Watch the full interview below or listen to the full episode on your iPhone HERE.
Stu: This week, I’m excited to welcome Dr. Richard Jacoby to the podcast. Dr. Jacoby is a leading peripheral nerve surgeon and celebrated author of Sugar Crush, where he reveals how overconsumption causes crippling nerve damage throughout the body. In this episode, we discuss why so many of us crave sugar, the everyday health foods that could derail us, and how to structure our diet to overcome this. Over to Dr. Jacoby…
Audio Version
Some questions asked during this episode:
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Why do many of us crave sugar?
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Which everyday foods (that may be perceived as healthy) could derail us?
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Should we be concerned about consuming ‘natural sugars’ like fruit?
Get more of Dr. Richard Jacoby:
If you enjoyed this, then we think you’ll enjoy this interview
Jessie Inchauspé – Discover the Life-Changing Power of Balancing Your Blood Sugar
Robert Lustig: The Hidden Truth About Sugar, Weight Loss & Disease
How to Get Your Family Off Sugar Without a Fuss
The views expressed on this podcast are the personal views of the host and guest speakers and not the views of Bega Cheese Limited or 180 Nutrition Pty Ltd. In addition, the views expressed should not be taken or relied upon as medical advice. Listeners should speak to their doctor to obtain medical advice.
Disclaimer: The transcript below has not been proofread and some words may be mis-transcribed.
Full Transcript
Stu
(00:00:03)
Hey, this is Stu from 180 Nutrition, and welcome to another episode of the Health Sessions. It’s here that we connect with the world’s best experts in health, wellness, and human performance in an attempt to cut through the confusion around what it actually takes to achieve a long-lasting health. Now, I’m sure that’s something that we all strive to have. I certainly do. Before we get into the show today, you might not know that we make products too. That’s right. We are into Whole Food Nutrition and have a range of superfoods and natural supplements to help support your day. If you are curious, want to find out more, just jump over to our website. That is 180nutrition.com.au and take a look. Okay, back to the show.
(00:00:45)
This week, I’m excited to welcome Dr. Richard Jacoby to the podcast. Dr. Jacoby is a leading peripheral nerve surgeon and celebrated author of Sugar Crush, where he reveals how overconsumption causes crippling nerve damage throughout the body. In this episode, we discuss why so many of us crave sugar, the everyday health foods that could derail us, and how to structure our diet to overcome this. Over to Dr. Jacoby. Hey, guys, this is Stu from 180 Nutrition and I am delighted to welcome Dr. Richard Jacoby to the podcast. Dr. Jacoby, how are you?
Dr. Jacoby
(00:01:22)
I’m excellent. In America, we say Jacoby.
Stu
(00:01:26)
Jacoby. Okay.
Dr. Jacoby
(00:01:27)
Jacoby. But I hear Jacoby, Jacoby, lots of different pronunciations, but that’s what I get.
Stu
(00:01:36)
Wonderful. Thank you so much. Well, look, first up then, for all of those that may not be familiar with you or your work, I’d love it if you could just tell us a little bit about yourself, please.
Dr. Jacoby
(00:01:48)
Well, I’ve been doing this for a long time. That’s number one. That’s pretty obvious. So I’m a podiatrist by training, but my last 25 years has been dedicated to the peripheral nerve, and that is diabetic polyneuropathy as it’s called in medicine. So I started the Wound Care Center in Scottsdale here about 35 years ago, and at that time, we were doing the traditional treatments of ulcers, amputations, that sort of thing for the sequela of diabetes. But about 25 years ago, I ran into a professor from Johns Hopkins. His name is Lee Dellon, D-E-L-L-O-N, and he is a peripheral nerve surgeon, and he has a novel treatment for decompressing nerves of the lower extremity to resolve the effects of sugar on nerves. So that’s how I changed my viewpoint about 25 years ago and devoted the last 25 years to that subject. And that’s what the book Sugar Crush is about.
Stu
(00:02:58)
Fascinating. So we’ve had many conversations about sugar. Nerve damage has never been a topic of conversation. So that’s what I’m very, very curious then. So tell me then about … Well, I guess first up, we should probably delve into the reason behind the cravings for sugar. So many of us, irrespective of whether we know we’re doing it or not, are consuming too much sugar, way too much sugar I would imagine that would be healthy for our systems, but why do we crave it?
Dr. Jacoby
(00:03:33)
Well, you mentioned the circus. So let’s start the circus. Sugar is really a magic act. It’s really what it is. So glucose, which most people think of sugar, that is not tasty at all. It’s not sweet. Most people don’t realize that. So glucose, although we need glucose about four grams, one teaspoon at any one time in our circulation to run our systems such as brain function. But you wouldn’t eat that if you tasted it. So you don’t crave it. It’s a poison. But the trick is cane sugar, beet sugar, that is really called sucrose. And sucrose is a disaccharide, meaning that there’s two sugars connected there. That’s table sugar. So table sugar is a combination of roughly 50% fructose and glucose. So fructose is sweet. So that’s the magic act. So you eat table sugar, and then when it gets in your mouth, it breaks down by an enzyme and the glucose is released, goes into your bloodstream, and immediately insulin is pumped out to counteract the effects of that toxin poison.
(00:04:52)
But you continue eating because you love the taste of fructose, but you don’t really realize there are two sugars there. So the fructose causes the leptin hormone, which is the switch that turns off your hunger. So if you eat a lot of sucrose, glucose and fructose, you cannot stop eating because the switch has been turned off. That’s the trick. So the body keeps getting more and more poison. Insulin response, insulin takes that excess energy produced by glucose and turns it into fat. That’s why people cannot stop eating, and they keep getting fatter and fatter and fatter. Then in 1974, the Japanese, by the way, invented high fructose corns syrup, which basically is taking a corn product. And here in the United States, I’m not sure of Australia, but I assume it’s similar, then they take corn in our midland of our country, Iowa, Indiana, Nebraska, places like that, which were really grasslands.
