Our guest: Michael Collins, Founder & CEO SugarAddiction.com
The landscape of substance use disorders is complex and multifaceted, often extending beyond what we traditionally consider addictive substances. Today, we’re expanding our usual focus on pharmaceutical diversion to explore an intriguing connection in the world of substance use disorders.
Our guest is Michael Collins, Founder and CEO of SugarAddiction.com, whose personal journey through recovery led him to investigate the compelling parallels between alcohol use disorders and sugar addiction. As we’ll discover, the brain’s response to different substances – whether they’re controlled medications, alcohol, or even sugar – may share more commonalities than we might expect.
In this episode, we’ll explore how sugar affects our brain chemistry, examine potential correlations between various types of substance use disorders, and challenge our preconceptions about addiction. Michael brings a unique perspective, combining personal experience with extensive research and work in supporting those struggling with sugar use disorder.
Together, we’ll investigate whether having one type of substance use disorder might predispose someone to another, and examine how trauma plays a role in these complex relationships. We’ll also discuss why society might readily acknowledge certain substance use disorders while minimizing or dismissing others.
Join us for this fascinating conversation that bridges the gap between traditional substance use disorders and what some researchers are now calling ‘food addiction,’ as we challenge our understanding of substance use disorder itself. This is the link for the QuitSugarSummit discussed in the podcast.
Transcript
Terri
Welcome back, listeners, and happy New Year. I hope your 2025 is a good year for you. The topic of today’s podcast is perhaps good timing as we start the new year and everyone loves their New Year’s resolutions. It is certainly not meant to make you feel any guilt regarding your diet over the holidays. We tend to indulge a little bit more. My guest today is Michael Collins. He is the founder and CEO of Sugaraddiction.com and today we’re going to explore substance use disorders in a little bit different context on our podcast. As you know, our focus is usually pharmaceutical substances, but there are other substances that obviously can be ingested to the extent that it is considered an addiction or a disorder. So the question I want to explore today is if there is crossover between the different substance use disorders.
Terri
In other words, if someone has a substance use disorder with drugs or alcohol, is there a higher chance for one with sugar or vice versa? Welcome to the podcast, Mike.
Michael Collins
Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. I’m honored.
Terri
Start by telling us about your background of substance use disorder and how it has influenced your work today and what kind of work you are doing today on the topic.
Michael Collins
Yeah, thank you. I appreciate it. You know the story, I know it sounds a little bit too far back. Steve Martin said I was born a small child kind of thing. It really started with my mother, you know, my favorite sugar junkie of all time. And my grandmother died when my mom was just 8 years old. And it was weird, they had to move in. My grandfather, she was this last child and my grandfather had to move in with his sister who was not the nicest person in the world. But anyway, they, the family owned the country store across the way, right across the street. And they made a deal, My grandfather and his cousin Jim made a deal that anytime my mom walked into that store that she could have any candy she wanted, just put it on his tab.
Michael Collins
And it was a wonderful thing to do for a child who just lost her mom. But sadly it set up a cascade of. My mother really believed that sugar was love. And that’s how I grew up. I mean, I grew up with unfettered access to the sugar bowl. We could have as much sugar on our cornflakes or our Cheerios and were scraping off half an inch at the bottom with the milk know, you know, Kool Aid with two and three cups instead of one. It was, and candy and cookies she baked every Saturday. It was just a free for all. And, and there was no, don’t have that you know, I have that sugar bowl from the estate. You know, it’s like, it wasn’t like, that’s too much or we could have as much as no one cared.
Michael Collins
And so fast forward, I didn’t realize at the time that sugar was changing how I felt. And I think this is the, I don’t think I know this is the main message that I need and want to get across to your audience is that about 14 years old I ran into beer. And I knew that beer was changing my state. I could drink behind the high school and, you know, we called it liquid courage and you know, I could talk to the girls. I was kind of shy, but anyway, that party lasted until I was 28 years old and ran through running the largest nightclubs in the state of Florida. You know, cocaine and marijuana and acid and just about any kind of drug you can think of. Alcohol. I was a very bad drinker. I started, I quit drinking very early, like 23.
Michael Collins
I crashed a car when I was 19. I, I didn’t quit drinking, I just quit driving. And you know, anyway, at 23, I just kept using drugs instead of. And that’s why I got promoted so much in the, out in the bar business. Anyway, I got sober at 28, and I’m happy to talk about any of that if you want. But when I got sober, I just really wanted to get healthy. You know, I. My grandfather had this big red nose and I had rosacea at the time, and I just didn’t want to look like that, first of all. And I felt like the sugar was doing that and the caffeine and stuff. So I luckily ran into these guys who I was working out at the gym with, and they would cut their weight with their sugar or their carbohydrates and stuff.
