Detox Paradox

Michael Collins takes us through the details and subtleties of sugar addiction. 

Michael Collins, the founder of SugarAddiction.com and Board Chairman of Food Addiction Institute, has been completely sugar-free for over 30 years and has worked closely with others to help them regain lives ravaged by this addictive product.

Mike has been in recovery from substance-use disorder for over 34 years and can speak on recovery topics separate from sugar.

He raised two children sugar-free from the womb to over six years old - when they only had sugar once a month for their entire childhood.

His book, which was rated #1 in Healthy Living on Amazon, will be available to all Detox Paradox listeners for free today.

https://www.amazon.com/Last-Resort-Sugar-Detox-Guide-ebook/dp/B07JNSBVX4/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?keywords=mike+collins+sugar+addiction&qid=1579578893&sr=8-1-fkmr0

Donnalynn: 00:01 Well. Hello and welcome to detox paradox. I'm so glad you're here with us today. We always talk on detox paradox about how detox is really kind of a paradox, If we change our lives then we probably don't have to clean out the closets because they're already clean. So today I have with me Michael Collins and I'm very excited to get to hear what he has to talk about today. It's the focus on sugar and what it does in the body and to our minds and to our emotions. And I'm very interested to hear so I'm going to bring him in now. Hello Michael, how are you?

Michael: 00:51 Hi, how are you? Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

: 00:53 My pleasure. My pleasure. So tell us a little bit about your background. Like I know it was a, a long road getting to where you are now and I'd love to hear sort of the brief progression of what that is. I think a lot of times people think it's easy. You know, they, they see somebody who's now saying, Oh, you should live a certain way. You should make a choice that makes it better for you. And they think, Oh yeah, that must've been easy for them. And it's rarely been the case as is, I think with you. So go ahead.

Michael: 01:28 Yeah, no, I thank you and I appreciate it. It has been a long journey and I just grew up as a regular kid and I enjoyed sugar and like everyone, and you know, my mom was my favorite sugar junkie. She had a stash around the house. We always knew where it was. And you know, we had red and buttered sugar sandwiches and Kool-Aid with three times the sugar and court requirements. And if we didn't, we had unfettered access to the sugar bowl. That was the crazy part. We could put as much sugar on our cereal as we wanted. And we were scraping up half an inch of sugar at the bottom when we, you know, we finished up. So, and, and one of the things in hindsight, I mentioned more of it later, is that I didn't realize that was changing how I felt.

Michael: 02:14 And I don't think anyone has yet. I mean, one of the missions that I'm on is to get people to connect that that drug would, that I call it is a psychoactive drug that makes us feel a little bit better about ourselves because it's a little lift, makes us feel more self-confident, gives us a touch of energy we think, but not really. And you know, it's, it's really a different thing than just a sweet product that we crave because in nature, fructose, nothing's poisoned, the sweet stuff and we're attracted to it. So I just moved, you know, I ended up in this, probably not part of the story, but I think it's relevant in that about 13 or 14, I discovered beer and marijuana and all these other things. And that party til I was about 28. And I got sober on the way out.

Michael: 03:03 Like a lot of people. I substituted sugar again, I came back, if you will, to sugar. And a lot of my fellows in recovery into mutual aid societies did the same thing. They would you know, gain, you know, it wasn't the freshman 15, like college, we're talking the freshman 50 here, you know, people gain weight fast. And so, you know, I started thinking about it and looking at it in that way as an addictive kind of thing and got some mentorship there. And I've had a couple of children and raised them sugar-free from the wound forward and till they were about six years old then they only had sugar once a month maybe till there, basically the whole childhood. And about 10 years ago I grabbed the addict, the domain sugar addiction.com and I started putting out information, but it's only been the last three or four years that we have been coaching and having online groups and that kind of stuff. And that's really where the success has happened, where for folks is when they had that one on one connection with people. So that's the short version called the podcast version. And if you have a, usually brings up more questions than answers.

