Breaking Free: The Journey Beyond Sugar Addiction

Introduction and Mike Collinsu2019 background 0:00

Hi, everyone. Welcome to the reversing Type 2 Diabetes Summit 2.0 Edition. It's my distinct honor to interview Mike Collins, the founder of the Quit Sugar Summit, also known as the Sugar-Free Man. Mike has been on this journey for quite a while. He's really an advocate of people eating healthy food, nutritious food, making sure that they are well aware where there might be hidden dangers for sugar that's lurking in today's world. You know, when you eat food that someone else has prepared or packaged food, you might be surprised what lurks in those packages.

So we all need to be better informed. Right. So, Mike, welcome to the summit. Thank you Beverly, I appreciate. It's always an honor and always a pleasure to talk to you. Yeah, same here, man. Give us a little thumbnail, if you would, an overview of your background and what got you into this work. I think it's important that people know that. Well, that's a you got an hour, We'll take up the whole hour. But now I got the podcast version at the short version. So I actually started a generation back.

My my grandmother died when my mother was just eight years old. And when they moved in with her, my great in her or they they they owned a country store across the way. And they said any time my little mother walked into that store, she could have any kind of candy. She wanted. And it was a great gesture for someone who was just lost her mom. But she really believed I believe she died believing this, that sugar was love. And that's how we grew up in. You can't even imagine the amount of sugar that I had access to or I ate and drank my in my childhood.

Right. It was just insane. Like like you. We had unfettered access to the Sugar Bowl. We could put as much sugar as we wanted on the and the corn flakes or whatever, and scrape off a half an inch. And with the milk it was, it was and then candy and whatever. But anyway, that's how I grew up as a kid. So I was, you know, inundated with it. And and here's the thing. I didn't know that I was changing how I felt emotionally with sugar. And that's an important part of what we'll talk about. But when I hit 14 or 15, I ran into beer and I knew that changed my state.

I knew that I was shy and that I if I drank beer behind the high school, I could talk to the girls at the dance. Right. Well, anyway, fast forward, I got sober at 28. Long story. But, you know, I'm an open book. We can talk about that if you want. But I went right back to sugar, as many people do when they quit smoking, cigarettes or drinking or whatever. And I gained a bunch of weight. I'm pretty thin guy and athletic and I gained weight and, you know, I started getting acne and rosacea. Like, I didn't even have rosacea when I drank beer, but I started to get it with the sugar and the people that I knew in recovery, they were all gaining weight as well.

And real quick, rapid like 50 pounds in a year kind of stuff. And so I started studying it and I started to realize that it was pretty much the same. There was a book that came out back in the day, Sugar Blues, and I really enjoyed that. The guy eventually married Gloria Swanson, who was a real health nut for her day, you know, the movie star. Anyway, I met a woman and we had kids, and I raised those children. They had no sugar in the womb or until they were six years old. And we you and I talked about it just before we went on.

That's very helpful. And that experiment worked. My kids, you'd think I was lying if I if I told you all their escapades as their you know, how their brain works and their their college entrance exams and their careers today, that really did help. I do believe I'm not that smart, Beverly, but these guys are like rocket scientist smart. So anyway, that's about it. I got involved in the sugar addiction after I kind of semi-retired sugaraddiction.com and founded the summit about seven years ago and been interviewing the experts like yourself all over the world for seven years and it just it's the love of my life.

I so many people have put type two in remission in our programs

Sugar addiction and the brain 4:20

that it's just I it to me I don't want to say paper tiger yet because we're getting some grad students in to study it more so we have some more evidence based stuff. But I mean, I see so many type two remission after they get rid of the sugar in the flower that I just I know that if there's not if it's not a direct cause, it's it's related, you know, and obviously we have to get more science, but I see it all the time. So that's how I got here. Cool. Cool. Thank you for sharing your story with us.