Michael Collins
So they were familiar with restricting it. And I would go to a few of the food groups and I kind of started to understand it. So I quit. Sugar, flour and caffeine. Like in a couple of weeks I’m going to be 40 years sober. But about. I don’t even know. I, I know the date of that. But now I could not tell you when my sugar freedom date was. But it’s about 35 years ago. So that’s the age of my children. And I went on to raise two kids sugar free from the womb until they were 6 years old. No flour, no sugar, no caffeine. And I could tell you that story, but it would, you know, people would think I was lying or bragging or both, because in my heart I know that their brain developed better.
Michael Collins
You know, they really, I mean, I’m a smart enough guy, but these guys are rocket scientists. Card carrying genius perfect scores on their college entrance exam. Smart. You know, and in my heart there’s a big non profit now called First Thousand Days. That first thousand days of brain development is so important. Right? And now we know very clearly. I mean hell, they’re calling Alzheimer’s Diabetes 3, right. And you know, the science has advanced so much about brain health and sugar and ultra processed carbohydrates that it’s just not, you know, it’s not a mystery anymore. I do these huge summits, the Quit Sugar summits every year and I’ve talked to 400 of the world’s leading experts and you know, the last two or three years the science has just exploded. Right. Anyway, the kids said I should write a book.
Michael Collins
You know, I was, I didn’t. This was not my career. I did help a lot of people get sober for 20 years, but it wasn’t really my career and the kids said I should write a book. So I bought Sugar Addiction.com in 2009 and I put out great information, but I didn’t really pay much attention to it, to be honest with you. I. It helped some folks and I wrote back and forth and I enjoyed it. It was a nice outlet. But in 2018, I did write the book finally and it did well on Amazon. And so then I also, I was kind of semi retired. I started coaching. I started like having coaching groups and training coaches and we had support groups. And so I was kind of geared up and just a perfect storm hit called the Pandemic.
Michael Collins
So I’ve already got these coaches in line. I’ve been doing coaching myself. And you saw the Pandemic, they bought out all of the sugar, the flour, the cookies, the candy, the alcohol, the soda, everything. Just the supply chain just tanked because. Yeah, what is at home buying all this stuff, right? And so, and then the second part of the perfect storm was Zoom. I mean you, even grandma knew how to use Zoom. Everybody’s Zooming everything from the hospital visits to the everything, everybody’s finally using Zoom. Hell broke loose and it’s never stopped. And now we have four or five Zoom meetings a day for support. We train coaches, we’ve got, you know, we just got approved by the National Board of Health and Wellness coaches for training for First Addiction. Definitely First Addiction one, but definitely for one as well.
Michael Collins
So it’s turned into something pretty good. You know, we’ve helped you know, we’ve had over 20,000 detoxes. You know, we’ve got big groups and support groups and stuff. So it’s been a bit of a ride and I don’t think it’s getting any slower because I don’t think the problem’s going away. But that’s the person, that’s the podcast version. That’s how I go.
Terri
Yeah. What are your support groups look like? Is it based on the same premise of any other addiction? This one just is. Sugar is the focus.
Michael Collins
Yeah, look, so that’s a good question. You know, I, people always say is it like real addiction? And it’s absolutely. You know, my program is in essence an advanced kind of codependency recovery program. This brainwashing by the diet industry, this eat less and exercise more is truly a brainwash. There’s no, there’s no validity to it anymore. I mean I’ve had hundreds of people lose hundreds of pounds and half of them don’t walk any further than a car. They don’t do any exercise, they just change their diet. And most people come to us for weight loss. But the support groups, I even say it’s funny, I created this 30 day challenge and it’s all videos for 30 days, but I’ve redone it four times.
Michael Collins
But it’s like because I’m tired of asking all, answering all the questions on the 29th or 30th day I say, haha, I tricked you. You know, this is really a long term recovery program. It’s not a diet, there’s no one and done. It’s a lifestyle change. And the only way you get through it is to learn, you know, go back to my drinking behind the high school and sugar. The only way you get through it is to learn how to self soothe in a different way. Right. If you don’t understand that this is what happened to you, it’s a very common construct in the world of alcohol and drugs, substance use disorder, that if you started using drugs and alcohol at 14 or 15, you stopped growing emotionally. Right. Well extrapolate that back to four or five, but likely in the womb.
Michael Collins
But four or five and a child begins this understanding that they can self soothe themselves with this substance or substance. Right. We didn’t know. We still don’t know. Because you’re not going to get in trouble for giving a child sugar right now. And this is why this perfect storm of obesity and metabolic syndrome and diabetes too has, you know, ramped up so gigantically since the 1980s when high fructose Corn syrup hit the market is that this drug, and it is a drug, is the original gateway drug.
