Auto-transcribed and lightly edited for readability; speaker labels added by LIV3. Timestamps follow the player above. 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 Welcome to Learning to Glow

00:00Jess:Welcome to Learning to Glow, a show about wellness, skin health, and self-development. I'm your host, Jess. I'm a mom, entrepreneur, and skincare expert. I'm so excited to share tips on how to achieve healthy skin and bring amazing guests in the field of health, fitness, aging gracefully, and personal growth. Let's explore all the different ways we can take care of ourselves as women, both inside and out, to truly shine. So let's get glowing.

00:28Jess:Welcome to our show today. Thank you for being with me. I hope you guys are having a great summer and it's not too hot where you are, like it is here. It's actually not that bad, but it is definitely a little heat wave in Orange County, California.

00:45Jess:So today's episode is all about sugar. This is such a good topic. I know so many of you are going to enjoy this one. Specifically, we talk about fructose, and I really learned a lot in this conversation with our guest, Chris. He explains why fructose affects the body differently than glucose, how it can signal the body to store fat and conserve energy, and why cutting out sugar can sometimes make cravings even worse. We also talk about inflammation, fatigue, brain health, perimenopause, why fruit is usually totally fine, and some simple things we can do to actually support our metabolism.

01:21Jess:And this is all science backed. He has some really great information with studies behind it that I found so helpful, but in a very easy to digest way, so it's not too overwhelming. It's very interesting, and I learned so much. You can find Chris. He has a supplement called SugarShield that I just started, so I will definitely keep you guys posted. Once you learn about this topic, you're going to want to look into it like I did. So I'll put all of that in the show notes, and I hope you enjoy.

01:57Jess:Hello, everyone. Welcome to our show today. Chris, welcome to Learning to Glow.

02:02Chris:Thank you so much for having me, Jess. Nice to be here.

02:05Jess:I'm so excited to have you. You're going to be sharing some information with us that I know our listeners always want more knowledge about, and when it comes to weight loss and sugar, and what we can do to help our bodies, this is very important to my listeners. So I, first of all, would love if you could just introduce yourself, tell us a little bit about what you do, and then we can get into this topic.

02:30 Chris's path to the fructose model

02:30Chris:Sure, okay. So I don't actually come from a scientific background, but about five years ago, when I had a little girl, I decided that I needed to start taking my health seriously because that would be what a responsible parent did. But my background actually comes from user experience and synthesizing research. I worked in user research, and so when I started digging into this stuff, I innately tried to find cohesive patterns across what I was reading.

02:58Chris:And I started to realize that there's a very big gap in what we're understanding, because so much of the research points in a single direction, and when you start looking at the entire map of how our bodies work under that lens, it's like all of the different debates that we've had over many, many decades start to resolve themselves. And so I was like, okay, well, I've got to dig deeper, and that was like five years ago. Basically since then, I've been drowning in confirmation. And it's really exciting because it really kind of provides a new lens as to how our bodies work in a really, really simple way, and ultimately it traces back to sugar.

03:48Chris:And it's interesting, because if you look at kids, they'll tell you, okay, well, I know my mom says I'm not supposed to have too much sugar. Every single human knows that it's like the one thing we should probably be careful with and moderate, but we haven't really talked about why, not to a real mechanistic level, saying, okay, this is why sugar is a problem for us. And this kind of resolves that.

04:15Chris:So if we were to say, okay, our assumption might be: sugar has glucose, and now we wear glucose monitors because we recognize that if we have high glucose levels, that becomes problematic for us. Fair? But I would argue that's sort of like saying too much fuel in your car is bad for your car, because glucose is your body's preferred fuel. So if your brain doesn't have glucose, you could probably die within a very short period of time. So is that really the logical place to start? I would argue that the other half of sugar, which is fructose, has probably been this quiet thing that we didn't pay enough attention to. And now we're starting to understand how the mechanics of it actually work, and it's showing that it might actually be the bigger issue really behind how sugar affects our health.