(00:06:07)
And I’m going to take this conversation over to the cheeseburger in paradise, the fires in Maui. We’ll work that into the conversation. That’s an unbelievable disaster on the fires. And I realize your country has been devastated by fires as well. And now Canada is being devastated. So it’s a worldwide phenomenon, global warming, all these things are interconnected. So sugar, which was really not in our diet in the Americas before Columbus, he came to the New World from … Actually the Portuguese had been to the New World 50 years before Columbus. He went to Spain, Queen Isabella and Birmingham said, “I got a deal for you. I found the maps. If you finance it, I’ll go to the West Indie.” He thought he was going to India because that’s really where the sugar was coming from, India. And he found the perfect place to grow sugar, and that’s what the United States was built upon, sugar.
(00:07:15)
So in the 1600s, it started to get back into Europe. That’s when you started to see all the different diseases of they used to call consumption, which they were absolutely correct. So they were consuming massive amounts of sugar, but only the rich could afford it. So the rich had all the diseases. The board didn’t have the diseases because they couldn’t afford the poison. Very similar to cocaine and any other drug, which it is. It’s very addicting. And even in rat models, when you give a rat sugar water opposed to cocaine, they will choose the sugar over cocaine, which is phenomenal when you think about it.
(00:08:01)
Because cocaine, I’m not advocating drugs, but those drugs are recreational. They really don’t cause any physiologic damage in the human being, but the sugar does because you don’t really realize that it’s destroying your nerves. And that’s where I come into the picture with diabetic polyneuropathy, which is really the term that we use for, or diabetes affect your nerves of the lower extremity, which results, by the way, in about one and a half million amputations every year in the world. That’s a big number. And that’s just one itis, as I call it, Alzheimer’s, autism, muscular dystrophy, MS, all these, in my opinion, are caused by the same biochemical process. So it’s a big problem.
Stu
(00:08:52)
And in terms of symptoms, now you mentioned nerve damage. People may typically think, “Well, I’m eating too much sugar. I’m drinking too much soda, I’m putting on weight.” That would be perhaps one of the most common symptoms, “I’m putting on weight. My trousers don’t fit. I don’t feel like I used to in terms of perhaps I’m not as fit. I don’t feel like going to the gym because I’m more conscious. I’m weighing much more than I should.” What other symptoms might people experience when consuming way too much sugar?
Dr. Jacoby
(00:09:29)
Well, that’s the really good question because what the Western world medicine has done is put these diseases in what I call different silos. So if you go to a neurologist and you have a headache, they’re going to look at it from a very different point of view. First of all, let me give you my background a little bit back to Dr. Dellon. So he’s a surgeon. He was actually a plastic surgeon in the beginning back in the ’80s, and he was at Johns Hopkins, and our institute, it’s called National Institute of Health. So he did all the experiments on sugar, on nerves, and he came up with two pathways. One was sugar, it’s called the polyol pathway. So the polyol pathway, this gets down into the biochemistry to answer your question. So sugar had enzymes to process that sugar, but it gets overloaded.
(00:10:29)
So the polyol pathway is taking sugar and turning it into sorbitol, which is an alcohol sugar, and that sugar is very hydrophilic, which means it pulls water into the nerve and causes the nerve to swell. The second biochemical pathway is called the Maillard reaction, which is really a cooking term, which means sugar plus a protein, like when the French use that term, that’s where you make the sauces with sugar and some fats and things like that. So that’s called the Maillard reaction, and it produces thousands of different adducts, as they call them, different flavors. But in the body, those flavors turn into an actual physical chemical change. And that takes the collagen, which is surrounding the nerve and starts to like a shrink wrap, compress the nerve. So that nerve is now swelling, getting bigger as the covering is getting smaller. And we call that nerve compression. That’s the fundamental action. Now, it’s interesting, your last name is Cooke?
Stu
(00:11:44)
Yes.
Dr. Jacoby
(00:11:44)
With an E?
Stu
(00:11:44)
Yes.
Dr. Jacoby
(00:11:47)
So Dr. Dellon, he trained me about 25 years ago. In that concept, I brought that back to Scottsdale. What we do, we decompress nerves, and I’ll get to your name in a second here while you’re part of this equation, probably one of your relatives. So the concept of diabetic neuropathy, most people think it’s not a curable disease. It’s treated by medicines, which in our country is Lyrica is number one made by Pfizer. I think it probably is the same in Australia. And that works in the central nervous system. So you don’t feel the effects of the sugar, which causes the pain. Okay?
Stu
(00:12:31)
Right.
Dr. Jacoby
(00:12:33)
So back to Dr. Dellon. So in the early ’80s, he had a patient who had carpal tunnel of the wrist, which is a very rare disease by the way. There was only 12 cases in the literature in the 1960s by the way. In our country last year, there were close to 600,000 carpal tunnel surgeries.
Stu
(00:12:56)
Wow.
Dr. Jacoby
(00:12:57)
Yeah. So in the last, what, 75 years, all the sudden we have a pandemic. We know that word, don’t we?
Stu
(00:13:04)
We do.
Dr. Jacoby
(00:13:06)
And it’s self-inflicted. It’s caused by sugar, in my opinion and Dr. Dellon’s opinion. So a patient of his, he did her carpal tunnel and also her ulnar tunnel, which is the nerve in the elbow. And she was diabetic. And she said to him, “Dr. Dellon, you fixed my arm. Why don’t you fix my leg?” And he said, “No, that’s a different disease.” Because it was called a different … diabetic polyneuropathy. Same person, diabetic, carpal tunnel in the wrist. Oh, maybe there’s tunnels in the leg. Well, he did a lot of experiments, wrote a couple of textbooks, 75 chapters in medical books. I mean, he’s the guy.