Michael Collins
And when you get to be 14 or 15, if you’re so inclined and you can’t self soothe enough with the sugar anymore and you turn to the alcohol and drugs and then on the other end of the spectrum, because it happened to me and it, one of the things that happened because of my openness about my substance use disorder, I, I got involved with the group. You know, it’s the big national nonprofits, the Faces and Voices in Recovery, Shatter Proof, all the big nonprofits, they’re about a decade ago they started something called Recovery out Loud. Meaning, you know, no more anonymity. I’m done with anonymity and they are done with anonymity and courageous people are done with anonymity because this is a health care issue. This is doesn’t have anything to do with, you know, a moral judgment or anything.
Michael Collins
Anyway, because of my openness, I attract a lot of recovering people. People recovery now 5 years, 10 years, 20 years, one of my coaches at 20 years sober. But these are addiction savvy people that cannot put down the sugar. They cannot, they don’t understand it. They’ve never put two and two together, right? And now the science is super clear that this is a brain illness. This is a dopamine dysregulation problem. The same as cocaine, the same as alcohol. It’s know the alcohol doesn’t give you the buzz, the cocaine doesn’t give you the buzz. It’s what it does to the dopamine. And when I say dopamine, I mean dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine, gaba, oxytocin, adrenal glands, endorphins, cannaboid receptors, all of the body’s brain and body reward chemicals are affected by sugar.
Michael Collins
Really, it takes about the arc of a podcast for people to understand, to get all of the story of why this is the same as drugs and alcohol. Why the obesity crisis, why the type 2 crisis is because it’s not related to dieting, it’s not related to weight loss, it’s related to drug addiction. And this is a difficult message even for recovering addicts, as I mentioned.
Terri
So yeah, so the research shows that the effect on the brain is the same with the dopamine receptors. Are there different levels? I mean sugar gives you a lower burst of that versus opioids.
Michael Collins
So here’s the thing is that we take a little heroin, we take a little opioid pill, we Take a little alcohol. We are pounding 20 teaspoons average. That’s women, men, women, man, woman and child in the United States, that’s average. Anybody that has any habit at all is at 30, 40, and even 50 teaspoons of sugar a day, okay? And since they were children, they’ve never had a break. They’ve never had a break. They. Their system, the dose makes the poison, okay? They’ve never not been using. And it’s so unconscious. It’s not like a beer on a Friday. Say, I had a rough week. I need a beer. You know what you’re doing? You’re gonna chill out, you’re gonna mellow out, you’re gonna numb out for a little bit. This is very unconscious because of its ubiquity, because you’re. It’s almost free.
Michael Collins
You know, even a child can score it. You’re likely. You’re just, you know, responding to your limbic brains, craving for sugar. It’s not. You’re craving a sweet taste on your tongue. It’s like you are, you know, your entire, like, body is somehow. And this is what I study really intently. I can’t quite yet figure it out, but, like, the limbic brain somehow is able to transmit to the frontal cortex, you know, the hijacked frontal cortex, that it’s okay to go out in a snowstorm to get ice cream. You know, if I had one time, like, people, I don’t know, maybe because of my drug and alcohol openness or whatever, but 20% of the people that call me for help, for coaching are crying. They’ve never told this story to any of these stories to anyone.
Michael Collins
They think, I’ve never heard the story of people throwing stuff in the garbage, you know, pouring dishwashing liquid on it, then coming back or later and cutting the dishwashing liquid off and eating what’s left out of the garbage. They think it’s like a new story. Like. Like it’s the most shameful thing they’ve ever admitted to another human being. Because I am the first human being they ever admitted it to.
Terri
Right, right.
Michael Collins
And never explained it to anyone. And, hell, if that is not addiction. I’m not exactly sure what the definition of addiction is, you know, that’s true.
Terri
Yeah. I mean, it. It makes sense. I mean, I. I think. Well, I don’t know, maybe you can probably answer this better than I can, but I. I think it’s clear to everyone, although maybe not somebody in an active substance use disorder with drugs or alcohol, but certainly to the rest of us, that Those are very highly addictive substances. You crave more. More and more people are recognizing it’s a disease. So it’s like that’s that craving. There’s a, you know, a disease mechanism to it. You gotta, you know, off we go through withdraws. We understand why they want it and they need it. But I, I don’t think that people connect that dot with the sugar.
Michael Collins
They do not. They do not connect you together because.
