This is my puppy Herman...
And this is me. My name is Ethan.
One day not long ago, Herman and I went for a walk.
We started at our apartment, here in Los Angeles...
And walked up here, into the Hollywood Hills...
Where we came across the most incredible house either of us had ever seen.
I ended up chatting with a neighbor, who told me this house had just sold for $33 million...
I asked him who bought it, and he said “some pharmaceutical guy.”
When I got home, I looked up the house online, and learned more about it...
It’s called “The Stanley House”...
The interior was designed by Lenny Kravitz...
And it was indeed purchased for $33 million...
Which was actually a bargain, because the asking price was $38 million.
The “pharmaceutical guy” who bought it is a member the family that owns one of the biggest pharmaceutical companies in the world.
This pharmaceutical company makes $40 billion a year selling popular prescription medications for diabetes, cancer, heart disease, cholesterol, and many, many other serious health problems...
Which is a good thing...right?
If you suffer from a disease, you should take medicine for it...shouldn’t you?
Well... yes...
But then I started doing a little research...
And what I learned inspired me to make this video.
For example...
Did you know, according to the Centers for Disease Control, the average lifespan of Americans is actually declining?
How is that possible, I wondered?
Despite being one of the wealthiest countries in the world...
With access to science, technology, and medicine that is unparalleled in human history....
And pharmaceutical companies selling drugs to treat heart disease, cancer, diabetes and Alzheimer’s...
How are Americans actually living shorter lives than we were just a few years ago?
And here’s the other interesting thing I learned...
As recently as 100 years ago...
These health issues did not exist.
At least, not at anywhere near the rates they do now.
According to the CDC, the top 10 leading causes of death today are:
Heart disease
Cancer
Accidents
Chronic lower respiratory infection
Stroke
Alzheimer’s disease
Diabetes
Influenza & pneumonia
Kidney disease
Suicide
But in the year 1900, the leading killers of Americans were:
Influenza & pneumonia
Tuberculosis
Gastrointestinal infections
My grandma had cancer. I have a cousin living with type 2 diabetes.
I have to admit
I thought they were “natural,” I guess...
Just kind of the luck of the draw.
But what I’ve learned is, these health problems aren’t as natural as we think...
Meaning – we don’t have to accept them as a way of life.
In fact, we’ve actually developed them, as a society, over the last several decades.
The question is....
Why?
And... if we created these problems... does that mean we can solve them?
According to what I’ve learned... the answer seems to be yes.
Way back in 1898, the first comprehensive study on diabetes was conducted.
A medical student named Elliot Joslin looked at the record of every patient treated at Massachusetts General Hospital since 1824 – a 74 year span.
Among the 48,000 patients treated, only 172 had been diagnosed with diabetes – just 0.3%.
Today, 1 in every 7 to 8 adults in America has diabetes...
Diabetes expert Kelly West diabetes “one of the most important of human problems.”
And he said that 40 years ago, in 1978...
(Which, coincidentally, is when I was born.)
But here’s the good news...
There is mounting evidence that heart disease, cancer, stroke, Alzheimer’s, and kidney disease are closely related to type 2 diabetes...
In fact, many doctors... including one I sat down with for this documentary...
Now believe the culprit behind the rise in diabetes... is the same thing that’s also contributing to all these other health problems.
So what that means is... if we can crack that one central problem...
We might be able to improve all of them.
These health issues are known as “Western” diseases because they are most common in the United States and Europe... as well as big cities all over the world...
And are relatively uncommon in more remote populations that have not been influenced by Western culture...
And more specifically – Western diets.
We know this because within a very short time period of becoming “Westernized”...
In other words, beginning to eat the same types of foods we eat...
Those more remote populations start experiencing the exact same types of health problems we do.
A great example is Japanese women and breast cancer.
The rate of breast cancer among Japanese women is much lower than American women...
And yet, within just two generations after moving to the United States...
Japanese women experience the same breast cancer rates as Americans.
Dr. Steven Gundry is one of the most prominent heart surgeons in the world.
But recently, he left his position as Chairman at the Loma Linda University Medical Center...
And founded his own research institute, The Center For Restorative Medicine, which now has locations in both Palm Springs and Santa Barbara.
Dr. Gundry’s focus these days is on helping people change their health primarily through what it is they’re putting into their bodies...