You know, I think it's important that people understand that there's different ways in which an intolerance to certain kinds of carbohydrates, especially highly refined, ultra processed carbohydrates, can really be people's weakness. And Achilles heel. Unless we are aware of that, we run the risk of having generations of people who struggle, whether it's issues with alcohol issues, other kinds of addictions, problems with sweet tastes, like you were saying, like sweet sugar is love and people get that emotional association.

It gets really, really embedded. So what are the top three things that people have to know if they are trying to get a hold of the sweet tooth? They know this is their issue. Wow. Yeah, that's it's some of it sounds a little counterintuitive, but a any one, whenever you want to, you have to eat whole food. Okay. You have to stop eating bags, boxes, cans, packages, takeout. You have to know where your food's coming from because 84% of the groceries in the foods, in the grocery store have sugar in them.

And so you have to be careful there. But the second part is less understood. And I believe the most important part of the message that I'm that I deliver out there is that it actually has nothing to recovery, change, transformation. Putting the sugar down has almost nothing to do with food. It really becomes and a an emotional management system. As a young child, you were exposed to so much sugar that your brain was wired. And this is all about the brain, and that's number three. But this is all about the brain.

Your brain was wired to have sugar when you felt sad, when you felt upset, when you felt worried, and your parents were likely complicit in this and that, you know, they gave you a cookie and had you to the TV when they were busy with the other kids or their job or whatever. And the more than I do this every day, the more that I know that this is a substance use disorder, it is that it's a drug addiction that has literally rewired the brain. And we need to pave that brain over and begin a new neural pathway where we self-soothe in other ways.

Meaning and I call it the difference between effort based dopamine and substance based dopamine. Okay. And the third, as I mentioned, is this is mostly in order to to change that sweet tooth, you have to study two things. One, fructose, not the glucose out of the molecule, but the fructose half of the molecule, the table sugar molecule, and that this is in the brain and it's not in your stomach, it's not what you eat, It's not the sweet taste in your mouth. The ability to quit revolves around what's going on with your brain chemistry.

Okay. I always tell people if you want to get off sugar, study fructose, right? It's the frontal cortex, the frontal lobe that is affected by sugar. So it's it's it's like I said, it's just a little tweak in what people already know. They know that the glucose is causing diabetes, weight gain, heart disease, possibly Alzheimer's, maybe. But they don't know that. The cure, if you will. I don't want to say cure. I shouldn't say cure, but that's one of the solutions to understand that the fructose is affecting why they can't stop.

Okay. Very important distinction. So they a little bit more about that because, oh, boy, it was about 18, maybe 20 years ago. There was a fair amount of noise made in 25 years ago about people who have diabetes being told, oh, just high fructose. It's so much better for you that it's a safe, healthy choice. Right. Blah, blah. Right. And I'm like, yeah, Particularly when people have issues with a fatty liver, you're like, What kind of advice is that? So say more about what you mean behind this issue with fructose.

So that's a sugar folks that typically found resistance in fruit. Yeah, no thanks. It's important, I think. Thanks for asking because you mentioned the liver. Okay, let's just you start with the liver and then we'll go to the brain again. So in essence, we have an epidemic of five year olds with fatty liver disease, okay? Five year olds. Now, this is an alcoholic's disease simply because alcohol and fructose are processed in the liver. Fructose can only be processed in the liver. Okay. It doesn't have it's completely the stage or meaning.

It doesn't have a function in the human body that we've ever found. Okay. And so the fructose creates the fatty liver and then by extension, creates fat in the body. But when you move it to the body, the research is very clear. And this is really fructose research is not that old in a lot of ways. The deep fructose research in the last 3 to 5 years, the fructose understand the understanding of the fructose on the brain has really increased. Okay. And we realized that it's activating the dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine, GABA, oxytocin, adrenal glands, endorphin, all of these brain and body reward chemicals are activated by fructose.

And we've learned literally as humans to hack a 10 million year old evolutionary system that was created to find food and shelter, food and and and sex. Okay. To recreate this and create the species, continue the species. But what we've done is to hack it by sitting on the couch eating sugar. Okay? The weight gain, the the liver, fatty liver, the fat, the weight gain, but more importantly, the I always tell people the reason they can't quit is and the reason they continue to have cravings for sugar every time.

