# Pregnancy Diet Expert: The Pregnancy Diet That Rewrites DNA! Why Pregnant Moms Are Being Lied To!

An episode of [The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1291423644), 26 Feb 2026, 1 h 36 min.

Audio: https://pdst.fm/e/pscrb.fm/rss/p/mgln.ai/e/1390/claritaspod.com/measure/p.podderapp.com/2544644999/mgln.ai/e/1651/episode.flightcast.com/01KJBMV2VD9J5PCVRSCH7JDM3T.mp3

Glucose Goddess Jessie Inchauspé exposes the pregnancy diet rewriting your baby’s DNA, how sugar in pregnancy spikes insulin, and the simple protein and supplement fixes most mothers miss! Jessie Inchauspé is a world-renowned biochemist and founder of the Glucose Goddess movement. She is the international bestselling author of books such as ‘The Glucose Goddess Method, and her latest book is ‘9 Months That Count Forever’. She explains: ◼️How glucose spikes in the womb program a baby’s future diabetes risk ◼️The 4 specific hacks to reduce blood sugar spikes by up to 75% ◼️Why eating 28 eggs a week is essential for infant brain development ◼️The link between glucose levels and ADHD ◼️How to stop sugar cravings in just 4 weeks 00:00 Intro 03:06 Why Sugar Controls Your Mood More Than You Realize 05:52 The Truth About Modern Fruit — Is It Really “Natural”? 12:07 The Real Reason “Healthy” Foods Aren’t What They Seem 13:30 What No One Tells You About Fertility and Blood Sugar 16:54 How Pregnancy Programs Your Baby’s Genes for Life 21:44 The Critical Nutrient That Shapes Your Baby’s Brain 26:01 Breastfeeding Vs. Bottle Feeding 27:59 What Happens to Your Baby If You Eat Too Much Sugar 32:06 How Inflammation in Pregnancy Sets the Stage for Disease 35:31 The Hidden Trigger Behind Gestational Diabetes 39:53 Why Muscle Is the Secret Weapon for Glucose Control 41:53 Four Proven Hacks to Stop Dangerous Glucose Spikes 43:58 Standing Desks: Helpful Habit or Metabolic Distraction? 45:22 How Safe Exercise During Pregnancy Changes Everything 47:46 What Both Parents Must Do to Protect Their Baby’s Future Health 49:40 Ads 50:47 Why Even Small Amounts of Alcohol During Pregnancy Matter 53:27 Can You Drink Alcohol While Breastfeeding — And What Happens If You Do? 53:54 Caffeine and Breastfeeding: Safe Boost or Hidden Risk? 55:31 Why Fermented Foods Could Transform Your Pregnancy Health 57:46 Keto During Pregnancy — Smart Strategy or Serious Risk? 58:57 The Only Supplements That Truly Matter During Pregnancy 01:01:36 Miscarriage: What It Teaches Us About Pregnancy and Health 01:05:34 What I Wish I Knew Before Becoming a Mother 01:07:07 How Motherhood Completely Reshapes Your Priorities 01:08:45 Can You Overcome Your Mother’s Pregnancy Health Choices? 01:10:22 What I’d Add to My Books After Everything I’ve Learned 01:13:33 Why Waking Up Hungry Is a Metabolic Red Flag 01:16:56 Ads 01:18:54 Why Protein Intake During Pregnancy Is Non-Negotiable 01:21:24 GLP-1 Medications in Pregnancy — What Happens Next? 01:22:52 How Your Pregnancy Diet Shapes Your Child’s Obesity Risk 01:26:01 How Stress During Pregnancy Rewires Your Baby’s Future 01:30:06 What My Daily Diet Really Looks Like (And Why) 01:31:48 A Powerful Message Every Expecting Couple Needs to Hear Enjoyed the episode? Share this link and earn points for every referral - redeem them for exclusive prizes: https://doac-perks.com Independent Research - https://stevenbartlett.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/DOAC-Jessie-Inchauspe-Independent-Research-Further-Reading.pdf Follow Jessie: Instagram - https://link.thediaryofaceo.com/4qaUx1w YouTube - https://link.thediaryofaceo.com/DGazyDp TikTok - https://link.thediaryofaceo.com/6wk21Fo X - https://link.thediaryofaceo.com/EZGPu7m You can pre-order Jessie’s book ‘9 Months That Count Forever’, here: https://link.thediaryofaceo.com/6nFPyYW The Diary Of A CEO: ◼️Join DOAC circle here - https://doaccircle.com/ ◼️Buy The Diary Of A CEO book here - https://smarturl.it/DOACbook ◼️The 1% Diary is back - limited time only: https://bit.ly/3YFbJbt ◼️The Diary Of A CEO Conversation Cards (Second Edition): https://g2ul0.app.link/f31dsUttKKb ◼️Get email updates - https://bit.ly/diary-of-a-ceo-yt ◼️Follow Steven - https://g2ul0.app.link/gnGqL4IsKKb Sponsors: Cometeer: https://cometeer.com/steven for $30 off your first order Ketone - https://ketone.com/STEVEN for 30% off your subscription order WHOOP: https://JOIN.WHOOP.COM/CEO for one month free

## Transcript

[0:00] With your diet during pregnancy you're programming your baby's DNA and this is going to have an
[0:04] impact on your baby's development and on their future risk of disease and there's a lot of
[0:09] pregnant moms who are eating a diet that's not giving them the nutrients their baby needs.
[0:12] This is not the mom's fault. This is the fault of our food system. This is the fault of society
[0:17] and nobody's telling moms about this and I wanted to create this guide to help parents navigate
[0:22] that food system and see easy things they can do to help their baby's development and I know this
[0:26] because as a biochemist when I became pregnant I just went deep, deep into the research and there
[0:31] are some main things that I learned. For example, 90% of moms are not getting enough
[0:35] calling during pregnancy and calling is super important. It forms your baby's brain in the wound.
[0:40] So this is the amount of eggs that I ate per week during the nine months of pregnancy because
[0:44] this is the simplest way to give enough calling to our baby and then your baby needs no fructose
[0:50] during pregnancy. So sugar from dessert from chocolate from muffins from cupcakes your baby needs
[0:55] none of this because if you have very high glucose levels during pregnancy, scientists have found
[1:01] that your baby's DNA will have epigenetic switches that are programming them towards having a higher
[1:07] vulnerability to develop diabetes obesity and psychiatric disorder. Next, this is basically the
[1:11] amount of protein that I need to eat every single day in the third trimester of pregnancy.
[1:16] Day. Yeah because the studies show low protein diets lead to smaller babies and potentially this
[1:22] epigenetic programming of staying smaller throughout life and it's findings like that that led me to
[1:27] create a plan and simple hacks for pregnant moms and we can talk about them. And then what does the
[1:32] research say about breastfeeding exercise? Kathy and also do you recommend that mothers take certain
[1:37] supplements? So this is what people need to know. Just give me 30 seconds of your time. Two things
[1:44] I wanted to say the first thing is a huge thank you for listening and tuning into the show
[1:49] week after week means the world to all of us and this really is a dream that we absolutely never
[1:52] had and couldn't have imagined getting to this place. But secondly, it's a dream where we feel like
[1:58] we're only just getting started. And if you enjoy what we do here, please join the 24% of people
[2:03] that listen to this podcast regularly and follow us on this app. Here's a promise I'm going to make to
[2:08] you. I'm going to do everything in my power to make this show as good as I can now and into the
[2:14] future. We're going to deliver the guests that you want me to speak to and we're going to continue to
[2:18] keep doing all of the things you love about this show. Thank you.
[2:26] Jesse in show space, the glucose goddess. For people that don't know who you are, what have you
[2:32] spent the best part of the last decade committing your life to and why? My work started in the glucose
[2:39] space, meaning the blood sugar space. I was showing people how blood sugar impacts all of us on a
[2:44] daily basis, the spikes and dips after we eat daily to information, faster aging, cravings,
[2:50] fatigue. And it's been the basis of my work because glucose matters for everybody. And it is
[2:57] the core of a healthy body and mind. And so that's where I started because it's so important.
[3:02] We last spoke almost two years ago now. What have you learned in those last two years that has evolved
[3:09] your own thinking or has developed your own thinking in any way? If we reflect on the last
[3:12] conversations we had around glucose spikes and sugar and the health consequences and diets,
[3:17] is there anything you've learned in those two years that is interesting and new?
[3:21] Oh absolutely. I think most of the impact of glucose on mood and on relationships,
[3:28] for example, there's this fascinating study that took married couples and they gave the husband
[3:34] and the wives a little voodoo doll representing their spouse. And the researchers told the participants
[3:40] to put a little pin in the voodoo doll every time their spouse annoyed them. At the end of the
[3:46] two weeks, the researchers counted the number of pins in the voodoo dolls and they also measured
[3:51] the participants glucose levels. They found that the people who had the most glucose lows
[3:56] had put the most pins in the voodoo doll representing their spouse. So it's just an association
[4:02] but it's interesting. And scientists then found that when you have very unsteady glucose levels,
[4:07] it impacts this neurotransmitter in your brain called tyrosine that manages your mood.
[4:11] So it seems that with unsteady glucose levels, your mood is less stable, which could then correlate
[4:17] to you being more annoyed at your spouse. So I think studies like this have really burned my mind.
[4:23] What's going on when we go through a glucose crash per se?
[4:28] So glucose is your body's energy. So your brain is constantly monitoring how much glucose
[4:33] we have in our bloodstream. And steady glucose is great. When your glucose levels crash,
[4:38] this indicates biologically that you're out of fuel. And this is a powerful signal to your body
[4:44] in your brain to say alert, alert, we need food, we need more glucose. And so it creates all these
[4:49] downstream consequences on your mood. You become angry. All you think about is food. You're in a
[4:53] bad mood. You're like, I need to eat something. You look for a banana. You look for a cookie.