Donnalynn: 04:10 Well, I love that. I love that it's the sort of elevator version of it, you know so that we can kind of get the overview. But I do think that the, you know, the back story is always really relevant because like I said, a lot of times people are in a dark place and they feel like, well, you've never been there and what do you know? And also I think quite often the people that I am in contact with are, they're in a sort of mediocre place where they are not in they don't necessarily recognize that the amount of alcohol that they're drinking is having an effect on their body or that any alcohol that they're drinking can be having an effect on their body. The number of cookies they choose to make can be having an effect.

Donnalynn: 05:00 Right. And that, so, so a lot of times people search for health answers and they say, no, no, I, I eat quite normally. Life is a, you know, I don't need anything really that bad for me. And I don't do anything kind of bad for me, but they're still drinking a drink or two a day or they're still eating cakes and cookies and those kinds of things. And I thought it was really relevant not just for your background, but also you have a fantastic book, which I would really like you to talk about in a minute because I think that one of the things that spoke to me in your book really was your connecting wheat and gluten to sugar and sort of processed foods in general to the sugar reaction in the body. So I'd, I'd love for you to get to talk about your great book and, and that topic.

Michael: 05:58 Well though, I appreciate it. The book is really my story, my personal story, and then the science behind why all this works and how to walk your way out of it. It's kind of a labor of love is what it was and I just needed to get it out of me. But that's, that's how it came to me. But the answer to your question about what, what I call to process carbs flour and sugar products, they really, and it's your, your top bureaus that the title of your thing, your thing, and then we're going to get into the energy management is really perfect for me because we don't realize, I don't think the fo people don't realize that I'm there by what's happening to their body is and what's happening to their brain through these products.

Michael: 06:50 It just gets no respect. Right? And you know, everybody always talks about it on the market. There's always these sugar detoxes, right? There's these, I've got a detox from certain for 10 days, 21 days, 30 days, which is probably dangerous in a lot of ways. It's like restricting and then going back, right? It's probably more dangerous than helping you and flour turns to sugar in your stomach. So, and that part affects, you know, the body, everybody knows about diabetes and the glucose, but they don't realize it. I don't think they think it through that half of the sugar molecules, fructose. Right. And the explosion of the information and this research, the scientific, deep peer-reviewed research that's happened in the last five years, where the fructose is the offending molecule and it's affecting the norepinephrine that GABA the serotonin, the dopamine, the big one, oxytocin.

Michael: 07:48 And even your adrenal glands are being affected by the fructose in sugar table sugar. And that's really what's causing all the upsets, right? That's what's causing the lethargy and the anxiety and the depression. And the biggest part of that is causing people not being able to quit because literally from the wound forward, basically since they were children, they've been used unconsciously using this substance to quell hurt and anger and pain and fear and all these kinds of things. And now here we are adults and we don't have alternative coping mechanisms, right? And so it's this process that I had this thought process that I need to get out to folks so that they understand that this is not an innocuous little suite that you, this, this is truly is a brain chemical. And the important part is that this is dose-dependent. I mean, if you take an SSRI or a little pill or an ASP or something this big, we're talking

Donnalynn: 08:56 About pushing 150 pounds of this stuff through your body over a year period. Is that, is really the dose-dependent part. That's the part that gets, yeah, I heard a statistic a while back about how much sugar, and I don't remember the exact amount and I'm sure you probably know it, but of how much sugar we ate in the U S 50 years ago and what we eat now, and it's like five sounds or something to 150 pounds. It's, it's astronomical the differences and really it's in so much of our food that it isn't even aren't the places you expect to find it. Right. So you know that there's going to be sugar in the cake, right? You get that, but you don't really think about that there's going to be sugar in the bread or that there's going to be sugar in the sauce that's on your vegetables.

Donnalynn: 09:49 You know, those kinds of things that, that we just, it's just pervasive. It's in a lot of our food. So yeah, there's one that throws people and they use it as a caping agent and they don't really, almost all industrial salt has sugar in it. Salt. Wow. Wow. So it's an anti-caking agent instead of corn, right? Yeah. Let's throw shade. Use it for, but yeah, we know why they use it because they use more of the product. That's right. That's right. It helps with sales. That's right. That's right. That's exactly right. So so this let's talk a little bit, actually before I ask you that question about what sort of qualifies as sugar. So in the world of sugar detoxes, which are, are typically sort of teaching people short term but even the ones that are teaching people longterm we've got a lot of diets out there now with keto and you know, other kinds of diets that sort of severely limit carbs in a way that typically we only used to do when, when we had a doctor's supervision so that we were sort of sure that the body was reacting in certain ways.