05:11Jess:Maybe we could start there, because I think for a lot of people, sugar is just like a blanket statement: sugar bad. So can you talk to us a little bit about the difference between glucose and fructose, as far as what do we need to know? What are some 101 basics here?

05:32 Glucose vs. fructose: the sugar 101

05:31Chris:Love it. Okay, so sugar, what we typically call sugar, is two simple sugars bound together, and one of them is glucose and one of them is fructose. It's just a simple 50-50 split. Glucose is basically the body's preferred fuel. When we eat carbohydrates, we capture the glucose from it and convert it into glycogen, which is basically your body's fast fuel. It's like the water weight we kind of recognize is actually stored glycogen, because that carbohydrate gets bound to about a three-to-one ratio with water.

06:13Chris:Now the body can easily break that down and send it directly into your cells as fuel. And that's really critical for your brain, because your brain consumes about 20% of your fuel, and that is primarily in the form of glucose. We could talk about ketones, but that's separate. So basically, glucose is fuel.

06:31Chris:Fructose, the other half, they didn't really classify it as to what it does until super recently. Even, I would say, maybe six weeks ago, there was a research paper put out by one of the strongest authorities on fructose, and it basically said that separate from being a calorie, it is primarily a regulatory signal that controls metabolic health. That should give us serious pause. It's like, okay, now we've got fuel, and then we have a signal that controls our health. What in the world?

07:13Chris:So we put them together, and we really have to understand what fructose does if we're going to understand how this works. Fructose effectively controls your cellular energy. It controls the conversion of fuel, of glucose, into ATP, which is your cell's energy. So it's like saying, when you eat sugar, you're taking in fuel and you're taking in a conservation signal at the same time. Your body's saying, we've got fuel, let's try to hang onto it as much as possible and stretch that, because we've got this opportunity we should really take advantage of, because we're an animal and life can be hard. So it starts to give this survival lens on how sugar works in our body.

08:04Chris:And so primarily we'll talk about sugar, because that's where we're primarily exposed to it today, but fructose exists in fruit. Fructose exists in high fructose corn syrup, which I know sounds bad and we've kind of villainized it, but really all we're talking about is like 55% fructose compared to glucose, so it barely moves the needle. It just happens to be more bioavailable because it's a liquid form.

08:32Chris:And so those are the main places we'll encounter fructose, but when we go a little bit deeper, we'll find out that the body makes fructose in response to a number of things we already know we need to be careful of: high-glycemic carbohydrates, salty foods, dehydration and hypoxia, alcohol. So many of the ways we want to protect our health, suddenly everything starts to trace back to this survival signal, where it's telling our body to conserve. So if you want to make this really, really simple, fructose is sending a conservation signal to your body. It's telling your body to store. And I don't know about you, but personally, I don't really want to tell my body to store fat on a daily basis, and that's really what it's doing. It's giving your body the opportunity to hang onto as much as possible, because as a survival signal, it's saying difficult times might be coming, or might be here, and we need to protect ourselves. So it's like this protection mechanism.

09:37 What this means for midlife weight gain

09:37Jess:Yeah, I was thinking, okay, when you started to first talk about that, I was like, okay, what does this mean for weight loss? Because back in the day, you didn't have food readily available like we have today, and I definitely also don't want my fat stored more than I need. But that's like an issue that a lot of times, like what you said, a lot of people maybe don't think about: the fact that the high carbohydrates affect the fructose in our body is what you're saying.

10:10Jess:So talk to us a little bit, because I know everybody on this show, a lot of people are very interested in what this means for weight gain. And a lot of the women listening are in midlife. They're having a little bit more of a struggle than they used to, as far as the storage part, when our body does hang onto that fat, it's a little bit more difficult to release that. So a lot of people will think, okay, well maybe I do need to cut out sugar. And then I also was thinking about how popular the keto diet was, and you're saying glucose is so important for our body. So I know I threw a lot at you, but let's start with: what does this all mean if we are on a weight loss journey and we are storing this extra fat?

