The Sugar Bomb in Your Brain: Breaking Free from Addiction with Bitten Jonsson | EP 460

This is episode 460. For those sugar fiends that are always wrestling their cravings, I've got a question for you. Do you think that you're addicted to sugar? And I don't mean, oh my god, like totally I'm addicted to sugar. I mean, have you been unable to say no to sugar and refined carb foods for many, many years? Whilst your weight gain continued to increase and your health progressively deteriorated into things like obesity, pre-diabetes, type 2 diabetes, brain fog, mental health issues, gut issues. The list goes on. Doctors have incorrectly regarded this group of people as lazy and stupid and have pathetically offered their terrible food pyramid plate advice of eating a balanced moderate way. Which for addicts is like saying, "Just use heroin modestly for a few months and then we'll look at your results at your next appointment." If this sounds something like your story with food, then this episode is worth listening to because today's guest essentially found a sugar addiction as a legitimate addiction within medicine and built both the medical diagnostic tools to help patients understand it better and she created the first holistic addiction protocols to help patients actually recover from sugar addiction. She also broke her own alcohol addiction 40 years ago and has been in recovery for her own sugar and carb addiction for the last 32 years. Sugar and carb addiction is real and needs to be taken seriously and this podcast is a part of that vision. So let's get into it. Welcome to the How to Not Get Sick and Die Podcast. You've tuned in because you want to start taking your health seriously so you don't. Well get sick and die. Here we talk all things health nutrition and human optimization. Let's jump into it with your host and resident scientist, Maddie Lanzdown. What's up my healthy friends? Great to have you here on today's podcast. This year it's my mission to support 500 people to achieve real weight loss and by real I mean dealing with what's really weighing you down and not just the number on your scale. And today's conversation and today's podcast is extremely pertinent to the kinds of people that we support. So if you're thinking it might be time to do things in a very different way to what you've done in the past, scroll to the show notes or the caption below and book in a discovery call to check out some of our programs. Now returning to us all the way from Sweden is the legendary bitten Johnson and a quick bit about bitten is that since 1973 she's been a registered nurse and bitten is the world's leading expert in sugar addiction. She's written three books with one of the most well known being the sugar bomb in your brain. Now if you'd like to check out some of the conversations we've already had on here after you've finished on this episode head back to episode 137 or 277 and of course now this episode. So bitten it's so great to have you back on the show welcome. Thank you and good morning from Sweden. It's a beautiful, beautiful spring morning over here. Oh well it's a beautiful autumn afternoon where I am. Yeah I understand. Yes. So before we hit record you were just telling me about your amazing history and you've hit this 40-year milestone. So I'm wondering if you could start with what that 40-year milestone is and then continue us on with everything amazing that you've done in your career. Well my story I've told that many many times in different podcasts but I was a nurse and working as a nurse and knew nothing about addiction. I couldn't even spell the word addiction. Never heard of it and in Sweden at that time if you were drinking and hiding, lying, sneaking with that you were a very bad person, low moral, you were absolutely horrible. So I was like everybody else trying to control drinking and could end up in treatment in USA because I met an American married and moved over. The best thing that happened in my life to be meeting professionals that taught me that addiction is a brain illness and all the research with newer transmitters and the brain and that. It was amazing and it was a shock and I was almost very angry too. Why hadn't anyone told me that before? In Sweden it was such a shameful situation. So I decided oh my goodness now when I've learned this I'm going to teach everybody else you know what that is and everybody else doesn't want to hear that. So anyway I started out working but the thing was that also I met some absolutely wonderful people like Terence Korski who became my mentor and he was the world leading relapse prevention specialists at that time. So I was just sucking up every lecture he had every I went over the training with him twice. I had him over in Sweden doing training and so forth. So and I thought I going to be very healthy. So at that time I was smoking so I quit smoking right after seven years in sobriety and of course I had no idea about what we call addiction interaction disorder, one illness, many outlets. So and nobody talked about sugar and carbs and food and fat people were lazy stupid sort of low moral and no character and that forth. So anyway and I wasn't really overweight. I had some weight but so I thought I quit smoking and that was absolutely totally crazy because I could die for chocolate. Chocolate nice cream now. I was acting like an addict but with those things and I thought this is crazy and I started thinking what is wrong I could quit smoking I could quit alcohol but I can't quit sugar and carbs. Food is absolute I try it every day and it was absolutely nightmare. So and then I started talking about it and then I ended up in U.S again I was living back in Sweden at that time so I ended up in Chicago at this hospital where they were helping as they said food addicts. But I want to point out one thing I know that most people use the word food addiction. I don't like that and I tell you what nobody would say about alcohol is some alcohol liquid addiction. You know like I would have a liquid addiction or wait a minute water is not addictive it's not a psychoactive substance. So I have through all these years kept saying sugar addiction because when I asked people they're problem with food they said nah not food