Donnalynn: 11:06 Let's talk about you talked about sugar table sugar. And I know that you have a good list, in the back of your book, which is well worth getting. So if anybody's interested in that, it's a little last resort sugar detox guide. And do you, where do you prefer people buy it? At Amazon or at your website? It's free in the United States to download the digital copy or you can buy a hard copy book and an expensive and other English speaking countries, 99 cents. I think that's through Amazon. They should just do that or write on your website. Yeah. Okay. Very good. All right, good. I know you have a really good list in the back, but often I hear people and, and it's comprehensive, so it's worth getting just for the list, which it's a very good book. That a hundred and, well I should say 700 pages before that or whatever it was. But that's Amazon speak. But a lot of people talk about a fruit, actual fruit with its fiber as a source of damaging sugar. And I would love to hear your thoughts on that.

Michael: 12:28 Yeah. This opens Pandora's proverbial box here. This is something that what we found, this is pattern recognition over thousands of detoxes, people coming off sugar and attempting to stay off sugar over the longterm is if you've got a substantial habit, the body doesn't really know the difference between the fructose and an orange juice or even an orange and Coca Cola. Yes, the fiber does slow it down, slows the hit to the liver down. It's the only place that fructose can be processed. There's no other way for it to be processed in the body. And so the hint to the liver is the same, right? And yes, like I said, a fiber will slow it down. But let's look at a Naval orange. Okay. It has no seeds in it. It can't replicate in nature. We basically have fructose bounds. And the research, as I mentioned in the last five years, has really accelerated to understand that what's happening. Yes, we're getting a lot of damage from the glucose, diabetes and all these other things. But why we can't stop and why our energy is affected is our reward systems in our brain. And that has to do with fructose and large amounts of fruit, especially dried fruit or juice fruit juices is almost identical to the same thing as Coca-Cola or candy or whatever. You cannot binge on sweet fruits, high-glycemic, high-fructose fruits and expect that your brain chemicals know the difference. Right,

Donnalynn: 13:58 Right, right. Yeah. and it, and it seems that it's significant in the way that you're speaking about it, that there's a, there's a significant difference between having an Apple once a day and bingeing on concentrated fruit sources and sort of that's that craving response that you, that you end up triggering. You can tell because you've eaten three pieces of fruit and going like, I think I'll have some more and then I'll have a little cake. Yeah.

Michael: 14:31 A lot of people say like berries are, and they are, they're less Brooke toast, less glycaemic blueberries and strawberries and raspberries and, but they are small fruit and people eat the entire container, you know, that's not good.

Donnalynn: 14:44 Yeah. So, so so as you know we talk about on a detox paradox and on my channel DRS detox, we talk a lot about energy management and exhaustion and tiredness and sort of how to move forward in life as we get older and older and older from 20 to 30 and 30 to 50 and 50 to 70, right. How to do so with optimal energy so that we're enjoying our lives the best that we can. And we're supporting that effort with our food intake and our breathing and our lifestyle habits and, you know, the whole package. So can you talk a little bit about the connection between caffeine, which you talk about in the beginning of your book and sugar and exhaustion, tiredness, the inability to really rally your energy.

Michael: 15:52 Wow, I'm really so happy that you're giving me this forum. I mean, no one's literally asked me that. A lot of podcasts, this, this question, and it's something that I've been, I teach a lot and I'm very passionate about and that I genuinely believe that caffeine and sugar and flour to some extent, but caffeine and sugar are the bane of the, they're the total enemy and opposite of true wellness energy, right? Energy that is, comes from within, that's that can be cultivated and raised is totally decimated by caffeine and sugar. Now, we know in the last five years we know why because it's affecting our reward systems in our brain. You know, one of the withdrawal symptoms of sugar and caffeine is lethargy and it's like you're down, you're depressed. You don't want to do anything. Right. I actually believe in, I've studied this quite extensively because at the end one of my drugs of choice was marijuana, which has a symptom that most people don't understand, which is a motivational syndrome, right?