The inspiration for this career change came after Dr. Gundry himself lost over 70 pounds and successfully reversed his own prediabetes diagnosis. Al by making some simple changes to his diet.
GUNDRY: Unfortunately, the baby boomers as a generation will probably be the last of the oldest living Americans, and the Gen X-ers, the baby boomers generation...unless things change will not live as long as the baby boomers.
I asked Dr. Gundry the obvious question...
What exactly is it we’re eating that’s making us so sick?
GUNDRY: Sugar is a huge part of it.
ADD SONG: Let’s sing that song about the sugar…
Who doesn’t love sugar?
We eat it to celebrate birthdays...
We give it to children as a treat, or a reward...
We make movies and board games about it...
We created a whole holiday dedicated to giving it away to kids...
We even call the ones we love “honey”... “sweetie”... and, of course... “sugar.”
But what if we thought about sugar less like a delicious treat...
And more like an addictive substance?
GUNDRY: It's addictive because your basic genetic programming, your computer program thinks you'd be an idiot not to have as much sugar as possible.
Studies show that right from birth, babies prefer sugar water to other substances...
Which explains why children get hooked on it so easily.
Sugar triggers the exact same reward center in the brain as drugs and alcohol...
Meaning that just like drugs and alcohol, when we get it... it immediately creates a desire for more.
GUNDRY: The presence of sugar alone will make you seek more sugar as a survival mechanism.
In fact, it’s probably even more powerful than drugs...
Studies show rats already addicted to cocaine and heroin will actually switch over voluntarily to sugar water within two days, given the choice.
The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous suggests curbing cravings for booze by snacking on candy...
After the beginning of Prohibition in 1919, per capita candy consumption doubled in the United States, hitting all-time highs within just one year.
The New York Times reported at the time:
“The wreckage of the liquor business is being salvaged by the production of candy, ice cream and syrups.”
But in the century since then, sugar has gone from something we have for dessert... to something we consume at every part of every meal.
GUNDRY: We've created a monster in the amount of sugar that is in all of our foods.
Americans’ daily intake of sugar has doubled over the past 40 years.
In fact – of the 600,000 food items you can find in your average grocery store...
74% of them have added sugar...
Including bread, deli meats, salad dressings, condiments... even veggie chips.
Yup – I was actually at the grocery store the other day, looking for a healthy snack, and I bought a box of veggie chips.
I was proud of myself!
But when I got home and cracked them open, I realized I couldn’t put them down...
So I looked at the label.
Sure enough – they contained 7 grams of added sugar.
The American Heart Association recommends we limit our added sugar intake to 36 grams a day for men, 25 grams for women...
And even that’s probably too high...
GUNDRY: You really only want probably a total of maximum 20 grams of sugar. That's about five teaspoons of sugar a day.
However, thanks to all the sugar that’s added to our food supply...
The US Department of Agriculture estimates we consume on average a staggering 94 grams of sugar a day.
GUNDRY: People are having 100, 200 teaspoons of sugar every day in their diet, and it's all hidden.
Why is this a problem?
I’ll let Dr. Gundry explain...
GUNDRY: When you eat sugar or something that turns into sugar, the pancreas secretes a hormone that's called insulin. Now insulin's job is to get sugar out of the bloodstream, and its first sale is to muscles. Muscles enjoy glucose. They think it's great, but insulin actually has to knock on the door and say, "Hey, muscles, are you guys hungry? I've got some great sugar here for you." Well, if your muscles have been exercising or if you're building muscles, your muscles say, "Yeah, I'm starving. Give it to me." So insulin literally unlocks the door, and in goes the sugar, and the muscles burn the sugar and all's good.
Okay, now if you and I are sitting all day and we eat a wonderful cinnamon roll or we have a big juicy hamburger with a bun, which is pure sugar, then insulin rises to the occasion of all that sugar coming into our bloodstream, goes and knocks on the muscle cells, and the muscle says, "Couldn't eat a bite. We're full. Go sell it someplace else." Well, insulin doesn't sit there lying down. It's got to get sugar out of your bloodstream. So insulin comes back with 20 of its buddies, and with a battering ram tries to shove sugar into the muscles, and the muscles go, "No, there's no place to put it. Put it someplace else." So insulin says, "We have to help this guy out. He's obviously been at the best fruit tree ever. He's just hit the mother lode of sugar. He'll thank us. We'll go knock on the fat cells and say, 'Okay, muscles don't want the sugar. How about you guys?'" And the fat cells say, "Yeah. Bring it in. We'll take it." Well, that goes on for a while, but then the fat cells actually go, "We got no other place to put this," so what happens is more and more salesmen, more and more help, comes to try and get sugar out of the bloodstream.