[4:56] It can also activate the craving center in your brain that says Stephen, go find some chocolate.
[5:01] And science has shown this. Low glucose levels create a cascade of consequences on how we feel
[5:06] and what we seek. Now, what's interesting is that back in the day when we had low glucose levels,
[5:12] I'm talking like hunter gather times, they wouldn't arrive so quickly because we didn't have
[5:16] these big spikes that then led to these big drastic drops. It was more, we ate to no more balanced
[5:21] way with less sugar, obviously. So when our glucose became, though, it was a bit more gradual.
[5:26] Today, because we have access to all this sugar, we can spike our glucose very quickly and as a
[5:31] result, it then crashes very quickly. So the effects are pretty much immediate and they're very
[5:36] intense. All of a sudden you go from feeling okay to your brain being in alert mode, we need to
[5:41] find more fuel. So we've dysregulated our glucose levels to the point where it's impacting us in a
[5:47] very unnatural way. Is that in part because we modify our food, even fruit. When I looked back
[5:52] through the history of fruit, apples, bananas, etc. looked extremely different before they were
[5:57] modified to be juicier and sweeter, etc. Completely. It's like dogs. So all the dog breeds today,
[6:04] from shawawa to golden retrievers, they all come from wolves. Humans have been breeding wolves
[6:09] together to create these different species of dogs. They all had that ancestor of the gray wolf.
[6:14] So humans are very good at breeding natural things to serve their purposes and when it comes to
[6:18] fruit, it's the same thing. So as you say, if you compare like an ancestral banana or an ancestral
[6:23] apple to a modern one, they look completely different and you should pull up these photos, they're
[6:27] fascinating. An ancestral banana, tiny, full of fiber, full of seeds, not very sweet. And then
[6:33] modern banana, full of sugar, low in fiber, really easy to eat. So that's the first thing people need
[6:38] to know about fruit. Fruit is not natural. Fruit is the product of human engineering. However, a
[6:44] piece of whole fruit also contains fiber and water. So even though it's been bred to have a lot of
[6:49] sugar, the fiber and the water reduce how quickly the sugar arrives in our bloodstream, making it
[6:54] more or less okay for us. But the problem comes when we denature that piece of fruit, meaning if we
[7:00] remove the fiber. For example, if we take an orange and make an orange juice, what are we actually
[7:05] talking about here? Actually, oranges are not even the natural fruit. They were invented thousands
[7:09] of years ago by breeding, by crossing other species of fruit. To make an orange juice, you throw
[7:14] away part of the orange. You throw away the solid part, which is the fiber. So you're left with
[7:19] the sugar of a very sugary fruit, water and no fiber. As a result, you're getting a very unnatural
[7:26] amount of sugar in your bloodstream with no fiber to protect the spike. So a big, big glucose
[7:30] spike. And people often say, oh well, you know, fruit has vitamins in it. So therefore, orange juice
[7:37] must be better for you than Coca-Cola. That's actually a total myth. If you compare a glass of orange
[7:43] juice to a glass of Coca-Cola, it's the same amount of sugar, about 25 grams. And the sugar in
[7:49] the kind of coke and the sugar in the glass of orange juice, they're exactly the same. They're glucose
[7:54] and fructose molecules. And your body absorbs them in the exact same way. Your body does not make a
[7:59] difference between sugar from an orange and sugar from a sugar beet that's now in a kind of Coca-Cola.
[8:04] I hope that orange juice disappears from school lunches, from hospital meals, the World Health
[8:11] Organization recommends 25 grams of sugar per day or less. So with just one glass of orange juice
[8:17] in the morning that you squeeze at home that you think is good for you, you're already at the maximum
[8:21] limit of sugar recommendation. And most people drink this glass of orange juice thinking it's good for
[8:26] them. Most people with diabetes drink this glass of orange juice, thinking it's helping them with
[8:30] their condition. And that's really where I want to act. I want to help people understand what they
[8:35] actually need to do to feel better. So they don't fall victim to marketing. We talked there about glucose
[8:39] crashes and what that causes in terms of behavior. I was wondering if also causes other compulsive
[8:45] behaviors. Does it make me more likely to want to doom scroll on the internet if I have been
[8:52] eating lots of sugar? Well, that's a great question. Why does sugar feel good? Because it releases
[8:57] dopamine in our brain. Dopamine is the pleasure molecule. It makes us feel good. So if I have
[9:02] what it drinks is glass of orange juice, which would have to pay me a lot of money for me to drink
[9:06] this. But my brain would let out so many dopamine molecules. And I would feel this wave of pleasure.
[9:13] Now the problem is people confuse that with energy. It's not energy. It's dopamine. And dopamine
[9:19] is the same exact molecule that gets released when you're scrolling on Instagram. You look for the
[9:24] next post. You look for the next video every time you get something new and interesting. Bum,
[9:28] a dopamine signal as well in your brain. So if you're constantly triggering dopamine in your brain,
[9:33] you're going to constantly crash. You're going to have dopamine spikes, dopamine crashes,
[9:36] and become more and more addicted to it. So I don't know about studies showing glucose spikes,
[9:41] and for example, doom scrolling. But if you look at just the biology of it, they're triggering
[9:45] the same center in your brain. So for sure, I can imagine that if you are on a dopamine
[9:51] binging or dopamine addiction cycle, both an orange juice and a glucose spike and doom scrolling
[9:57] can go ahead and end. I was just looking at some research here and it says, yes,
[10:01] you're significantly more likely to doom scroll during a glucose crash. And it explains that
[10:05] that's because of something called the energy crisis in the prefrontal cortex, where you're
[10:08] prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for wheel parent decision making,
[10:11] and saying no to things like doom scrolling. In the case where glucose drops, this area is first
[10:16] to dim the lights to save energy for vital functions. The result is you lose your executive
[10:20] function, making it nearly impossible to resist. The hit of dopamine that social media provides,
[10:23] but it also says the second reason is this dopamine trap. And the third is generally your emotional
[10:29] regulation goes out of the window. I think this in part, because I notice in myself that when I
[10:34] am on a higher glucose diet, I'm more likely to get involved in like compulsive behaviors that I
[10:40] otherwise don't like. Like doom scrolling on the internet. Yeah, less will power, less control.
[10:46] Yeah, I have less will be more addicted. Yeah, yeah, like I have less control over my life.
[10:50] And the first thing that people notice is that when they are on a glucose roller coaster,
[10:54] they feel addicted to sugar. Like it's no longer a choice to go after that cookie. It feels like a
[10:58] compulsive behavior. Like I need sugar right now because that glucose crash is triggering a
[11:02] biological mechanism that is nearly impossible to override. So when you tell somebody, just eat less
[11:07] sugar. That's that's BS. You can't just eat less sugar. You have to go fix the underlying
[11:12] cause, which is usually the glucose crash. You can override that feeling of craving that comes from
[11:17] deep inside your brain when you have a glucose crash. You need to fix the spike, reduce the spike,
[11:21] and then naturally the spike also reduces and you feel fewer cravings. There's a theory called
[11:26] the protein leverage hypothesis. And this theory says that your body will keep you hungry and keep
[11:31] you seeking food until you've given it enough protein. So if in the morning you have, I don't know,
[11:37] some oats and toast and jam, very little protein, your body is going to be like, okay, we
[11:42] didn't get any protein. We need to get more protein. So you stay more and more hungry at 10 a.m.
[11:45] you're hungry again. If you have a cookie, again, no protein, your body will keep you hungry. If
[11:50] all of a sudden you have 40 grams of protein, then that craving dissipates and that feeling of
[11:56] seeking out food sort of calms down because your body got what he actually needed, which was protein.
[12:03] People send you lots of messages. You have a enormous online following. If I was to peer into
[12:08] those DMs you get, what would be the essence of what people are saying to you? They're asking me
[12:13] about specific foods. They're saying our lentils, okay, can I eat three eggs a day? What kind of
[12:19] vinegar should I use? And often it's people trying to navigate the marketing messages. They're
[12:24] seeing them the packaging of things. They'll be like, this can of tea that says zero grams of sugar
[12:29] is a good for me. They're trying to decode what these food products actually contain and whether
[12:36] they're actually good for them. And is there any real standout marketing messages that are
[12:40] not deceptive? Yeah. No added sugars. That is so deceptive because this class of orange juice
[12:50] has no added sugars in it because the sugar was there at the beginning. It came from the orange
[12:56] from the original ingredient. So on the count of orange juice you can say no added sugar, even though
[13:00] it contains 25 grams of sugar, which is the maximum limit the WHO recommends for your daily
[13:05] sugar intake. So that's a really, really bad one. Another one would be something that says gluten-free
[13:11] or vegan. It's not because it's gluten-free reading vegan that it's good for you, but we're being
[13:15] tricked. Food manufacturers do everything they can to make you buy their products.
[13:19] I think I'm in the season of life where I'm thinking a lot about fertility, both my fertility,
[13:23] my fiancee's fertility and how my diet, the things I eat has an impact on that. What is it we
[13:30] need to know about? If we're trying to conceive, if we want to have a family,
[13:35] is it really the case that I need to start thinking about my own fertility in the lead-up
[13:39] to putting that sperm into that egg? Yes. Both the males and the females need to be thinking about
[13:46] fertility and nutrition plays a big role and health plays a big role in the quality of your sperm,
[13:51] for example. So a good idea would be to reduce, before you want to have a kid, if you're the man,
[13:56] you know, reduce alcohol, exercise more, eat better so that your sperm on high quality. So the sperm
[14:01] turnover is about three months. So if you do like a three month sort of intense, my sperm
[14:07] are getting in shape kind of situation, it's a good idea. For women, it's different so our eggs
[14:12] are present from before we're born, but the quality of our diet of our nutrient reserves is going
[14:17] to impact our ability to have kids also and is going to impact what our baby gets in the first
[14:21] trimester of pregnancy. You've just given birth? Eight months ago, yeah. Feels like just last week,
[14:26] but yeah, eight months ago. And I guess that's somewhat linked to why you've written this new book,
[14:32] which is titled nine months that count forever, how your pregnancy diet shapes your baby's future.