Terri
They maybe realize, like, I want this, I love this, but I think it’s more of a diet. And obviously putting sugar in your diet is diet, but we’re talking about going on a diet. It’s like I can’t control my compulsive eating or I eat too much or, okay, I had two Oreos. That should be it. Next thing you know, I’m finishing the bag. It’s because I can’t control my impulsive eating. They don’t think about it as sugar is doing something to my brain.
Michael Collins
They don’t. No, no one is putting those two and two, that two and two together simply because of you. Its ubiquity, of its close to, you know, it’s not very expensive and you can give it to a baby. Nobody’s going to be mad at you. Like 900 people are just gonna say, you know, here’s not illegal, it’s not illegal.
Terri
I can just go to the grocery store or, you know, the fast food place and get my milkshake or whatever it is that I want. And. And on top of that, I think people don’t realize how much sugar is in other things. Like you and I, when we talked the other day, I didn’t realize there was sugar and ketchup. And now I know, I mean, spaghetti sauce, you know, so I’m always like, which one has the least amount of sugar, you know, that I’m buying. But things that you don’t even think about, you’re still feeding it.
Michael Collins
85 of the packaged and boxed and bagged canned stuff in the grocery store has sugar in it. And it’s for a reason. I mean, the story’s pretty simple, but a lot of people don’t know. It is that in the 1980s, after decades of litigation from the states, the cigarette producers knew could see the handwriting on the wall. And they literally bought up all the food company, all the biggest food companies are now owned by what used to be, you know, RJ Reynolds and, you know, that kind of thing. And they started using their addictive processes to sell their products. Like now they literally have campuses and there’s a bunch of books you can read about this.
Michael Collins
They have campuses, they slide you in an MRI and they put the new product on the tongue as they’re in the MRI and watch the brain light up. You know, it’s just, it’s, you know, this is. And here’s the thing. I mean, from doing the summits, I, you know, get to talk to all these scientists and scientists like that and. But the general public doesn’t hear this information yet, you know, because the news media is not going to, you know, shoot off their foot to spite themselves because the great majority of their advertising comes from these folks. So not have newscasts about this. Right. Which is similar to drugs. It’s similar to, you know, 50 plus of newscasts and other, you know, advertising is big pharma. So it’s very similar.
Michael Collins
But, you know, they’re advertising to kids on the cartoons and I mean, it’s just, it’s a conflict of interest for them to get this information out. That’s why I do these podcasts to make sure we get this information out.
Terri
Yeah. So I’ve had other guests on the show before where we talk about trauma load and how some people. Are you susceptible and prone to a substance use disorder than others? I’m going to assume is that. Well, first of all, do you find the trauma load. It works the same if somebody’s got a sugar disorder versus a drug or alcohol disorder. I mean, when you start talking to them, do you find all of those things? I mean, your mother certainly did. Losing her mother, you said the aunt was terribly mean. I mean, that’s a lot of trauma for a child. But do you find that it works the same? In other words, if a checklist, you know, of all the things that make somebody more susceptible to having these addictive type personalities, sugar would be right there.
Michael Collins
With drugs, alcohol, gambling, 110%. Correct. Okay, so here’s the thing. Like, everybody wonders where the term comfort food came from. Everybody wonders this uptick or ascension, if you will, of the construct of emotional eating. Right. The problem with emotional eating is they get a little bit of it wrong. They believe, as do people in this is going to be a. I’m going to slaughter a sacred cow here. The people in the eating disorder world, the bulimia and the binge eating world, believe that if you can’t eat a little bit of sugar in moderation, you are not well, that you are not cured or healed. Okay. Which is total bs. It’s not true. I was A president or chairman of the board of the Food Addiction Institute. And the information is very.
Michael Collins
It’s getting to be pretty steady now in new studies, one third of people biochemically cannot ingest sugar without setting up cravings for more sugar. So this idea that you can’t heal from binge eating or you can’t heal from bulimia if you can’t eat a little bit of sugar and that all foods fit and you shouldn’t demonize one food is total bs, okay? You need this, isn’t it? This is a real addiction. There are a few educators who are, who can and have walked in both worlds and are trying to build bridges in that regard. But the answer to your question about the trauma is this is a trauma recovery in a lot of time and a lot of times, the great majority of the time a trauma recovery and a codependency recovery program, okay? What happens is you use sugar, we use sugar.
Michael Collins
The whole world now uses sugar to self soothe unconsciously. They don’t realize they’re doing it. It’s not like that beer on a Friday where you know what you’re doing. This is an unconscious process that is just. I feel like a soda, I feel like it. You’re not thinking it all the way through. But what, and the reason I know this, two reasons. One, at about day 15, you’re dealing with people that most, 90 plus percent of 95, maybe percent of people have never been five to 15 days without sugar, okay? And what they say is, Mike, I’m losing my mind. Because first of all, God forbid they had any sexual or physical trauma or they were just bullied or their boyfriend broke up with them and never worked through the problem, they just ate about it or you know, use sugar about it.