Simplistically, this is insulin resistance.
Insulin resistance is just one symptom of a larger condition called “metabolic syndrome.”
Metabolic syndrome is essentially when your metabolism is broken...
And it’s a really bad thing.
The other symptoms of metabolic syndrome include:
Obesity
High blood pressure, or hypertension
Chronic inflammation
Heart disease
And, of course...
GUNDRY: Insulin resistance is the cause of diabetes.
In Mexico, there is a small town called San Cristóbal de las Casas...
Where a Coca-Cola bottling plant has a deal with the Mexican government, giving it access to most of the town’s drinking water.
Because of this, clean water is scarce...
So most of the residents of San Cristóbal drink Coke instead... more than half a gallon of Coke every day.
In fact, Coca-Cola has become such a huge part of the local culture, it’s even used in religious ceremonies to heal the sick.
According to a report in the New York Times, local resident – and diabetic – Mikaela Ruiz, 41, claimed the “soda ceremony” helped cure her infant daughter, who was weak from vomiting and diarrhea.
But in actuality, according to the report:
“The effect on public health has been devastating.”
“The mortality rate from diabetes...increased 30% between 2013 and 2016, and the disease is now the second-leading cause of death in the state after heart disease.”
GUNDRY: Almost 80% of the patients who walk through my door have insulin resistance, and they have not been told this by their doctor.
GUNDRY: Most everybody in the United States is a pre-diabetic, and 30 to 40% are already a diabetic, but when I tell people they're a pre-diabetic, that's like telling a woman she's a little bit pregnant. There's absolutely no difference.
At this point I began to wonder...
Why isn’t the government treating this like any other public health crisis?
In the 2014 documentary Fed Up, about the obesity epidemic in America, Katie Couric interviewed former president Bill Clinton about our sugar problem.
Katie Couric: Do you think the government is behind when it comes to helping Americans reduce their sugar intake?
Bill Clinton: Yes, I do.
Couric: Why? Why aren’t they doing more?
Clinton: I can’t answer that, particularly since corn has been turned into fructose, and is a sweetener for soft drinks, which I don’t think is a good use of corn.
Whether he meant to or not, President Clinton did answer the question.
Since 1995, the United States government has given out $8.1 billion in subsidies to the corn industry.
And as Clinton mentioned, corn is used to produce an artificial sweetener called high-fructose corn syrup...
Which is a mixture of two types of sugar – fructose and glucose – and is cheaper to produce than regular table sugar, or sucrose.
Scientists believe high-fructose corn syrup may actually be worse for you than regular sugar...
GUNDRY: All the evidence shows that the more fructose we ingest, the worse our liver gets, the worse our kidneys gets, and believe it or not, the higher the cholesterol levels go because of higher triglycerides.
So fructose as a part of sugar is really the big culprit right now.
A 2011 study by the U.S. Public Interest Group revealed that since 1995, an astounding $16.9 billion in taxpayer money has been doled out in subsidies for food additives used primarily in junk food...
Like chips, soft drinks, and candy.
The study, titled “Apples to Twinkies,” found that if this government money was given directly to consumers in the form of the food it is used to produce... instead of subsidies to the agricultural industries...
Each American would get over $7 worth of junk food...
While receiving just 11 cents worth of apples.
In other words, “enough to buy 19 Twinkies, but less than a quarter of one Red Delicious apple apiece.”
“By fueling the crisis of childhood obesity, the subsidies damage our country’s health and increase the medical costs that will ultimately need to be paid to treat the effects of the obesity epidemic,” said Mike Russo, the lead author of the study.
These subsidies ensure sugar producers can produce as much sugar as possible to flood the market...
With no fear of losing money due to economic conditions that would create risk for any other industry.
As far back as 1934, when Congress passed the Sugar Act to prop up the industry, President Franklin D. Roosevelt called the sugar lobby “the most powerful pressure group that had descended on the national capital during his lifetime.”
Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, says:
“It’s fair to say that the government is subsidizing the obesity epidemic inadvertently through its subsidies of corn, which gets turned into high-fructose corn syrup and all those weird ingredients that you see in processed food. The maltodextrin, the xanthan gum, all those words you can’t pronounce.”
But the most fascinating part about all this...
Is everything I learned about sugar causing insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome...
And the unmistakable links to obesity and diabetes... as well as all the other chronic Western diseases...
No one really knew that stuff until very recently.
Remember that first diabetes study I told you about, from 1898?
The guy who conducted that study – Elliot Joslin – went on to be the leading diabetes expert in the world, for pretty much his entire life.
Joslin recognized diabetes was becoming more and more of a problem in society...
However, he completely missed the true cause of it.
His theory was all calories are the same...
In other words, a calorie of sugar is no different than a calorie of fat, or a calorie of protein, in terms of its effect on the human body...
So the true cause of the diabetes problem must be that people were simply eating too much... of everything!
If people just ate less and exercised more, Joslin argued, the problem would be solved.
Essentially, he blamed diabetes on gluttony and laziness... oh, and cars.
Yes, people were spending too much time in these fancy new inventions called “automobiles”... and not enough time moving their bodies around.
That was what was making them sick.
It makes some sense in theory... but that’s all it was: a theory.
It was not based on any scientific data whatsoever...
But, since Joslin was the quote and quote, expert... his word was treated as gospel...
And the “science” on diabetes seemed settled... and remained that way for most of the 20th century.
Of course, the sugar industry was only too happy to promote Joslin’s theory as fact.
In the 1930s, they took out newspaper and magazine ads marketing sugar as a health food – claiming it gives you energy and builds up your immune system, a sort of “super vitamin.”
In 1952, nutritionist Ancel Keys made a name for himself with his famous “Seven Countries Study”...
The study examined populations in Italy, Greece, Yugoslavia, Finland, Japan, the Netherlands, and the United States, and concluded the rising levels of heart disease in society were caused by too much fat in the diet.
This also made sense, in theory...
Because fat contains cholesterol... and many of the people in these countries who were dying from heart disease had high cholesterol levels...
But this science was also faulty.... because it did not prove that cholesterol from dietary fat is actually the cause of heart disease...
And... it was later revealed that Mr. Keys had cherry picked his research to fit a narrative that a high fat diet was unhealthy.
Keys actually had information on sixteen other countries that did not show a correlation between a high fat diet and elevated rates of heart disease...
Such as France.
Have you ever heard of The French Paradox?
The French Paradox refers to the low rates of heart disease among the French...
Which seems strange, considering their diet is loaded with saturated fat from copious amounts of meat and cheese...
Until you think about the fact that the French actually consume way less sugar than the other Western countries that do suffer from heart disease.
But instead of pointing out that inconvenient fact, scientists like Keys simply wrote it off it a “paradox”...
Almost as if it was an inexplicable freak occurrence... one of those things you just can’t explain...
And then went right back to demonizing fat.
We also now know that Mr. Keys’s research was selectively edited to ignore that the data showed those people who were on a low cholesterol diet actually had more heart attacks and a higher risk of death than those who weren’t...
And that lowering cholesterol levels did not reduce heart disease.
Of course, nobody knew at the time that Keys’s research was being funded by the sugar industry itself.
GUNDRY: These scientists were actually paid to tell people that sugar was good for you, that it was a great energy source, and that fat was the evil empire.
Once again, sugar was exonerated. America had the answer to heart disease: avoid fat...
Which led to a “low-fat” diet craze that lasted for the next 50 years...
And landed Keys on the cover of Time magazine as a national hero.
On the flip side, cholesterol has been demonized ever since...
And even though we now know that having high cholesterol isn’t necessarily a bad thing...
And that cholesterol is actually a vital nutrient we very much need... especially for our brains...
Cholesterol-lowering medications have become another huge source of profits for the pharmaceutical companies.
In 1956, when emerging studies began to suggest that sugar could be contributing to the nation’s rising health problems...
The sugar industry countered with a $750,000 advertising campaign – an enormous sum in those days – that was remarkably effective at pushing the narrative that sugar was a nutritious part of the diet.
In the 1960s, a physician named George Campbell ran a diabetes clinic in South Africa.
Four out of five patients he treated were immigrants from India...
Which surprised him when he learned the prevalence of diabetes in India was extremely low.