[14:37] You could have written about anything, just seeing people would have bought the book,
[14:42] because people are so fascinated by you and the work that you do. Why of all the subjects you
[14:46] could have written about was this the subject that meant the most to you to commit a long period
[14:51] because it is a subject where there's such a big gap Stephen between what science knows and what
[14:59] parents are told. It felt like there was a just canyon between information in the studies that's
[15:06] been there for decades and what I as a pregnant woman went through and what advice I was given,
[15:11] what's available out there to pregnant moms. So even though I was pregnant and I was hired,
[15:16] I felt I need to write this book because people need to know the power that they have.
[15:21] So today, science knows that you're not just an oven when you're pregnant. Have you heard this thing
[15:27] being a bun in the oven? It's an American expression. I think I've had it once or twice, yeah.
[15:32] Okay, so often if you're pregnant, people will say, oh, you have a bun in the oven, that's so cute.
[15:36] It's like an expression. And I feel like this is where all of our problems started because it implies
[15:41] so many misleading things. It implies that when you're pregnant, you are an oven, meaning you're just
[15:47] there to provide heat and time. And people often say just relax, you know, let nature do its thing.
[15:53] So it implies that you're passive, that you have no agency, no power, you're just a vessel of heat
[15:58] and time. That's the first problem. The second problem is that it implies that just like a chocolate
[16:05] cake that you put in the oven, it implies that your baby, the moment the sperm meets the egg,
[16:11] your baby is set in stone. Like if you're making a cake, when you make the brownie and you put it
[16:16] in the oven, the oven is not going to change the brownie into banana bread. The oven is just
[16:20] cooking the brownie. Well, actually, it's very different with pregnancy. Your baby is not set in
[16:27] stone at conception. What happens during the nine months of pregnancy is co-creating your baby's
[16:33] plan. And depending on what you eat, a different baby will come out. So we've been lying to pregnant
[16:40] moms, telling them they have no agency, they have no power, they should just relax and let nature
[16:45] do its thing. So that's why I wrote this book because the science is fascinating.
[16:50] So where are pregnant women being let down in this regard? Is it that there's just not enough
[16:54] information out there? Is there's not been enough research out there? Is it bad advice currently
[16:59] on the internet? This is the fault of our food system. This is the fault of society. This is the
[17:03] fault of the food industry that we're just talking about, the marketing messages. For everybody
[17:07] today in developed countries, we are being fed processed unhealthy foods that are hurting us.
[17:14] Whether we get diabetes or heart disease, there is a link to food. And today, even pregnant moms
[17:18] are being let down by the food system and are eating a diet without knowing it. That's not giving
[17:22] them the nutrients their baby needs. So the moment I became pregnant the first time, I started
[17:28] researching. I went to Google Scholar and I just opened about a thousand tabs on my computer,
[17:33] which is usually what I do when I'm researching a new topic. And I looked at the big review studies,
[17:37] the meta-analyses of how nutrition during pregnancy impacts our baby's development. I read probably
[17:42] 2000 scientific papers. And I just went deep, deep into the research. And out of it, I saw these
[17:49] four big themes coming out of these four nutrients that most moms are not getting enough of in
[17:56] their diet or too much of in their diet. And I wanted to create this guide to help parents navigate
[18:01] that food system and see easy things they can do in the mom's diet to help their baby's development.
[18:07] So while your baby's DNA is set, the moment the sperm meets the egg, with your diet during pregnancy,
[18:15] you're programming that DNA. Have you heard of epigenetics? Yes. Okay. So epigenetics are like
[18:21] these little dimmer switches that sit on your DNA and that say, activate this gene or silence this
[18:27] gene. And so during pregnancy, you're putting these little switches on your baby's DNA. And this
[18:32] is going to have an impact on your baby's development and on his future risk of disease.
[18:38] I'll give you a very simple example. If you have very high glucose levels during pregnancy,
[18:44] scientists have found that your baby's DNA will have epigenetic switches that are programming him
[18:51] towards having a higher vulnerability to develop diabetes himself in his lifetime.
[18:56] So if you have high glucose levels, your baby will be programmed to be more likely to then have
[19:01] high glucose levels himself throughout his life as a kid, a teenager, and an adult. That's
[19:06] epigenetic programming. And depending on your diet as the mom, you can program your kids differently.
[19:11] But nobody tells moms about this. And that's what I'm trying to change.
[19:15] What do I need to know is someone that is very little about pregnancy to really understand the
[19:19] like basics of what's going on? What timeframe matters? What happens when? So females have a
[19:26] uterus, which is an organ. And the uterus is where the baby develops. And the uterus grows as
[19:31] pregnancy progresses. And then when you give birth, the baby comes out of the uterus and the uterus
[19:35] stays in the mom. So that's important. When conception happens, so you have the sperm meets the
[19:42] egg. That little packet of cells will implant in one of the walls of the uterus and start growing.
[19:47] And pregnancy is divided into three trimesters. It's about nine months. So once one to three is the
[19:52] first trimester, four, five, six is the second trimester, seven, eight, nine is the third trimester.
[19:58] And what we're going to talk about today is about nutrition and how your baby's getting the
[20:03] building blocks that he needs to develop in your womb as the female. Because your baby needs to
[20:09] grow from a single cell to 40 trillion cells by the time he's born, right? He grows from like
[20:14] nothing to a three or four kilos. And that has to come from somewhere. It doesn't just come out of
[20:19] thin air. All those building blocks, all that matter is coming from you from what you're eating.
[20:24] What you eat becomes your baby. So your baby is what you eat. In the first trimester,
[20:30] your baby's getting food from this sort of milk that your uterus creates. So it's uterine secretions.
[20:37] And then from the second trimester onwards, something incredible happens. When's the second trimester
[20:42] that starts? It starts at four months. And so for the second and third trimesters,
[20:47] there's another organ that you create inside your uterus. It's called the placenta. And the placenta's
[20:52] job is to bring your baby's bloodstream and your bloodstream as the mom in really close contact.
[20:59] And all of a sudden, symbiosis is established. And your bloodstream and your baby's bloodstream
[21:04] are then going to exchange nutrients and waste. So your baby's going to get all his nutrition
[21:10] directly from your bloodstream. And Stephen, here's a main myth that people believe. They believe
[21:14] that your baby will just get what he needs from you during pregnancy. That's something mom's
[21:19] are told. Don't worry, your baby will get what he needs from you. This is a lie. Depending on
[21:24] what you eat, your baby will have different access to important nutrients. So your baby doesn't get
[21:29] what he needs. He gets what's there and what you give him. So let's take a simple example.
[21:35] One of the nutrients that is really important is called colon. Have you heard about colon
[21:39] before? It's not in eggs. Yes, exactly. It's in the egg yolk. So colon is super important.
[21:46] It forms your baby's brain in the womb. So your baby's brain has these cells that are forming
[21:52] called neurons, which are the ones that process information. And colon is important to creating
[21:56] those neurons. And colon creates the parts of your baby's brain that have to do with memory,
[22:01] learning, and attention. So that egg that you're holding contains about 125 milligrams of
[22:07] colon. And it's an incredible, incredible substance. The thing is, if you don't eat enough colon,
[22:13] your baby's brain is not going to get enough colon. And this can have an impact on the development
[22:19] of your child. So much so that the American Association of Pediatrics says failure to provide
[22:26] colon during this time can result in lifelong brain deficits in the baby. Today, 90% of moms
[22:33] are not getting enough colon during pregnancy. 90% of moms are not getting enough colon during
[22:39] pregnancy. Why? Because nobody is telling them about it. And because today we don't eat very
[22:44] nutritious, nutritious foods anymore that contain a lot of colon. They're present in eggs. So four eggs
[22:49] a day gives you all the colon that you need. But colon is also present in organ meats like liver.
[22:54] Nobody eats liver anymore. Most of the foods that we eat today, cupcakes, dried fruits,
[23:00] burgers, chips, they don't contain a lot of colon. We need to be eating eggs. This is the simplest
[23:06] way to give enough colon to our baby. And scientists do these animal studies where they
[23:11] deprive moms from colon and they look at the impact on the brain. And they see that brain development
[23:16] in the baby stops earlier than it should. And those babies are born with fewer neurons.
[23:23] The amount of colon in your diet during pregnancy is going to be impacting your child's brain
[23:27] development. And nobody's telling moms about this. It's really messed up. So how many eggs a day do I
[23:33] need to eat while I'm pregnant to get enough colon? Four is the golden number. So here I think we have
[23:39] 28 eggs. So every day during pregnancy, I ate four eggs. So this is the amount of eggs that I ate per
[23:47] week during the nine months of pregnancy. That's a lot of eggs. But as I was doing this,
[23:52] I knew I was giving my baby all the colon that he needed, which is about 450 milligrams per day.
[23:57] And this is not very expensive. 28 eggs is about $7. So for $1 a day, you're getting all the
[24:03] colon that your baby needs to form his brain. Mothers are often told to avoid liver while they're
[24:10] pregnant. Why is that? You're saying that that's not the correct advice. So liver contains a lot
[24:16] of vitamin A, quite high levels of vitamin A. And there's some older studies that show that liver
[24:22] and high vitamin A can cause issues to the baby. That's why liver is not usually recommended during
[24:27] pregnancy. I would say check with your doctor. Different countries have different thresholds
[24:31] of how much liver is allowed. And honestly, I don't like liver. So I prefer to have eggs. But liver
[24:38] is super, super high in colon. It's quite impressive. You can also take colon supplements,
[24:42] but eggs are the cheapest, easiest source. And for example, in the supplement world, so scientists
[24:47] have done this study at Cornell. They gave one group of moms the bare minimum amount of
[24:54] colon that is recommended. So 450 milligrams in supplements. And then they wondered, well, if a baby's
[25:00] brain needs colon, what happens if he has a lot of colon available? Does his brain form even better?