(00:13:48)
So he said, “Well, let’s find those tunnels, decompress those nerves in the leg.” And sure enough, she restored her sensation and did not get an amputation. That started the whole sequence. Now, he’s been teaching that for quite a few years. I trained with him in year 2001, but only in the proviso, he said to me, “You have to read my textbook,” which is daunting, believe me. And I was in practice for quite some time, and I knew everything, I thought. I knew nothing until I met him. And he said, “Read the textbook because the eye cannot see what the mind does not know.” This is a really fundamental point, and that’s why neurologists never figured this out.
(00:14:39)
So he went to the laboratory, figured out where the tunnels were. He uses magnification about three and a half times. We call those loops. So when I trained with him, he said, “Read the textbook so you understand what I’m saying. Put these loops on. And lo and behold, I’m looking at the nerve and you can see the compression.” I never saw that compression before. No one did. And that started the whole industry of decompressing nerves. Now, is it accepted worldwide? Not at all, because big pharma runs the circus. I’ve used your metaphor, and it does work. Lyrica works up in the brain, so that process of compression, you don’t feel it.
(00:15:27)
It’s like going to the dentist when you don’t have pain, well, I’m fine, but when you have pain, you want something done. So he taught me, and then after about four or five years, I did thousands of those surgeries without any amputations. And I said to him, I said, “I think there’s more to your theory.” And my point was, if this is true and this is true, and all the nerves and the legs are true, wouldn’t all the nerves throughout the body be true as well? And he said, “Well, why don’t you figure it out?” Not really nicely, but professionally, professional challenge. So I started reading the literature outside what I’d normally read, and I was reading the Journal of Circulation 2004. There was an article by John Cooke, C-O-O-K-E.
Stu
(00:16:17)
Yes.
Dr. Jacoby
(00:16:17)
Which is not a common spelling of Cooke.
Stu
(00:16:19)
No, it isn’t. That’s right.
Dr. Jacoby
(00:16:21)
Now, let’s see if we can match you up with him. So his family’s from Ireland. Is that an Irish name to you?
Stu
(00:16:32)
So I’m originally from the UK and one of my grandparents came from Ireland.
Dr. Jacoby
(00:16:40)
There’s your connection.
Stu
(00:16:41)
Yes.
Dr. Jacoby
(00:16:42)
So John Cooke, he did tell me the county he is from, but I mean, we’re all related somewhere somehow, but you’re probably related to him. So John, he wrote an article called The Uber Marker, and that was 2004, which was a new word to me, meaning kind of a universal solution. And he was talking about a molecule, and this is where it gets really deep into the biochemistry. It was called asymmetric dimethylarginine. And that’s a simple molecule in biochemistry, but it does cause additional compression. So when I read that article, I text Dr. Cooke and he was at Stanford University in California, and he ran the metabolic clinic there. He’s a cardiologist by training. He has a PhD in vascular biology. And I text him and I said, “I think there’s a connection between those two theories.” And he called me on the phone like an hour or two later, said, “I love your idea, come up to Stanford,” which I did.
(00:17:50)
I worked with him on his molecule, on my patients, and all of a sudden. I realized, MS, Muscular Dystrophy, all the different kinds of neuropathies are really all connected by that molecule. And the bottom line is it’s sugar. It’s that simple. So he’s a cardiologist by training. This is where it gets … I don’t want to say conspiracy, but it’s your orientation to your knowledge. And if you’re not a surgeon, and cardiologists are not surgeons, they’re medical doctors, they write prescriptions. So even when I said it’s a nerve compression, they said, “Well, what do you mean?” Well, if I said, put these loops on, well, he’s not in surgery. The only surgeons really kind of understand this theory, but we stuck with it. We became good friends. And the research does point to that molecule is the first molecule that starts the cascade of compression 40 years before you would even notice anything.
(00:19:05)
So it’s what we call an insidious confirmational disease. What that means is these molecules that are normally forming get misfolded. So when an amino acid folds into a protein, this sugar causes biochemical reaction and it gets misfolded like origami. But I used to say, now you’re probably too young to know this metaphor, but I was lecturing a couple years ago to a medical class. I said, “It’s like you’re making insulin and you misfold the insulin. Like in the car, when I used to take the map out of the glove compartment and I looked at the map, I can never refold that map, but I would stuff it in the glove compartment.”
Stu
(00:19:53)
I’m absolutely not too old for that one. Yeah, I used to get the map, and yes, you can never fold it back.
Dr. Jacoby
(00:20:02)
Yes, women can, men cannot. I don’t know what that … it’s a special trait. I think it’s genetic trait. I could never do it. So that’s what happens with sugar. So sugar changes chemically the bonds on the amino acid as you’re making insulin. So it’s really insulin. I mean, it’s a map, but it’s misfolded. So the body cannot read that direction on the map, so it can’t produce insulin effect. So that’s insulin resistance. So that keeps going on and on and on. But it takes 40 years. So the early symptoms are really so diverse, like migraine headache, that’s the early phases. Irritable bowel syndrome, that’s part of it. Maybe numbness and tingling in the foot, eyesight problems, anything where nerve innervates a muscle. That process is happening, but we call them different diseases. So then we did the research and we figured all that out. Then the question is, what do you do? Well, number one, don’t eat the poison. Well, that’s asking a lot because the poison tastes great.
Stu
(00:21:29)
And the poison is everywhere.
Dr. Jacoby
(00:21:31)
And it’s everywhere. In the United States, about 85% of all the food in the United States has high fructose corn syrup in it. So that was the big change in 1974, that fructose glucose was made into a liquid form by the Japanese, and now it’s in everything. You could take that shirt you have on, make it into a powder, put high fructose corn syrup, and you would have it for dinner, and you say, “Wow, I want to have a fried shirt …”
Stu
(00:22:04)
I absolutely believe you. So a question then springs to mind. You mentioned high fructose corn syrup. Now, sugar, as insidious as it is, comes in very many forms, and people often tout, “Well, it’s a natural sugar,” and you’ve got, you mentioned fructose and high fructose corn syrup, and then there’s sucrose, glucose, maltose, lactose. It goes on and on and on. If we adopted a whole food diet, so we’re just eating meats and nuts, seeds, fruits, vegetables, all of the above, irrespective of whether the body breaks down our carbohydrates to glucose for fuel, do we still have to be mindful of the consumption of maybe whole food carbohydrates?
