The Sugar Connection to Neuropathy

August 8, 2015

Dr. Jacoby, author of Sugar Crush, joins Dishing Up Nutrition to discuss neuropathy, “crippling nerve damage throughout the body—in our feet, organs, and brain” and why he suggests eliminating sugar and carbs “can mitigate and even reverse the damage.”

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Transcript

DAR:  Welcome to Dishing Up Nutrition. I’m Darlene Kvist, licensed nutritionist and certified nutrition specialist. Dishing Up Nutrition is brought to you by Nutritional Weight & Wellness, a company providing life changing nutrition education and counseling. We have an amazing show planned for you today. So if you are experiencing nerve pain of any kind, you’re going to want to listen because we have author Dr. Richard Jacoby joining us in a few minutes to share his wisdom about how to reduce inflammation, reverse nerve damage, which is pretty big, and kind of reclaim your health. And he's actually getting up really early this morning at 6:00 AM to join us, but before we have him come on, just let me introduce our cohost, Katie Vigasa, who is a licensed and registered dietitian. Katie, it's really so nice to have you back here today.

KATIE:  It’s so nice to be here. I have missed being on the show a very badly. If anyone out there has ever had more of a severe morning sickness case, I understand. And that's actually why I haven't been on Dishing Up Nutrition for a couple months and of course we're so excited, but I'm definitely glad to be through that phase of pregnancy. So good to be back. I'm really looking forward to an eye opening presentation from our guest, Dr. Richard Jacoby, author of Sugar Crush.

DAR:   So Dr. Jacoby is joining us today from Scottsdale, Arizona. He’s treated thousands of people with peripheral neuropathy. That's a condition usually associated with diabetes. So listeners, if you have pain, numbness or tingling in either your hands or your feet, I'd encourage you to turn up the volume because you don't want to miss one word today.

KATIE: I bet some people's ears are kind of perking up or calling some or their friends or their family are saying maybe you should listen to this show. So Dr. Jacoby, welcome to Dishing Up Nutrition. We are broadcasting live from St Paul, Minnesota, plus we have over 350,000 people downloading and listening to our show every single month, not only locally, but in the United States from really all over the world. We're actually finding that a lot of people are becoming very interested in nutrition. And I actually believe those same people will be surprised at the connection you have made between sugar and nerve damage.

DAR:  I mean, I think that that's really interesting that there's actually a doctor that has figured out that there's a connection.

KATIE:  Between what we're eating. Right. So, and that's kind of what you're saying in your book, Sugar Crush, sugar is destroying our nerves. So, would you please share your background and what inspired you to write your book? What did you feel was important for people to understand about nerve damage?

DAR: Good morning to you, sir.

DR. JACOBY:  Well, good morning. Thank you for having me on the show today. There is a huge connection between sugar and nerve damage. My background started with chemistry back in Philadelphia many years ago. I studied with Michael Chef, who was a biochemist in Maine. Mainly worked on PKU. I was his research assistant. He worked with Watson and Crick in London with the discovery of DNA and that kinda got me started in this field. And then I ran into, many years later, Dr. Lee Dellon out of Johns Hopkins who has a unique surgical approach to peripheral neuropathy, which is really a pioneering look at nerves in the lower extremity. And he taught me this technique about 15 years ago and we get about 80 to 85 percent excellent results with peripheral neuropathy surgery for the diabetic population. Our amputation rate is almost zero, which is amazing. And I said to Dr. Dellon about 15 years ago, I said, how come we don't get 100 percent? Which he thought was kind of odd because we're getting better results than anybody else in the world. And he said, why don't you figure it out? And I said, well, I think I just might do that. So I've been on a quest for the last 15 years to try to figure out the biochemistry behind nerve compression. That simple answer is sugar. And I think specifically high fructose corn syrup because that was introduced into our diet in the ‘70’s, but in the last 10 years it's really become a pandemic problem. Diabetes and diabetic related problems are a worldwide phenomenon now, probably over 350 million people have diabetes and probably that many have prediabetes as well. So I decided to look at the literature outside my field of peripheral neuropathy. And I ran into a paper that was published in circulation in the year 2004 by Dr. Jon Cook at Stanford. I emailed him and he called me that same day and he said, that's an interesting theory come up to Stanford. And I did. And he has a molecule called asymmetric dimethyl arginine. It’s a big word, but it's a very important marker for inflammation. And it blocks the nitric oxide pathway. And I think that is the third pathway in the biochemistry behind peripheral neuropathy. And I extrapolated that that information to all the other neuropathies throughout the body. I think like MS, Alzheimer's, and autism even is part of this equation. So a nerve is a nerve, biochemistry is biochemistry, it causes compression. And Dr. Dellon’s theory of peripheral neuropathy is that sugar causes the nerve to become swollen and the surrounding material around the nerve makes it very crispy. So that's the biochemistry. So carpal tunnel, peripheral neuropathy, MS, ALS, Alzheimer's, they're all the same process, different end organ damage.