really. What about sugar and type that type of food. Oh yeah tell me about it they do this oh my goodness. So and if you're an addiction specialist which I am you understand what psychoactive substance is. Okay alcohol is psychoactive substance water is not right. So and also food I like to keep the word food for real food. What we need but we thrive on what makes us healthy. So that's why I say sugar and carbs because if you look at meat it's not addictive. Plain meat is not addictive. Plain pure fat is not addictive the good fat and so on. So it is about sugar and carbs that's what trigger our reward center. So anyway I understood the sugar and everything so I got into training with that and I came home just waiting after a few weeks over there and I started telling people about it. I said I am sugar addict and they looked at me like I came from March or something. What are you talking about? This was 1970 1992 and yeah but I tried to explain nobody listened. I said no no no you can't be addicted to that. I said yeah you can but then people started ringing me I said hey wait a minute you know what I'm like a food a holly. That's the word they used in the beginning. We had so few words and we didn't have any research and we we knew so little but people that couldn't stop eating were viewed very poorly very bad sharp up. Yes. Eat less will more and then these people came to me and I started to teach them a little bit of the little I knew at that time right but sharing my story and then after that I said okay let's start a group so I did I had no material no nothing but I knew from US the treatment center I was in they had a program for alcohol pills and drugs and I thought drug as a drug so I started working with that so that was 1993 94 and I met Terence Gorski my mentor for many years and he was a relapse prevention specialist because if you go out go to the gas station there's no bottles would whiskey there or no cocaine bowls but there's food right sugars sugars, sugars, bakery, that out so we are exposed so terribly so I started to talk about it more and more and people said but that's me that's me that's how I act I can't I start eating I take one bite to the cinema roll and I can't stop and then I'm going to eat this and that and so forth and yeah that's my story so that's the way it was so we started talking about these things and 95 I started the first group I put together a program for one whole day every week for 20 weeks and we started to learning together we nobody talked about insulin at that time nobody talked about well when you was reward center something happened in our brain right and we had lots of control So that's when my story started. And then from there, people said to me, "Hey, I can't only come one day a week. I need to stay here. I need to get a few weeks for this." That's, "Oh, I better get some beds and put people in the beds." But the thing that hit me during all these people that looked for me and I started exploring their story was how horrible the doctors and nurses treated them. That was started ringing in me. They viewed them as, "They didn't even want to help people with overweight because they said, 'You're a hopeless case.'" You know, it's such poor track record of people losing weight. People lose weight and then they gain weight and they lose weight and they gain weight. So they wanted, the whole medical profession was behaving horrible. Still do, still do, Matt. They don't know anything about addiction. They can't fantom that your brain is hijacked by certain food products. So that is the horrible thing. And that's why I was fighting so hard. I had a tremendous amount of resistance from the medical profession. But being a medical professional, I wanted to really teach my peers because those are my tribe, my pack. But they were worst. And the social office, which helped people with alcohol and pills and drugs, they said, "No, no, no, we don't help people with eating disorder." And I said, "This is not an eating disorder. This is a sugar and carb addiction." And they said, "No, that doesn't exist. They still do here." So people that come into me told me such horrible stories. What the doctors have said to them, how the nurses treated them, looking down upon them and all that. So my dream was all the time. Ooh, I wish I could take every doctor and nurse, put them on a deserted island and force feed them knowledge. That's how I felt. I was very upset with my colleagues behaving in that way. And many still do. So right now, if we look at that whole history, I have had so much ridicule from the press or from other doctors, nurses, professionals, nutritionists, blah, blah, blah, blah. And they, if you look at the whole field, there are so many names for having a eating problem. It's binge eating, it's overeating, it's restricting, anorexia, bulimia, purging, volume eating, blah, blah, blah. I have a slide with a long list of names. And of course, each professional have their little piece of understanding and then they have a method, eat in moderation, try this liquid diet, this diet. And we know that many people do the bariatric surgery and that's a temporary solution. They lose weight, but they become very sick in the end. So I was pushing through. And in the meantime, I thought, well, we need to marry people in the integrative functional medicine field because they understand more lifestyle medicine. There's a medical field. They were one meal, one pill, right? Yes. So I set out to talk to people that were nathropatic doctors and integrative functional medicine specialist or the molecular specialist. And this I did many years ago. And they started listening, although many of them didn't still understand loss of control and hijack brain, which is the key issue to understand. So they came up with other remedies, pills and powders and drops and all that. And of course, that didn't help. And still the moderation eating, which of course not, it's like eating on an aqua, drinking on an alcoholic or you can't wait to somebody addicted to heroin. Well, maybe you could have a little bit of heroin on Friday evenings. Such a funny example. That's what they did. And that's what they do. Still, they still do. So anyway, because they don't go into depth