Michael Collins
These things are bubbling up and they don’t have a way to self soothe it. They don’t have a meditation practice or a yoga practice or running or walking practice. They don’t have a way to self soothe because they have outsourced their self soothing to a substance for decades, since they were children, okay? And this is now, these are people 30, 40, 50 years old or more and there, this is the first time in their life they’ve been without this product for any given amount of time, right? And they, and then forget about today’s stresses and strains, finances and relationships and job and career and everything they’ve learned again to, you know, hijack a hundred thousand year old system that was, you know, reward system that was created to find food and sex and procreate the species and keep us alive.
Michael Collins
And they learned to hijack it by sitting on the couch eating sugar. You know, this idea that a third of the population is obese and another third is overweight kind of leads. Now, it’s not my job to tell somebody they’re an addict, okay? But the research is pretty clear that in excess of 50, closer to 70% of people who are obese are sugar addicts and flour addicts, okay? They’re addicted to ultra processed carbohydrates. And we know what it does to the body, okay? I always make this delineation nowadays between what I call the body guys and gals and the, in the brain, these are the scientists and the addiction recovery folks, is that for a hundred years we’ve known what sugar does to the body.
Michael Collins
The weight gain and the diabetes and the heart disease and you know, they’re calling Alzheimer’s, like I said, Diabetes 3. We know this, okay? But lesser is known is the, you know, it’s only about three to five years old. The real deep new science about the brain and the life, right? This is where this is a brain problem. This is a dopamine dysregulation problem. And this is not well understood by the general public. We’re right in that place where cigarettes were, where they were still advertising on TV and doctors did the advertising and a lot of people kind of knew or had an idea, but there was no way that they were able to put the labels on and say this causes cancer. The diagnostic tools were not there yet. Well, that’s what we now with sugar.
Michael Collins
Yeah, it’s going to happen in our lifetime, likely. It’s just. How fast is it going to happen?
Terri
Yeah, it would be interesting. There’s probably nobody out there that would fit this bill, but it would be interesting if you could take somebody that wasn’t exposed at all to sugar and maybe in their teens or twenties, give them that first little bit and see if you hear any stories, like the repeated stories I hear with guests on the podcast and others that I know that are recovering from drugs or alcohol. It’s like that first Percocet was Whoa.
Michael Collins
Yes. Well, we have a.
Terri
We ease into it because we’ve been, you know, doing it since were toddlers.
Michael Collins
Well, a couple things. We have a similar thing that happens when you get yourself 90 days of abstinence and healing. Right. Either an accidental ingestation or one on purpose. You’re like high as hell. I mean, we all see it when the kids at the five year old’s birthday party. They’re hiding behind their mother’s leg, and then the cake and ice cream comes out. And all of a sudden, literally, the atmosphere raises that there’s just this insanity going on with their behavior. You see it very clearly and you go, ha, ha, ha. That’s funny. But we know what happened. We know what it is. You can, even if you pay attention, you can see it in your own child. But also, you may not know this name, but there is a dentist in the 40s or 50s, I think, Weston A. Price.
Michael Collins
Weston Price traveled the world going to indigenous populations who were just now getting sugar in. Okay. And he was a dentist. He was very interested in the teeth. And he would take pictures of the teeth and he would take pictures of the deformist. Deforming of the jaw and the teeth. Okay. And literally, it deformed teeth. It deforms jaws. And, you know, people start to get overweight and stuff. So he’s there. It’s. He’s got an entire book. It’s a gigantic book that he wrote about it with pictures and everything. So this research has been done. It’s just that. And it kind of happens every 20 years or so. I mean, a lot of people remember sugar busters in the 90s and 1990s. So there’s a lot of.
Michael Collins
And you know, the book I read was called Sugar Blues, which was written in the late 70s and promoted by Gloria Swanson, who eventually married the author. So this stuff has been leaking out over the years. It’s just that the sugar producers and I got nothing against the sugar producers because they had a job to do, but they did get a little devious and they. There’s. Now, they found stuff in old sugar mills and old sugar businesses where they would. They had paid Harvard professors to cover it up. And that’s where the new low fat crap came from. Right. So, people, now for the last, for you and I, for our entire adulthood, it was low fat. Was the. Is the fat, was the answer why people were getting fat? Sure. But we still keep getting fatter.
Michael Collins
And people have been eating low fat for 40 years.