11:02 Inside the cell: ATP, uric acid, and the bottleneck

11:02Chris:That's a great question. So it'll help to understand the biomechanics just a little bit. Basically, when you metabolize fructose, that's not in your gut, that's in your cells. When your cells start to convert it, it converts your ATP, so your cellular energy, into a waste product. Normally your ATP is like a rechargeable battery. It drops from a triphosphate into a diphosphate, and then your mitochondria boost it back up. It's like this little rechargeable battery.

11:34Chris:But when you introduce fructose into it, it will burn your ATP. It actually drops it into a monophosphate, and then it burns it all the way down to uric acid. Uric acid in your cell causes inflammation, it causes cellular stress, and effectively over time, not right away, but over time, that cellular stress dampens the performance of your mitochondria. It actually restructures it so that it can't produce as much energy as it really wants to. And that's really where everything starts to fall apart.

12:10Chris:So I like to think of it like a bottleneck, where you've got fuel on one side and then you've got this signal that tightens the bottleneck, that tightens the amount of energy coming out. So then you basically create a cell that is so hungry, because it's not getting enough energy. It's running on fumes, basically. And so it sends a signal back to your body to say, I'm starving, not in your gut, but on a cellular level: my cells are not getting the energy they need. So it tells your brain, hey, we're starving, we need to eat more food. And then it becomes a loop where it's like, I'm going to eat more sugar, more carbohydrates, more of whatever. But then it sends the signal to tighten that bottleneck even more. So you've got cravings on one side and excess weight on the other, and as long as you keep the loop going, you basically compound the problem.

13:57 Menopause and estrogen: why the bottleneck can tighten

13:08Chris:And it speaks back to a survival mechanism, because in the wild, abundance and scarcity have always been in flow, but our modern diet doesn't work that way. So basically we just keep feeding the same signal, and it resolves why we can be overfed and overweight and yet always hungry and always tired at the same time.

13:33Chris:And bringing it back to women as they start to age a little bit: when women hit toward menopause and their estrogen starts dropping, there's an interesting parallel that happens here, because typically what will happen is your ability to rid the body of uric acid drops a bit. And if you remember, uric acid is sitting at the center of this equation, and that's the stress that's causing your mitochondria to drop. So if you lose the ability to flush that uric acid out of your body fast enough, it's just going to make that bottleneck tighter and tighter as it goes.

14:14Chris:So it's almost like it puts women and men back on the same level as they get to a certain age, where men don't really have that advantage with estrogen levels. But when we lose that little bit of advantage, then it makes sense why suddenly your body's not really responding the way it wants to anymore, where it's losing the ability to create cellular energy, and the loop forms where you just keep feeding it more and more of what causes a tighter bottleneck, and effectively store more and more energy in the form of fat.

14:47Jess:Yes, okay. Well, I want to get to-

14:49Chris:Does that make sense?

14:50Jess:Yes, totally. I love that. I want to get to what are some mistakes that we can work on when it comes to this process in our bodies. But before that, you did mention something. You mentioned cravings. And also, when I think of sugar and the bad parts of sugar, when you think of the negative things people talk about, they talk about cravings. It's almost like the more you eat sugar, like processed sugar, the more you crave it, and it's just like you said, the cycle. But also, how does that affect our mood, like our emotions? And it affects our brains too. Can you talk to us a little bit about that too?

15:27 Cravings, mood, and the brain connection

15:27Chris:So, absolutely. You have to think of this like fructose metabolism, which is what we're really talking about here, happens in energy sensitive tissues. It will happen in your gut lining a little bit, but that's typically not the main source of metabolic dysfunction. The bigger one is liver. Fructose metabolism is very strong in the liver, and it'll probably soak up about 80% or so of the dietary fructose that you eat, kind of filtering the rest of the body in a way. It makes sense as to why you'll start to see liver fat form if you have a high sugar diet or a high alcohol diet, since that's going to be the primary place things will start to go wrong.