Michael: 17:00 It's fake. You know, "stoners", they just want to sit and eat, watch TV, right? They don't want to do it. Then go out and do it. And he does smoke and eat and sleep, right? And this is what I believe sugar and caffeine causes the, you don't realize it cause you get a little bit of an energy boost as you're fighting off withdrawals, right? That's all you're doing when you're re ingesting their morning cup of coffee with both sugar and flour is you're getting a little better, right? But in reality, it is truly causing a motivational syndrome. And this is again from pattern recognition, from thousands of detoxes of people that when they get to the other side, when they acquire some abstinence from most of these, what people think today is innocuous substances there, they cannot believe how much energy they have.

Michael: 17:47 They cannot believe that they've two hours off their sleep time. They cannot believe that they're, you know, they don't know what to do with themselves because they have more time on their hands and they have more energy on their hands. And this is not, this brings up the thing that people are always fussing with, with, which is what I call moderation, right? Which is what society believes. All wellness people, even eating disorder people, a lot of people, nutritionists, they believe that there's some level or some possibility that we can ingest these two substances with moderation. And that's from people who have never gotten to the other side 30 60, 90 days. I have never had a person genuinely get to 90 days and want to go back. Okay. To start re ingesting these two substances. Okay. And so, and again, one of the most exciting parts.

Michael: 18:42 Yeah. People come to me for weight loss and that's the part of it. It's just a byproduct. It's not really what we focus on. What we focus on is literally getting your brain back online and getting your energy stores back online. So it's, it's an exciting new world if people can just think about it in a different way that the possibility existed. This ubiquitous product they've been using since the womb could be affecting how they view the world mentally, emotionally, and how their emotion, how their energy is presented to the world and through their body.

Donnalynn: 19:17 Yeah. So you bring up an interesting point about because you, you keep going back from physically to mentally and emotionally. And I noticed that's a theme throughout your work that those things can't really be extracted from one another. And that's I think a core concept that you can't, you can't have that belief and think it's kind of okay to do the moderation thing on whether even if they're drugs and alcohol or even if their sugar and Kathleen and wheat and all these sorts of things that you instantly know don't feel good in your body. But if you think, okay, it's okay if I have a cup of coffee and a donut for breakfast because I don't associate that with my behavior later in the day. But once you make the association not only a causal association, but really cyclical association, right?

Donnalynn: 20:21 So the one causes the next, causes the next, right. And you'd go back and forth that you can have. It's a loop that's very hard to get out of. And, and once you remove a substance, I think actually it's, it's in my opinion and I can't back it with scientific evidence or anything, but in my opinion, it's, it's very much what programs that remove a substance work is that once you remove the substance, you can kind of see what's happening in your life in a very different way. Whereas if you keep the substance, then you've got this dance going on and you don't need to really deal with anything. You're good. You're good, you have a little cake, you feel better. You don't have to tell your mother what you think or your kids, what you think or your boss, what you're saying, color you or deal with you, you know and, and sort of find a new way.

Donnalynn: 21:19 So so I find that that is also very true with exhaustion. That when people are experiencing very difficult times a little tiredness is one thing, but when you really feel exhausted in your life there's something going on there that's bigger than, Oh, I ate too much pasta last night, or whatever that is. That excuses that comes up the next day. And so you have an interesting way of going through it. I hope you don't mind me going back to your book all the time, but I really found it a great roadmap for you know, to, to lay out days one through 30 for people and to talk about not just, okay, this is what you do, which is what most people do on a program, but to also layout this is how it feels. This is what's going to happen. And if it doesn't, well who, but maybe it'll happen tomorrow, so it'd be ready. And this is how you deal with it. So can you talk a little bit about that process of emotional recovery along with your, you know, substance removal, your sugar removal?

Michael: 22:34 Yeah, no, thanks. No, it's a, for sure it's a, a, again, I'm a big fan of this pattern recognition. They say geniuses only pattern recognition. It's like, I, I've seen it so many times that there's not that this big of a discrepancy in what happens to each individual. Yeah. They may be a few days or even a week apart, but they're basically gonna happen at the same time. It's the same, you know, everybody's going to have the same problem. And people that have all a really big habit, 102 hundred pounds overweight, who have really never had any other way of managing their emotions, they're going to be a little different, but not that much different. So what it is, is, and this is a, I think of, should be the biggest clue of all, is that in days, if you were to attempt all three at the same time, sugar, flour, caffeine, by day two to three, you are going to be incapacitated, literally, physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, incapacitated, and not being able to get out of bed most.