DAR:   So, Dr. Jacoby, go back over that biochemistry just a little bit because listeners, this is kind of new information for them. So go over that to how sugar affects that nerve and causes the compression.

DR JACOBY:  Well, there's three biochemical pathways and they get complicated, but simply put, let's talk about the first one called the polyol pathway. And what that is is sugar gets inside the nerve in his process, normally down to what's called a sugar alcohol, which is a sorbitol. And sorbitol pulls water into the nerve. So we have enzymes that will get rid of that. The nerve is swelling and it doesn't matter which nerve at about the wrist, carpal tunnel, if the nerve is swelling in the wrist because it's pulling in water, then it bumps up against the soft tissue around the tunnel.

DAR: Right there. Most people think of carpal tunnel as they've overused their wrist. It's the computer.

DR JACOBY:And that's what I looked at. If you go back in the 70s, there were two things happening at the same time. The computer generation and people started using computer keyboards. But think about it. Computer keyboard is magnitudes less energy to press the key then an old typewriter was. So it couldn't have been that. But I think what happened was that can of Coke that was sitting next to the keyboard is the problem. So that's the red herring. The can of Coke was the problem and we started putting high fructose corn syrup in that can of coke at about the same time. 1974. I have a lot of political stuff in my lecture. Sugar prices were getting high and inflation was taking off in 1974, so Nixon wanted to substitute for regular sugar and he introduced high fructose corn syrup or allowed that to be put into foods. Well, it's sweeter than regular table sugar and it's extremely cheap and it comes in a liquid form. Now it's in 80 percent of all the food we have in the United States and the way it's being processed, I found, with mercury is another contaminant in that process. So we have really a poisoning of our food supply. It really is, simply put, a poison. And this show is too short to get into the real mechanics of why that happens and how it happens, but it destroys thiamine. That's really the key. And the Krebs cycle is altered. And for the biochemistry buffs on your show, the Krebs cycle is very important for diabetes. Same mechanism that happens with beriberi, which is a nutritional problem as well. It's thiamine. So high fructose corn syrup and beriberi are very similar and another disease which mimics this is arsenic poisoning.

KATIE: So really what we're saying is sugar is poisoning us. It's poisoned our food system. We're getting so much of it into our food system and we're eating so much of it and it's really creating a lot of this inflammation and swelling of our nervous system.

DAR: And I don't think that people realize that, like you said, like 80 percent of the foods out there, manufactured foods, now we're always talking about real foods on our show, like real meat, real vegetables, and real fruit. And even limiting the amount of fruit that people have. So we don't find high fructose corn syrup in any of those foods. But you're talking about all the manufactured foods that as you walk into the grocery store you see.

KATIE:  Yeah, that's right. And that's the kind of conversation we want to keep going here. We do have to take a break, but we're coming back. So Dr. Jacoby’s book, Sugar Crush, is full of what we believe is important information. For example, if you experience restless leg syndrome, and we know that a lot of people do, especially in our consultations, it's like, “Oh, do you have restless leg?” And people are saying, “Oh yes, that's me.” Did you know that people with peripheral neuropathy often get restless legs syndrome?  Having diabetes for example increases your risk. In fact, 18 percent of people with diabetes also have that restless leg syndrome compared to nondiabetic people at only five percent. So very interesting. We want to keep this conversation going. We'll be right back.