16:14Chris:But beyond that, the other energy sensitive tissues are your vascular system, the lining of your blood vessels. Those are very energy sensitive as well. That's probably where the body made fructose a little bit more comes in, because most of the dietary fructose gets sucked up in the liver. But then the other side of it is the brain, which you mentioned. The brain's a fascinating one, because fructose itself doesn't cross the blood brain barrier. So then you would probably think, well, then it's not an issue. However, they've actually identified that fructose metabolism is very active in the brain, especially in targeted areas.

16:57Chris:There's a pathway in the body that allows glucose to be converted into fructose, and it seems to activate when glucose levels are high. So if you think about it from that perspective, we know the brain runs on glucose, it's a huge soak when it comes to that. So if you have high glucose levels in the brain, that means fructose metabolism is activating, and the same downstream energy conserving, low energy signaling thing is going to happen in the brain. It's basically starting to look like that's how the brain triages energy.

17:37Chris:If you think about it from the survival perspective again: if I don't have enough food, or if there's some uncertainty in my environment, what are the things I would want to turn off, and what are the things I want to prioritize? I'm going to need to prioritize movement. I'm going to need to prioritize vision, because otherwise I'm never going to find food again. But do I really need reproduction? Do I really need short-term memory? So now are we going to talk about the downstream effects of PCOS, or PMOS as it's been reclassified? Or are we going to talk about cognitive dysfunction, like Alzheimer's disease, and those kinds of patterns, because it all starts to fit really well.

18:39Chris:If we just talk about Alzheimer's for two seconds: basically there is massive evidence that targeted areas of the brain are running on low cellular energy, and that's what kind of seems to emerge with these plaques and things like that. What happens in Alzheimer's patients is they can still see, they can still move, they can still generally find food, until things progress to a state where they're struggling so hard that even those start falling apart. It kind of gives an argument as to how these things form and why, simply because this energy triage is happening.

19:16Chris:So when you start to look at it that way, suddenly this little survival pathway that's just in our sugar could really be having a major effect across the entire body. I start to think of it like an alarm signal, where a fire alarm is fine in a single room, but we never install it in just a single room. We need it throughout the entire house, so that if anything goes wrong, we know about it. Perhaps this is working the same way, where in all the energy sensitive areas of your body, it uses fructose to trigger conservation, because that's going to help us in the short term. The problem only becomes when we leave it on too long, because fructose is not a toxin. It's not going to kill the cell or anything like that. All it does is drop the energy level down to minimal levels, because it's perhaps trying to triage energy and manage it, saying, okay, we need to get through a bit of a difficult time here, or take advantage of an opportunity, so that the body can last a little bit longer.

20:22Jess:Is that why we're so tired?

20:24Chris:Yes.

20:25Jess:Is that why we feel so exhausted if we're living this kind of a diet?

20:30Chris:I would say I have like a 99% confidence of that, personally.

20:35Chris:Yeah, I would say so, because if you think about it, the cell has less energy, and what happens within the cell to get there is it's creating a lot of inflammation. Doesn't that just sound like everybody? We're tired and we're sore, and we don't have that vitality we feel like we should have, or maybe the vitality we had when we were young, it's like it switches off. So I think this is that unspoken little bit of burden that's just under everyone. And I would also say it's not anyone's fault, because this is written into our biology.

21:11Chris:What do we like to eat? We like to eat sweet foods and salty foods and savory foods, and all of those foods can now be traced back to this signal. Maybe the reason we like those things is because it would help the animal survive. In contrast, we don't like bitter foods, some of those other flavors we don't really have an affinity toward, and those are the ones that are maybe more like the fat burning compounds, like polyphenols, that would counteract some of this signal. So it starts to look like a balance.

21:50Jess:Yeah, if you're struggling with fatigue, or if you're really tired, it's funny how the body craves the ice cream and you're not craving broccoli. I mean, some people might, but I think it's just funny how the body works, and what it actually looks like, what we want and what we need in the moment, for cravings to get us through. I remember being really exhausted, and it's like your body's saying, okay, what do I need to give me that quick energy so I can make it through the rest of the day?