Dr. Jacoby
(00:22:51)
Well, I get that question every day. And you happen to have in Australia a neurosurgeon by the name of Chaffee. I don’t know if you know that name.
Stu
(00:23:01)
Dr. Anthony Chaffe. Yes. Carnivore diet.
Dr. Jacoby
(00:23:04)
He’s the carnivore guy.
Stu
(00:23:05)
Yes.
Dr. Jacoby
(00:23:06)
And he has a good video, YouTube, Vegetables are Out to Kill You.
Stu
(00:23:12)
Yes.
Dr. Jacoby
(00:23:13)
Have you?
Stu
(00:23:15)
I know huge amounts … Well, I’ve watched many hours of videos around oxalates, salicylates and lectin [inaudible 00:23:25] and everything that comes with the antinutrients that are proposed to be hiding and lurking in vegetables.
Dr. Jacoby
(00:23:34)
Yes. And I think his theory is correct. I am going to have him on one of my podcasts, because I think, first of all, he presents it very well. He is a neurosurgeon. So he comes from the surgical nerve background and he’s a carnivore. So the question is, are humans carnivores? The answer is yes. That’s what we were bred to be. Don Johanson, I don’t know if you know that name, he’s a anthropologist, but he was the fellow who discovered Lucy, “our first primate.”
Stu
(00:24:15)
Yes.
Dr. Jacoby
(00:24:15)
So I know him and I asked him all these questions, “What did Lucy eat?” And originally, she was ate a carbohydrate diet like most primates do, like gorillas still do. And I’m not sure I fully buy this theory on evolution. There’s lots of different theories. But let’s take her theory, 3.2 million years ago, she was in the trees, got out, tasted a few bugs, “That’s tasty. I’ll have some more bugs.” Then she tasted fat, then meat, then started cooking it. It changed the morphology of her skeleton. So if you eat meat, your elementary canal, digestive tract has to be much, much smaller to process meat, where gorillas have a huge elementary canal. So they have a very big rib cage, knuckle walking. Dr. Johanson says that because of the change in diet, that’s what makes us human, larger frontal lobe, upright stance, plantigrade foot, but a very small elementary canal and fuel that she liked was fat.
Stu
(00:25:41)
Right.
Dr. Jacoby
(00:25:42)
So fat has nine grams or nine calories per gram. Carbohydrates have five. But the nutritionist thought, “Well, you don’t want all those calories.” Well, you do. You want them in the right type of food. We want fat for fuel. That’s what our body’s run on. Now, we do need some glucose, one teaspoon, which is about four grams at any one time. Anything over that is toxic. And that’s where all these disease [inaudible 00:26:12] are coming from. And this is my theory.
Stu
(00:26:16)
I’m fascinated by all of it. And I’ve spoken to Dr. Paul Saladino, so-
Dr. Jacoby
(00:26:23)
Yes, yes.
Stu
(00:26:24)
… you’d be aware of him. So the American version of Anthony Chaffee, and he was following the same principles for a very long time, but now he has adopted carbohydrates in the form of fruit of which he professes to be much safer and required for the healthy functioning of the body. I think when he went to a carnivore diet, he had issues with cramps and athletic performance and realized that he needed to do X to get his desired outcome. It’s very tricky. Oftentimes, influencers in this space or experts in this space have figured out a solution that has worked for a problem that they were looking to overcome. And then for them, it becomes almost a journey of exploration in terms of testing out, “Well, maybe I need to tweak a dial here and maybe add in a certain nutrient.”
(00:27:33)
But from what I’ve seen, certainly from an animal-based diet perspective, I mean, you have access to a very, very broad range of very, very valuable and bioavailable nutrients that the body can readily absorb, which you can’t get from other forms or readily, you can’t readily get from other forms like plants. So it’s very, very interesting. But I follow that more than anything else, I think, in this particular space, it’s all about, “Well, what is the optimum diet?” Because you’ve got a huge camp. I’ve interviewed frugivores, vegetarians, vegan, all the way through to omnivore, Mediterranean, high fat, low fat to carnivore. And I’ve tried it all myself as well, and I’m the biggest experiment for myself, and I’ve been fascinated by the results. But I’m very interested to hear your thoughts in how we can optimize our diets based upon your experience and your findings.
Dr. Jacoby
(00:28:48)
Well, I’ve seen the devastating effects of carbohydrates because the amputations, the gangrene, that’s what I see every day. But myself, I’ll give you my own journey. About 35 years ago, prior to meeting Dr. Dellon, I like to go to the gym every day, like lifting weights. So I did not give diet any consideration whatsoever. So in the morning, I would do surgery. I would go to the cafeteria in our hospital, which is nothing but carbohydrates, very tasty meal. Then see patients, then go to the gym. But I kept gaining weight. Now I was strong, and there’s no question about that. So I thought I’d look good, but I weighed almost 50 pounds more then than I do now.
Stu
(00:29:41)
Wow.
Dr. Jacoby
(00:29:42)
Oh yeah. But you would not consider me fat because I lifted weights. So one day, I had this sharp pain in my side, got an ultrasound, and I had an gallstone. I thought to myself, “Well, my mother had her gallbladder out, and that’s probably what I would need to do.” So I played with that for a year or two. And then finally, I had the gallbladder out, and one of those interesting little sidebar stories to that, I’m in the hospital and one of the family doctors who was sitting there with this enormous plate full of food, and he was a big guy. And he said to me, “What happened to you?”