understanding how our body gets hijacked. And today we know much more. So anyway. And then this journalist asked me, how come you're pushing talking about this when people think you are fanatic or a lunatic or there is no such thing a sugary car prediction. And I know the resistors you're meeting here. And I said, I looked at him and said, I think, why do I keep doing this? Because I'm right. You know, that was my answer at that time. And I know I'm right. So there is such thing. Sugary addiction is real. And I had all those hundreds and thousands of people keep coming to me and said, help me. I'm dying. And the whole field is looking at the consequences of the addiction. Obesity and overweight is a consequence. High blood pressure is a consequence. Inflammation is a consequence. The diabetes is a consequence. I could go on and on and on. It's the typical nature of Western medicine, right? Look at the symptoms rather than the root cause. Yeah, yeah, the consequences. And also I understand why because there is nothing more difficult in the world to tell somebody that is in the throws of addiction. Eat less, move more, don't eat cakes, but eat bread, eat this moderation. Because every bite triggers the addiction and makes it absolutely impossible to stick to diet. Right. So that's why I pushed through. And so 95 was the first more professional group treatment. And then people came and said, oh, you got to keep me for a couple of weeks. I can't do this in one day a week. And people traveled from all over Sweden to come to that group. And didn't work. Night train and doing one day and night train back. And I have people doing that. So anyway, I thought, well, I better rent a few beds. Yeah. And that's how it started actually. And people came and wanted to stay for a couple of weeks and then four weeks and then aftercare. So that's how I built the treatment that I did. And we were learning together because it was so little. But anyway, my dream was always to get the doctors and the nurses who was the people that met these people in the GP's office. They came and tried to ask for help and they were brushed off. Brushed off. Go home and eat less and do this and take this pill or this powder or this diet or this and that. They still recommend that in many J.P. clinics. I know, I know, I know because they don't have knowledge. So through all these years, anytime a doctor or a nurse or a dietitian, any of the medical professionals came to me and said, can you tell me what you're doing? They were at least a little curious. And they also saw what happened to the clients when they came to me instead of going to their office. I had one psychiatrist calling me and said, very stern and he was like, we have a common client. And I said her name and I said, yeah, we do. And he said, what are you doing to her? And first my heart sank and I thought my goodness. I hope she's not dead or something and he thinks I did it. But you know, at that time everything was so strange. So I said, well, she's been at my place for help with her sugar and car prediction. And he said, oh, so there is such thing. And he said, why do you ask? I asked him. Well, she was coming to my office and I put the diagnosed borderline on her. And you and I know that borderline is not really, it's very treatment resistant. So like early cycle disturbance and so on whatever we want to call it. But you know, they don't really recover. They can learn a lot of stuff to deal with life pretty good, but they don't really recover. So he said to me, she has been away from my office for four years. She came back to me now and I must say she doesn't have a borderline. And I said, hmm. And I said, but depression and bipolar and anxiety and all those diagnosis are a consequence of an untreated sugar and car prediction. Because sugar and car prediction really screws up your brain and your body. Yeah. And he said, interesting, interesting. I must say. So anyways, stuff like that happened. And I thought, why isn't doctors and nurses and medical professionals coming to the training? Because they said, no, no, I don't want to deal with that because they are hopeless cases. And of course, what they saw was that these people tried again and again and again to heal to go into recovery to start working a good program. But they relapse and they didn't understand. First of all, sugar and carbs. That's the first psychoactive substance anyone encounter as a toddler, as a baby, as through their life. Nobody starts drinking when they are three, four years old or using drugs that comes later in the teenage years, right? So exposure for those psychoactive substances are much later. sugar and carbs. And then they didn't understand the genetic predisposition that people have. So if you have a sensitivity for addiction or some kind, it's back in your family or way back in in the generations, somebody had this. You are very, you are sitting duck if you start eating these products because then it can explode and become an addiction. So anyway, the exposure is very early. Keep that in mind when we look at it. Our plan with our little guy is to try and do the first 1000 days of his life, entirely sugar, carb free. This is wonderful. Keep going as long as you can because he's going to be exposed to the society and he's going to start wanting that. So, but because remember that the prefrontal cortex of the brain is not developed when you're born. The part of the brain that is already developed is the retelian brain. What's in your retelian brain? Well, that's instinct for survival. And fight, flight, freeze, food and sex. You are hardwired already, born, that part of the brain. But the prefrontal cortex where you learn how to behave in life, where many of your skills as a growing human being developing, is not ready until when I started training, they said, "But matured when you're 20." But you know how kids and teenagers can be and that's part of growing upright. They are rowdy and all over the place, but that's what life is. But then later on, I learned from science that the prefrontal cortex is probably not mature until you're 25. And I thought that's interesting, they changed it. More research showed better result. Fine. A few years ago, some researchers said in Oxford, they