we didn't have internet. We had no way of tracking what people were buying. That was just kind of all people were thinking about it. How can we track who's buying my product? How can I sell that group more of my product? And the junk food stuff, the chips, the Frito Lays, all that stuff, if they could figure out who was buying it, because they knew that 80% of their product was being sold

50:42David:to the same 20% of the people. And who's getting sick? Well, that grew. And then they're over here in this other paradigm in the medical complex. He says, you know, kind of think like, you look at the big picture, they might be in it together. I just thought that was amazing that he said that as a consultant to both industries. But you know, were they? Who knows?

51:01Chris:But yeah, I'm careful not to villainize too many people in this world because it's like, that might be true. But then also grandma that just wants to bake me a cake to tell me she loves me kind of a thing. I can't villainize that. It's part of our biology. Apparently, we developed to like these foods and now we can make them and we can have them whenever we want. And I think there's actually a really interesting historical lens to put on this because we all know that we rewind like a thousand years and the only people with metabolic dysfunction were the elite, the kings and the clergy and we called it gout, right? They had major issues because when you think about what they had, they had access to sugar

51:46Chris:and they had access to eat whatever they wanted to. They had alcohol and high glycemic carbs and they hardly moved. They were just, they were, they got to do whatever they want and then they paid for it.

51:55 From the 1850s to high fructose corn syrup

51:55Chris:But then you rewind, you fast forward to like about the 1850s and that was when the tariffs on sugar collapsed. So the East India Trading Company was basically that it became no more and sugar was introduced at the London World Fair on 1851 or so and suddenly everybody could eat sugar. It was like here it is. We're introducing it to the world and the consumption, the worldwide consumption of sugar just took off like a rocket after that and you can actually track it. It seems to be a leading indicator of metabolic dysfunction. It just trails by like 10, 15, 20 years and it makes so much sense. It's like here we were. We could eat sugar now. We could do whatever we want and then you keep moving forward

52:41Chris:then in the early 1900s we have the Piggly Wiggly where suddenly we have supermarkets and we could now eat whatever we wanted, whatever we wanted. Trade improved. We're getting imports from all over the world. In the 1950s and 60s we start seeing high fructose corn syrup arrive where it's just the same signal but more bioavailable and liquid and all that and then no wonder we're in this state we are now. It's like you can actually trace it through history to see sugar just might not be good for us.

53:13David:Well, we figured out how to grow a lot of corn so we got to do something with that. So what do we do? We make it into gasoline and we make it into fructose sugar and we put it in everything. Well, shelf stable and get this.

53:26Chris:It's true. You add it to foods and then it makes sense to add salt into it as well because it improves this. It dials back the sweetness a little bit and makes it more palatable. So then suddenly you've got this salty and sweet fructose thing all at once and typically packaged with high glycemic carbs. So it's like it's this perfect picture of this entire story.

53:47 David's water fast

53:47David:Yeah, and then getting those. So we're getting those chemicals out of the body but I just did recently and I took myself to a new level as I did a three day or four day water fast. And that was interesting. I mean, I've done, Chris, I've done like over 900 colonics. I've done 11, 10 day retreats. I've done 71 liver cleanses. I mean, I've turned my health completely around. Thank God I'm doing this business because this would save my life. But this water fast, I've been putting it off for a long time. I've watched some of my clients do it. But for me, it's like, oh, but I love to eat. I love to eat fat. And finally, one day I thought, you know what? I just got this vision. I thought, I got to do it. So I did it. And once I did it, it was like, whoa, that was like eight pounds one day. It's like, what?

54:29Chris:Good for you.

54:30David:That's just inflammation, my friend. And then...

54:34Chris:And glycogen stores too. Yeah, it's water weight, right? Your body consumes all the glucose out of that. And then it's like, okay, I got none of that. Let's start breaking down some fat stores. It's pretty impressive stuff. It's cool.

54:44David:And then I went back to... I always keep a little bit of something here at my desk because I get stressed. I'm going to pull out either a meat stick or I have this chocolate. It was like, huh, don't even need that anymore. So it's just interesting how the body can respond if we give it the right tools. Yeah. Oh, it's so true. It's so true.

55:00 Prevention over treatment

55:00David:And if we do it, we got to do it, Chris. You know, we got to do it because we're $5 trillion sick care bill, which is crazy. It's not sustainable. $5 trillion.

55:08Chris:Yeah. I think so much of our medicine is treating rather than preventing.

55:14David:Oh, definitely.

55:15Chris:I think that that's probably the biggest problem is we kind of think we just get away with it forever, and eventually it does catch up with us. So I want to say that this very clearly needs to stick in the prevention category because if fructose is dropping your cellular energy, you want to keep that at bay as much as possible. And then hopefully that means that all the restorative stuff, like even the disease treatments, they'll maybe work better. Like they'll they won't be you won't have this constant thing fighting against you all this time. I'm really hopeful that like if we can as a large group, if we're able to actually control fructose, then maybe we can get off some of these medications because we're kind of

56:00Chris:we're taking them just to keep alive, not because our bodies are actually restoring.

56:05David:I've seen people as many as get this 54 medications and they come in here and they're sick and they're going like, okay, what can you do for me? Let's get the detox and get off some of those things. Yeah, liv3health.com.

56:19 Final words

56:19David:Chris, any final words?

56:20Chris:I would say to your audience if you have any doubts that this is real, try going off sugar. Just observe what happens because it's the I'd say that probably the easiest signal to know whether or not this is affecting you. Like I said, is that inflammation, that chronic pain kind of thing, that fatigue that doesn't go away and the cravings and all of those work together in this model. It's saying that like fructose is crushing your cell with inflammation. It's sending this energy debt to your body and that energy debt is going to result in cravings. And so that entire picture is very, very clear and the crazy thing is it works as a feedback loop. And so if you try and cut sugar to break that loop,

57:05Chris:your body's going to freak out a little bit and it'll be a really solid indication that this is worth paying attention to.

57:11David:Okay, SugarShield liv3health.com. Chris, thanks for coming on the show. I appreciate you so much.

57:17Chris:Thank you so much, David. It's great to be here.

57:18David:David DeHaas from livingwaterscleanse.com. Till next week. Have a pleasant week, my friends.