Terri
Right, right. Yeah. So in your support groups, how many people do you see that end up coming to you after they’re in recovery for a substance, for. For another, a drug or alcohol? And then they end up realizing, I mean, for you it was a quest to get healthy because you realized you weren’t healthy, and so you kind of fell into it. Right, right. Do you have people that, like, actively recognize, okay, I’ve kicked The drugs, but I’m having a problem with sugar or are there still cravings for the drug? I mean, how. How are you seeing things?
Michael Collins
They come to lose weight.
Terri
Okay?
Michael Collins
That’s the. You know, 85, 90% of people come to. Strangely enough, 95 of my. And I think women are smarter than men,
but 95 of my clients are women. I like to say 40 and 80, but it’s really closer to 50 and 80 or 90. I think they’ve just struggled for many years. But, you know, the answer to your question is even people in recovery don’t. Haven’t really put two and two together yet.
Terri
Okay.
Michael Collins
I have to sneak them in the side door. This has been my marketing biggest thought problem forever, because people don’t want to sign up for an addiction recovery program, even if they’re already in one for drugs and alcohol. They just don’t believe that’s what their problem is. Right. They believe from the brainwashing of the diet industry, eat less and exercise more. Not. Not the case. I have to literally sneak them in the front. The back door until they. And if. When they see it. When they start to see people talking about it in the support groups, then they finally say, oh, I see.
Terri
That’s right. Yeah. Yeah. Because a lot of people will say they eat, you know, to soothe. Although I’ve never heard anyone say, oh, it’s Friday. I’m gonna go home and, you know, have a cupcake because I need to relax. Right. But you know that people do eat to soothe, or I’m stressed, so I’m stress eating. People will admit that. So I guess I could see them coming to a support group to try to stop that. That behavior. And then they find out, wait a minute. You know, it’s maybe more that I. My brain is hijacked, and I have a true problem here. And it goes deeper than that.
Michael Collins
Yeah. No, it is. I mean, the hijacked stuff is real. I’m getting kind of strong on this lately. But the reality is most of the people that come to me, if not all of them, are in no position to make a decision about their health or their weight. The word hijack comes to mind.
Terri
Drugs.
Michael Collins
Yeah. On drugs. And the reason I know this is because six months later, people say to me, how could I possibly be thinking this? That it was okay to go out in a snowstorm to get ice cream, that it was okay to eat out of the garbage? Like, I’m a lawyer, for God’s sakes. I’m a doctor. I’m this. I’m a, that, you know, I’ve had success. I’m a, you know, I’m an. I had an Olympic athlete, you know, I mean, it’s like I’ve had these most amazing people who, when they arrive for weight loss or two diabetes diagnosis, they like, they think there’s some other solution to this, right? That they’re not high, their brain is not hijacked, that they’re not in a position to, that they’re, they are in a position.
Michael Collins
They think they’re in a position to make a rational decision about their behavior. Right? Just like an intervention, the drugs and alcohol. Just like, you know, everybody can see your friend who’s got a drinking problem except them.
Terri
Right?
Michael Collins
They can’t. You know, that’s the second thing I study besides cravings and understanding how the brain interprets the limbic brain’s signal to get more dopamine into the frontal cortex is denial. Like the denial is so real in sugar addiction and ultra processed carbohydrate addiction. I just don’t understand why people can’t see it. I don’t understand what, why it’s not in the DSM yet. You know, the diagnostic statistical. Which there are work groups on that now, so it’s going to be eventually, but. Yeah, just not there yet.
Terri
Yeah. This is fascinating. I, number one, it makes me even more grateful that I don’t have that propensity. And we talked about that.
And I’ve mentioned this on other podcasts how, I mean, I’ve taken an opioid in the past and I don’t get it. I feel nothing. And so I’m grateful for that. You know, it’s just not something I’ve ever struggled with. Yeah, I like my sugars here and there and try to stick more with the natural sugars, which I know after you and I talked, you’re not a big fan of that either, so we can touch on that. But I’m just really grateful for that because it’s all interconnected. But it also reminds me that, you know, we, there are people that get very judgy about people that have a substance use disorder, specifically drugs and alcohol and in the healthcare industry. It’s like, how could you as a healthcare professional do this and then go take care of patients? Don’t.
Terri
You know, you of all people should know this is wrong. And so we’re working through that process of it’s a disease, you know, and their brain is hijacked. But now you extrapolate that over to sugar and obesity and you look at somebody and think, how could you not, you know, improve this? Aren’t you uncomfortable? And it’s so unhealthy. But when you put it in that context of a disease of the brain, again, that’s their struggle.
Michael Collins
Right? Yeah, they’re just not, they’re not clear on it.