So Campbell began doing some research. He looked into their diets...
These immigrants were eating the same amount of fat as the native Indian population was...
And they certainly weren’t overeating...
In fact, many of these immigrants were so poor they were surviving on as little as 1600 calories a day...
“A figure in many countries which would be regarded almost as a starvation wage,” said Campbell...
And yet, many of them were obese, and suffered from severe diabetes.
However... when he compared the sugar consumption between the immigrants and the native Indians, Campbell found his answer...
In India, sugar consumption per capita was 12 pounds a year...
But the immigrants who showed up at Campbell’s clinic consumed nearly 80 pounds of sugar per year.
Writing in 1963, University of London nutritionist John Yudkin – who was Ancel Keys’s biggest rival – said, “We now eat in two weeks the amount of sugar our ancestors of 200 years ago ate in a whole year.”
(By the way – someone really should make a movie about the rivalry between the anti-sugar Yudkin and the anti-fat Keys. It’s a fascinating story. Those guys hated each other!)
Then, just a couple years ago, thanks to a man named Stanton Glantz...
We learned the true extent of the pro-sugar narrative that had been pushed on the public.
Dr. Glantz is a professor of medicine at the University of California at San Francisco.
In 2016, he unearthed a trove of documents showing that back in 1967, a trade group called the Sugar Research Foundation...
An industry lobby known today as the Sugar Association...
Paid three highly respected Harvard scientists the equivalent of $50,000 (in today’s dollars) to publish heavily biased studies that cleared sugar as being a cause of heart disease...
And instead blamed saturated fat.
At that time, studies like the one George Campbell did in South Africa were beginning to show a strong link between sugar and chronic health problems...
So the sugar industry responded.
The documents Glantz discovered show that in 1964, a top sugar executive named John Hickson formulated a plan to shape public opinion “through our research and information.”
That research, to be funded with sugar industry money, would need to downplay any harm sugar caused... and play up the dangers of dietary fat.
“Then we can publish the data and refute our detractors,” Hickson wrote to the scientists-for-hire.
“We are well aware of your particular interest and will cover this as well as we can.” wrote back Harvard scientist Dr. Mark Hegsted.
The so-called “research” proceeded... with the scientists reporting back regularly to Hickson with their “findings” that sugar had essentially nothing to do with contributing to chronic disease.
Hickson was overjoyed with his investment.
“Let me assure you this is quite what we had in mind, and we look forward to its appearance in print,” he replied.
The sugar review the scientists came up with was soon published in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine...
And once again...
Sugar was completely cleared of any danger.
“It was a very smart thing the sugar industry did, because review papers, especially if you get them published in a very prominent journal, tend to shape the overall scientific discussion,” said Dr. Glantz.
Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition, food studies, and public health at New York University, had another word for the sugar industry’s strategy:
“It’s appalling,” she said.
It’s a strategy that has paid off so well, however, it’s been repeated multiple times.
In 2015, The New York Times revealed Coca-Cola had provided millions of dollars in research funding in order to downplay the link between soda and obesity.
And the Associated Press recently uncovered that candy companies were funding studies claiming that children who eat candy actually tend to weigh less than those who don’t.
GUNDRY: What's now apparent is that the sugar industry took all the same tricks as the tobacco industry and made a known toxic substance and turned it into not a problem at all.
One of those scientists on the sugar industry’s payroll in 1967 was Fred Stare, the founder and chairman of the department of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health.
The sugar industry had been quietly bankrolling Stare’s work for more than 20 years...
So it’s no surprise he evolved into sugar’s leading public defender...
At one point writing it is not even “remotely true that modern sugar consumption contributes to poor health...”
And that it “may be hazardous” to recommend anyone – including children – avoid sugar...
All the while receiving money from the National Confectioners Association, PepsiCo, Coca-Cola, and the National Soft Drink Association.
For good measure, Stare was also getting money from the Tobacco Research Council to conduct studies that concluded there was no link between smoking and heart disease.
Dr. Hegsted – the Harvard sugar scientist who hatched the false research plan with John Hickson, the Big Sugar executive...
Went on to become Head of Nutrition at the United States Department of Agriculture...
Where in 1980, he helped draft the federal government’s first official dietary guidelines...
Which contained the following conclusion:
“Contrary to widespread opinion, too much sugar in your diet does not seem to cause diabetes.”