[25:06] So they gave the other group of mom double the bare minimum recommended amount. And then they
[25:11] brought the kids in during their first year of age for some tests. And the main test that was used
[25:18] is you basically plopped the baby on his mom's lap in front of a computer screen and you flash
[25:22] images on that screen and you measure how quickly the baby reacts to the new images. So how quickly
[25:28] he moves his eyes. And the reason they do this is because this test is correlated to adult IQ,
[25:34] meaning the faster a baby reacts to images in the first year of age, the higher his adult IQ.
[25:40] That's the association. And so they were wondering, could we see a difference in the baby's
[25:46] reaction time depending on the mom's colon level in the room? And they found that the babies who were
[25:51] born to the high colon moms had 10% faster reaction time to this test. People talk a lot about
[25:57] breastfeeding as well, whether it's good, bad, indifferent, whether you can breastfeed too much,
[26:01] etc. Obviously there's lots of practicalities that make breastfeeding quite difficult for a lot
[26:06] of mothers, which we probably should acknowledge. But otherwise, what does the research say about
[26:11] breastfeeding? So the main difference between breast milk and formula is that breast milk is
[26:18] alive. It's alive with information. It's alive with little molecules that are going to continue
[26:24] that DNA programming. Formula is inert. It's not alive. It's not doing that programming.
[26:30] So yes, breastfeeding has advantages for the mom and for the baby. But formula is nutritionally
[26:36] complete. And it's very useful for many moms who are not able or don't want to breastfeed.
[26:41] And if you're using formula, you actually have to check because today not all formulas have
[26:46] colon in them. So checking the ingredients for colon, also checking the ingredients for omega-3s,
[26:50] which is something that will cover in a bit. Look for that. Coling omega-3s in your formula to
[26:56] make sure that your baby is getting what he needs in those respects. I was reading about a study
[27:01] in the pediatric research journal that says a 2013 Dutch study of 120 children found
[27:07] that less breastfeeding was linked to a silencing of the gene for leptin, the hormone that signals fullness.
[27:14] So that's a good example of epigenetic programming. So we have this gene that codes for leptin,
[27:19] which is approaching. And leptin is one of the molecules that makes you feel full. So you and I both
[27:24] have this leptin gene. But depending on our epigenetic programming on that gene, you might be producing
[27:29] more of it and I might be producing less of it. So for the same meal, you might feel more full
[27:35] and I might feel less full after that same exact meal. And so in the study, they saw that if you're
[27:40] not breastfed very long, your leptin gene is deactivated. So you feel less full after eating.
[27:47] Now these are small associations, but they show you that there's a difference here and that
[27:50] potentially breastfeeding could help your baby be more satiated after eating.
[27:54] What about sugar during pregnancy? So sugar is fascinating. When you eat sugar,
[28:01] your baby is also receiving that sugar because absentia lets the sugar through.
[28:06] And your baby doesn't need any sugar during pregnancy. He needs a little bit of glucose,
[28:10] which is different. But sugar, as in the very sweet molecule of fructose that is in chocolate,
[28:16] that is in these cupcakes, that is in dried fruit, your baby needs none of it.
[28:21] And the most interesting study on sugar in pregnancy actually came from the UK.
[28:26] So from 1940 to 1953, I don't know if you know this, but in the UK, there was a government
[28:32] mandated sugar ration, meaning for 13 years, the government controlled how much sugar people had
[28:39] access to. It was during the war and they were trying to manage resources. So everybody in the UK
[28:44] got 10 sugar cubes per day. That's it. And this is down from what people usually ate before
[28:50] the sugar ration, which was about 20 sugar cubes per day. So everybody, including pregnant moms,
[28:55] for 13 years, had a capped amount of sugar. At the end of the sugar ration after 13 years,
[29:01] bam, everybody went back up to eating more sugar. And to scientists in the early 2000s thought,
[29:07] well, that's really interesting. This means we have two groups of pregnant moms
[29:12] during the sugar ration and right after the sugar ration, who had babies develop in their room,
[29:17] either with 40 grams of sugar per day or around 80 grams of sugar per day. And the scientists
[29:22] wondered, can this small difference be making an impact on the baby's long-term health?
[29:28] So they called up 60,000 people who were born either just before the ration ended or just after.
[29:35] And they asked them about their health. They were like, do you have diabetes? Do you have heart
[29:38] disease? How are you feeling? What's your weight? And they saw that the babies who were born
[29:43] and who were in the mother's room during the sugar ration had 15% lower likelihood of having
[29:49] developed type 2 diabetes in their lifetime. So what does this mean? It means that the amount of
[29:55] sugar during pregnancy can be slightly increasing or decreasing your baby's vulnerability to getting
[30:02] type 2 diabetes later in life. And today, scientists look at the epigenetics of babies who are
[30:07] born to moms with very high glucose levels. And they see that the genes that are related to
[30:12] diabetes are activated. So we have a full picture now of data. We have epigenetics. We have this
[30:18] long-term, interesting study. And we now see that the amount of sugar that we eat during pregnancy
[30:23] is subtly programming our baby. So Steve, I don't know if you know this, but when I was 25,
[30:29] I was on the cusp of pre-diabetes. I almost had pre-diabetes when I was 25. I had very high
[30:33] glucose levels. So I had a vulnerability to diabetes. And as I was being in the studies, I was like,
[30:40] oh my god, maybe this has something to do with what my mother was eating when she was pregnant with
[30:45] me. Because pregnancy is this window of outsized influence in somebody's health. So I called up my mom.
[30:52] I was like, mom, what did you eat when you were pregnant? She's like, oh, it was the 90s, you know,
[30:56] I ate a very little protein, very low fat. And in the morning, every morning, I had a big
[31:01] glass of orange juice. And I had special case cereal with about a half a cup of tablespoon
[31:06] sugar on top. I was like, that's pretty interesting. So I wonder, I will never know. I wonder if maybe
[31:12] my vulnerability to diabetes had some roots in the womb. And the science suggests that it does
[31:19] have a correlation. Absolutely. So the science suggests that the amount of sugar that you're eating
[31:25] during pregnancy is having an impact on your baby's epigenetics. And today, so as I was mentioning,
[31:30] the WHO recommends 25 grams of sugar per day. But most moms are eating 80 grams of sugar per day.
[31:38] 80 grams, which is usually more than what they eat when they're not pregnant. Because of this
[31:44] collective myth that you should eat for two, that pregnancy, you're going to gain weight anyway.
[31:49] So eat as much sugar as you want. Really, we're failing moms because we're not telling them about
[31:54] the incredible opportunity they have by just being a bit mindful of how much sugar they eat
[31:59] of being able to help their baby be less vulnerable to diabetes. It's not just diabetes, though,
[32:03] is it? No. I was just looking at some of the studies. There's a study here in the JAMA network.
[32:10] It says a Danish study found that children born to mothers with diabetes had a 15 percent
[32:14] high risk of psychiatric disorders with schizophrenia risk being 55 percent higher, intellectual
[32:21] disability 29 percent higher, and a connection to autism ADHD, a 2005 review of 200 studies,
[32:31] which is 56 million mother baby pairs found a 25 percent higher risk of autism when
[32:38] mothers had diabetes during pregnancy from the Lancet diabetes and endocrinology report.
[32:44] And it's important to note that these studies show correlation, not causation, and a 25 percent
[32:48] increase in absolute times only raises the prevalence from 1 in 100 to around 1.25 in 100 children.
[32:56] So there's some nuance to be had on that. There's some nuance, but that association holds
[32:59] very strongly. And as you said, 56 million mom baby pairs. So across the world, we see that when a
[33:06] mom has diabetes during pregnancy, her baby has a higher risk of psychiatric disorders. And the
[33:11] main theory that could explain this association has to do with the baby's brain. So your baby
[33:19] is forming his brain in the room. And today, Steven, you have about 100 billion neurons in your brain,
[33:24] and they are the exact same neurons that you had the day you were born. Neurons never get replaced.