Terri
Right.
Michael Collins
You know. Right.
Terri
Yeah.
Michael Collins
Yeah. It’s, it’s hard. I mean, it’s hard to watch. It’s hard to, you know, one of my goals is to get it down to more childbearing age women so that more kids don’t, they don’t accidentally, you know, put past this on to their children.
Terri
Right.
Michael Collins
And you know, we all know that, you know, it’s hard. Hard enough to be an addict of any kind, but when children are, when you come up that way, it’s just harder, you know?
Terri
Right, right. You’re starting them off that way without even realizing what you’re doing.
Michael Collins
Really. The biggest problems. Two of the biggest problems I have in the, in my groups is the first one is people set a weight goal and they go rocketing right past it. Like they’re like, I’m getting too thin kind of thing. I know that sounds crazy, but that’s exactly what happens.
Terri
Right.
Michael Collins
And they can’t really change it. If they keep their abstinence, their body will fall to where it supposed to be. Wherever. Wherever it was, you know, what nature, God or whatever intended it to be.
Terri
Yeah.
Michael Collins
You know, and the second part is that, you know, that they’re, they’ve ruined their kids. You know, they, they get this guilt trip. They did something and, you know, hurt their children.
Terri
Right.
Michael Collins
We’ve got to work through as well. Both are difficult to work through, but both fair become very real after you get abstinent from the stuff.
Terri
Yeah, I can appreciate that. I think most parents feel that they’ve done something that has ruined their kid in some way. If they could go back and do something different. I know I’m no exception to that one.
Michael Collins
A lot of the motivation is when they start to see their kids having problems with it. They gaining weight, whatever. Okay.
Terri
Okay.
Michael Collins
My Olympian who had a, won a bronze medal in swimming. She, that’s how. What was her motivation? Because her kids were starting to. By this time she was a chiropractor and he was still swimming. It wasn’t a weight thing, but she was. Saw her sugar, you know, she saw her kids having problems, you know, because she was still a bad sugar junkie yeah. The funny part of the story is that they, when it couldn’t get her off it, like this is six or seven years ago, but I couldn’t get her off of it and she couldn’t. I’m swimming. Still swimming. She could do anything with her body. But come to find out, coaches were given her coffee at 10 years of age and you know, no child is drinking at, without sugar.
Michael Collins
And so she was trying to still drink black coffee and it was like wired together, fired together, you know.
Terri
Interesting.
Michael Collins
And that’s the same thing that happens with the sweeteners, the artificial sweeteners. Right. Once we got rid of the coffee, the sugar was easy for her, but the sweeteners are the same. It’s that sweet taste. And the body says to itself, where’s the calories? You know, where’s the sugar? You know, where’s the rest of this once the sweet receptors are triggered? One of the worst parts about this, if you’re working on it, is you don’t want to have cravings. That’s the last thing you want to have. You want to be free of it. You don’t want to be craving it. And caffeine sometimes, and definitely sweeteners will keep those cravings alive, as will what you were mentioning before. Some, lots of high fructose, high glycemic fruits will do the same thing or nuts will do the same thing, you know.
Terri
Nuts.
Michael Collins
Nuts, yeah. Nuts have been high. Most nuts are not even nuts. Cashews, pecans, I think almonds. They’re drupes. Google it. D R U P E S Droops, which are the seeds of fruit. And yeah, they’re hybridized to take the bitterness out, which adds a lot of fructose. And strangely enough, pistachios are actually a real nut, but they somehow have been hybridized for the fructose. Now the fructose is really high in them as well. Highest fructose. I always tell people, if you want to get off sugar, study fructose, because fructose is the offending molecule to the brain. Right. It’s the thing that’s causing the problem. It’s the psychoactive drug. It’s the thing that can only be processed in the liver. And why we’re, why it’s creating, you know, an epidemic of 5 year olds with fatty liver and an epidemic of fatty liver in general.
Michael Collins
But because this is an alcoholics disease, fatty liver that, you know, is being created by sugar and fructose is why it’s being created. It’s not being created by the other half of the table sugar molecule, the glucose. It’s being created by the fructose. And I’ve asked a lot of these experts, is fructose a psychoactive drug? And they just, they don’t even hesitate.
Yes, it’s a drug. One guy, Dr. Richard Johnson, has a grant from the NIH as he can cure alcoholism if he can block the fructose pathway. Imagine this. Now, this is. He’s already formed a company around this and the research is pretty, you know, obviously enough for the NIH to give him a grant. And so again, the science is becoming clear, but again, most people are not aware of it.
Terri
Yeah. Wow. Interesting.