said, "Well, it's probably not matured until you're 30." And now it's getting interesting. Why is that? Were we so wrong in the beginning or could something hinder development? Well, for the major. Yes, yes, yes, yes. That's my theory. Malnutrition hinders the brain to develop. So if you do give nutrition less food to a toddler and a baby, and of course the brain gonna develop much slower, and also it's gonna be very hampered in its development. You get the wrong connections and you get places where it's not connected in the brain. And I read a lot today about the agotistical generation today. There's a selfish. All you wanna do is eat and sit with the mobile phone. So now we have problem number two, the screens. Oh yeah, absolutely. Who's gonna hinder a proper development of a child? And can you imagine that you don't get sufficient nourishment and you'll be on a screen day and night? Which part of your brain wanna be developed? Repealian brain. Yes. Yeah, fight, flight, free, sex, and food. So that's what's happening. That's so interesting. So anyway, but my colleagues, they were not really listening. So you said you asked me what's happening in your life? Well, I finally have some professionals listening. And that's the first one that started doing that was Professor Timothy Nox in South Africa. He's incredible. It's a network and Nox Foundation. And remember him saying a few years ago, after I've been doing some training for them and he said sugar addiction is probably the most hidden, unknown problem underlying today's health problems. And it's right. Because they were still seeing the top layer, the consequences. And now they can see what's underlying this. Well, if I've been doctor and I treat the client for high blood pressure and diabetes or inflammation or the other consequences, the depression, the anxiety, but I don't address the addiction, which is loss of control. Again, hijack brain. I'm not gonna help this client. They're gonna be a little bit better for a while and then they're gonna go back and a little bit better and go back. And somebody that is doing that, you can imagine if you were trying a treatment method and you kept failing, how would you feel? And I'll put it all. No, you were doing something as wrong with you. You would see that everybody else can do it. I am the loser. I am the bad one. I can't even make this method or this diet or this what. So people feel more and more like losers. And then finally they stop going to the healthcare professionals and they start looking online and they get into really crazy remedies. The starving diets and even more diets and they start doing low carb by themselves, not knowing anything how the body reacts so they relapse and then they go, well, I try keto and they have no knowledge, nobody teaches them about the brain, how that is working, or the retelian, the sucker sitting there screaming at you, "E-T-D-D" because it's overactivated from the addiction. And then what's more gonna happen and you know this, well, your pancreas gonna be overactivated, right? Tonight's going to start squirting insulin and you have insulin resistance and I'm not gonna wind all the details there but this is very important to understand. It starts with a reward system reacting to sugar and carbs in these sensitive people. I'm one of them. And then we want more of that and more and more. So now our reptilian brain gonna say, "Oh yeah, huh, now we're going eat more, eat all your dye." And you try to, it's like stopping it tsunami with your hands. It's not gonna work, right? Yeah. Because it's overactivated. The whole brain is hampered in its development and overactivated because it starts early. And then you have a pancreas that is overactivated. And now the whole hormonal system is screwed up. Your brain is screwed up. It's not functioning properly and you get something we call foggy brain. George A.Ede has a very good name, cerebral glucose hypomethobeles if you want to fancy your name. But I said foggy brain. You don't function. You can't over-view things. You don't connect the dots. That is the problem. So that's why I call the work I do. Now, years back, I came up with the term hashtag connect the dots between. So first I married the functional medicine people. And now I'm marrying the metabolic syndrome people. I get to do some training in nutrition network and NOPE's foundation. And now they are the leaders in saying we're changing one professional at a time, medical professional at a time. Teaching this is part of everything as they teach about health and lifestyle medicine. So actually, I could quit now because my dream is true. I have medical professionals listening. That's incredible. You've achieved that goal. Yeah, I'm very happy. But there are a few, but they're coming along and they make it as a natural part of their training. To understand addiction and the disease concept, it is a brain illness with physical, psychological, social and spiritual consequences. It's not those consequences are not 30 diagnosis as the tradition on medical system. And there are no pills and quick fixes for that. The way to recover, you have to take away the drug. The only way to recover and heal is to take away the psychoactive substance, which is sugar and carbs and eat real food. And also the sugar and carbs has screwed up your brain and caused addictive thinking and addictive behaviors. So all these years you've been eating this and been on and off, on and off. Your brain is not functioning properly. So it's nothing that you can heal in three weeks. It takes years, takes many, many years to rewire the brain and develop the brain with proper nutrition and lifestyle. So it's a whole, I used to say the food part, changing food and viewing what I call biochemical repair, which is so important to restore energy. So you have energy to do the rest of the work with proper sleep and breathing and physical activity and supplements. That's about 10% of the whole treatment process. 