If I told you to quit steak for a month, you say, okay, I like you. Do it. Quit broccoli. No problem. But when I tell people to quit sugar, they all try, but they seemingly cannot do it. They, they, they, they they fail. At this simple task, this adult task of not eating sugar for 30 days. The reason is, is because not because you want to. You're craving a sweet taste. That's a subconscious thing. What you're really craving is a dopamine hit or a chemical,

Fructose, fatty liver, and cravings 11:30

a neurochemical that was created for you to help find food and sex. Right. And we hacked it in this modern age. And this goes back about 300 years from, you know, when sugar ascended. But I swear to you, if people could just I believe what I'm describing right here is the key to the obesity crisis, the diabetes crisis world wide, because this connection is not being made. We are all focused on the glucose in the body and the fat and the that that that they're not figuring out how do I stop And you've experienced it.

We talked about it before. People we can explain to them that they can't have sugar but when they try to stop, they can't seem to succeed. They over and over, they repeat this process because they're not understanding this one little piece of the puzzle. So, yeah, it's a it's not. I like this phrase from a future. It is actually a science fiction writer. The future is already here. It's just not evenly distributed. So people, they don't like you. And I know some of the things that I'm talking about, and we've talked down to experts and they get it because they've been researching.

But the general public is still stuck in this diet mentality of eat less and exercise more for weight loss and health. And they can't they haven't yet really received this information. So I'm really glad you're helping to bring it out. To, I think giving their avenue or an understanding of, you know, what was historically true. And now in this modern moment that was not or, you know, the right environment that we all pull in the social. It's not that if you participate in this nonstop festival of sugar like you are somehow not part of the tribe.

You know, a lot of people talk about their social life and say, what am I going to eat when I leave the house? What do I do when I go to a party? so people ask, you know, should I bring my own food? Like, how do I navigate? What are your tips make for people to navigate this world time where we are just bombarded with sugar, added sugar, sometimes sugars in recipes or ingredients and doesn't even taste sweet, which is really unfair because then people don't know unless they actually read the label.

Right? Right. You know, it's such an interesting question and I call it adulting, right? Like like we talked about in a minute, a minute ago that people, like don't seem to be able to they birth children. They've got advanced degrees. They've done a lot of great things in their life, but they're not able to stand their ground when someone is offering them a piece of cake. Right. And look, it's no it's no fault of their own, right. I mean, this is in culture that it's ingrained in the culture. Every ceremony from birth to death includes you know, we talked about before we came out, we were recording just before Super Bowl Sunday.

And and it's like this anything a funeral, a baby shower, it doesn't matter what it is, is covered up with this sweet product. And now all of these holidays have been co-opted or hijacked. And whatever way you want to talk like Halloween. I mean, yeah, how William, Of course. But Valentine's Day, I mean, what the heck? It's like it's not a chocolate holiday. It's. It's a long holiday, right? Well, I. Agree with you. It's so much bigger. It's ridiculous. I can't I just don't understand it. But anyway, I do understand.

I understand where it came from because I'm a, you know, researcher of history. I understand where the the hobbies came from. They came from the candy manufacturers. And they and they create they, they hijacked the the holidays. But what I'm getting at here is that the folks have literally a and this is part of our our you know educational process in the in trying to change is that you're likely in a system like that could be your family you know your friends, your workmates whatever where this is happening and you have to say that big word no you have to be able to say no and be okay with it.

You know what I mean? Not not really worry about it. But people really do. They think that they're being judged. And I always tell people, you know, you quit drinking. People are like, yeah, you quit smoking, good job, you quit using sugar. And they're like, What? Why they're done to you? And they get all bent out of shape about it. It's just, I don't understand. I mean, I do understand it, but I just it's kind of sad. And especially with the kids, you know, when the kids get past five or six, it's almost expected that this is going to be part of every event they go to.