22:42 Sugar substitutes, and why restriction alone backfires

22:20Jess:I wanted to get your opinion on, if we're talking about sugar and ingesting it and what can happen in the body, what about fake sugar? Like something like a Splenda, or something that's been marketed as more healthy, like a Stevia, for example, but it's not real sugar. What do you think about that?

22:42Chris:I think, just to be completely frank, I think those are great. I know there's some argument that some of these things are over-processed and maybe there's a little bit of a problem there, but I think the risk is so minimal compared to the fact that we're actually providing the body a survival signal. I think that is the real challenge, because if you're crushing your cellular energy the whole time, that's going to be a persistent problem that could last perhaps years, much more so than a tiny little toxin. So I would say, yes, I think those are great.

23:24Chris:The challenge might be that if you're trying to cut sugar just with restriction, that's a really high hill to climb. Because if you think about it, that means we have to be really careful about added sugars, about high glycemic carbohydrates, about alcohol, watch our salty food, make sure we get good sleep and hydrate really well. And it's like, well, then this is the same story we've been talking about for decades, and it's like, that's fine, I'll do some of it, but I'm not going to live that way for the rest of my life. That's the challenge: how do we actually make this actionable in a real way? I think that's the major challenge underlying this whole thing, because this is a survival system rather than a single molecule. If it was just sugar, it would be easy. But it's not, right? That's the challenge.

24:18Chris:If we think about this redundant alarm system, it explains why someone who is an alcoholic, or drinks a lot of alcohol, goes dry and suddenly eats a lot of sugar. It's so well documented that that happens. It's automatic, like the body tries to compensate. So if we're doing all of this compensation, just trying to keep the system alive because the body is trying to conserve, we've got to figure out some other strategies a little bit.

24:48Jess:Okay, so let's talk about some of those. Give us some strategies so we can work with our biology, right? One thing I'm taking away from this is let's work with it and not try to fight it, because can we do that? No. Probably, maybe for a little bit. But give us some strategies, especially because a lot of times when we learn these strategies and tips to help support our bodies, that's probably when the weight loss, if that's a goal of yours, whoever's listening, that's probably when things will start to click and work. So can you give us some tips on what we can do about this?

25:26Chris:I would love to. Would it be a good idea to talk about fruit for two seconds, just because I have a feeling everyone's like, well, then I don't want to cut fruit because fruit's healthy.

25:36Jess:I do agree, but I feel like there's this kind of a side where we have to address that, because otherwise the argument falls apart.

25:44Chris:Absolutely.

28:23 Fruit is not the enemy

25:45Chris:So fruit is amazing, because fruit is a source of fructose, we know that. But it helps to think of what fruit is like in the wild, when it goes in, when it ripens, and the process and all that. Fruit starts as this dull, colorless, fibrous thing that is telling the animal, don't eat me yet. And the reason it tells you don't eat me yet is because the seeds aren't ready. From the plant's perspective, this is how the seeds will be distributed: I want an animal to eat me and then take my children elsewhere. That's how this works for the plant's perspective.

26:23Chris:So what it does is when it ripens, first of all, it's protecting itself. It has really high fiber, high polyphenols. It doesn't have sugars in it yet, has no bright colors. It's basically protecting itself almost with fat-burning compounds. And then it ripens, and you've got bright colors that say come and see me, smells that attract. It's full of sugar. The fructose content goes up and the fiber drops off. All of those little signals start getting replaced. And it almost makes sense why it ripens right before winter, where the animal will now come and eat it, and if they eat enough of it, they might activate this little bit of conservation signal right before wintertime.

27:15Chris:So you look at a bear, they'll eat hundreds of thousands of Oregon grape berries. They just all out binge on fruit if they get the opportunity, or honey, or whatever it might happen to be. Things that we like, we see as healthy, and yes, they are, but there's so much context here that matters, where the same fruit can go from this unripe, fat-burning thing that we don't really want to eat on our counter, to a fully ripened and sweet, delicious thing.