(00:30:28)
And I said, “I had my gallbladder …” And he said, “That’s because you don’t exercise your gallbladder enough. It’s a muscle.” And this is such a funny story. So I was thinking, “I never ate breakfast. I always get up early. I start surgery at seven. I drink coffee, cream and sugar, maybe there’s a donut or something around. And then I ate a big lunch, go to the gym, but I couldn’t keep the weight down.” And then the gallbladder, and I thought to myself, “Well, maybe I need to just change my diet.” So I’m looking through the literature on gallbladder diet means don’t eat fat.
(00:31:07)
So I actually started eating more carbohydrates thinking that was the right thing to do. Then I really couldn’t lose weight. Then I ran into Dr. Dellon and he explained all this about nerves, and I thought to myself, “Wait a minute …” Let’s talk about the gallbladder. It’s the muscle, right? So the vagus nerve innervates the gallbladder. So I’ll go back to the carpal tunnel. So this nerve, the median nerve for the carpal tunnel operates this muscle, and that’s its function. The gallbladder innervates that muscle, which is gallbladder to expel bile into the intestine. So on the autonomic nervous system, it’s funny because that’s the molecule I found that’s really the culprit right there. You would not know it because it’s the autonomic nervous system. So the muscle empties on its own, but it doesn’t completely empty, and the residual tissue in there is cholesterol.
(00:32:12)
So now we get this whole cholesterol. I just say myth, fraud. It’s fraud. Okay, now I’m the patient. So now I’m really deep diving on this. Wait a minute, why is that cholesterol there? Because the muscle cannot excrete it. So it hardens and turns into a stone, gallstone, blocks the duct. So the doctors in the 1800s, they looked at it, “It’s made up of cholesterol. So cholesterol is a bad thing.” No, it’s not. It’s a neurotransmitter. So let’s go back to Dr. Cooke, your relative.
Stu
(00:32:49)
Yeah, my uncle.
Dr. Jacoby
(00:32:51)
Your uncle John. So Uncle John is the world’s leading authority on that molecule, asymmetric dimethylarginine, cardiologist by training. When I worked with him at Stanford, first question I asked him, because I thought cholesterol was not the right thing, and I didn’t want to be on the wrong side of him on the first day. So I carefully asked him and I said, “Would you walk me through the cholesterol hypothesis?” And he did. And he said, “Well, the lining of the blood vessel, which is called the endothelial,” his words, “that it’s like Teflon, smooth. It’s only one cell thick. When you eat sugar, it makes it like Velcro and cholesterol being a signaling molecule goes through the bloodstream to that area of inflammation, puts down cholesterol to heal that inflammatory lesion,” as we call it. And every time you eat sugar, more plaque, more plaque, until the arteries are occluded. Let’s go back to 1800.
(00:33:57)
Now, I’m really obsessed with this question because it’s me. I said, “Where did that word come from, atherosclerosis?” Well, this guy [inaudible 00:34:08], he opened up an artery in like 1865, and he looked at it, and since he spoke five language, one of which was Greek, and he saw this gunk in the artery and gunk in Greek is athero and hardened gunk is atherosclerosis. So I read his original paper and I went, “Well, wait a minute. That’s not a disease. That’s an observation.” What is causing that? He actually said it was inflammation, but he didn’t know what was the inflammation. It was sugar. And that’s what caused his hardening arteries.
(00:34:45)
So then I said to Dr. Cooke, I said, “Well, why are we putting patients on statin drugs?” And I could sense you don’t build these huge organizations like in our country, Mayo Clinic, Stanford, all of them. They’re based on finding a drug to mitigate the effects of something, and that something is sugar. And all the drugs, when you really think about it, the drugs like Metformin, and now there’s a hundred new monoclonal antibodies. We don’t have enough time talking about all those drugs, but it’s very clever. So if your insulin is going up and your sugar is going up, take this drug. What does that really mean? You take this drug to keep your sugar down. You’re really telling the patient, just eat what you want. We’ll just keep adding on drugs.
Stu
(00:35:45)
That’s right.
Dr. Jacoby
(00:35:46)
That’s called polypharmacy in medicine. That’s out of Harvard. That’s at the Joslin Clinic. That’s what they told us 40 years ago at polypharmacy. Keep adding in drugs until you can’t add anymore. And then you just give the person insulin to substitute because they don’t have enough, because they’re eating so goddamn much sugar.
Stu
(00:36:09)
I’m so fascinated by the whole world of cholesterol, and I’ve been personally researching out of my own curiosity for years, 15 years, and understand where Ancel Keys changed the whole paradigm with his hot health hypothesis and decided demonized fats. So we ate more carbohydrates. And I mentioned previously that I’ve changed my diet over the years, just out of my own curiosity. And I’ve been eating an animal-based low carbohydrate diet for a couple of years, and I’m lean and I lift weights every other day. I love it. And I don’t go to the doctors. I don’t have a need to. I haven’t been for years, 25 years plus. But I do like to run bloods personally on myself just to see what’s happening inside. And I ran some bloods a couple of months ago because I was intrigued as to how they were looking in terms of things like [inaudible 00:37:14] Lp(a), some of these markers that I’ve been reading about in combination with eating more saturated fat as part of an animal-based diet.
(00:37:26)
And my LDL was high. My triglycerides were super low. My CRP was non-existent. My Lp(a) was barely there, but my LDL was through the roof. And my doctor came in and she said, “You’re a lean mass hyper responder.” Now, I don’t know whether you’ve heard about that term, but essentially it’s where a metabolically healthy, genetically lean person adopts a low carbohydrate, higher fat diet. And you get this triangle of effect where HDL and LDL go up and triglycerides come down. And so that led me into, “Well, I just need to find out more about LDL.” Everybody says that LDL is going to kill you, but there’s a whole other camp with very radical ideas that are saying, “Well, no, it’s absolutely required for human health.” And oftentimes, you’ll find the incidence of mortality from cardiovascular disease, these guys are having the lowest amount of LDL.