40% is relapse prevention. Because think about it, I talked about the early exposure. Now you have constant exposure, gas station. I want to a new, it's not a new old, but new grocery store yesterday. And I was so depressed. I had to call my best friend, she's in the field, Anika, Stranberg, Schmidt. And I said, I need to complain. Listen to me. I was looking for plastic bags, three liter plastic bags. And I was walking their eyes up and down, up and down, because they had rebuilt in there. And I thought, where have they put cleaning supply? I found it at the corner, a small stretch, a few few shelves where it was. But you know what I saw? - What? - Energy drinks, energy drinks, long eyes, full with energy drinks, and crisps, and candy and all that. It was huge. You know, I wish I could measure in percentage, a big that was compared to the rest in the store. I was painted. I had no idea it's been that sick. It was sickening. I felt so bad, matter, because we know that craving comes from seeing it, all those colored cans with drinks and crisps and all. That hits, if you're an addict, you're going to react to that by seeing it, smelling it, hearing it, pop a can, you know, that's a trigger sound. And this is, you know, what life is all about today. All those ails with all that junk, drug foods. So it's very hard to try to resist. And you need a lot of help, a lot of knowledge, a lot of support. So 4% is battery-elapse prevention. We have to teach that from day one. What is the risk situation? When you are new into recovery, first weeks, everything trigger you. So we advise you don't go to the grocery store alone, because, you know, you're going to be triggered. And once you're triggered, and the craving takes over, other parts of the brain shuts off. It's like crocodile seeing a person on the beach. Ooh, we're going to get you focus, focus. Yeah. Yeah, people often talk about that cognitive dissonance that happens when they have a binge. And it's like, oh, it was like an out-of-body experience. Yes. So that starts in the grocery store. It can, so if you're new into recovery, first years, your brain is extremely sensitive to when the craving, which is a physical thing, starting in your brain, you can't resist it. You'd like missile looking for the target going. And so that is society. The food industry knows this. So that's why they do what they do when the baked goods in front of the kids and the candies and all the colors. And it made me so sad. I was thinking, hi, it's going to end. Oh, it's going to end well. Because you're listening here, I can safely assume you're an absolute legend. And so if you want to keep this party going, I'd love to invite you over to follow me on Instagram or YouTube, both under the same name of the real weight loss coach. Over there, you'll find different content in both places. It's different. So heaps of bite-sized pieces of information. So if you want to learn lots of things really fast with a bit of a scroll, or simply you just prefer some visuals, then scroll over to the real weight loss coach on Instagram and YouTube. So see you there. Thank you. And let's get back into the episode. One of the things that the whole world looks to is the EU and the countries in Europe in regards to their food laws. And so I'm curious in comparison to like the USA, which is probably the worst situation or the worst example in the world for food laws and sugar and supermarkets and all that kind of thing. Do you feel like in the EU, the laws are going to protect the European population? Or is it starting to go the other way? Are they moving in the direction of the USA? Well, in Sweden, at least, they know about this. They do understand it, but they keep the quiet treatment. Everybody pretends they don't know anything about it. And the food industry is running the whole show. And you can't deprive people of Maddie. Deprive them. Or forbidding something or taking it away. And all I see when I go to the grocery store shopping is all these incredible sick people. They were way sick people. And I know that the healthcare system is about to break. And actually, it has broken because the government is trying to cut down on healthcare because it costs too much. Oh, wait a minute. Stop. Why does it cost too much? Well, because you are using the wrong methods on helping people. The word lifestyle medicine is unheard of. In Sweden, what's that? And the medical professional things too, that well, people don't do it as I tell them. Well, 15 minutes, you judge overweight, you're depressed, you have foggy brain, eat less and move more. How is that going to help anyone? It doesn't. It doesn't. It doesn't. I develop the sugar diagnostic assessment to help people see this is the disease you have. This is the illness. This is how your life goes. With all these ups and downs in weight and illness, more and more consequences, the older you have gotten and so forth, it's going to end with a disaster if we don't turn this table. And then you have to take away the food. And then the 50% of the treatment method, if we're going to go back to that, is support. Because once you have developed this, as I call you, now the red dog monster, the addictive part of your brain, which is not you, by the way, you have an illness. You are not your illness. But that thing that said, wow, shouldn't we eat some today? Maybe I can buy that just a little bit. Just for today, only one. This time I'm going to control it. Sure, babe, you're not going to control it. The drug controls you. Yes, absolutely. You know, you're screwed. But anyway, so there is no support for changing the lifestyle and people have asked me through the years, when they're going to be normal, why don't you eat normal? And I said, I'm normal, why? You're not. Oh, I totally agree with that. But you know, I have many years in this field. So I can be pretty tough when people criticize me. But you know, we are called fanatics, eccentric. Why do we eat like this? Why don't we eat normal? Why can't you have a little bit comparator? If you're a peanut allergic and you die from a peanut, could you have half a peanut? It's a good comparison. You all want to understand. Anyway, support is very important that we have people around us like mind that we can talk to. Or today my red dog wants to eat chocolate all day long. But of course, I'm not going to do it. How do you withstand the craving? What do you do instead? We have a huge toolbox today to help people. That's been developed through all this year with all the