And so it's been the cultural part of it is really a big part in change. Okay. You have to have some sort of support, some group of people, like I'm sure most of the people listening to this summit who cannot leaning towards researching this and understanding it a little deeper. But it's not an easy it's not an easy shift. I do believe that it's going to take time. It is a culture phenomena that needs to be changed and hopefully it will be soon. And with this, if you keep doing stuff, it's and I keep to it's.

Definitely, definitely I hear you about that. So folks you know as you listen this think about the role that sugar plays in your life. You know, is it a reward? Is the withdrawal of it a punishment? Do you see it as a way to extend and help your health span and to be healthy, or do you just miss it? You know, is it deeply emotional for you or is it just a substance you just keep sneaking into your diet and you're like, Dang, I thought I'd gotten rid of all of it. And I don't know, you look at the back of a packet to go, There it is again, right?

Like, I just felt you have to be vigilant and thoughtful. It won't happen by accident, that's for sure. Truly, it's eternal vigilance. Yeah. Yeah. In this society, I mean, you know, I have hope that it will change that. I think in 50 years they're going to say, you know, they used to give Sherry to kids. Right. I'm just hoping that that evolution happens and that's going to take more diagnostic proof of all of the things we kind of already know. We just don't have exact proof, you know? Yeah, I see more and more dentists now, particularly pediatric dentists.

My kids were younger. I of course, I take them to the dentist and I'm noticing they're not offering lollipops and I'm loving that shift. Yeah, that's great. Finally. That was so, so different. You know, they're going there to fix their teeth, and you're offering them sugar? Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so let's do some myth busting while we're here.

Navigating sugar in daily life and culture 18:30

Let's start with what's your favorite myth? The bust. When it comes to this whole concept of just, you know, walking away from sugar, where is it that you see people struggle because they've got one set of thoughts in their mind? Then? But the reality is actually a little different. Yeah. You know, I hate to sound like a broken record, but it really is that idea that it's not the food, it's not the sugar. You talked about it a minute ago, is that people view it as a restriction, right? They view it as they're losing something, right?

They're losing a to a treat, a pleasure. Right. I'll give you a true story. So just a couple of days ago, someone called me about coaching. And this woman is £100 overweight. And she when at the end of the day, the decision was made that she can't give it up because she cannot give up these foods. Right. She cannot give up these sweets, these salad dressings, these different things. And it's just really not about that. I mean, you have to really resign yourself to the fact that this is about your health, this is about your wellness and that and this is a big a big thing that I talk about lately is that we find ourselves like cigarets, like cigarets in public places, seat belts, condoms in bathrooms.

We find ourselves in an evolutionary wrong turn that now science has said this is what's happening. So, you know, it's just a level of acceptance at this point of the actual research and proof from people who have like I'm sure in your practice, put Type 2 in remission by diet, reduce their dependency on medication, and if they can like kind of get that, they use this term a lot, this adulting part of it and like we are not children who can't have not have our candy at five. We've got to bust this idea that it is some that we are trying to, you know, as as professionals trying to mitigate this damage that's caused by the sugar.

We're not trying to take something away from you. We're trying to give you health. We're trying to help you get health. And that and I think another thing is that and I've been pretty strong on this lately and two things. One, likely, if they're listening to this some and had a different difficult time, their brain is compromised to a point where they're not able to make the decision correctly. And that tangentially with that and running right next to it is that this is a substance use disorder.

This is a drug addiction, and that it's the dose makes the poison. This is a neurotoxin that we are ingesting and and because we can give it to a baby right now, people somehow think that it's okay. And I should be able to do just a little. Right. And I'm busting about five myths in a row here. We should be able to do just a little. Right. But some people biochemically cannot ingest sugar without creating cravings for more. It's just been proven now. And so when if that's you, it's not good. It's not bad.

