Everyone thinks fructose is good for you because it sounds healthier. Fructose implies fruit, and fruit is good for you, right? Well, that may not be the case. Research is showing how fructose is metabolized in your liver almost identically to alcohol. We all know you need to be careful with alcohol because of the risk of damage to your liver.
Dr. Martin discusses several studies on how fructose is a lot worse than we think. Instead of being used for energy, fructose is instead being stored in our bodies. Dr. Martin uses the example of bears who can eat up to 30,000 berries a day. Bears are storing fructose on purpose for their hibernation. It’s not being used for energy like glucose would be.
Dr. Martin says fructose is a horrendous man-made sugar, and explains why in today’s episode. It’s important to learn the differences between fructose and glucose.
TRANSCRIPT OF TODAY'S EPISODE
Announcer: You're listening to The Doctor Is In Podcast, brought to you by MartinClinic.com. During the episode, the doctors share a lot of information. As awesome as the info may be, it is not intended to diagnose, cure, treat, or prevent any disease. It's strictly for informational purposes.
Dr. Martin: Well, good morning everyone. Welcome to another live this morning. Hope you're having a great start to your day, and we're going to, as usual, have some great information today. Now, yesterday we talked about a study that came out on erythritol we talked about... Somebody said this to me afterwards, and yeah, is it really a fake sugar? Well, look, sugar alcohols is not a real sugar and it's not alcohol. So we brought that up yesterday a new study saying, cardiovascular disease isn't really artificial sugar as far as erythritol, maltitol, xylitol and all these sugars. Look, you know what? I think we came to a conclusion yesterday. Let's limit those type of sugars. Okay? Let's limit them. They're very much found in keto foods because they're not calories in that sense. So that makes them popular with keto. You know, me and keto foods, look, I, here's the best keto foods in the world. Eggs, meat, and cheese, okay? It's nature, it's animal protein, and I double down on that all the time. Eat real foods. And the problem with keto foods, eh, there's too much fakeness in there, in my opinion. Okay? So they're popular, but I like pure nutrition, okay? Pure nutrition is where I come from.
Now, today though, I want to talk to you about another type of sugar, and it's called fructose. Okay? Now everybody thinks fructose is good, okay? It's good. I mean, if you had to pick a sugar, you would certainly think that fructose is the best. Well, that depends, okay? That depends on a couple of things. What I want to do is sort of bring out a couple of studies, new studies on fructose, okay? Now, fructose is metabolized, almost identically to alcohol in your liver, okay? Fructose is metabolized, almost identically in your liver. Now, you don't have to be a rocket scientist. Any doctor, any doctor will tell you, eh, be careful with alcohol. I mean, any doctor worth any salt will tell you that, right? Be careful with it because alcohol can be very, very damaging to the liver. But guys, fructose is metabolized very, very similar, and that's what separates fructose from sucrose, okay, or glucose. Now they're both sugars, but fructose is metabolized differently, okay?
So I want to just bring to you, okay, a couple of studies that are really interesting when it comes to, let me just get a quote of where these studies came from. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Dr. Richard Johnson. Now, I have a book by Dr. Richard Johnson, probably the guy that has studied fructose more than anybody else in terms of research. I really appreciate some of the books that he is written and I've, I've really read them, taken a lot of notes. His name is Dr. Richard Johnson. Here's a few things that he says, okay, and this is important, okay? "Recent studies," okay? I'm quoting Dr. Johnson here, "looked at high fructose corn syrup," okay? We'll talk about this in a second, "as a culprit because it alters brain metabolism and causes degeneration of brain regions associated with Alzheimer's." Okay? So yesterday we looked at sugar alcohols and possibly... I read the studies. Look, were they conclusive? No, maybe, maybe not. All I'm saying is it made the news. So I said, I better pontificate on it to give you some perspective and we came to some conclusions. I think I tried to convince you, you know what? Be careful with those type of sugars, don't overuse them. But today we're going to talk about fructose, and more specifically, the one that I hate is high fructose corn syrup. Okay?
Here's a quote on research done by Dr. Johnson. Here's what he says. "Fructose levels are high in brain with early Alzheimer's." Look, we all know what fructose does in the liver, okay? And we've talked about this in the past. You know the six days on the road, and I'm going to get home tonight. I'm not supposed to be singing, but that was a song that I used to like as a kid, <laugh>, okay? It doesn't take long to damage your liver. And they've shown this. Changes in the liver. As soon as you start drinking high fructose corn syrup in soda or whatever, the attitude, when they do ultrasounds on the liver, they can tell within six days, less than a week changes occur within the liver. Okay? Now, the good news is, let's put this up there. One of the biggest benefits of the reset is in six days you can change the liver for the good because it empties out the fat in the liver. An epidemic beyond epidemics today is non-alcoholic fatty liver.