Michael Collins
It’s crazy. I mean, this is like the first thing. We have something around here called borderline foods. And borderline foods are. There’s three, four categories. Dairy, fruits and fruit juice. Fruit and fruit juices and dried fruit. You can’t have it all because it’s just straight fructose, straight sugar. And you can have a little bit of regular berries or something sometimes.
Terri
Okay.
Michael Collins
And then there’s nuts and nut butters. Nut butters are really. Because they’re so concentrated. And grains. You know, a lot of people don’t know that quinoa is actually a fruit. You know, it’s actually a fruit. It’s a seed of a fruit.
Terri
You were, you were just like messing up all of my food tables.
Michael Collins
I know, I know. This is part of the problem. When you delve a little deeper into it, there’s some stuff that has been obfuscated or just left out of.
Terri
Yeah.
Michael Collins
People. What People’s understanding of what a diet is, what healthy is. And here’s the thing. Go back to the, the body guys and gals and the brain and emotions. Part of it. Right. Is that 95, even the experts, even all the people that I’ve interviewed, I’ve had to, you know, pull it out of them, and they had to kind of come over to my side of the fence because they’ve studied the body so long and they’re so expert at the body and the denigration of the body with sugar that they don’t understand how the behavioral change needs to happen. And the behavioral change needs to happen along the pathway of a drug and alcohol recovery. It’s not an eat less and exercise more problems.
Terri
Right.
Michael Collins
It’s not a calorie burning problem. It’s a, you know, it’s an emotional change process that you need to go and mature.
Terri
Yeah, interesting. Okay. Well, a lot to think about. So, yeah, definite crossover with any addiction. How it affects the brain. It kind of slips in, I think, and catches us unawares because we’ve been exposed to it for so long. But no less of a problem. Problems to. For what’s happening in our brains. Wow. Okay. Now you mentioned a summit that you have. I believe that’s coming up. Is that something if people have interest, they can attend. How does that work?
Michael Collins
Yeah, depending on when this airs. January 6th, we do it every year, but this year is January 6th. It’s a full year. It’s like a year’s worth of podcast in a week. So every day we start on Monday and we have six or eight, and then we have. Every day we put a new six or eight speakers up, and we have about 10 or 12 who come back every year. Who are the real true addiction experts, sugar addiction experts from all over the world. But, you know, we also bring in new folks every year. But it really is a fascinating, like, I don’t know if you watch them, our Facebook group or our Facebook page or whatever. There’s a lot of people whose first exposure to this type of information. The podcast that you and I just did is that, you know, is.
Michael Collins
Is from the summit. Right? They’re, they’re. They learn how to, you know, and everybody’s got a little bit of a different take on it, but at the end of the day, we’ve had carnivores to raw food, vegans, and everybody says no sugar, no flour, you know, and some no caffeine, but mostly it’s ultra processed carbohydrates. And. But yeah, no, it’s a wonderful experience for people. There’s no cost. You just go to quit sugar. Well, you’ll have a link for the thing, but, you know, can you.
Terri
If, if they miss it live, can they get it recorded? Or do you have.
Michael Collins
Yeah, we have. We’ll have an encore and we do encores through the year. So if you just go to the website from your link, then they’ll. And give your email, then we’ll tell you when the. The new ones come out.
Terri
Okay, perfect.
Michael Collins
All right.
Terri
Okay. Well, thank you, Mike, for taking the time to educate myself and the listeners a little bit on this. I think we kind of. We kind of sort of know sugar’s not good. Some of us know it more than others, but we certainly don’t. I don’t think most of us recognize how destructive it can be if you’re not overweight. I mean, you could say, oh, well, you need to Stop that. But there’s so much.
Michael Collins
You can be a very thin sugar addict.
Terri
Okay?
Michael Collins
I have a coach who’s an ultra marathoner. She was running, still running 100 miles a week, and she couldn’t get the last £15 off at 100 miles a week. So you understand that you can’t outrun this. There’s no way to.
Terri
Okay, maybe that’s my last 15 pounds of. Need to be a little introspective on this, all right?
Michael Collins
This happens to me all the time. You know, it’s like some of them say about halfway through, they say, mike, the reason I had you on is because I’ve been sober five years, ten years, whatever. Oh, interesting.
Terri
There you go. Yeah. All right. No, I’m in denial. I have no problem, but maybe I’ll think about it.
Michael Collins
Yeah, check it. You know, just test it. You know, it’s. You can always go back. It’s easy.
Terri
That’s true. Very easy. All right, well, thank you very much. Thank you, listeners, for listening. Hope this was beneficial for all of you, and we’ll see you next time.
Michael Collins
Alrighty. Take care. Thanks.
Terri
Okay, bye.