It just is like the color of your hair or the color of your eyes. You have to accept that we all know that person who can have a half a glass of wine, but we also have a friend who drinks too much and we say to ourselves, Why don't they just stop? And you have to say that to yourself in a level of acceptance that that's what you need to do. Maybe now people always ask me, Mike, do I have to do it for the rest of my life? I'm like, Maybe, you know, but at least as an adult, give yourself what I call a 90 day window, a 90 day gift.

I call it the scratch test. Just test your body with 100% abstinence. We will refine the way the skin problems, the the higher one sees. We will rebate all that back to you because all you got to do is start again on day 91. But I guarantee you they will not go back if they really truly try it just as a test. As an experiment. So that's a great way to put that. Yeah. I don't want to get on a soapbox, but, you know, I it's frustrating because I experience the same thing you do is like people really say that they want this, but then they're not willing to do some of the things that are a little counterintuitive and sometimes even may be stigmatized to recognize the term addiction, the idea that it could be something that they may have.

You started to use the word words, slight dependency. And some people seem to accept that better than the word addiction. So. Yeah, I know what you're getting at here, right? Unfortunately, the issues around stigma are real and, you know, there's perception and then there's reality. And sometimes we just fighting against stigma. No matter what we do. It's presumed that if someone has type two diabetes, that they've somehow partied their way through that diagnosis and they're at fault for their health here in the U.S., at least maybe not other countries, but certainly here it is absolutely a social habit to blame people for their health problems, even when it's absurd on its face.

And that's often the case. And I think that what goes on with the judgment and the blaming and shaming for type two diabetics is really unfair and often has got nothing to do with it because sometimes it's the case. People have no idea how these things are related and nobody's trained the time to teach them this. They didn't grow up with it. They didn't learn in school. Maybe they see it in their family, right? Like it's just not obvious. What if somebody has been super stressed? Maybe they're a first responder and maybe they work in the trauma ward of a hospital.

Maybe they are a firefighter or a police officer. Maybe they're in the military. Maybe they're a single parent who's just juggling way too much and they're really, really stressed all the time. That don't get you the Type 2 diabetes. So will obstructive sleep apnea, etc.. There's all kinds of ways that it's become and I do diabetic. And in that the idea of stigma sometimes when I've seen clinically and I'm sure you've seen it in your work, it is a factor that often keeps people from getting the help that they deserve because the people who should know better, who should be completely willing to meet that person where they're at and help them, doesn't do it because they're so busy being judgmental or the person who has the problem doesn't want to get shamed and blamed anymore.

And so they stop asking for help. And yeah, knowing that, then asking for help is you're hitting on a big one right there that people like. They don't guys especially I mean, I'm sure I don't know the same with you but you know, 95% of people that come to me are women like the guys. They just don't want to they don't want to talk about it and asking for help in an addictive process or change process like that is I don't want to say mandatory, but it's dang near mandatory.

Myths, stigma, and asking for help 25:40

You know, you really do need to be able to have a support group around you, people that are doing the same thing that you want to do. Yeah, we're tribe animals, you know, we want to do stuff together and there's now lots of peer reviewed studies. Even if it's cancer, it doesn't matter if you join a support group, your chances of change, your chances of not, you know, getting cancer again, keep it in remission, go way, way up. And the same thing here, you know, it's the exact same thing. So, you know, don't be afraid to reach out, ask for help, you know, ask somebody or go in and get your self tested.

People are a little afraid of getting tested, you know? I mean, they gotta want to know. Yeah. Or whatever, you know, or they keep putting it off. But I think it's important. So, Mike, you know, let's take a peek at the whole concept of willpower, because I think there's a subtext here that people can muscle through, you know, like they're just strong enough. They'll be able to conquer everything. And I've I've yet to see that work. My understanding is from the research, like there's research nearby here at Stanford. Dr.

B.J. Fogg, other people, right. We've got about 15 minutes, people. It's a quarter of an hour. We got like 15 minutes of willpower In any given day, that is not a lot. So that means if we're going to be able to make decisions and choices once that 15 minutes is done, we're kind of cooked, right? So now what do we do? Yeah, yeah. Willpower is a so funny as I was going to talk about it as soon as you said it before the break, but it's like willpower in an addictive process is almost not a construct.