Believe it or not, this has been the official position of the United States government ever since...
Fat is bad. Sugar is fine.
In fact, the Sugar Association website still cites the government’s FDA report to this day to claim sugar is no different than any other form of calories.
According to a document provided by the Sugar Association titled Sugar’s Place in Healthful Eating Patterns:
“Excess calorie consumption, combined with sedentary living, is a major contributing factor to the obesity epidemic, independent of any single food or nutrient consumed.”
Aha! There it is again...
The exact same logic Elliot Joslin used over 100 years ago, with no scientific evidence.
It’s our fault we’re unhealthy.
We eat too much. We’re lazy.
And we still probably spend too much time in our cars.
While that last part may be true...
We can’t ignore the facts.
Since Fred Stare led the commission that put out the FDA’s first dietary guidelines almost 40 years ago...
Americans have doubled their daily intake of sugar...
And in that same time frame, the number of Americans with diabetes has shot up over 400%...
Not to mention, we’ve witnessed the creation of an entirely new health crisis:
Childhood diabetes
Cases of type 2 diabetes among adolescents has gone from just a handful of cases in 1980...
To approximately 215,000 in 2010.
GUNDRY: One of the really sad things that happened was when mothers were convinced that fruit juices were good for their children and a wonderful change from say a Coke or something like that, but what they weren't told was that these fruit juices were basically pure, concentrated sugar, and mostly fructose. And so we've had this epidemic of fat, obese kids. I see kids in my office, six and seven and eight years old, who are type 2 diabetics. Adult-onset diabetes as kids, and one of the big culprits in their diet are all of these fruit juices.
Food science author David Wolfe thinks the sugar in our children’s diets has devastating effects far beyond obesity and diabetes...
David Wolfe: This has had a very profound impact on children’s behavior, on mental illness, it has exacerbated many different types of neurological disorders. But we don’t actually name what the cause is, which is the sugar that’s in the diet.”
I emailed the Sugar Association asking why they continue to promote the claim that overeating and a sedentary lifestyle is what causes diabetes...
A spokesperson wrote me back, saying:
“In relation to type 2 diabetes, total sugars intake does not show causation. In fact, prospective studies show a negative association between sucrose intake and diabetes risk.”
The spokesperson’s source for this information was the American Diabetes Association...
Which itself claims on its website it is a “myth” that consuming too much sugar causes type 2 diabetes...
Yet strangely recommends against drinking too many sugary sodas.
The loophole that allows powerful entities like the Sugar Association and the government-funded American Diabetes Association to say things like the link between sugar and diabetes is a “myth”...
Is that we actually don’t have conclusive evidence that sugar does in fact cause these health problems.
Why?
Because in order to determine definitively if eating too much sugar causes conditions like metabolic syndrome... heart disease... diabetes.... and cancer to develop...
It would have to be proven with scientific studies.
And not just any studies...
We would need extensive studies that put people on a high sugar diet for decades...
And then wait and see if they develop these diseases.
As you can imagine, this type of study would be extremely unethical.
It’s one thing to drive up the blood sugar levels of a lab rat until it gets sick...
It’s quite another to do it to a person.
And since we cannot apply rat studies 100% to human beings...
And few scientists believe such studies will ever be performed on people...
We simply cannot say for absolute certain that sugar does in fact cause all of these health problems directly...
And if it does, then how much sugar is required to cause them.
So even though, given everything we know about how the human body responds to elevated blood sugar levels...
And the obvious correlation between the increase in sugar in the American diet, and the explosion of metabolic syndrome and type 2 diabetes in the same time frame...
Scientifically speaking, no study exists we can point to and claim we know for sure.
This allows the pro-sugar forces to keep claiming “further research is necessary...”
Knowing full well that further research will never happen.
And if it ever does...
They can just bury it with their own bought-and-paid for so called “research” that refutes it.
But here’s the thing...
We don’t need a decades long, expensive, unethical study to know eating all this sugar is bad for us.
Science writer Gary Taubes, author of The Case Against Sugar, breaks it down with his simple “If/Then Hypothesis”:
“If these Western diseases are associated with obesity, diabetes, insulin resistance, and metabolic syndrome, as many of them are,” Taubes writes...
“Then whatever causes insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome is likely to be the necessary dietary trigger for the diseases.”