[33:31] So what does this mean? It means that your neurons that you have for life are formed during pregnancy
[33:36] in your mother's uterus. Now, you have these neurons in the baby's brain being formed 250,000
[33:41] per minute, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, and neurons everywhere. And next to the neurons,
[33:45] you have another type of cell. This cell is called the microglia. And it kind of looks like a
[33:50] starfish, and it's patrolling the baby's brain. And its job is to make sure that the neurons are
[33:56] forming properly. So what microglia do, they're a cell from the immune system, is they are on the
[34:01] lookout for any neurons that are being damaged or not formed properly. And as soon as they find a
[34:07] neuron, that is not ideal. They go over to it and they eat it and they destroy it. So they're pruning
[34:12] the brain, and they're looking out for damage and making sure everything develops normally. Now,
[34:17] if the mother has high inflammation levels during pregnancy, and this can be caused by a number
[34:23] of things. It can be caused by high glucose levels. It can be caused by infection. It can be
[34:28] caused by chemicals. High inflammation seems to be making these microglia overactive. Now,
[34:35] all of a sudden, they become a bit deregulated, and they start eating and destroying neurons that
[34:40] don't need to be destroyed. They start destroying healthy neurons. And as a result, the brain is
[34:47] forming in a slightly suboptimal fashion. And scientists believe this to be the leading theory behind
[34:52] why we see the association between gestational diabetes, so diabetes of pregnancy, and the higher
[34:58] risk of psychiatric disorders. They believe it has to do with the inflammation levels going on in
[35:03] the baby's brain during pregnancy. And so what does this tell us? This tells us that when we're
[35:08] pregnant, we're influencing the amount of inflammation in our baby's body. And this should be
[35:14] something that we tell women about, because if they can have power over their inflammation levels,
[35:20] for example, by reducing their glucose spikes, they could also give their baby a benefit
[35:25] to its brain formation. Do you think it's useful for women during pregnancy to where those
[35:30] continuous glucose monitors? I did. I did the whole time. Is that useful? Depends on what you want
[35:38] to do. I think it's really interesting. It helped me a lot. Maybe just for two weeks could be
[35:43] cool, so you can kind of see what's going on and learn about your glucose spikes. And I think
[35:48] one of the issues we see during pregnancy is that your glucose levels are usually tested in the
[35:52] third trimester with the diabetes test. But by that time, like you've already been going on for
[35:58] six months with your glucose levels, I think we should be testing glucose levels much much
[36:01] much earlier. Like in the first trimester, because your glucose levels in the first trimester actually
[36:06] can predict very well whether you're going to get gestational diabetes or not. So I think we should
[36:11] maybe put a glucose monitor on all pregnant moms in the first trimester or even pre-pregnancy
[36:16] to help them understand their glucose spikes and show them about these easy tools and habits and
[36:22] hacks that you can put in place to reduce your glucose spikes. I was reading about a study from
[36:25] diabetes care that said they put these continuous glucose monitors on 700 women and found
[36:32] that if they did it in the first trimester, they could accurately predict who would develop
[36:35] gestational diabetes at 24 to 28 weeks. Yeah, and so that's really interesting because a lot of
[36:41] people used to think that gestational diabetes, meaning diabetes during pregnancy is kind of random.
[36:46] I was like, oh, you get it, but we don't know why it's random. Your body's just doing this.
[36:50] And now we have evidence that suggests that actually it's correlated to your glucose levels in the
[36:55] first trimester. Now in the first trimester, your glucose levels are pretty much the same as when
[37:00] you're not pregnant. As pregnancy progresses, hormones come into play and things start shifting.
[37:06] Glucose spikes get bigger and longer, fasting glucose levels becomes lower. But that first trimester,
[37:11] your glucose spikes and your glucose levels are similar to pre pregnancy. This means that essentially
[37:16] your non-pregnant glucose levels can predict whether or not you're going to get gestational diabetes,
[37:21] which means that gestational diabetes is not random. It actually has roots in what was happening
[37:27] before pregnancy, meaning that if you had high glucose levels before pregnancy, you're more likely
[37:33] to get gestational diabetes. Gestational diabetes could actually just be a symptom of having
[37:38] high glucose levels before pregnancy, but just not knowing about it.
[37:42] You know when we say high glucose levels, is that a very individual thing?
[37:46] No. It's not an individual thing.
[37:48] No, we have very clear cutoffs. So for example, if you're not pregnant, like you and I,
[37:53] a hundred milligrams per deciliter is the cutoff between healthy and pre-diabetes.
[37:59] So that's fasting glucose level, your glucose level first thing in the morning.
[38:02] If you're pregnant, that changes. Anything above 92 milligrams per deciliter is considered
[38:08] diabetes of pregnancy. So high glucose levels, it's very well segmented. We have these very
[38:15] specific ranges that say normal too high, much too high.
[38:20] But if me and you both have this teaspoon of this honey that I have here on the desk,
[38:25] our responses to this honey are going to be completely different, right?
[38:27] Yeah. The glucose spike rate experience is going to be different.
[38:31] For a bunch of reasons, our microbiome, our genetics, how much muscle mass we have,
[38:36] how hydrated, how stressed, how tired we are. So maybe you're going to get a spike or like,
[38:41] I don't know, 30 milligrams and maybe I'll get a 45 milligrams spike because I'm tired.
[38:47] Now what does that mean? It doesn't mean that honey is necessarily better for you than it is for
[38:52] me. It just means that my body today is more or less good at managing this influx of glucose.
[38:58] Today. Today, yeah. Today. And it also means something very important, which is that if you and I both
[39:05] used a glucose hack. So for example, if you and I both had a chicken breast before the honey,
[39:10] both you and I would have a smaller glucose spike from that same honey. So glucose hacks and
[39:16] ways to reduce your glucose spikes work in everyone. The exact absolute values after eating
[39:21] something, these can vary. But one thing that is true for everybody is that you're fasting glucose.
[39:28] So glucose before you eat anything, that is something we can compare. So if you and I both at 7am
[39:35] before we eat anything, we had our fasting glucose levels checked. We could compare. We could
[39:40] say, Oh, Jesse is very close to pre diabetes and Stephen is not very close to pre diabetes.
[39:45] Those are very easy numbers to compare. The spikes after eating, these can vary.
[39:49] So if I put on a little bit more muscle, that means that I'll tolerate glucose better.
[39:54] Yeah, because your muscles are an amazing sink where your body is soaking up glucose from your
[39:59] bloodstream. And that's why we see that even during pregnancy having high muscle mass is protective
[40:04] against diabetes. So women with higher muscle mass and pregnancy are less likely to have gestational
[40:09] diabetes. Let me give you an example. So we eat this honey. What happens? The honey goes from our
[40:15] mouth to our stomach to our intestine. And then it goes through our intestinal wall into our blood
[40:21] stream. So all these glucose molecules are arriving into our bloodstream. Now there's two options.
[40:26] Either we stay here and we don't move. In that case glucose is going to rise in our bloodstream,
[40:30] big glucose spike and then crash. Or we say, Okay, let's go outside and go for a walk right after we
[40:35] eat this honey. We're walking our muscles are contracting, our leg muscles are contracting,
[40:40] our arm muscles are contracting. And these muscles as they're contracting, they're looking for energy.
[40:45] And the first thing they look is in the bloodstream. They look for glucose in the bloodstream,
[40:49] which is why if you move after you eat glucose, you will get a smaller glucose spike because some of
[40:55] that glucose is being used by your muscles for energy. I've heard you tell people that they should
[41:01] do some stuff with their coughs. Calf raises, yeah. Okay, so put your feet on the ground, Stephen.
[41:05] Yeah. And just do some calf pushups, calf raises. So you go up onto the ends of your feet and
[41:11] back down. Okay. So you got it. I'm going, I'm lifting my heels. Exactly. Lift your heels up and
[41:15] down. So as you do this, there's a muscle on your calf called the soleus muscle. Can you feel
[41:20] it contract? It's your calf muscle. Yeah. Okay. So this muscle is very good at soaking up glucose
[41:26] from your bloodstream. So easy hack you can do after you eat something sweet is you just do some
[41:31] calf raises at your desk like this. Nobody can notice five minutes. And that's going to help
[41:35] reduce the glucose spike of what you just ate. I mean, five, five minutes. Yeah. I mean,
[41:40] you can do five minutes in the studies they do sometimes hours of this, but even just one minute
[41:44] is better than nothing to reduce your glucose spike. I mean, this is probably while our
[41:50] cultures go for a walk after dinner, right? Completely. And a lot of the glucose hacks that
[41:55] I've talked about, they actually mirror a lot of traditions. So for example, the glucose hack
[42:01] of having your vegetables at the beginning of your meal, this is incredibly powerful pregnancy
[42:06] or not pregnancy because vegetables contain fiber. And when you have them at the beginning of
[42:11] your meal, they create this protective mesh in your intestine that slows down the glucose
[42:18] molecules from carbs and makes the glucose molecules arrive more slowly into your bloodstream,
[42:24] meaning smaller spike. Now eating veggies at the beginning of a meal, that's something that we
[42:28] call coded day in France, which means raw veggies at the beginning of your meal.
[42:33] One of the simple exercises you recommend, if I've just eaten something that's high in glucose,
[42:39] that I can do quickly to help bring down my glucose spike, right? That's ultimately what it's
[42:43] going to do. Bring down the spike. The best thing to do is to move your body. So get up,
[42:48] find a spot in your apartment that needs to be tidied, find a place you got a vacuum, find some
[42:54] laundry to do, and do that within 90 minutes after eating. Your muscles are your best ally in
[43:00] reducing your glucose spikes after you've eaten. So what's going on there? I start eating a cake.
[43:05] I finish eating the cake. How long have I got to get that cake into my muscles?
[43:11] That's a great, great input. You have about 90 minutes, so an hour and a half.
[43:15] Okay. That's when the spike is usually going to be added at its maximum.
[43:19] So if I start squatting, yeah, squats are a great, great tool. I want to get for a big
[43:23] muscle, right? Yeah, absolutely. So there's some studies showing that if you do, I think it's
[43:27] five squats or 10 squats every five minutes, that is a very, very powerful way to get your
[43:32] glucose spike down. Now, you don't always have the space to do some squats, but if you're
[43:38] alone at home, go for it. That's one of the best ones. So what's going on in my body,
[43:42] that is my, I start squatting, I'm working my glutes. Yeah, so your glutes are looking for energy,
[43:47] and the first place they look is in your blood. They're looking for glucose because glucose is
[43:51] the energy that your muscles are using. Okay. Do you use standing desks? I've really got into it.
[43:56] Yeah, I do. I have a desk at home that moves up and down. Same.
[44:00] Yeah, but sometimes if I'm tired, I just feel more tired with the standing desk. So I have to have
[44:03] a bit of energy left over. Do you always use the standing desk? I mean, I kind of oscillate between
[44:08] standing and sitting, but I think especially in the morning, I find it to be really, really good.
[44:13] You just gave me an idea for a glucose test. I should do the same muffin and afterwards
[44:19] standing desk for 30 minutes or sitting at the desk for 30 minutes. That's a great test.