Michael: 23:25 And if you can get out of bed, it's just to eat and go back to bed. I mean, it's literally, and when that happens to a person, they have to be thinking, what the heck? Right? And so here's the, you know, the progression after that, that lasts between two and seven days, it starts to feel a little bit better. And there's this feeling of impending, like all of the angst and anxiousness and hurt and pain of the world and your past starts to start to sneak back in, right? And this is where the recidivism happens. This is where people fall back, okay? And after about days, 14 to seven to 14, you're starting to feel a little bit better physically and you think, well, maybe I can have a little, and that's the downfall of it. All right? And so then you got to go 14 to 30, which you're feeling pretty good physically.

Michael: 24:15 Again, now your dopamine receptors are coming back online. You don't heal those that quickly, right? And I want to stress that in days 30 to three 65 is kind of where we shine because the recidivism rate is lower in all of the literature. Medical, peer-reviewed everything. University studies, 90 plus percent of people who lose and a substantial amount of weight gain it all back in the first year, right? They can muscle that what I'm describing, right? They can get through it. They can exercise all the time and get through it. If they were previously an athlete or whatever, they understand it. They can get through it. They've probably done it two or three times, but then they get to a place where, I don't know, two months, three months in, and they're starting to think, well, I've lost 40 pounds. I feel great.

Michael: 25:04 I can have a little, I can. That's how every story of failure starts. It was at a wedding. I was at a birthday party, I was my birthday, whatever, and then all of a sudden they fall back and that it's just like muscle memory. It's brain memory. Your brain is flooded with dopamine and serotonin because you've healed it up for four months and now there's this feels pretty good and you don't know. It's not like a giant cocaine buzzer and it's a little subtle lift in self-esteem lift and feeling. You're like, well, this is okay. I can do this and your brain is cooperating. And I don't like, people don't like when I say to your addict brain is cooperating, getting this back in because you're getting a hit and dopamine here, right? Or serotonin. I've heard people say it's the first one that gets you to the craziness.

Michael: 25:49 And and that's sort of, you know, that moment of like, I'll just have a bite so I don't offend someone. You make me cake or whatever. Yes and no, this is a, this is exactly what happens and this is, it's hard to separate, to cleave apart these things that have been enculturated into our world for 300 plus 400 years. And now that the last 30 or 40 years with high fructose corn syrup, it's literally in everything. So to be ever vigilant to separate your whole food stops out from everyone else's "food" or food-like substances takes, like I said, eternal vigilance to make sure you're not getting an accident. I don't mean gestation and so, but when it happens and when people adhere to it, the stories are unbelievable of life changes, right? Or personal development. Here we are mostly dealing with people who would listen to a podcast or listen to or read a book or something. They're high performers in their job, in their academics, in their athletic performance. And this is like one last push, if you will, to get, I have a Olympic athletes, ultra marathoners who have had upticks in their performance after they got through this because now they can manage their energies. Just they're more cognizant of exactly what's going on with themselves and it's not, yeah, it's a, I got on my soapbox sometimes. Sorry.

Donnalynn: 27:24 That's great. Sometimes in, in the things that we talk about in day RSD talks, we talk a lot about sort of how to deal with going in the direction you don't want to go. So we talk about meditation, visualization, how to deal with, okay, so you did have that piece of cake and what do you, where are you going to go now? How are you going to, what is today? Is today a new day or is today the same as yesterday? And you're just going to go, well, I already had one. And and what the difference between those two things are like where did they lead? Right? So for, for what we talk about a lot really we're talking about disease and and bill health and and how to build a future that is full of life until it's time to go as opposed to Alzheimer's and Parkinson's and neurological diseases and heart diseases.