It's just not. What I was laying out before is that this idea that like we don't and honestly do not know what we are actually craving, this is the crazy part. Like people don't people think that they want this crunchy taste or this sweet taste or they crave ice cream or whatever, None of it. So what when you get some absence 30, 60 days, you start to have this gap of time where you can say, What am I really? What am I? And this is a question I make people ask themselves, What do I really need right now?

Sit down, have a glass of water and say, What do I really need? Likely it's some, you know, resolution to a relationship problem or work problem or finance problem or kid problem. It's something else that you need and you only wanted the dopamine hit, not the taste, to just make you forget about that for a minute. Just make you feel better to assuage the feeling for a little while. Right? And when people realize this, when they cleave apart this, when they raised to the subconscious from the subconscious level, the need for dopamine, then they go for a walk instead and they in innate.

And also what happens during the process. And as they let go, sometimes old trauma resurfaces like things that were not processed. You don't have closure on resurface and you start to get this free floating anxiety. And what did we used to do when we had free floating anxiety? We went back to we went to the sugar, Right. Well, now you don't have the sugar. So a, you've got to figure out a new way to soothe yourself, to self soothe yourself. Right. And that usually involves some sort of effort. And it can be get a hug or, you know, get a massage or manicure or walk or something.

Go to yoga. But, you know, it's got to be something that isn't the substance. And when we finally, like, have time, it's not an instant gratification thing. We can really separate these two things. Right. And again, it's not willpower. Like, I always laugh at the Stanford. I think it was Stanford, the study, and you've seen it where the little children are given one marshmallow. It's a black and white thing. You've seen it. They give one marshmallow so that they can wait 5 minutes. We'll give them two.

And I always say to myself, like, that has nothing to do with their willpower. It has to do with they they know that unconsciously, even at five that they would get you know, they would feel better about themselves if they ate that one right now. And so that little trick, that little like tweak in the in the knowledge or the the acceptance of how to do this little thing, how to how to cut back or quit, I think changes a lot of lives. I know it does because I've seen it. So. Yeah, yeah, definitely.

You know, I think these are early imprints and way, way back in human history, the availability of things that were sweet was not year round, not in any climate. And also you couldn't just go and get it on demand. It's so different in today's world. And so we're built for that prior moment and know this moment. I think that's part of why we're seeing this international wreckage when it comes to metabolic health, when it comes to blood sugar regulation and all the things that are related, you know, whether it's fertility issues with dementia and Alzheimer's, metabolic rates, cancer, weight apnea, sleep apnea, things of that nature, you just see all of these like a Venn diagram with all these circles of interconnected things that are being affected by this blood sugar thing.

Because back in the day when we had sweets, it would have been fresh and in season local it also would have been acquired because you had to go pick it and get it yourself. You were physically active. Yeah, you couldn't possibly overeat because really, how many berries or apples could you eat at one time? And so and it wasn't concentrated. It hadn't been ultra processed, it wasn't highly refined so much, you know, like, how are we going to handle it? Because the day we're all is not reasonable. It's not set up for us to win.

I actually love the evolutionary description of this game because I believe it 100%. Okay. And you know, we were getting fructose, like you say, once a year, literally, You know,

Willpower, self-soothing, and evolutionary mismatch 31:50

I mean, I don't even want to bring this up because it confuses people a little bit. But even the vegetables that we have, the greens and everything, they have been hybridized to take the bitterness out and they have some fructose and all that actually. But the greens we ate 4000 years ago did not. But those little crab apples, those you know, bananas don't look anything like they, we got very little of this stuff. And you know, if you want to get stung by a bee, you could get a little more. But that was it.

Like that was it for the year, like. And so that's why the body doesn't have this process to handle the alter process. Assault that we're getting now. Right. And that that evolutionary tip trick idea concept construct, if we could just get that part and then look into the fructose research, look into this, the sugar, the processed sugar research about how what it's doing in the brain and body, it would literally walk people out. Like, first of all, I want to say real important gathering information, More information on this summit or anywhere else is not helpful.