BREAK

DAR:  Welcome back to Dishing Up Nutrition. I'm Darlene Kvist, licensed nutritionist and I'm here with Katie. She's a licensed Dietitian and also we're here with author of Sugar Crush, Dr. Richard Jacoby. If you’ve had an adolescent in the house with acne, I think you could even just listening to the show, you can make a recommendation. It's simple, but it's a powerful recommendation that usually works. Have them cut their sugar intake. Interestingly, the average adolescent male drinks five cans of soda per day.

KATIE:  And if it's not soda, it's energy drinks. Those sports drinks, they're always walking around with a bottle of something high in sugar.

DAR: And this is all information out of Dr. Jacoby's book. They eat the most candy bars and they consume the most junk food. So, the results of eating high sugar foods and high sugar sodas and drinks is high insulin and acne.

KATIE: We actually had a really interesting question, a caller called in and was asking about how all of this, what we're talking about the sugar, how it plays into erectile dysfunction, any thoughts?

DR JACOBY:  I think it's the same process that's probably more over than nitric oxide pathway, which we talked about in the book because it's blood flow. The blood flow is interrupted by sugar interacting with nitric oxide. That molecule that we talked about, asymmetric dimethyl arginine, which we'll abbreviate ADMA, that is an endogenous blocker of the nitric oxide pathway. And the blood flow is impaired and without blood flow, any end organ is not going to work. So it doesn't matter if it's that into end organ or it's your eye, your ear, or your toe. All the same. And it's the common denominator underneath all of this is sugar. And specifically in my opinion, high fructose corn syrup.

KATIE: Yeah. So that's the biggest takeaway for people is just look at what you're eating. If we can get rid of some of these sugars, see what improves.

DAR:  So actually, Katie, you mentioned that you had a client. Do you want to share that?

KATIE: We were talking about this in between break is we were working on a variety of things with this client, but one of the things that came up in the consultation was libido and erectile dysfunction and honestly changing the food within a week, we had a follow-up conversation and he had said that was one of the first things he told me was his erectile dysfunction has improved within a week.

DAR:   And that may be what's going to get men to change their eating. They're going to be making lots of appointments with you, Katie.

KATIE:  Sure. But I mean, the eating plan was meats and vegetables and healthy fats and we kept those processed carbohydrates and the high fructose corn syrup limited. So this individual was actually eating out quite a bit. So I had him look for things like that on the labels.

DAR: It’s so interesting, Dr. Jacoby, I think that people really don't understand their body at all and I think a lot of people with diabetes or whatever is going on or they're just eating too much sugar and they're not diabetic yet, but they're starting to have some of these symptoms. And maybe if you could just go over some of these symptoms that people might be experiencing way before they have to have an amputation.

DR JACOBY: Yes. That's an excellent question and that's one of the reasons I wrote the book because when I go through a person's history that's in front of me who has had an ulcer from diabetes, they think it just happened. They think that diabetes, let's define the word diabetes mellitus, the medical term. Diabetes mellitus means sweet urine. You’re just eating so much sugar, you either don't have the insulin to be able to get rid of that sugar, or you're consuming too much sugar. That's simply put is what it is. All the medications on the market, in my opinion, aren't there to allow you to eat more sugar. It's insane. It would be like saying to a patient who has high levels of arsenic, here's a medication so you can eat more arsenic. It’s the same thing.

DAR: So you mentioned in your book how doctors use to diagnose diabetes. Would you share that with people because that's interesting? That's interesting.