[44:24] Well, we need to put some stellar glucose monitors on before, but yes, we can do it. We should do it.
[44:28] So I will eat a muffin first thing in the morning, then stand for 30 minutes. In the next day,
[44:33] I will eat a muffin first thing in the morning and then sit for 30 minutes, and I'll send you this
[44:37] bike and we can see. We can see how much glucose is being burned when we're standing in our desk.
[44:43] Okay, well, we're going to put that the results in the episode. Okay, great.
[44:46] Now, so what you see on the screen, if you're watching, is the results of Jesse standing
[44:54] after having a muffin. And then these results which you see on the screen are Jesse sitting
[45:00] after having a muffin. And either we'll see that the spikes are very similar,
[45:05] which means that standing doesn't use much more muscle energy than sitting.
[45:10] Or we will see that standing is using up some of the glucose from my bloodstream,
[45:15] and therefore the spike is smaller after the muffin.
[45:18] On that point of exercise, mothers are given conflicting advice about what to do when they're
[45:23] pregnant. Some people say exercise is not good. Some people say it's great. What's your position
[45:30] for all the research you've done as to whether mothers should be doing exercise during pregnancy?
[45:33] Exercise is incredibly good for your baby's development. And there's one study done in animals,
[45:39] because we can't do many studies in humans when it comes to pregnancy for obvious ethical reasons.
[45:45] But there's this incredible study, which I think is my favorite study in the book.
[45:49] So scientists took two groups of pregnant rats, and they gave them the exact same housing conditions,
[45:56] diets, lighting, everything. The only difference is that one group also had these tiny little
[46:03] treadmills that they had to walk on for 30 minutes a day every day during pregnancy. So same exact
[46:10] conditions. The only difference is one group of pregnant rats is moving 30 minutes a day on these
[46:14] tiny treadmills. Then they wait for the babies to be born, and they put the babies in these mazes
[46:19] to kind of measure how quickly they're solving the maze. And they also measure the baby's anxiety
[46:24] levels. They found that the babies that were born to the moms who were exercising solved the maze
[46:32] twice as fast, and had fewer anxiety symptoms. So they found this strong association between a mom
[46:41] exercising during pregnancy and the outcomes of the baby's brain. And the main theory is that when
[46:49] we exercise, there's this molecule produced in our brain called BDNF, and it's got a complicated
[46:55] name. But what it does is that it helps neuroplasticity. It helps your neurons create new connections.
[47:00] And we know that in humans, when we exercise, that's one of the reasons exercise is good for the
[47:04] brain, because it increases BDNF. And in these pregnant rats, they found not only were the mom's BDNFs
[47:11] higher, but the baby's BDNF levels inside of the wounds was also higher. And they believe
[47:19] that is why they saw this impact on the baby's brain development after birth. So what happens in
[47:25] the womb is really setting up a strong foundation for your baby's brain. It's laying out the
[47:31] basic architecture, which is why it's so important to do these simple hacks to give your baby's
[47:37] brain the optimal nutrients that it needs to form properly. What is there's a little metaphor
[47:44] for those two plant pots? What is the metaphor? Okay, so both of these plants come from identical
[47:54] seeds. The only difference is what they were planted in. So one of these plants was planted
[48:02] in basically little rocks and gravel with a tiny bit of soil in it. The other seed was planted
[48:08] in rich, fertilized soil. What is this showing us? We intuitively understand that when we're planting
[48:15] a seed, the soil we choose is important, right? We understand that the same seed is not going to
[48:20] lead to the same tree, depending on where we plant it. And I think for pregnancy, we've lost
[48:26] intuition because your baby is a seed. You as the mother's body, you are the soil. And the
[48:34] soil is going to co-create your baby's plan. So when you're pregnant, you have this little baby
[48:39] with his DNA plan. But depending on the nutrients you provide, he's going to grow into a different
[48:45] tree. He's either going to grow in a super optimal tree that has all the nutrients he needed,
[48:51] or he's going to have to adapt to what's available and grow into a slightly different tree.
[48:56] The main difference is that humans are not plants. So humans are very resilient. Your baby will
[49:01] probably be okay, even if like 90% of us, you don't have enough choline, even if like 75%
[49:08] of us, you don't have enough omega-3s, even if like 70% of us, you don't have enough protein,
[49:13] and even if like most of us, you're eating more than the recommended amount of sugar,
[49:18] your baby will probably be fine, but he will be adapting to a slightly suboptimal nutrient
[49:25] environment. So that's what this metaphor is all about. You're co-creating the plan of your baby
[49:30] with your diet, doing pregnancy, and it's shaping him, and he's adapting and calibrating to what
[49:35] you're giving him. Eat one day. Just making myself a delicious coffee from the freezer.
[49:44] From the freezer. Have you not had about come to you? No. Oh my gosh. This is going to change your
[49:48] life. A couple of months ago, the founder of this business called Matt sent a big shipment of this
[49:54] coffee to our office in London. This coffee is like nothing you've ever seen before. What most people
[49:58] don't know is that the processing of coffee takes out a lot of the taste. So what they do is they
[50:02] flash freeze it at the optimal moment when it's most tasty, and they send you in the post, the coffee,
[50:09] in these little frozen ice cubes. Now, Matt sent a big shipment to my office. I moved it to the
[50:14] kitchen. I said to the team, knock yourselves out, give this a try, and then I saw so many messages
[50:18] in our Slack channel of people going, oh my god, what the hell is that? It's so delicious. All I have
[50:23] to do is pop it out in the morning using the little button on the back of this thing. I pour my hot
[50:28] watering, and I mix it, and that is done. You can get $30 off your first order of comatier coffee
[50:36] if you go to comatier.com slash Stephen, and it won't be available for long, so get that discount
[50:41] while you can. I'm not going to be a pregnant mother in my life, but I am going to have a fiance,
[50:47] hopefully at some point, who is a pregnant mother. So I would really like to know how I can help
[50:54] as a partner, but also I'm sure she's going to listen to this. So what she can do to make sure
[50:59] that the soil in which my baby grows is optimal. We've talked about a few of the things so far,
[51:03] like Colleen and we've also talked about sugar and glucose levels throughout pregnancy
[51:08] to avoid gestational diabetes. We've talked about exercise as well. What about alcohol?
[51:14] Not a good idea, because as I explained, your bloodstream and your baby's bloodstream
[51:18] are basically connected. So when you drink alcohol during pregnancy, your blood alcohol level
[51:24] rises, and then your baby's blood alcohol level in your uterus also rises. There's no filter
[51:33] protecting your baby from alcohol. So when you have a glass of wine, your baby's also having a
[51:36] glass of wine in the room. And we know that alcohol is not good for our brains, and this also goes
[51:44] for babies. So you wouldn't put red wine in your baby's bottle after birth and give him red wine
[51:50] to drink, but that's kind of what's going on when you're drinking alcohol when you're pregnant.
[51:55] And there's been a lot of stuff online about, oh, alcohol, your pregnancy is fine and small
[52:00] quantities. I think when you understand how alcohol is toxic to the brain biologically, it makes
[52:06] no sense to sell pregnant moms that a little bit of alcohol is okay. It's best if you can't
[52:10] avoid alcohol entirely. So complete abstence. Yeah. There was actually a study that came out in
[52:15] February last year, which was quite recent from the University of Melbourne, where they used high
[52:20] resolution 3D imaging to reveal that even low doses of alcohol cause facial morphing, consistent
[52:27] changes in the shape of the eyes and nose 12 months persisting up to age 8. And weaker connections
[52:33] in the right anterior, singular part of the brain, the region critical for emotional regulation
[52:39] impulse control, even if the mother drank only occasionally, which is very surprising.
[52:50] Because I think for a long time, we've always thought that heavy consumption of alcohol
[52:54] was a problem. And we know that, yeah. But even low doses are suboptimal.
[52:58] It kind of goes for all adults, right? We've thought for a long time that one glass of wine per day
[53:03] was good for the heart. Now we understand that the ideal amount of alcohol is zero. There's no
[53:09] benefit to alcohol. Now, is that to say that one glass of wine during pregnancy is going to
[53:15] indelibly impact your baby's brain, probably not. But if you can't avoid it, this is the best time
[53:21] to avoid it entirely. What about when you're breastfeeding? Well, you have much more leeway then
[53:26] because the amount of alcohol in your breast milk mirrors the amount of alcohol in your bloodstream.
[53:32] So for example, if you have a glass of wine two and a half to three hours later,
[53:36] you have pretty much no more alcohol in your bloodstream, which means your breast milk is also
[53:40] pretty much devoid of alcohol. So if you time it right, you're going to be able to have a glass
[53:46] of wine without it actually going into your breast milk. But it's all about timing.
[53:51] The recommendation is to stay under two cups of coffee per day during pregnancy. It's not a
[53:56] newer toxin like alcohol, right? But caffeine does go to your baby's bloodstream. And some studies
[54:02] show that babies are more active in the womb after the mother drinks caffeine. And it has no benefit.
[54:08] So listen, you do what you can. I reduced a little bit my caffeine intake instead of having like
[54:13] two fat whites, a head maybe half of that white or a decaf that white when I could,
[54:18] but some days I just really want to coffee. So I had a coffee. Have they ever done any studies on
[54:22] caffeine and pregnancy? Well, we can't do any studies on caffeine and pregnancy in humans.
[54:28] It's unethical to test anything in pregnant moms. We have associations and the associations
[54:32] don't show much difference. Like we don't have studies that show caffeine taking moms leads to this
[54:38] kind of bad outcome in the kids. It seems pretty neutral at low doses. If you have really high
[54:43] doses of caffeine, there is an impact on the baby's more associative impact on the baby's
[54:48] temperament. But for one or two cups a day, there's no impact that we find. And they've done animal
[54:52] studies? Yeah, they've done animal studies. Low doses also find very high doses. We start to see
[54:57] changes in the baby's behavior. You talk about this in the book in certain animal studies they show
[55:01] during pregnancy leads to smaller offspring, altered heart development and delayed brain growth.