treatment I've worked with and all the people, the other professionals I've married, as I said, making a holistic model. So the important thing is that we support each other. To do the necessary changes. It's one thing to teach somebody. This is what you need to do. It's another thing to do it every day, day after day. Sometimes like that's like a desert walk. People feel, oh, I have no energy. I have no mental horsepower. I'm so tired. And the remedy is knowledge. Knowledge is power. If I didn't know so much about addiction, I would never have been alive today. Because that's what kept me all these years to understand how my brain was rewired, faulty wired. And the tools I need to rewire it again, to heal it. Because in your brain every thought, every behavior you have learned will never go away. So the addictive part of your brain will be there forever. So how do you get out of that? Well, you do brain bypass. You learn new things, bypassing the old behavior, old thoughts, old feelings, and so on. And you learn to do new things. And then you have to be like an athlete. You have to practice every day for years, every day. And that can be some time, oh, how am I going to do this? But then you have your peers. And they said, well, I used to be there a year ago. And today it feels like this. Because I kept practicing. And also I learned this new tool and this tool. And like the conscious breathing tool that I learned many years ago, you've probably seen me using this relaxator. I love it. And I teach everybody how to do conscious breathing. And use a relaxator. Because all that is over breath. If you look at them, they go, so that is really ruining the whole biochemistry in your body. So I teach them about breathing, proper breathing. How to practice that every day? No breathing. Slow the breathing down. Exhale for longer than inhale and so forth. It's such a simple thing. I teach people that in one minute on the screen like this. And I tell them, start practicing. And of course, the body will slow down. Reptilian brain is high active. It's like a speed freak. It's like a Ferrari on cocaine, type thing. So you have to slow the Reptilian brain down in order for you to the new lifestyle, with the new food, the breathing, the better sleep, the physical activity, support for you to take in those tools. If you have a high-active, retelium brain, you know, it's not gonna listen. No, no, no. The next thing, the next diet, the next this. So people become, of course, from eating junk food, which I still like to call it, they become very tired and wired because the sugar and carbs give you false energy for a little time and then you crash. So it's, you are both wired and tired and that's a horrible feeling because it's like spinning all the time, you don't get anything done, you don't go forward, you run in circles and nothing happens. So that's why the first thing is to really slow everything down. If you are an exercise addict, we recommend that you slow down. You can't keep doing that. Most people don't, they are terrified or they don't like to exercise because they are overweight, they are in pain, inflammation, poor sleep, am I to carnivorous, shut down, it's not working. So we have to hear that first. But this is the message that I want to give to people that if you think you have, and there are screening instruments on my website bitincedaddiction.com and if you see that you have a problem, if you see, oh my goodness, I suggest to many of those answers, you need help. We ask for professionals with our new fancy cards, we don't try to repair them yourself. We ask for help with many, many things, but it's like this, deep inside the illness, the red dog, as I call it, the monster, wants to tell us you have to fix this yourself, but you can't. That's like putting a, as holding a pilates bowl under the water, it's gonna bounce up in your face before you know it. So you need a professional to tell you, this is the picture of you and your life right now. They need to do a sugar diagnostic, which is an instrument that developed many years ago, which is absolutely brilliant. It's very powerful. It gives you all the insight you need. Sometimes when we talk, I should demonstrate it to you and you should see, maybe I can do it on you, and you can have, when you see your life story folding out there, I said, I had no idea. Yeah, I'm curious with those diagnostic tools, I know that there's a classification for harmful use of sugar and refined carbs and addiction, was the distinguishing factor between those two groups? Good question. While WHO World Health Organization still is keeping the terminology harmful use and then addiction, they have both American Psychiatric Association that is doing DSM five today. We had DSM three, four, five through the years I worked, versions of it. They took away that and they have another lead gen of it today, explanation that if you have symptoms in two to three criteria, it's a mild addiction, which is stupid word, because you can't have a mild addiction. That's like saying, I'm a little bit pregnant, either you are or you're not, but it is in the early stages or you're full of denial and pain you can't see it, and then moderate and then severe. The harmful users, the definition is that you're not addicted, but those are the emotional eaters, the stress eaters, the culture eaters. Those are the ones eating wrong because they don't know, because they are stressed and unhappy or whatever. But when you start looking at them with the diagnostic tool, you can see that they don't have the loss of control as an addict. So it could be early, early addiction too. I am never treated harmful users, because to me, that's boring. I love the addicts. I want to work with the hardcore stuff. But there is a terminology of all the people that ask for my help through the years. Everybody wants to be a harmful eater, because that means moderation, and dealing with the problem like distress or the emotions or thoughts or whatever, what have you. But of course, out of thousand clients, maybe one would be a harmful eater, the rest are addicts, and they don't want to be addicts, but that's the way truth is. Yeah. So you need help, because I say like, "Church it the further back, you look the