And I said it again and again and again. Listen, there was no such thing when I was in school. Do you know that? No such thing. You couldn't go reading a book, non-alcoholic fatty liver. All we knew about liver fat and cirrhosis was alcohol caused that. There was no fructose causing non-alcoholic fatty liver, at least not when I was in school. It's a new phenomenon, and even in the last 20 years, it's up 300% and there's a reason for it because fructose is different. Look at a bear. Okay? What? Let's look at a bear <laugh>, okay? My sister had me laughing, this is years ago because she said they're buying condos in Timmins. There were so many bears, and where I live in Sudbury, in the spring, boy, the bears come out and you better hammer down your garbage and stuff like that because they come right out of the woods and they come into town, right? Like my sister had me laughing. She said, we got so many bears in Timmins, we, they're buying condos, okay?
But let's get back to what bears do. Bears, when they're getting ready for hibernation, they store an enormous amount of fat. Bears get really fat, and you know what bears eat to get fat? Not your garbage, okay? They'd love to eat that. But what they do is they eat berries, fructose, and they fatten up <laugh>, it must be true. I read it. Berries eat up about 30,000 berries a day, <laugh> to gain fat. You see? So fructose is a fat storing sugar, okay? Fructose is a fat storing sugar. You don't use fructose for energy. This is really important, guys. You don't use fructose for energy. You use fructose to store. Unlike glucose. Glucose you can use for energy. Now, if you don't, glucose will be stored as fat, but nothing like fructose. Do you understand the difference? Fructose, think about it. Fructose, storing. Glucose, energy, you need to burn it. Fructose you won't burn as energy. Fructose will be stored as fat. Glucose gets there too, okay? Glucose gets there too.
So guys, here's why I'm bringing it up, okay? And way before Dr. Johnson brings it up, I admire him for that. I've been screaming blue murder since 1980, maybe before. They changed the sugars, the food industry changed sugars, okay? They went from glucose to fructose and they made it in a lab and it's called high fructose corn syrup. Why is that so bad, doc? It's fructose. It sounds healthy. I remember, this is, I'm talking 20 years ago more. I had written an article and I got blowback from the top doggy in the states about high fructose corn syrup. She said was good for you. It's high in fructose. I had written an article saying that was the antichrist of sugars, horrendous sugar. Okay? Now, why am I bringing this up? Because last two days, we're talking about sugars, and I want you guys to understand this. And the best way to understand it is to understand how your body operates.
And by the way, here's what the food industry was able to get past the FDA, Health Canada, you name the body. The government agencies, they allow them to hide the name high fructose corn syrup. They don't even have to mention it. You drink a soda, they don't have to put, they got high fructose corn syrup in there. They tell you they got sugar, but they don't tell you that it's the worst sugar in the universe. And Dr. Johnson, in his research is saying, your brain, my brain, if there's fructose up there, it's the worst thing because Alzheimer's, when they look at early Alzheimer's, the fructose levels are the highest in the brain. So folks, what am I singing? It doesn't end in your liver, okay? And liver. I'm a big guy on liver. I'm a very, very big guy on liver health. You know what happens in the liver? Don't stay in the liver. It's not Las Vegas. I've said that to you. What happens in the liver, it starts the metabolic syndrome. It starts people on the broad road. 93% of the population, imagine in North America are unwell. They don't even know it, most of them.
And one of the biggest culprits is this fructose. It's in a liquid form. High fructose corn syrup. The worst thing you can do, look, you want to have an orange, eat an orange, don't drink it, don't drink apple juice, ever. Don't give it to your kids, grandchildren. Nothing. Don't do that. Why? Because it's fructose. It's not going to do one thing for their energy, one, and it's going to be stored because fructose is a storing sugar. Isn't that important? You can eat fruit. I'm not against eating fruit. I'm not, okay. I'm against living on it. Don't live on fruit, but you can eat it. I love fruit, but I limit myself and I never drink it. Now, you can put a few berries, okay? In Dr. Martin's perfect smoothie. Okay? You can do that. Put a few berries, it's all right, but don't live on fructose and the especially high fructose corn syrup. Okay?
Now, let me give you some other things that Dr. Johnson brought out, okay, in his research on fructose. Really interesting, fructose actually causes more hunger and thirst than glucose. It doesn't satisfy as much. And what Dr. Johnson said, it affects lectin. It makes you lectin-resistant. You know what lectin is? Leptin is a hormone that tells you you're full. Okay? Lectin is a hormone that tells you you're full stop eating. But what happens, boy, the food industry, give them credit because what did they do? They made people fat and they made people hungry by switching sugars. They made people fat and they made people hungry, and people don't even realize it. Doctors don't take anything in nutrition. Let me give you a quote. I wrote it here. This came from an article I was reading. Listen to this quote from Pierre Ducart, whoever he is. "For the first 50 years of your life, the food industry is trying to make you fat. Then the second 50 years of your life, the pharmaceutical industry is treating you for everything." I like that.