27:44Chris:And with that context, I think fruit can be a little bit better understood, where it serves a purpose in the wild. And because there's so much complexity there, it's not something to be afraid of. It's not something to say, okay, I'm not going to eat any fruit. The body can handle that bit of whole fruit quite easily, without really activating the survival signal too far. So I wouldn't say maybe don't juice your fruit, maybe don't dry your fruit, just because that bit of processing allows you to eat way more than you would otherwise, but otherwise, fruit's pretty good.

28:20Chris:So then back to your question of what do we do about it: don't worry about fruit. But it makes a lot of sense that you start with just cutting sugar, if that's the main dietary source, then cut it out. The problem is that many people can last like three days and then they fall off the rails. So you kind of have to ask the question of why cravings get worse when I cut sugar, based on this whole argument.

28:47Chris:I think it's actually very simple. If you think about this, it's half glucose and half fructose. Glucose is fuel, and fructose is restricting access to the fuel. So if you take away both, what you've basically done is taken away fuel and increased your fuel needs. So then cravings actually make more sense. It's like you're opening the bottleneck and increasing the demand and taking away what's going to fill the demand. So it makes sense to cut the fructose, but actually increase the glucose temporarily, so that you're filling that bit of demand.

29:24Chris:So I would say if you cut sugar, great idea, but replace it with complex carbohydrates, replace it with glucose sources. Just for a while. I know most of us probably want to go low carb, we recognize that's beneficial, but do that later, after you've restored your cellular energy. And then later on you can start talking about, okay, maybe if you want to level up, you drop your carbs, you drop your alcohol, but do that after your cells are starting to fire a little bit, after you feel the cravings drop and your energy is rebounding a little bit. That's a good signal that that might be the time to level up a bit.

30:01Jess:Oh, that's great. I've never seen that before. So with the glucose sources, you're talking about things like sweet potatoes and things like that?

30:11Chris:Yeah, exactly. Things that are not going to be a super high hit of glucose that'll just spike your glucose levels, like white rice, that kind of thing. Sweet potatoes, perfect thing.

30:24Jess:Slow carbs, right? I love that. That's such an actionable thing, because I bet you too, if you're doing it that way and not just cutting everything at the same time, you would feel so much better through that process too.

30:41Chris:So much better. The other little tip I'd give is maybe using MCT oil, kind of like a break-glass move. MCT oil gives you, it's like, not glucose, it's exogenous ketones. So your cells will soak up ketones, no problem. It's like an alternative fuel source. So if your cell is super hungry and you're not going to hit that level with glucose, just give it some ketones and it'll calm down, and it turns the cravings off a little bit faster. I'm not suggesting do this forever, but in getting over that little hump, where you're trying to let your cells wake up again with energy, I think that's a good move too.

31:26Jess:And then, so what is your philosophy about: say you want to cut out the sugar, you're doing it in this way, you're adding in some oil. What are your thoughts on, after you've been living this lifestyle, you're sustaining it, and you want an ice cream? Do we go back? Are we allowed to have treats, or do you have to start that process all over again? Talk to us about the sustainability, with enjoying our life.

31:51Chris:I think that's probably the most important question, because now we're talking about a survival system that's never going to turn off, right? Like, you do all of that, and maybe cravings will go down, but it doesn't mean that ice cream isn't going to taste good, right? So every once in a while that's going to creep up on you, and you'll have agency over the choice to eat it way more than otherwise, because the cravings are gone, but it still is going to be good. Honestly, I don't think a restrictive diet for the rest of your life is sustainable. I really praise the people who can accomplish that, but I don't personally, that's not how I want to live, because I want to enjoy life.

32:34Chris:So the other side of this topic is really discussing: can we control fructose metabolism itself? Because if sugar, carbohydrate, high glycemic carbs, alcohol, salty foods, dehydration, and all these things are all activating fructose metabolism, can we just control that instead of everything?