[55:06] But you explain that we don't have direct clinical trial data on the long-term impact of
[55:10] caffeine during human pregnancy. And also those studies are very high doses of caffeine.
[55:14] Okay. Yeah. And the world health organization recommends that women who consume more than
[55:18] 300 milligrams of coffee a day, which is roughly three cups, reduce their daily intake during pregnancy.
[55:23] Yeah. So probably one cup a day is not harming your baby.
[55:27] Fermented foods in the gut. What about that? Yeah. What should I be thinking about that?
[55:30] Well, this is very early research, but showing that potentially if a mother has fermented food
[55:35] during pregnancy, it's also seeding her baby's gut microbiome. But this is very, very early stuff.
[55:40] But if you can include some key for some sour crowd during pregnancy, it's helpful.
[55:47] What about bread? Do you think much about bread?
[55:49] Do I think much about bread? I mean, I'm French. So I think about bread all the time.
[55:54] In terms of your recommendations on the type of bread one should be eating?
[55:58] Well, bread is interesting because bread is a carb that contains mostly glucose. And we know that
[56:04] in the third trimester of pregnancy, your baby actually needs more glucose because he's developing
[56:09] and he also needs energy. Your baby needs about 70 grams of glucose per day at the very end of
[56:15] pregnancy. So as a pregnant mom, you should be eating 70 grams of glucose more than you usually do
[56:21] at the end of pregnancy. For the first and second trimesters, you don't need to be eating much more
[56:26] glucose. So you could have that via bread. You could have that via rice, for example. So 70 grams
[56:31] of glucose is about three slices of bread or a cup and a half of rice. In terms of the type of
[56:37] bread you should be eating, it's always better for your glucose levels to have bread that is full
[56:41] of seeds. But to be honest, there's not a huge difference between like sprouted grain bread versus
[56:48] white bread. It's all just glucose. Because there is a, I guess there's a risk that mothers might get
[56:54] a little bit scared of having sugary foods during pregnancy. And then you've just said the baby
[56:59] does need glucose. Yeah, so there's a difference. So glucose is present in carbs and starches,
[57:05] meaning bread, pasta, rice, potatoes, oats. So starches contain glucose. But starches are
[57:12] different to sugars. So on this plate, we only have sugars. These are the sweet foods that contain
[57:20] glucose, but also another molecule that makes them sweet called fructose. Your baby needs no
[57:26] fructose during pregnancy ever. So your baby does not need any sugar from dessert, from chocolate,
[57:32] from muffins, from cupcakes. Your baby needs none of this. But your baby does need glucose,
[57:37] which is healthier to get from starches, like bread, pasta, rice, potatoes.
[57:42] What about the ketogenic diet while you're pregnant? I don't think there's enough evidence to tell
[57:47] us whether it's okay or not. It's very early. It's quite rare. And it seems that since your baby does
[57:54] need glucose during pregnancy, it's just easier to eat glucose and to eat starches when you're
[57:59] pregnant. And whole fruit is also a good way of getting glucose that you need. Because thanks to
[58:05] the fiber and the water, the amount of fructose in the fruit is not leading to such a big fructose
[58:10] spike. There's a study on the G1D foundation that basically says for 99 percent of pregnancy,
[58:16] the strict ketogenic diet is considered dangerous. Doctors would instead recommend a low glycemic index
[58:22] diet. And low glycemic diets mean a diet with smaller glucose spikes. And this is really helpful
[58:28] for people with gestational diabetes to help some manage their spikes and reduce the nutrient
[58:32] medication. But also for any pregnant mom, it's important to think about your glucose spikes.
[58:36] Because when you have a glucose spike, your baby has a glucose spike. And glucose spikes are not
[58:41] good news. It's better to give your baby slow rolling hills of glucose and not these big spikes that
[58:47] can lead to more inflammation. And as we talked about, more inflammation can impact the baby's
[58:51] brain development. Do you recommend that mothers take certain supplements? Did you take supplements
[58:57] throughout your pregnancy? Yeah, I took omega-3s. And the reason is I took omega-3 supplements is
[59:03] because omega-3s also form the baby's brain. And they come from algae in the ocean and fish.
[59:10] Now omega-3s, and in particular, one omega-3 called DHA, it helps your baby's neurons
[59:16] connect with each other. And this is really important. And in animal studies, when scientists
[59:22] restrict how much DHA a mother has access to, they see measurable impact on the baby's brain. They
[59:28] see brains that are less efficient. They see babies who find the exit of mazes with much more time.
[59:33] There's an impact on the brain development. Now, the easiest way to get enough DHA is to eat fish,
[59:39] or to eat sardines that we have here. So the recommendation is fatty fish twice a week.
[59:47] I would say fatty fish three times a week if you can. And this is also, it's amazing because
[59:51] it's very cheap. So these three cans of sardines are your three servings of fish per week.
[59:56] This gives you all the omega-3s your baby needs, and this costs about in total like $6, $7.
[1:00:02] So for $6, $7 per week, and for another $7 of eggs per week, you're getting all the
[1:00:10] old omega-3s your baby needs. Yeah, you're opening it. You're going to eat it.
[1:00:19] Okay, you want to know how I have them? Okay, you're going to eat it? Yeah, go for it.
[1:00:23] So I open the can, I put it in a bowl, I put mustard in it, I put sea salt, a little bit of
[1:00:30] feta, some herbs, and I make this sort of nice little paste, and then I toast a piece of bread,
[1:00:36] and I put it on top of the bread, and I have like a nice little sardine mash on my bread.
[1:00:41] It is quite nice. Yeah, and it's really good for you, lots of omega-3s. And so for omega-3s,
[1:00:45] I also supplemented with additional omega-3s because I think the recommendation of fatty fish two
[1:00:51] three times a day is lacking. Most moms don't have enough omega-3s in their body to give their
[1:00:57] baby everything that he needs. So I did this three times a week plus two grams of DHA supplement
[1:01:04] per day. What else was in your supplement stack? Then in the third trimester, I took iron because
[1:01:10] my iron levels were very low. This often happens during pregnancy even though I was eating a lot of
[1:01:15] meats because your baby is pulling a lot of iron from you. And then I had a sort of normal
[1:01:19] prenatal supplement, but I made sure I had colline in it. And I made sure it had a type of folic
[1:01:25] acid called methylated folate, which is better absorbed. And folate is very important to prevent
[1:01:30] miscarriage. You talked about your first pregnancy and you said we'll talk about that later.
[1:01:37] You went through miscarriage? Yes, correct. So I got pregnant at first time and I thought
[1:01:44] everything would be totally fine. But I found out at the three-month scan that the embryo had stopped
[1:01:50] developing. I had what's called a silent miscarriage. So usually when you miscarry,
[1:01:57] you start to lose blood. You have cramps. You know something's wrong. I had a silent miscarriage,
[1:02:02] which is more rare. Meaning the embryo stopped developing. The embryo was dead. My body did not
[1:02:08] expose it. So I found out that I had lost the pregnancy at the scan and the doctor's office.
[1:02:15] And I found out that I had been walking around for a month with an embryo that had stopped developing.
[1:02:21] And I had no idea. I thought I was still pregnant. What is someone like me that has never experienced
[1:02:31] such news? What are the range of emotions and thoughts that occur when you get news like that?
[1:02:40] Listen, for me, it was so devastating. It was so, so difficult. I didn't want to believe it.
[1:02:47] I was screaming. I remember falling to the floor in my living room and seeing to whatever God
[1:02:52] or the University that I wanted my baby back. I was not okay. It was very, very difficult. I
[1:02:58] felt a lot of anger. I felt a lot of despair. I felt a sense of injustice. Why me? I felt like I had
[1:03:07] done everything right. I was eating the colon. I was taking the right supplements. I was not
[1:03:12] like smoking crack. And I still had a miscarriage. And I didn't know this happened. I didn't have
[1:03:20] it in my consciousness that it could happen to me. So I felt from very, very high. It was probably
[1:03:24] one of the most difficult experiences of my life. Is this more common? One in five pregnancies
[1:03:29] and in miscarriage. That's really high. Like way higher than I thought it was. Yeah. And it's usually in
[1:03:37] the first trimester. But it can happen later also. Yeah. And I felt so isolated. And I didn't
[1:03:46] feel like people around me knew how to handle it. Because it's kind of taboo. And then when I
[1:03:52] miscarried, I started talking to people about it. And I found out that so many people around me
[1:03:57] had gone through it, but had never told me about it. When was your first pregnancy?
[1:04:02] So I got pregnant in February 2024. So the miscarriage was in spring 2024. And then I got pregnant again
[1:04:17] in August 2025. No, 2024. And my son was born in May 2025. So I got pregnant quite quickly
[1:04:26] afterwards. But it was difficult because I was still carrying the grief of the miscarriage. So I
[1:04:32] had a very anxious pregnancy. I was very anxious the whole time that something bad would happen
[1:04:36] again, that I would miscarry again and not know about it. It was very difficult.
[1:04:45] It's a trial of the heart man.
[1:04:50] It's the numbers way higher than I expected. Just much higher than I expected. It's scary.
[1:04:55] It's scary to think about. Yeah. And that's why people usually wait until the third month
[1:04:59] mark to tell their friends and family that they're pregnant. And for some reason I had no
[1:05:04] conception of that. So the moments I got that first pregnancy test, I told everybody.
[1:05:09] So it made it quite complicated to have to announce the miscarriage to like 50 people.
[1:05:17] But at the same time, I felt less alone than I would have felt if nobody knew I was pregnant
[1:05:21] in the first place. But yeah, I was very, very challenging. And it's more common than we think.