(00:38:36)
And so it is this rabbit hole. And then, of course, you realize it’s connected to statin, which is trillion-dollar industry. Who knows what to think, but I can only go from my own experiments. My doctor said, she said, “If you went to another doctor, they’d put you on a statin.” She said, “I would recommend that you don’t change a thing. All of your markers look fantastic. And LDL is exactly where I would expect it to eat because you’re eating more saturated fat, therefore you are going to get more LDL particles circulating in your blood. That’s just how it is.” She, by the way, follows a carnivore diet, which I thought was quite interesting as well.
Dr. Jacoby
(00:39:22)
Well, you were lucky because you’re right. Most doctors, that’s what they’re taught to … Well, let’s go to a family doctor. What can they do? I mean, you come in and he’s or she’s a great doctor. Well, that means they agree with your lifestyle and they are facilitators. So here’s the statin drug, although lowering your cholesterol does not improve your health.
Stu
(00:39:52)
No.
Dr. Jacoby
(00:39:53)
The statistics and the hospitalization in the United States are people who arrive at a hospital with a myocardial infarction, which is a heart attack, it’s true. There’s half of the patients that enter there do have elevated cholesterol. I don’t know if you know that. It’s very high. You know what the other half have? Low cholesterol. It has nothing to do with that event. I hear this often. So I say, patient comes in and see me and they have diabetic neuropathy, and I say, “How long have you had that?” It is such a funny … not funny. It’s sad. They say, “I got it in the hospital.” I say, “You got it in the hospital?” “Yeah, I was perfectly healthy. I had a heart attack and they did my sugar, and my sugar was like 300.”
(00:40:45)
Oh, so you caught it like a cold in the hospital? No, sugar put you in the hospital and you did not know your sugar is elevated. That’s what caused your heart attack. But it’s too late. So I’ve been doing this for a long time. It’s kind of like pushing the stone up a hill. People are not going to change. They want a drug. My practice is morphed over to more of a regenerative practice. So I really kind don’t want to argue the point anymore. It’s exhausting because they all come in and I say, “How’s your diet?” The most common is … I don’t know why they do this. They always lean in, look either way and say, “I don’t eat red meat.” [inaudible 00:41:36].
Stu
(00:41:36)
Oh, dear.
Dr. Jacoby
(00:41:38)
So let’s see. You’re 350 pounds and you’ve got a hole in the bottom of your foot, but you don’t eat red meat.
Stu
(00:41:44)
No. Oh, dear.
Dr. Jacoby
(00:41:45)
Yeah.
Stu
(00:41:47)
Yeah. Alarm bell number one.
Dr. Jacoby
(00:41:49)
So my practice is around stem cells, and that’s what my new book, by the way, is about, Un-Glued. I want to ask you and your audience if they like the title of that book.
Stu
(00:42:06)
Absolutely. Well, I would be intrigued as to why you chose the title for that book and how it relates to stem cells.
Dr. Jacoby
(00:42:11)
Okay. So we go back and forth on this, some people. I was at a Think Tank when I was starting writing the book, and it was random. One of the people on the panel said, “What is glucose?” And I gave him that biochemical answer and he says, “No, no. What’s the word mean?” And I repeated. “No, no. What does the word glucose mean?” I’m going to ask you that because I’m going to see your face as well because it was me then, and I said, “I don’t know.” So I looked it up. Glucose is a Greek word, again, it means to adhere, to stick together. It’s glue.
Stu
(00:42:59)
Right.
Dr. Jacoby
(00:43:00)
That’s why it’s called glucose.
Stu
(00:43:02)
Yeah.
Dr. Jacoby
(00:43:03)
It’s a poison.
Stu
(00:43:04)
Right.
Dr. Jacoby
(00:43:05)
So it sticks everything together. So then we went, “Well, then that’s what the book should be, unglued.” How do you get unglued? Well, number one, don’t eat the poison, but you’re 75 years old and you got amputation, blah, blah, blah. You got Alzheimer’s, which is another manifestation by the way of the olfactory nerve. That’s all it is. You know Dr. Perlmutter?
Stu
(00:43:28)
Yeah, I’ve had him on the podcast twice.
Dr. Jacoby
(00:43:31)
You have?
Stu
(00:43:31)
Yeah.
Dr. Jacoby
(00:43:34)
Let’s say this is a perfect example. I have not been on his podcast. He does not agree with what I’m saying. Yet, he did put his name on the front of my book when it came out, which is weird. So he’s a neurologist. He’s very brilliant, very articulate. He says that dementia is type three diabetes. And I think he’s correct in that. There’s type one, type two, if that’s type three, then [inaudible 00:44:06] type four, type five, type six. There’s type 7,452. There’s no types. It’s the location of where the sugar manifests epigenetically.
(00:44:17)
If you carry the genes and you eat sugar, I got a gallbladder, you get Alzheimer’s. This one gets carpal tunnel. That’s really the answer. But since he’s a neurologist, even though he’s in front of my book, he’s not agreeing because he’s a medical doctor, so he can’t put these lens on in surgery because he doesn’t do surgery, so he can’t see what I’m seeing. And all neurologists in the United States are vehemently opposed to what I’m saying because they write for Lyrica. I say their education is predominantly, I don’t know if you have this in Australia … Do you have, I call it the doctors for postgraduate education, go to the University of Morton’s?
Stu
(00:45:08)
Right. No, I’m not familiar with that.
Dr. Jacoby
(00:45:11)
You don’t have Morton Steakhouse in-
Stu
(00:45:13)
No, no.
Dr. Jacoby
(00:45:14)
Oh, what’s your best steakhouse?
Stu
(00:45:17)
Best steakhouse, well, it used to be a brand called Sizzler, Sizzler Steakhouse. But even those have been slowly declining.
Dr. Jacoby
(00:45:25)
So what Big Pharma does takes us to, I call University of Morton’s. It’s a great steakhouse, very expensive. And they put on their show for their drug that they’re selling, and that’s how doctors learn after they get their degree and Lyrica, whatever your statin drug. Statins are very popular because they’re very lucrative. They don’t do anything, but they do buy you a nice dinner.