33:02 The fructokinase target and the essential fructosuria clue

32:59Chris:I think that is where the research is going to end up going. And as far as I can tell, everything hinges on an enzyme called fructose kinase. That's what causes that initial shift of consuming ATP and degrading it into uric acid. If you don't have fructose kinase, that doesn't happen. And a portion of our population doesn't. There's a small group that has a benign genetic condition called essential fructosuria, and they just don't have fructose kinase, and they don't get sick, they don't get metabolic illness. It's the weirdest thing.

33:36Chris:So it sort of says maybe this little enzyme is disposable, and this is actually the reason it exists, to kind of activate the survival signal. It also tells us that, when you don't have it, the body just pees it out. That's fructosuria, that's what it's named after. Your body just pees out the fructose. So a number of pharma companies are researching this. But in my research along the way, I discovered that some of them have actually identified polyphenols that do the same thing.

34:10Chris:And that's where I got super excited, because for three years I thought this is really amazing, but the only actionable thing I can see to do is just not eat sugar and do this insane control over my diet. So basically, there is a polyphenol called luteolin that's been identified as a potent fructose kinase inhibitor. To me, that's the most sustainable way to make this actually work, where you block to the extent possible, you buffer and block that signal from happening. So you're protecting your cellular energy, and then all of the diet stuff almost becomes less critical. Yes, do the healthy stuff to the extent you want to, to the extent possible, but I've always got this little bit of insurance happening in the middle. So if I do want an ice cream every once in a while and it feels worth it, then sure, I'll have one, and I'll just make sure I'm properly buffering the signal that's going to happen to my body. That's the way I've been living for the last three years, and I love it. It is so liberating, I can't even tell you.

36:50 SugarShield: how it works, and what Chris has noticed

35:21Chris:From my own personal experience, after taking a liposomal form of luteolin for about a month, I woke up with this euphoric feeling I've never had before. It felt like literally my cellular energy switched back on, and I felt amazing. And right around the same time, cravings just all out stopped. Me and my wife were sitting there one night, and it was like, do you want a cocktail or something? And both of us kind of looked at each other, like, not really. That sounds like it would be nice, but I don't really feel like it. It was weird enough that it stood out in our minds. Around the same time, we stopped eating cereal around nine o'clock, that late-night carb for no reason thing shut off.

35:56Chris:So all of that started happening, and then over the next, I'd say, six months, I lost weight without really trying. It just sort of melted away. So I feel like this ability to control that enzyme is going to be where everything changes. If everything is saying that this is where your cellular energy is dropping, then maybe controlling it is going to give us the most liberation, where we can eat healthy but not so obsessively as we used to.

36:40Jess:Yeah, because that's the goal. You want to enjoy your life. So tell us more about the supplement, and how you use it.

36:50Chris:So after doing this, I want to be very clear, the research all came first. And I honestly started taking something I just found online, because I was experimenting. I didn't expect any of those results, but it was like, whoa, okay, this is stronger than I expected. So eventually we came around to the point where we developed our own supplement called SugarShield, and it's as strong an attempt to control this pathway as we can come up with at the moment.

37:24Chris:So it's a liposomal form of luteolin, and that's important, because the body's luteolin doesn't really get through the gut very easily. Most of the preclinical research on it is done with injection and that kind of thing. So that protects it so it can actually get into all the different areas of the body. Liposomes are basically like encapsulating the ingredient in a little pocket of fat, so it survives the digestive tract. So it has a high potency luteolin, and we also pair it with tart cherry extract, because that's well-researched to help flush uric acid. So this whole concept is about protecting the cell and getting rid of the byproduct that would be slowing your mitochondria. Right at the moment, this is the best attempt we can make at working on this pathway.

38:24Chris:The results are, I think we're probably coming up on maybe 80% report a drop in cravings and improved energy within the first month.