further forward you can go." So you need to take a gutsy look at your situation and the truth, the reality. And most people, when we do show ground them, and they see black and white, well actually the curve is yellow and gray. The way the curve is gray and the dots are yellow. We look at the curve, and we see this is the way your life is right now. And these are all the consequences through all these years. And your first addictive symptoms, when you were three, four, five years old. And here you are. And the way it has gone up and down and up and down, and they have done very electric surgery. It didn't help. They gained it all back again and so forth. And all the consequences, they cry from relief. They cry and say, "Oh, this is what I said to myself. I understood that I'm adding." But people around me say, "There is no such thing as a sugar carb addiction, because it's so scary if somebody's an adding, would you do about it?" "Oh, I don't know what to do about it." So let's pretend it doesn't exist. Stupid. The ostrich in the sand. And of course things get worse and worse. So that's why I do the sugar diagnostic, the full assessment, which is pretty comprehensive. And I help people see reality, because as I said, if you don't see reality, you don't know where you're going. It's going to be a new method, a new diet, something that's only going to temporary halt something. And then you're back into it and even worse. And if you look at people that have lost a lot of weight, but they haven't gotten into recovery or they don't understand, they have a sugar and carb addiction, what's happening to them? They gain it all back and more. Yeah. So you can just look out there. I'm curious, because we often see this, or not often, we see this a lot, which is just as you're describing, the person that loses weight gains it back, loses weight gains it back. And people often do this for three, four decades. And before they start, we'll start looking for a solution that's not the same kind of cycle. But do you see the same kind of cycle with addiction? Because isn't the step to remove the addiction very sudden and immediate? So is there a lot of relapse in the beginning of addiction recovery? Yeah. And especially with food, due to what I told you earlier, early exposure, the brain is not developed. So it's worse, mental horsepower. You have to develop the brain too and stay away from the food. And then the constant exposure that you have with food, sugar and carbs, that you don't have with alcohol and cocaine and other drugs. So even alcoholics and drug addicts and pill addicts, they relapse. But it's much further to getting a drink for somebody in recovery than it is to grab a piece of chocolate or a cookie or a cake. That's very close. So it's much, much more obvious with people with food. And also another thing is that you have a society that don't understand, don't respect this. You can have a little bit normal, have a cookie. So we are exposed to much more nagging and much more. And so many people are sugar and carb addicted today. And if I quit, you threatening my eating. So I don't want you to quit because then you're going to be a goody, goody. Oh, that's horrible. But which to eat this? And you could have a little eat with me, eat with me. So you have the whole society's ignorance and silence and don't change. And the early exposure, the constant exposure, the food industry is absolutely drowning you in an exposure and all that. So with the reason that we need to learn about craving, management, queue-induced craving, when it comes to the sugar and carb part, is extremely important. Anyone working with this not understanding queue-induced craving, the physical reaction that has nothing with your will to do when you're exposed. Even people talking about it, oh, I going to go home and bake a cake. That trigger a sugar and carb addict in the beginning. So of course, the person that have this problem, they need a huge, huge toolbox and support to handle all this. I went to the store today and I saw all this chocolate and my brain started wiring up. You can talk to somebody. One of the best remedies I've learned through the years is to expose my red dog to my peer support group. Tell them about it. And that would take away the craving. If I pretend it didn't happen or lie or hide, it's going to grow on me. And maybe I eat chocolate three days from now. So I don't even connect it with going to the store yesterday. So it's important to share that with people so that you can release a pressure valve. Exactly. within you. Is it equally important to make confessions when you do it? Like to. Of course, honesty. Yeah, the program is about honesty. And people call me and I see them, they relapse a year or two back and it shocks me every time. And they said, "Well, I felt shame starting to eat again." And then what's happening is that the drug is screwing up your brain. That's what's happening. It's like a toxic poison. So you think, "Well, I had this today, but I'm going to quit tomorrow. I'm going to quit tomorrow." And one year goes and two year goes and you become sicker and sicker and sicker. So you have to in the treatment program, you build in the support group. It is a must. It is as important as quitting the drug. So that's why you're not 10% biochemical repair in the food. 40% relapse prevention and we have relapse groups. So that we prevention, we stop, we map out what are my risk situations, what are my warning signs. I know that. So, you know, I know what to do about it. And then I have the support group. Oh, the desert walk here. And then these people treated me bad today and you're somewhere to release all that. So that's why it's important to have that whole concept. Yeah, that's incredible. And I mean, yeah, the work that you do is so phenomenal and I'm such a fan of everything that you've created. And to be, yeah, just a part of the group of practitioners that get to learn from you. And what I love too is that you embody it. You've been 40 years sober. How many years have you been, you've taken that step with sugar and refined carbs? Well, since, you know, the first food plus that I shared this with Vera Torma, we have a pod out, the recent pod is going to be on my website where