Stu
(00:45:56)
Right. I get it. Yeah, I get it.
Dr. Jacoby
(00:45:59)
I called the University of Morton’s. I do not get invited anymore, by the way.
Stu
(00:46:04)
But that’s a good thing, right?
Dr. Jacoby
(00:46:07)
Yeah, it’s a good thing. So it is diet. Human beings are carnivores by physiology and anthropology, but we’re urban carnivores. To be an urban carnivore, and I’m trying to get that into the new book, you got to be able to function within an urban society. You can’t just eat steak every day, but if you can lean towards that little bit of Mediterranean, I do believe Chaffee is correct. A lot of these vegetables are poisoned. And so what I would say to patients especially have irritable bowel and Crohn’s disease and that sort of thing, or migraines for sure is go to corn for diet, do it for a couple weeks or a month. I did it for a month. I was amazed. I stopped just doing meat because I was losing so much weight and I had no weight to lose, and it’s a little boring. So I do a little bit of carbs and fruit, I may eat once a week. I like blueberries and cream, but predominantly, I want the fat.
Stu
(00:47:26)
You are almost describing me. I eat that way. I don’t have any fat to lose. I’ve got reasonable muscle tone. I like to lift weights. My biggest concern is that if I don’t consume moderate amounts of carbohydrates from Whole Foods, then I’ll just wither away to nothing because I don’t retain weight very easily. I’m nearly six foot tall and I weigh 70 kilos. So I’m lean.
Dr. Jacoby
(00:47:58)
Right. And that’s healthy.
Stu
(00:48:00)
Yeah.
Dr. Jacoby
(00:48:01)
But all your friends are overweight.
Stu
(00:48:05)
Many are. Few extra pounds to shed for sure.
Dr. Jacoby
(00:48:10)
Yeah. So we’ve got to live in an urban society. So that’s what I tell my patients and stem cell. Where does stem cells fit into this? So we had to get unglued. There’s lots of ways. Number one, diet. Find the diet that kind of works for you. Get your sugars down, get your insulin down. That’s key. And if you do that, you’ll produce your own stem cells. So this is a big controversy here. I don’t know in Australia, do people do a lot of stem cells? Is illegal?
Stu
(00:48:44)
No, it’s not a thing. I’ve been following that quite a lot recently, and it’s not big in Australia at all. It seems to be more of a thing for South America and Mexico. Those are the areas that people have been flocking to, to be able to get that at a reasonable price.
Dr. Jacoby
(00:49:10)
Right. So I’ve been doing that for about 15 years for the conditions we just talked about. There’s two classifications. One, there’s embryonic stem cell. That’s the fetus, which is illegal in the United States in most countries, although some countries do allow it. In the United States, we are allowed to use non-embryonic stem cells. But now the FDA is saying that these are really drugs, and we have to be in a research study, costs hundreds of millions of dollars and it’s going to take 10 years, and I’ve been using them for 15 years, as a lot of people do. And how do they work? They’re anti-inflammatory. So any effect of sugar, it’ll reverse it.
(00:49:56)
It doesn’t matter what it is, Alzheimer’s, autism. So I have been to a lot of those clinics. There’s a couple good ones in Mexico. Panama is probably the most famous. Dr. Reardon’s clinic. He actually is from Scottsdale right around the corner from where I practiced. But he got fed up about 15 years ago, and he went to Costa Rica first. They threw him out of there because they thought he was using embryonic stem cells, which he wasn’t. Then he went to Panama, and I’ve been there many times. He treats with what’s called umbilical tissue, Wharton’s jelly, the supportive tissue, that has stem cells in it. He grows in his lab, does an IV, kids with autism, many kids with autism, which is caused by sugar. And I just want to ask, in Australia, is that autism birth rates, is it going up?
Stu
(00:50:53)
I think it’s going up everywhere from what I’ve been reading. And I mean, there are so many different reasons why people think that is, but absolutely. I mean, autism, ADD, ADHD, digestive issues, autoimmunity through the roof almost everywhere.
Dr. Jacoby
(00:51:11)
And it’s true. So I get really a lot of controversy on this one. First of all, I’m a podiatrist. Okay? So why are you talking about autism? Well, my world is nerves and blood vessels, epigenetics, all that sort of thing. So it doesn’t matter what nerve it is. So I was at Dr. Reardon’s clinic about five years ago and a lot of autistic kids there, and I was in the cafeteria. It’s a big clinic, and all these kids from all over the world were there from India, North America, China, everywhere, and they all look similar. And I was watching them eat and the mothers were bringing them muffins and pancakes, carbohydrates. These kids are sugar addicts.
Stu
(00:52:02)
Yeah. Party food.
Dr. Jacoby
(00:52:04)
So I’m watching this one kid and his mother was standing there. I went over to her and I said, “Is this the first time you’ve been to this clinic?” And she said, “No, it’s the third time.” I said, “Really? Why would you come back? Does it work?” “Oh, yeah, it works rather nicely.” I said, “What do you mean?” “Well, we come here, he’s unable to speak. So when we’re there, we get an IV infusion of umbilical tissue. And then he speaks.” And I said, I don’t know why I said this, I said, “What did he say?” You know what he said?
Stu
(00:52:40)
No.
Dr. Jacoby
(00:52:41)
I want a donut.
Stu
(00:52:45)
Right. Okay.
Dr. Jacoby
(00:52:45)
The very thing she was feeding him, and I said to her, I said, “You got to read my book because I talk about autism.” Autism is, in my thinking, the hypoglossal nerve is the nerve that is affected. That’s the nerve that runs under your chin to a muscle, which is called your tongue, right?
Stu
(00:53:06)
Yeah.