38:32Jess:Oh my gosh, I mean, it's exciting, it's so exciting. When you think about it, you're like, well, kind of my weight kind of just effortlessly came off, but when all of a sudden those cravings aren't in your ear all the time, it's easy to see choices. Yes. It's not like, I've had cravings that are so strong I can't, it's almost like you can't stop yourself, and then I've had times where I'm more balanced, and it's like, oh, I could have a bite of that or I could not. But those cravings with sugar can be so intense.

39:04Jess:I do know about liposomes. I'm in skincare and that's something we use a lot with skin. They encapsulate different active ingredients. And also the cherry juice is very interesting, I do that at night for sleep, so I wonder if that helps with sleep with your clients as well.

39:21Chris:The more you pull on this, our research, I didn't expect us to go there, but it basically started to resolve a new model for metabolic dysfunction, and it freaked me out. I was not planning to go there, but you look across all metabolic disease and the same signature appears: low cellular energy, high inflammation, insulin resistance develops, and higher uric acid levels are there under the surface. It's the same signal we're seeing across all of us. So I'm not saying that fructose causes all metabolic dysfunction, but if a drop in cellular energy is at the root, then this might be why we went wrong, because toxins, environment, genetics, all of those will play a role. But I see that as a base level, the stuff you can't control very well, and then we're adding sugar on top of it, and that's the more universal thing.

40:21Chris:So when I started looking back through the historical record, when sugar arrived, gout was around hundreds of years ago, it feels like this is what tipped the scales into dysfunction, because suddenly we just started layering this on top of all of our little idiosyncrasies. And if it has this direct impact on cellular energy, I feel like maybe that's why chronic diseases cluster, why we have so much difficulty controlling and moderating them. I feel like this might be really big.

41:17 Where to find LIV3, and closing thoughts

41:00Jess:Well, this is, oh my gosh, it's so interesting. I can't wait to get mine. I am going to be trying it and I'll share with everybody what I think. But can you share, for people who want to learn more about you or SugarShield, where can everybody find you? And if there's any last things you want to share with us, let us know.

41:17Chris:Totally, totally. So our website is liv3health.com. And if you wanted to go deeper into this, it opens up conversations on obesity and cravings and fatigue and insulin resistance and fatty liver disease and cardiovascular disease and neurodegenerative stuff, all of that. I have a little YouTube channel that I've just been firing up called the Fructose Model, where we're trying to check out all those different things, because if this is as big as we think it is, then it should be unifying. Like the caloric model will still matter, but maybe the signal is why we over-consume calories. The insulin resistance model still matters, but maybe this is arguing that it's an adaptation because you've crippled your cellular energy, which is an interesting one, because it makes a lot of sense.

42:19Chris:If you were to allow too much glucose into your cell and the cell couldn't handle it, that would be toxic, too much substrate would actually kill the cell. So maybe insulin resistance is pushing back as an adaptation, saying, I can't handle any more, stop trying to feed me so much. And all of these existing ideas we've had, whether it's diets like cutting carbs, the keto diet, cutting alcohol, maybe this is why those help. It sits at the center, because it appears to be upstream of all of that. And that's what's so exciting to me.

42:58Chris:So yeah, our website is liv3health.com, and you can find SugarShield there, dig into our white papers and all sorts of stuff if you want to dive into the research. And to be frank, I want this challenged. If this is as significant as we think it is, then it should be easy to break, and if it's not easy to break, then we need to figure out where the gaps are, so we can actually figure this out. Because even if it's not exactly true, it will give a huge advancement to trying to understand how our metabolism works.

43:34Jess:Yeah, well, I love how you explain everything to us. It seems like a complicated thing for people who aren't good at all of this research, but you've really helped break it down in such a digestible way. So thank you so much. I will make sure I link everything, your YouTube, your website, in the show notes. So just go to the show notes, so it's easy to find. And Chris, thank you for being with me today.

43:57Chris:Thank you so much, Jess. It was a great chat.

44:02Jess:Thank you for listening to this week's episode. Please subscribe and review so we can reach more people who want to learn to glow alongside us. See you next time.