Donnalynn: 28:24 And you know, all of the things that, that we call part of normal, normal aging at this point in the US that we say, Oh yeah, well that's typical for 40 or 50, or 60, or 70. I mean, I remember when my, when we were kids my siblings are older than I am and so by quite a bit. And so they would always say to me, Oh, when you get to our age, you'll sing, it's going to happen to you. And I'd be like, that doesn't feel exactly right. That feels like maybe I don't want that to happen to me. I wonder how I make that go away. So

Michael: 29:01 You're doing this because people believe, I actually believe that most of the maladies out there are as a result of overuse of these stimulants in these products. And that they think everyday aging has to happen the way you're describing and it just doesn't happen.

Donnalynn: 29:17 That's right. It does not have to happen that way. That's exactly right. Yeah. And we have evidence of that, right? We have people in the world both through the people that we work with. And, and just in general, there are lots and lots of people talking about how it doesn't really have to happen this way. We even have doctors now who are willing to go out on a limb and say, you can really impact the trajectory of your body's future by changing your lifestyle habits. So so we're lucky that we live in that time.

Michael: 29:53 Oh yeah. No, the science is exploding too. It's said that people, I mean, there's a lot of anecdotal evidence over the years, but now we can quantify it that people are, you know, if you eliminate this or you eliminate that, then you're gonna out much better.

Donnalynn: 30:09 Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So okay. So this has been a, I think a really great for talking about the things that we like to talk about and, and help our folks to get more energy and to build a future that, that will be really good for them. And as I told you before we started, I would love it if we could leave our listeners with something practical that we can do today. Some way to take step one in the process of moving toward a better future.

Michael: 30:47 Yeah, no, thanks. Yeah, we did cover it slightly and I think it's the thing that I really, my mission out there is to get people to what I call the gift of 90 days. Okay. If they can get abstinence from flour, sugar and caffeine, it sounds like a lot. You don't have to do it all at once. I have a little protocol and that protocol is very simple. It's like a methadone or Suboxone step down. You use the sugar to get off the caffeine. You. In other words, you quit caffeine first and you shouldn't, you don't, not not crazy. You don't not have permission to go crazy, but use a little sugar for two or three weeks. Then use a little flour, pasta and bread or whatever to get off the sugar and then give yourself 90 straight days off all three and never ever have I had, like I said, anyone, I always say, look on day 91 if I'm not right and you don't believe me and you don't see it in your own body, then just pick, go to the seven 11 it's very soon.

Donnalynn: 31:45 Well, all your misery can be returned, right? Yeah. Yeah. There are probably a days

Michael: 31:52 No refund request. Yeah, so they're all, they're all a very happy with the way their skin looks, the way that their body is falling to a normal weight. Everything seems to work out. And 90 you got to give it 90, because you're going to have some emotional upsets in 60 to 90 or 30 to 90 that you're physically going to be okay at 30, but then you got to play that mental game with yourself, with society, you know, the cake pushers and the cookie pushers and the whatever out there. You've got to get there. It's

Donnalynn: 32:23 A lot to change your community. Your community is, you've, you've trained one another to behave a certain way over the course of a lifetime. And it does, it really does take a lot to sort of retrain your community. When you make a new choice, it's uncomfortable for the people you for a little while. So being able to, like you say, really kind of hold that space and say, this is what I'm doing and I'm doing it. Whether it's comfortable for you or not. That takes time. It really takes time. Well, thank you so much for spending time with me today. So and co I encourage everybody to go check out sugar addiction.com and to pick up the book, last resort sugar detox guide. It's a very interesting read and has a lot of really great, I really impressed with the work you're doing and excited for your progress in the world. So thank you so much for being here today. Well, thanks for having me. I really appreciate it and good luck with all your ventures. My pleasure. My pleasure.

Where do heavy metals come from? What happens when we are exposed and what can we do about them?

These are just some of the questions that we will answer in today's episode.

But maybe, more importantly, by listening to this episode you will learn one thing to exclude from your life that will make a substantial difference in your health. Plus, you will take with you one thing to include to start building a future that is free from chronic disease - and HOW to include it! 

I look forward to hearing how these changes work in your life! Please stay in touch on Facebook or @DRsDetox on Instagram. If you would like to get a notification letting you know when our next podcast comes out, feel free to collect a free gift when you sign up for the newsletter.