Okay? It's just not helpful. It literally produces dopamine. You can Google folks, dopamine information gathering and dopamine. Okay. You're going to get this long list of things that it creates dopamine, right? Not a peer reviewed studies. People come to me with no exaggeration. They're smarter than me about macros and food and diet. And I got doctors and, you know, therapists in these people. They know what they're doing, but they still can't put down the sugar because they're not willing to do the things that we've discussed here, which is give themselves some abstinence to see what their body does.

Right. And to actually do it. It's a very experiential thing. And I want to it's not something you can think yourself of. You really have to experience 100% abstinence just for a time. I don't think there's a doctor on the planet that would go against his health or her health plan that said, I'm just going to quit sugar for 30 days or 60 days. They're not going to say, don't do that. So try it. Just try it. Just give yourself 60 days and and see if you don't lose a few pounds and feel a little bit better.

Yeah, Yeah. Give yourself a chance to do that, that reset, you know, resets your taste buds on your tongue, The conversation, your tongue and taste buds both have with your brain and all the rest of the cues. Right. I've had so many patients say that when they take sugar out of their diet, they are shocked at how many ways in which they just feel better. Like they feel spiritually more free. Yeah, I'll tell you a quick survey So we do surveys and we're talking. We got hundreds people lost hundreds of pounds.

We've got hundreds of type 2 diabetes remissions. And you know what the one thing that they really are excited about in this, it's not those two things. They're like two and three on the list. The number one thing is that their brain came back fine. They remember better, they focus better. They don't have headaches anymore. They're not irritable anymore. Right. This is the number one thing. Okay. And this very easy to explain. You know, the inflammation caused by sugar of all parts of the body and brain.

We literally have like a type we've heard of this, you know, a type 2 of a metabolic syndrome of the brain. And we just you know, it's inflammation of the brain. And when that subsides from quitting the sugar, all of the brain works a little bit better. And folks like they're really, really excited about that part of it, you know? Yeah. Yeah. We just want to give people as many tools and in many ways to be in charge of their health and to understand how critical it is. The choices that we make each day where we have a choice.

Yeah, we don't have a choice. Just understand as quickly as you possibly can to correct the situation so that you can be healthy and well and you can enjoy your later years rather than be terrified about what the future might hold. Yeah, Yeah. I mean, people just need to look in their in their family to see the type 2 diabetes or the Alzheimer's or whatever heart disease, you know, and and know that that may be their future. And to accept the idea that the research is now proving that it was just the diet in a lot of ways.

You know not it's not hereditary in a lot of ways. In a lot of cases. Yeah. Yeah. The environment is what makes the expression. Even if you have a genetic likelihood of something, you're nutrition in your environment, your stress, your sleep make a difference right about your food, be your medicine let your medicine be your food. It's an oldie and a goody. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. No, it's a it's a hard one. Look, I mean, it's in culture and in too deep in the society to to snap your fingers and have it change.

But it, it it's doable. You've done it. Help people do it. And I've done it, so I know it's it's possible. I just. I don't know how to like I want to reach through the screen a lot of times and shake people a little bit and say just give it a try and and just, you see what see what happens. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally. Mike, I appreciate you so much for being a part of the summit. It's always great to get your pearls of wisdom and insights and share it with our audience. Thank you for being here. If people want to get in touch with you, how do they do that?

Yeah, I mean, you can always go to sugaraddiction.com and there's a free ebook you can download used to be an Amazon bestseller. We brought it home and you can go there, you know, just like you. We have a summit you can go to Quit Sugar summit and give us your email and when we have the next event, we'll we'll send you some information about that. All right, Great. Mike, I appreciate you being on this journey. We're all trying to help people have healthier lives. Friends, you know, these episodes, if you will, kindly share them with others who could benefit from this information. We sure would appreciate it.

All right. Thank you so much for your time. Interest and attention. Take care.