DR JACOBY: Well, that's how they diagnosed it. They tasted their urine and if it was sweet, they knew that they had diabetes mellitus, which is a Greek word. But that was probably type one diabetes which is similar but distinct from type two. Type one is just don't have the Beta cells in your pancreas to process sugar and you get diabetes mellitus type one and you most likely would die. But now since we have synthetic insulin, those people have survived, but the people we’re really talking about are type two. They have plenty of insulin. That's the problem. They’re producing too much insulin and they're eating too many carbohydrates, processed carbohydrates, and they have an elevated insulin response. The insulin is making you absolutely starving all day because you want more and more carbohydrates to satisfy that hunger. I think it goes back to the USDA Food Pyramid, which tells you to eat six to 11 helpings of carbohydrates a day. It's impossible, actually. You think about it, five meals a day, you would have to have to carbohydrates in every meal. If you do that, I guarantee you will gain weight because you're going to have high levels of insulin. Most doctors don't measure insulin levels. I think that's more important than measuring your sugar. Cancer, diabetes, all these peripheral nerve issues, whether it's Alzheimer's or ALS, it doesn't matter. They're all related to the same process. So when my patients come in, you asked me what are the early symptoms you were talking about. Acne is one of those symptoms. Migraine headaches is the symptom. They're inflammatory diseases related to excessive carbohydrates and high insulin level. And insulin for sure with acne. So it's really, it's the same process. I mean, here's an interesting anecdote that I get from patients. They come in and they say, I asked them when did, when did you get diabetes? And they say, “I got it when I was in the hospital,” as if it was a viral disease. Why were you in the hospital? “I had a heart attack and I got diabetes.” Well, you didn't get diabetes in the hospital. That was discovered that you had elevated sugar and that's what caused your heart attack, that myocardial infarction.

KATIE:   So really what you're saying is the people need to be paying attention to some of these warning signs like the migraines or kind of some painful fingertips or toes mean that's your body saying ouch and asking us to listen up because there's some blood sugar dysregulation going on.

DR JACOBY: Exactly. Now, you mentioned restless leg syndrome. To me that is the earliest sign of peripheral neuropathy and that is the nitric oxide pathway. When we're eating a lot of carbohydrates, we're producing a lot of insulin and we're blocking that biochemical pathway. We produce a substance called Peri oxynitride, and that's what causes restless leg syndrome. Fibromyalgia is the same thing. It's the small unmyelinated fibers in the skin, in the dermis that are on fire. That's why it feels like it's on fire. Number one symptom is burning. Phase one diabetic neuropathy. Well, patients come in and say, “Well, I'm not diabetic. I get checked every year.” Yes, you are. Restless legs syndrome precedes the actual diagnosis. All that you're saying to me is you still have enough insulin. It takes about 40 years to burn out your pancreas and then all of a sudden you have no insulin left and your sugar spikes to 600. So you just didn't get diabetes that day when you had your cardiac events. And the other problem that I really found that’s amazing to me is this whole cholesterol myth.

DAR:  Hold on Doctor Jacoby because we're going to have to take a quick break, but you were talking just before we go to break, you were talking about too many carbohydrates and I don't think people realize that when they're eating pizza, they're eating too much sugar. When they're eating corn chips or even potato chips, too much sugar. I know that people just don't make this connection. A bagel, English muffin. I mean, that's another one that I see so often people think it's okay, but it's basically one of those high sugar foods. And French fries. I think that's the number one vegetable that kids eat these days. All high sugar foods, let alone all the pop and all the juice and all the other things that people are eating, so it's no wonder that we have such an epidemic of not only neuropathy but all these other symptoms like the migraines and all these other things and that's why we have such amazing results when we put them on more of a meat, vegetable, good fat kind of eating plan, and suddenly they start to function a better again.

KATIE:  Their body starts to heal. Exactly what you were saying, Doctor Jacoby. So yeah, we do have to take a break, but I think this is just such an interesting conversation. Not necessarily are we dumping sugar into our food, but our processed, carbohydrate foods can turn into sugar and it's the diabetes. It doesn't happen overnight. It happens over a prolonged period of time if we're consuming those foods, so paying attention to some of those warning signs our body is giving us. You are listening to Dishing Up Nutrition. You may be asking yourself, what does sugar have to do with my feet itching, burning, tingling, and going numb? More than you think, as we're talking about. These are the early signs of that diabetic neuropathy. Even if you haven't been diagnosed with type two diabetes or even if your doctor hasn't said you have prediabetes, your symptoms will tell you that you're going to be in the near future developing that diabetes unless something changes before that happens. Maybe make an appointment with a Weight & Wellness nutritionist and change your eating to change your life and reduce that pain and that numbness that you're feeling. So give us a call today 651-699-3438 to set up an appointment or even visit our website weightandwellness.com. So stay tuned. We'll be right back.