I talk about how the food plants looks in the beginning when we had no knowledge about insulin or we had fruit in the food plan, the grains, but they were brown brown rice, right? Like it's, that would be better for us. No, no, no. We had lots of carbs, but we took away the really bad part and starchive veg. We had that in the beginning. So I used to say I started working on my food recovery for 32 years ago when I started to have knowledge, but my food plan has changed through the years. So if you listen to that podcast with Dr Vera Torma and me, she's interviewing me. We tell about how our knowledge, but we didn't know anything about insulin at that time. So today, my food plan, we've gone from that carbide, fruity, sweetie with dairy products to much stricter keto food plan with all the knowledge I have today about insulin and the body. So in periods, I used to eat a keto war, keto carnivore, because I was very young when I started and I'm going to be 73 this year. So my body has what's called reverse tolerance to that's something we develop. The older I get, the more sluggish or I, somewhere I read, well, we don't only get wrinkles in our face. We get wrinkles on the intestines and in our bodies. And everything is wrinkled in my body. Everything is older and more sluggish. So, you know, I need to expose my body to less food to less food groups. Fruit would trigger me. If I eat an apple, I probably would run to the store and rob them of the chocolate cakes because that's going to trigger my brain fruit sugar. So I've learned so much. So it's hard to say there was a date like without calling it your date, 27th of September, 1985. I haven't been drinking one rip off to that. I've been in recovery. I have done some beautiful relapses, which I'm very grateful for when I went into menopause. For instance, when I was 48, I could have drawn them in chocolate and it scared me terrible. And then I had some other relapses later on and I said to a lady I worked with, I said, I'm going to quit working in this field. Why? People love when you teach them this. You can't stop working with sugar and carbonic sugar. And I said, yeah, I have two because I can't stick to being drug free in it. She looked at me laughing and she said, but wait a minute, if you don't relapse, if you don't understand the work with relaps, like Gorski taught me, it's part of the journey. How can you help people in relapse? You can't help people in relapse. I looked at her and said, oh my god, okay, I'm going to stick to it. That's such a good perspective to have been given. It is, I love that. So today I work a lot with relapse prevention and I work with CNAPS Corporation. I teach in their webinars and in their training and they teach people from me to develop relapse because the relapse prevention protocol still is for alcohol, pills and drugs, right? Yeah. And I have revised Terry's protocol for food, sugar and carbs. So it's the same thing. It's a psychoactive substance and you have to take it away if you want to heal and you need support, you need knowledge, you need relapse prevention. You need a huge toolbox with what do I do? What do I do? And also working with peers in a solution focused way. Like if you and I were in a group and I had to go to a situation where I feel, oh my god, my relapse there. I asked you, Matt, have you done this? And you said, yeah, sure. How did you do it? And you would tell me, well, if it was my problem and it's my problem, I would do this. And I asked maybe somebody more. There's a whole word of knowledge out there. People have done what you're about to do long before you. They learned. They can tell you what to do. So that's how we work. Oh, I love it. I love it. And for anybody that wants to know more about you, get your books, get into this work. Where can they find you online? Well, the best thing is to go to bitinsteadiction.com and then you can go to my Facebook, you could go to LinkedIn, you could go to Instagram and X. My books are still in Swedish, but one is almost translated and updated, but it seemed never get done because remember the galaxy I told you about, I keep adding on other projects and having fun with that, but it will be done. But then you could do that. And also people email me after every podcast and there is a lot of podcasts on my website if you go there. So it's bitten and S like which words you will use, which is for the S for sure. Sure. Sally, that's a cool one. So it's easy. You can Google and you find me. Yeah, I'll put it in the show notes down below as well. So everybody will be able to scroll and click. Sure. But if you, if you email me, I get you the link to where you can ask for help. I have trained so many. That's why I train professionals so that people can get help. There are people on my website that help others professionals. Yeah, fantastic. There is help. And what before we finish, what is one piece of health information in your amazing career that you wish more people knew about? Ask for help and be honest. Tell how it is because that's when you get the help. There was a saying in a book once, she or he who cannot how cannot find his or her pack. Learn to how. Oh, I love that. That's a good soundbar right there. Yeah, I love that one. Oh, bitten. Thank you so much for your time, energy work. I love our conversations and absolutely good to have you back. Yeah, good. I'm happy to come back and for the work you do. Beautiful. Thank you very much. Oh, thank you so much. Hey, thanks for listening to the show. 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While we strive to bring you accurate and up-to-date content, it's important to note that a lot of this is mixed with opinions, stories and ideas not supported by mainstream science or medicine. Any advice or suggestion should not be considered a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Always consult a healthcare provider before making any decisions about the health and wellness of you and your family. Remember to that what works for one person may not work for another. And just as we promote on the show, each person is responsible for their own health decisions. Thank you for tuning into the How to Knock It Second Diapodcast and now the next episode. Here it is. [Music]