Dr. Jacoby
(00:53:07)
Part of the speech. So again, nerve, muscle, function, nerve, muscle, function. There’s no difference. It’s a function that’s different. You looked at me and he said, “Well, he’s going to get whatever he wants,” because she basically had the money, “and I’ll just bring him here.” That’s the thinking.
Stu
(00:53:36)
Oh boy.
Dr. Jacoby
(00:53:36)
But it does. It works on any neuroinflammatory disease, which are all caused by sugar. By the same process I talked about the biochemistry. Now obviously, I have to do tremendous amount of research to prove all that, and you can’t get a grant because they’re looking for a drug. That’s what they’re looking for. So now in the United States, FDA’s making it more and more difficult for me to do what I can do, and I’ll probably have to leave to go to Mexico or Panama or both to do what I like to do. But it is amazing, absolutely amazing what it works.
Stu
(00:54:16)
Well, I think the take home message is that I think that the body is capable of profound levels of self-repair and healing given the right raw ingredients. And you’ve mentioned before that sugar in all of its guise is insidious in everything that we consume today. And in the majority of what we drink, if we drink anything but water, which is kind of crazy. I liken it now to typical children’s diet is like party food. When I was a child, you would experience a plate full of cakes and crisps and chips and dips and lemonade and Coca-Cola at a party. But now every day is a party. And I think that’s very much part of the problem. So I’m mindful that we’re coming up on time. I’m just intrigued as to whether you could offer maybe a framework of maybe three solid pieces of advice, like the low hanging fruit that would enable us to get back on track in this crazy world, and whether it may be eat whole foods, don’t drink sugar sweetened beverages, things like that. What might they be?
Dr. Jacoby
(00:55:37)
Well, I think the easiest thing, and I know a lot of people don’t know how to do this, read labels. So the label, you’ll notice it’ll say one gram of added sugar. Well, it’s all sugar to begin with. So what’s another gram?
Stu
(00:55:52)
That’s right, yeah.
Dr. Jacoby
(00:55:53)
That’s the first lie. So you want to look at total number of carbohydrates. It doesn’t matter how many sugar or whatever. So let’s say it’s 16 grams of carbohydrate, divide four and 16, you get the four teaspoons. That’s what you’re getting in sugar. When you look at something and go four teaspoons of sugar? You would never do that on your own, but they put it in there for you. So that’s number one.
Stu
(00:56:19)
Interesting.
Dr. Jacoby
(00:56:20)
Number two, I think if little habit changes like breakfast, bacon and eggs got to break that Ancel Keys myth about cholesterol is bad. No, cholesterol is good, and just eliminate, let’s say it’s bacon and eggs and there’s bread. Don’t have bread, and then all of a sudden you’ll start to notice you feel better. You’re losing weight and you’re really not hungry anymore. The key thing that I did for myself, I put butter in my coffee. That was key for me. I like butter, I like coffee, and I rarely eat breakfast because that sustains me all day. And I don’t really eat that much. I only eat for entertainment basically.
Stu
(00:57:16)
It’s amazing when you can break that hunger, that calorie prison that you’re in, and have no need to completely and continually chase snacks and sweets and treats and whatever it may be that you need to get you through the day. It’s great to be able to have this food freedom. Yes, you can have a breakfast-
Dr. Jacoby
(00:57:45)
That’s very good sentence. Food freedom.
Stu
(00:57:47)
Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Jacoby
(00:57:51)
That’s a very good phrase. Because people say, “Well, where do you snack on?” I don’t.
Stu
(00:58:01)
No need to.
Dr. Jacoby
(00:58:01)
Because I don’t think of food.
Stu
(00:58:02)
No, that’s right. No need.
Dr. Jacoby
(00:58:03)
I just don’t. Now, I do love steak. So that’s just a steak. I mean, four ounces to me is a lot. I feel great. That satisfaction you get with the carnivore diet is pretty spectacular.
Stu
(00:58:22)
Yeah. And I think when you break that apart, people see steak and they think, “Well, that’s just steak.” But then if you break down what that actually gives you, and you’ve got all of the B vitamins and iron and zinc and everything else that’s packed into that, there’s a lot of information for your body and all these beautiful nutrients that do things that keep us alive and running in optimum form. It’s pretty profound. I think your steak will generally do a whole lot more than whatever your frosted cereal treats will do for you in the morning that are fortified with vitamins and minerals, which is another crazy term. But yeah, absolutely. No, I’m with you. Get back to the real food and you might start feeling like a real person again.
Dr. Jacoby
(00:59:11)
Well said. That’s well said.
Stu
(00:59:14)
So very appreciative of your time. We’re coming up there now, but if we could shuttle our listeners over into your world and find out more about your thoughts, follow you on perhaps social media, download and purchase your book or books, where could we send them?
Dr. Jacoby
(00:59:37)
Well, Amazon has my book Sugar Crush, so the new book Un-Glued, it was going to come out this month. But this FDA issue, I have to be very careful on what I say. So I’m modifying that. So I think it’ll probably be out in about two months. So I have a website, drjacobybook.com. So that’s D-R, Jacoby, J-A-C-O-B-Y book.com.
Stu
(01:00:06)
Wonderful.
Dr. Jacoby
(01:00:06)
So if people want to go there, I can send them a first chapter if they want to read the new book.
Stu
(01:00:14)
Wonderful. Fantastic. Well, look, that is excellent. I will put all of the links that we’ve spoken about today in the show notes, and I’m pretty sure that a lot of our audience are going to want to find out more about that, for sure. It’s been a very, very interesting conversation. Really enjoyed it. Thank you so much for your time.
Dr. Jacoby
(01:00:30)
Well, thank you. And if you see Dr. Chaffee, tell him I said hi. He’s brave in that world, in neurosurgery. That is a brave man.
Stu
(01:00:39)
Yeah, he’s a pioneer, that’s for sure.
Dr. Jacoby
(01:00:41)
Oh yeah.
Stu
(01:00:43)
Thank you.
