Essentials: Control Sugar Cravings & Metabolism with Science-Based Tools

“fructose and specifically fructose has the ability to reduce certain hormones and peptides in our body whose main job is to suppress ghrelin. So although I, and I think pretty much everyone out there, save for a few individuals, agrees that calories in calories out is the fundamental principle of weight loss may weight maintenance or weight gain, ingesting fructose shifts our hormone system, and as a consequence, our neural pathways within our brain, the hypothalamus, to be hungrier regardless of how many calories we've eaten.”

“One pathway in your brain and body is devoted to getting you to seek out sweet tasting things that you perceive as sweet, and another parallel pathway is devoted to getting you to seek out foods that lead to increases in blood glucose. It just so happens that the foods that lead to big increases in blood glucose typically are associated with that sweet taste.”

“We all have neurons within our gut. These neurons have a name. They are called neuropod cells. Neuropod cells were famously discovered by professor doctor Diego Bohorquez at Duke University, and these cells respond to, among other things, to the presence of sugar within the gut. These neuropod cells send electrical signals through a particular highway within the vagus to the so called nodose ganglion.”

“if you really wanted to adjust your sugar cravings and you really still want to ingest some sugary foods, you probably would be better off combining fiber with that sugary or sweet food. So what we're really talking about here is trying to reduce the dopamine signal that is the consequence of ingesting sweet foods, and we're talking about doing that through these different parallel pathways, not just by preventing sweet taste, but also by preventing the post ingestive effects of sweet foods.”

“there are many people who are experimenting with supplementing with glutamine several grams per day, often even, you know, five grams distributed through three or four different servings throughout the day, you know, as a way to blunt their sugar cravings. Now, there has not yet been a large scale clinical trial using glutamine to reduce sugar cravings, but the results of the few studies that I looked at as well as my understanding of the logic of these neural circuits including the neuropod cells brings us to a conclusion that it makes sense why if there's a population of neurons within our gut that responds very robustly to the presence of sugar, fatty acids, or amino acids, that the intake of particular amino acids would allow the dopamine pathways that might otherwise be triggered by sugar to be triggered by something like glutamine”

“lemon juice and lime juice, a couple tablespoons or so, if ingested before or even during or even after consumption of sugary foods, or I should say foods that sharply increase blood glucose or large carbohydrate meals can actually blunt the blood glucose response. And I did see that when I did my own experiments on myself with Continuous Glucose Monitor.”

“cinnamon can be a useful tool for controlling blood sugar and indeed that's the case. It's very clear that cinnamon can adjust the rate of glucose entry into the bloodstream possibly by changing, the rate of gastric emptying. It might slow the rate of gastric emptying, and thereby also reduce the glycemic index of particular foods... Cinnamon contains something called coumadin, which can be toxic at high levels. So you don't want to ingest more than about a teaspoon, maybe a teaspoon and a half of cinnamon per day”

“Using berberine is a serious step, you should absolutely talk to your doctor about it. It is true that if you ingest berberine, your blood glucose will plummet. And I point that out because I've actually tried it before. It gave me brutal headaches, and I felt really dizzy. And I felt like I couldn't see straight. And actually, I couldn't see straight. Why did it do that? Well, it made me hypoglycemic. It actually drove my blood glucose down too far. And the reason it did that is that I took berberine on an empty stomach.”

“many people have experienced the effects of disrupted sleep on their appetite. And in particular, it's been reported that when people are sleep deprived or the quality of their sleep is disrupted, their appetite for sugary foods increases. Now we don't wanna leap too far from this study to sugar metabolism and the neural circuits controlling sugar metabolism, but I will say this. There is now a plethora of data pointing to the fact that getting quality sleep each night helps regulate not only appetite, but also the specific forms of metabolism that drive specific appetites.”