BREAK

DAR: Welcome back to Dishing Up Nutrition. Dishing Up Nutrition is brought to you by Nutritional Weight & Wellness. Remember you promised yourself you're going to get healthy and lose some weight last spring and now fall is almost here, so what to do, what to do. That's always the question. Sign up for the Nutrition 4 Weight Loss program. This is a 12 week classes, plus you get two one-hour individual consultations with one of the nutritionists to address your metabolism concerns. Your cravings, your busy schedule, whatever it is that you need help with. We make it much more individualized that way. Now we have 11 different class series starting and they're from different locations. They are from Woodbury to Eden Prairie for Maple Grove to Mendota heights, from North Oaks, to Lakeville, and we really have a convenient location for you. So call 651-699-3438 to ask your questions or you can go on our website weightandwellness.com and read some of the success stories. And the thing that I noticed mostly people have really commented about is, “Oh, my migraines are gone.” Or “My inflammation in my body is gone. I'm not having asthma attacks.” Weight is one issue, but all the health issues are, I always say, the most important ones to consider. So we had a few callers, right?

KATIE:    Yeah. Dr. Jacoby, we have some callers. We would love for you to help us answer some. So, first caller here, Patti, welcome to Dishing Up Nutrition. You have a question for us about chemo and neuropathy?

CALLER:  Yeah, I'm a 12-year cancer survivor.

DAR:  And you have some neuropathy left?

CALLER:  I quit eating sugar right away. But I did have chemotherapy and 12 years later my feet are pretty much numb from right underneath my heels down. And I don't eat much sugar now. And I'm wondering how this applies to chemotherapy and what I could do.

DAR: One of the things I want to ask him more questions about is migraines because I have a really good friend whose husband has migraines. Ongoing migraines. And he's been to several doctors, including neurologists without any help. And he's retired now and he's actually having more migraines being retired than he did when he was working. I know he has insulin resistance. It’s pretty clear just looking at him. He does have insulin resistance. And I know that in Dr. Jacoby’s, his book that he wrote that people with migraines often have elevated levels of insulin. So anyway, I wanted to address that with Dr Jacoby. But maybe before we get to that we want to talk about the chemo.

KATIE: We had a question. An individual had gone through chemotherapy and she's still having some neuropathy.

DR JACOBY: Chemo neuropathy is extremely common. I have some specific thoughts on that. I think that people who have cancer obviously have high levels of insulin and sugar in their diet. And they probably had a small fiber neuropathy beginning. And then when you add chemo to the system then the burning and tingling and numbness manifest.

DAR: That makes some sense because she did say that and I think she had chemo many years ago, like 12, I think she said. And she did cut the sugar out after the diagnosis of sugar. So it makes sense that she did have that going before.

KATIE: That's very interesting. We actually have a couple other callers.

DAR:   So anyway. Do you have any other ideas on the chemo neuropathy?

DR JACOBY: Probably the most difficult problem to treat. There are some modalities out there that you can treat it with. There's a new system coming out of Rome, Italy. It's called the Scrambler. It's an electronic device that scrambles the signal coming from your foot to your neuron in your brain. So you still have the problem but your brain doesn't interpreted it as pain. All the medications on the market really don't help that problem from Lyrica to Gabapentin. They just mask the symptoms.

DAR: I want to make sure we don't run out of time because those are some of the other questions that I want to ask you toward the end of the show.

KATIE: But yeah, we do have a couple other callers here. So interesting. I love this conversation. We have another caller. She was asking about sugar affects and diet. So welcome to Dishing Up Nutrition. You had some questions?

CALLER:I do. I just want to ask what the doctor thinks about people who cut sugar from their diet for two weeks and then they say that they don't crave it anymore. If that's the fad or if that's actually something that is true.