“Because there is significant reason to believe that sugars...are the dietary trigger of insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome, it’s quite likely they are a primary cause of all these Western diseases.”
“Without these sugars in the diet, these chronic diseases would be relatively rare, if not, in some cases, virtually nonexistent.”
Now – is it realistic to believe we can eradicate Western disease by simply removing sugar from our diet?
I’m not sure...
But what would happen if we tried?
If we started being more careful about what we ate...
And focused on keeping ourselves healthy...
Instead of waiting until chronic diseases like diabetes... heart disease... cancer... and Alzheimer’s... developed...
And then taking medicine for them...
What would that do to the bottom lines of pharmaceutical companies?
GUNDRY: The more insulin you make the sicker you get. The more heart disease you get. The more cancer you get, and the more dementia you get. And the more you get those, the pharmaceutical industry is more than happy to step in with those drugs.
In 2016 alone, sales of the top 10 selling cardiovascular medications totaled over $13 billion.
The top 10 leading diabetes medications totaled $17.3 billion.
And total revenues for the top 15 “Big Pharma” corporations was $524 billion...
Over half a trillion dollars...
That’s more than the GDP of Finland, Kuwait, and Costa Rica...
Combined.
If we could begin to reverse the trend of these rising chronic Western diseases...
Would the top 20 Big Pharma CEOs make a combined $474 million, as they did in 2014 – an average of $23.7 million each?
Would that “pharmaceutical guy” – whose family’s company makes $40 billion a year – be able to afford his $33 million Hollywood Hills mansion?
GUNDRY: Let's suppose that you came to me with a case of pneumonia and I said, "Hey, this is great. I'm going to manage your pneumonia for the rest of your life." Now, you wouldn't have me as a physician very long because you'd go..."Give me some antibiotics, Get rid of my pneumonia. I don't want you to manage my pneumonia."
GUNDRY: But if I came to you with a case of diabetes or prediabetes, then as a physician who's been taught by the pharmaceutical industry, I'm going to say, "This is great news. I have all of these drugs available at my disposal, and I'm going to manage your diabetes, because I've been taught that diabetes should be managed not gotten rid of."
So the question is... how do we do it?
Is there any hope of us getting back to being healthy?
Personally, I believe there is hope...
And it all starts with knowledge.
I didn’t know about any of this stuff a few months ago...
I didn’t know the cancer my grandma had...
Or the diabetes my cousin has...
Aren’t natural at all.
All I did was walk by a gigantic house, do some Google searches, read a few books... and talk to one really smart doctor.
And now that you’re aware of these things, trust me: you’ll never forget it.
You can’t un-know the fact that what you’re eating might be harming your health...
And I think just having that awareness is all it takes to start making healthy choices.
Now when I go to the grocery store, I look at the sugar content of everything I buy.
And I’ll bet you start doing it too.
Just the other day, I was looking at breakfast cereals, and was shocked to discover Cookie Crisp contains 9 grams of sugar per serving...
But Raisin Bran contains 18!
When I was a kid, my mom bought us Raisin Bran... and there’s no way she would have let us have a cereal like Cookie Crisp...
So it blew my mind to learn the cereal based on a cookies actually contains way less sugar than the one that sounds super healthy!
That’s the kind of simple action we need to start taking...
Just being conscious of what it is we’re putting into our bodies can literally save our lives.
GUNDRY: If you have women with breast cancer who have insulin resistance, if they lose weight and become insulin sensitive again, they actually have lower incidents of recurrent breast cancer or breast cancer metastases than women who stay the same weight.
We need to make an effort to start eating a lot less processed food with added sugar...
And a lot more real food – like fruits and vegetables...
GUNDRY: The key is this has to be a grass-roots movement. The big pharma, big chemical, and big agriculture is not going to give you the information you need, because that goes against everything that they stand for. So it has to start from each individual person saying, "I'm either going to save my life or I'm going to save my child's life or I'm going to save my parents' life."
Please share this video so we can awaken as many of our friends and family members as we can to how we can improve our health...
Because I believe if we do... then someday...
We can push things like heart disease... diabetes... Alzheimer’s and cancer... off the leading causes of death list...
And leave them in the past.
That way, we can be around for our loved ones for a long time to come.
Thanks for watching... and don’t forget to like and share!
Sincerely,
Ethan & Herman