The first 50 years, the food industry brought to you by the people that used to run the tobacco industry, they want to hook you, they discovered a sugar in the lab named high fructose corn syrup. It's cheap, very cheap. It is addictive, and they knew it. It takes the same route in your brain as cocaine does. It'll hook you. And you know what I always say? Let's go to the mall together and we'll observe. Use our eyeballs to observe people today, including children. What do you see? Everybody is bigger. You know, it's incredible. And fructose, high fructose corn syrup is the main culprit. Now, let me get back to what else he said, okay? "Fructose for storing, glucose for energy." Fructose he says, okay, "depletes ATP and mitochondrial damage in the brain." Fructose, high fructose corn syrup, it depletes ATP. You know what ATP is? Energy. ATP is fuel coming out of your mitochondria. You remember in high school, mitochondria in your cells, your battery packs, but you got an enormous amount of mitochondria in your brain because your brain needs energy big time. It uses 25% of your energy, your total energy, 25% is found in 2% of your body weight, your brain.
And what Dr. Johnson and others, but Dr. Johnson is saying, look, you know what that fructose does? It depletes the ATP. It's mitochondrial dysfunction in the brain. And he says, that is catastrophic for Alzheimer's. It's catastrophic, okay? Now he also says fructose increases in the hypothalamus. So this is for hormones. Hypothalamus is hormones, hippocampus is memory, and he says fructose, even in the hypothalamus stores water by reducing... What fructose does is it makes your brain secrete a hormone to make you hold on to fluids. You're holding on to fluid. That's no good. It increases insulin resistance, it increases blood pressure, it increases inflammation, all in his research. Regional changes in the brain and decreased cognitive function. Wow!
You know what they call, in 2005, they discovered that Alzheimer's was really type three diabetes, and that sort of got shelved because it wasn't following the narrative of the pharmaceutical companies that were trying to find medications for Alzheimer's. So they didn't like the idea of type three diabetes, and it sort of got hidden. I often shock people when I do seminars or whatever, and I say, well, Alzheimer's is type three diabetes. Your brain becomes diabetic before the rest of you becomes diabetic. Hey, you can be skinny as the rake. It depends where that fat is being stored. You can have fatty liver and be skinny. Do you know that? You just don't see it. Some people have an enormous capacity to store fat. Some people don't have that capacity to store fat. They're still storing it in the wrong places around their organs. You just can't see it. You can't see it. Anyway, interesting stuff.
So let's do some takeaways here. If you got to sweeten stuff, if you still have a sweet tooth, be very careful, okay? You're better off having some fruit and eating it, okay? Limited. But look, I want you to win. I'm on your side. I am a realist, not a purist, but a realist. I want people to win. I want people to get the big picture first. I want kids to be able to understand so that they can make choices. I want parents to understand so that they can make choices for their kids and teach them good nutrition. I'm not a purist, okay? I'm not. I'm a realist. So for me, look, if you still got a sweet tooth, then you know, have some fruit, but limited. Never drink fructose. Don't drink it because you weren't meant to drink it. God gave you fruit to eat, not to drink, okay? Don't drink juice. Got it?
Now, someone was asking me yesterday, okay, so I got to answer this. "Doc, what if I want a little bit of sugar? What is the best sugar?" Okay, well, we know. Look, I guess if you can get unpasteurized, a local honey, have a little bit of that, okay? I'd rather you put a little touch of that in your coffee if you need to sweeten it up than use anything artificial. Unpasteurized, wild honey, it's in the Bible. Again, we live in a different world, so limited, not much, but it's certainly a better sugar. I guess if you got maple syrup, I mean, not Aunt Jemima, although they change the name of that. I don't mean artificial stuff, but the real, real maple syrup. Well, you could have a little teeny bit of it just to sweeten up your life, honey. Okay? So again, I'm a realist. I'm a realist.
Fructose levels are higher in the brain with early Alzheimer's. Fructose different than sucrose or glucose, it's used for storage. It creates more hunger and thirst than any other sugar, fructose, high fructose corn syrup. It elevates. So, by the way, I didn't even tell you this. Fructose, especially high fructose corn syrup, elevates your levels of uric acid. Okay, and that creates inflammation, uric acids, it goes hand in hand with insulin resistance. People think of uric acid and they think of gout. Yeah, that's true, but a lot of people have high levels of uric acid and they don't get gout, but uric acid when it's high, is not good for your brain and fructose and uric acid go together. That's why whenever I had patients with gout, I'd say stop drinking, especially any kind of fruit, okay?
Guys, have I told you lately? No, I know I told you that I love you, but did I tell you how much I appreciate you? We appreciate our audience, you have no idea. Okay. Tony Junior and I were talking about it the other day. I said, we have the most, I mean, what happened? That we get the best audience in the world. You guys, smartest. What did I say yesterday? <laugh>, smart, fun, loyal. Thank you very much. We appreciate that. Okay, guys, you can share this. It's good information. Share it, and you can get your friends and family. You can bring a horse to water. You can't necessarily make 'em drink it, but you can sure put a little bit of salt in the oats for that horse of yours to listen to The Doctor Is In podcast, and they can download that on their smart device. And millions have, millions have. Thank you. We appreciate it. Talk to you soon.
Announcer: You've reached the end of another Doctor Is In Podcast, with your hosts, Doctor Martin Junior and Senior. Be sure to catch our next episode and thanks for listening!