DR JACOBY:   Well, two weeks is probably too short a period of time to get rid of the addiction because I really think it is an addiction. I think you have to put good fat back into your diet to get rid of that craving. There's a little guy in your brain called the hippocampus and he's the guy that talks to you about the sugar cravings. So, for instance, when you look at orange juice, which a lot of people drink and they think it's healthy because of vitamin C, but really what they want is sugar. Vitamin C and Insulin compete against each other with glucose. So if you're going to get lots of vitamin C in your diet and you still have a lot of glucose in your diet, the vitamin C is washed out of your bloodstream because glucose always trumps vitamin C. So you got to put fat back in your diet. That's my mantra. I say to patients when they come in, they say, what should I eat? And I say, if it tastes good, don't eat it, unless you read the label, because I guarantee you it has sugar in it. You have to put fat back in your diet.

KATIE: We agree. We see that with clients all the time when they take the sugar out and get the fat and it's like they're able to stay off of it long-term. It's not just something they’re off of in that time period. Yeah.

CALLER:  Also, I wanted to know what it means inside your body, what that sugar high that people describe, and then the crashing, what it's actually doing when you feel that rush.

DR JACOBY:Well, the rush is that hyperglycemia. As your sugar gets really high, you feel great. That's why it's an addiction. There would be no different than tobacco or heroin. So all these sugars, like we talked about pizza. Pizza is nothing more than sugar and it tastes great and that's why people get addicted to it. They like that high that they get, and then they have a crash because insulin comes out in your system, pulls the sugar back to normal, and then it goes below the normal and that's hypoglycemia. Then you get depressed and the only way you feel better is to have more sugar. So you're up and down, up and down. And that affects your mood. And the food is the comfort. That's why they call it comfort food. So you have to get off the sugar, get back into a good fat diet. One of the tricks that I use and a lot of people are doing this now and you'll have instant weight loss and increase in mood, is put butter in your coffee if you're a coffee drinker.

DAR:  I put coconut oil.

DR. JACOBY:  Excellent fat. So the trick is putting fat back in your diet.

KATIE: Exactly. Which we've taken out for so many years. So, really what you're saying is you've got to balance those blood sugars. I mean, that's the biggest piece. Thanks for the call.

Well we have to take a break, but when we come back we've got a couple other topics that we definitely want to go over. You are listening to Dishing Up Nutrition. I think most people realize they should cut the sugar and they should cut the processed carbs. So, here are some ideas. Stop drinking the juice. You know juice as we've been talking about is a high sugar beverage. It's not good for us. Maybe replace juice with something we have in the office called Dynamic Greens and you can put that over ice. So it's like a dehydrated fruit and vegetable blend. Tastes great. And there's only five grams of carbohydrates in a 12 ounce glass. Stop drinking skim milk. So one cup of skim milk actually turns into about three teaspoons of sugar. I know people will be drinking skim milk or putting skim milk in their coffee. Maybe you use heavy cream or Dr JACOBY said a butter, right? Almost zero grams of carbs. How about this one? Limit fruit to a half cup serving. Pick half a cup of berries or half a peach or half an apple. And I know people love that watermelon, but we've got to keep that limited, too. A quarter of a watermelon is actually, if we've got blood sugar problems, gonna be a little bit too much. Snacking on nuts, especially raw nuts. So maybe learn more substitutes when you attend the Weight & Wellness series in St Paul. Give us a call 651-699-3438. So everyone, stay tuned. We'll be right back.

BREAK

DAR: Welcome back to Dishing Up Nutrition.

KATIE: One of the topics that we wanted to make sure we got in the show was a plantar fasciitis because we actually have quite a few clients who are experiencing plantar fasciitis or some of this foot pain. So can we talk a little bit more about Plantar Fasciitis? And I know you've also talked about it as being a compression neuropathy.

DR JACOBY: Absolutely, and I think plantar fasciitis is one of the most common foot problems in America. Normally thought of as a mechanical problem where in the foot is pronating excessively, rolling in and causing pain in the heel. My take on it is really a compression neuropathy. There's a condition called tarsal tunnel, which is similar to carpal tunnel of the wrist, and there's one specific nerve called the lateral plantar nerve and I think it's inflamed by sugar. When people have prediabetes or diabetes, that nerve becomes inflamed and if you roll over on that nerve it’s going to hurt. The plantar Fascia is involved in the process for sure, but Fascia does not conduct nerve impulses. You can't get pain transmitting to your brain from Plantar Fascia. It's transmitted by the nerve, so sugar inflames the nerve, you roll onto it and it hurts and it usually hurts that first step in the morning and it's a very debilitating problem. Lots of times it ends up in a surgical problem when you're really just change your diet, change your shoes, and very simple things could resolve that pain.

DAR:  I love the way you think because you make so much sense and people actually have control over their health when they start to think about this way of thinking. I really recommended your book to lots of people. Sugar Crush, people. I don't get this excited about a book very often, but you have done a fantastic job of educating people and truly we really appreciate it. We have another question for you. Would you go through migraines again? I explained that I have a friend whose husband has gotten migraines ongoing and he's been to neurologists and he's been all over and nothing, no medication or nothing helps.

DR JACOBY:  Migraines are more concerned with the nitric oxide pathway and L-Arginine is a very good nutrition supplement to take along with the b vitamins and vitamin C and that will counteract that inflammatory response. Obviously getting off of sugar and all the foods we just talked about and that's what causes inflammation of the neurovascular bundles. Now, in the back of the neck, there's nerves that go underneath the muscles the same way in the foot. Those muscles get compressed, compressed, and neurovascular bundles, the artery, nerve and vein, and that produces the migraine around the eyes and the forehead. It's the same process. That's why Botox is actually used in some of these conditions to relax the muscle so it's not pressing on the nerve. And there are surgical procedures that decompress those nerves as well. So the problem with Migraines is really not that dissimilar from peripheral neuropathy. It's the same process. The bottom line is sugar. It always comes back to that, and I like that phrase. The patient does have the choice and the power to heal themselves. Stop eating sugar. A lot of patients say, “Well I don't eat sugar.” Then they always seem to lean in when they say that. Well, what’d you have for breakfast? “Well, I had a good breakfast.” I said, what was that? “I had cereal.” Cereal is sugar. “Well, no, it can't be. It says heart healthy on the box.” How does that happen? We've been educated into ignorance. Sugar is bad and it's that simple, but for the last 50 years we were told the absolute opposite. Cholesterol has nothing to do with any of this stuff. Taking statin drugs is silly. All that lowering your cholesterol does is lower your IQ. That's a fact. Your brain needs to have fat. Fat converts to Glucose in the brain. That's where it gets its energy from. So taking a drug to reduce your cholesterol is a dangerous, dangerous thing in my mind. The only thing you need to do is get sugar out of your diet, but it's so pervasive that you really don't know you're eating it.

KATIE:  Exactly. That's what we teach people all the time. I mean really simply to boil it down with this conversation, if people are having these headaches and the plantar fasciitis and the tingling and the zaps and feeling all of those things.

DR JACOBY:  It's the same thing. It's exactly the same thing. All interrelated. I love this word. The first symptom of a tingling and burning in the legs is a word that describes bugs crawling on your skin, so fibromyalgia or restless legs syndrome and that word is, and you have to be careful with this word and I'll leave you with this word. It's called formication. It’s with an “m.” So you have to be really careful with that word. And America, in my opinion, has been formicated by sugar. Play on words, but it's true and that is the first symptom. It comes from the word ants biting, formic acid, and that's where the word comes from. And I thought it was ironic that that word is used in the medical world. And they have and they are being formicated by sugar.

DAR: So Dr. Jacoby, where can people get ahold of you? How can they get ahold of you if they want to?

DR JACOBY:  Well, I'm in Scottsdale, Arizona. I have a website for Sugar Crush, the book and they can get ahold of me through that. Or I have my own personal website as well with our Scottsdale Neuropathy Institute. And that phone number is 4809945977

DAR: You've been a wonderful guest. Thank you. I hope I can meet you sometime.

DR JACOBY: Well, I'd love to meet you. Thank you for having me.

KATIE:  Yes. Thank you so much everyone. Enjoy your Saturday and we'll talk to you soon.