[1:05:26] And it happens to more people than we know about. Is there anything you wish you knew
[1:05:32] earlier in life about? I mean, we've talked about many of the things specifically around diet and
[1:05:36] you know, pregnancy. But is there anything else you wish someone had said to you as a woman earlier
[1:05:43] that you didn't hear? Yeah. I think I wish my mom had told me about her miscarriages. She had not
[1:05:49] until I was carried. Yep. I wish my grandmother had told me. I did not know. I wish people had
[1:05:55] told me more about their experiences because that way I would have understood that it happens to
[1:06:00] a lot of people. And maybe I would have been more prepared. And maybe it would have made the
[1:06:03] experience a little bit less painful instead of feeling so so isolated. Or at least I would have
[1:06:10] maybe been a bit more cautious. Because you said one of the feelings and emotions you had was
[1:06:16] why did this happen to me? Yes. Why me? Why me? And then I realized it happens to many people.
[1:06:22] And it's not necessarily a reason. It's nothing you've done. It can be just a chromosomal abnormality
[1:06:27] and the embryo just can't develop anymore. It can be something we don't understand yet.
[1:06:32] It's hard, isn't it, getting pregnant? Yeah. It's hard, I think. I don't know what
[1:06:36] Laya was living under. But I just assumed that getting pregnant was have sex unprotected.
[1:06:41] I know because your whole life, you're told, do all these things to not get pregnant because
[1:06:45] it might happen without you expecting it. And then when you try to get pregnant, you realize,
[1:06:50] oh, it's not at all as easy as I thought it was. It's a lot. And I was lucky. I got pregnant
[1:06:55] after two, three cycles, both times. So that's very, very quick. But for some of my friends,
[1:07:00] it's taken them years to conceive. How is becoming a mother changed you?
[1:07:07] It's made me happier. I feel like my baseline happiness is higher. I used to have this like
[1:07:14] 10% kind of melancholy or spleen or sort of like, oh, maybe my life could be better if I did
[1:07:22] X-A-Y or questioning, you know, do I need more? How do I find happiness? And that's gone.
[1:07:27] Like with my son, that has been filled. And I didn't expect it to be filled. So that's been
[1:07:32] amazing. And it's made me very efficient because now when I have 42 minutes, I use those 42 minutes.
[1:07:40] Like I cannot imagine how much time I used to have. Like what did I use to do? And I thought I was
[1:07:45] busy. Now I'm really busy. It's so funny to look back at my life before and what I used to think
[1:07:50] and realize that I was completely wrong. I was so wrong. I thought I was busy and I thought I was
[1:07:55] tired. I wasn't, now I am. You feel very busy, right? I feel so busy. And you feel tired.
[1:08:06] I do. I do sometimes ask myself, you know, because again, I'm in that season of life. I do
[1:08:09] like, where am I going to get the, where's the time that I come from? Yeah. You just prioritize
[1:08:14] so many things. You just delegate where you don't do any more. And you find the time because
[1:08:19] your baby is the most important thing. And I think I've become better at my work because I'm
[1:08:25] more efficient. And I thought I was pretty efficient before. But now I'm like superhuman.
[1:08:31] On that point of parenting and pregnancy and everything we've been talking about,
[1:08:35] you said that you spoke to your mother about the diet she had and her lifestyle when she was
[1:08:41] growing you inside her. If your parents did have a suboptimal lifestyle in diet,
[1:08:50] this is a bit of a strange question to ask, but is there something that I can do now as an
[1:08:54] adult to reverse that? Totally. Well, first of all, my mom was eating a lot of sugar, but it wasn't
[1:09:00] her fault. Like culture around her was telling her fat is bad, low fat foods, like she was just a
[1:09:05] product of her time like we all are. So our diet today is just a function of what food marketing
[1:09:10] is going on. So again, it's not our fault. We're just kind of swimming in this sea of the food
[1:09:15] industry and marketing and we do it the best we can. Pregnancy is important. It has an
[1:09:20] outside effect on our vulnerability to disease, but it's not everything. So I told you that 25
[1:09:26] I was in the cusp of prediabetes. Well, I implemented the glucose hacks. I found all the science
[1:09:32] and I never got prediabetes. So you're probably going to be fine. It's more of the difference between
[1:09:36] like, so I have two friends. I have Gabriel and Nicholas and they both work out the same and eat
[1:09:42] the same. One of them builds muscle really easily and has a lot of muscle mass. The other one doesn't.
[1:09:48] They're not equal. However, it doesn't mean that they both can't build muscle. It might just be a
[1:09:52] little bit more difficult for one than for the other. Same thing with diabetes. One person may get
[1:09:56] diabetes with the same diet as another person who doesn't get it. Well, when you apply things,
[1:10:03] when you change your diet, you can change the course of your life. You can change what diseases
[1:10:07] you face, but you might be more or less vulnerable. So we always have agency. We always have power. No
[1:10:13] matter our age, no matter where we are in life to take back control. Cravings. Cravings are where
[1:10:20] it all begins. You know, you can know everything. Wait, say more about that. What do you mean?
[1:10:24] You can have all the information. I'm sure that there's people that listen to this podcast,
[1:10:29] including me, who know a lot about this stuff, but it doesn't necessarily mean that you have the
[1:10:36] control to take action because when your brain starts saying go and eat that thing, go on,
[1:10:40] it'll be so tasty. And you know what? You can do your calf raises after it. It'll be fine.
[1:10:44] Like that voice in your head that talks you into things that you don't really want to do.
[1:10:48] And then 10 minutes later, you feel really guilty that you did it. I'm just wondering if you think
[1:10:51] much about the psychology of being in the things I can do upstream to either fend off the cravings
[1:10:58] or to have better agency control over the cravings. So let's talk about that voice because that
[1:11:02] voice comes in two flavors. For some, the voice is, that cookie looks really, really good.
[1:11:09] Chocolate chip or sea salt. That looks tasty. I'm going to probably buy it after the end of this
[1:11:13] meeting. That is the voice of pleasure and enjoyment. There's another voice that might be in your
[1:11:18] brain, which is like, oh my god, I need sugar right now. What's in the kitchen? I'm going to open
[1:11:21] the cupboards, whatever there is. Oh, this weird old cookie. I need to have it right now. I need
[1:11:25] sugar. Otherwise, I'm not going to feel good. Those are two very different voices. That second
[1:11:29] voice is a voice of control and of almost being like a victim to sugar addiction. I want to help
[1:11:35] people go from the sugar addiction voice to the enjoyment voice because I think it's fine to have
[1:11:40] cravings or to want to eat something delicious. I just want to make sure people are not controlled
[1:11:45] by that voice. Do you see what I mean? I want it to be something you enjoy, not something you are
[1:11:50] victim to. So how do we separate these two things out? We need to balance our glucose levels so that
[1:11:56] that voice comes from a place of happiness and not a place of a glucose crash that is making you
[1:12:01] feel controlled by a biological impulse that is stronger than you. So protein in the morning,
[1:12:05] a savory breakfast, super, super important, then veggie starter before you lunch in your dinner
[1:12:11] when you can. Avoiding sugar on an empty stomach to not kick off a rollercoaster of blood sugar
[1:12:17] ups and downs that's going to make you crave more and more of this sweet stuff. But the voice that
[1:12:22] you just mentioned, which is like, oh, that looks really good. I'm going to do some calf raises
[1:12:25] afterwards. I think that's fine. To me, that doesn't sound like you're being controlled by it.
[1:12:29] It sounds like you kind of want to eat delicious stuff. But I regret it 10 minutes after. Why?
[1:12:34] Because I think, you know, especially if it's at like 10 p.m. Yeah, because then it messes
[1:12:40] up your sleep. It messes up my next day. Yeah. And what the hell did I do that? I knew I shouldn't
[1:12:45] eat it. Yeah. But the craving was too strong. And listen, sometimes that's a situation we're in.
[1:12:49] I do that too sometimes. Sometimes it is 11 p.m. I'm exhausted. I know my son's probably going to wake
[1:12:54] up at 4 a.m. But I want that cookie. And I just I just have it. Maybe I have some vinegar or some
[1:12:59] anti-spec before. But it's okay to give into these things. I don't think we have to feel guilty
[1:13:03] about them. Like that's just life. Sometimes we can't do the glucose hacks and sometimes we're tired
[1:13:07] and the cookie looks good. So eat the cookie. But it annoys me because I then feel shit the next day.
[1:13:13] Was it worth it? Absolutely not. Objectively. Absolutely not. So maybe if you had had that cookie
[1:13:19] after some almonds or after the cookie, you could do some laundry and move around a little bit
[1:13:23] to reduce the spike. Maybe you could help with your deep sleep during that night. But sometimes you
[1:13:28] can't. I think it's well, the subject of sleep in glucose is one we don't talk about enough
[1:13:33] because some people really struggle with their sleep. And I've just noticed that when I'm in a heavy
[1:13:38] travel period and I'm flying and waking up early at 4 a.m. flight to LA, fly Miami, go to Qatar,
[1:13:44] wherever. My ability to control cravings is significantly reduced. And weirdly I noticed that when
[1:13:53] I wake up at say I had dinner at 9 p.m. the night before, if I'm waking up at like 3 or 4 a.m.,
[1:13:59] I wake up really hungry. Interesting. Have you worn a glucose monitor to see if you're not crashing
[1:14:06] in the middle of the night? No. But I've always been so curious as to why that is because I know
[1:14:10] that if I'd slept for four hours more, I would have been like today where the first thing I've eaten
[1:14:15] today and it's what 2 p.m. is that sardine because I just wasn't hungry this morning. But if I'd
[1:14:20] woken up early, I mean, I've looked a little bit into my question. I have a question. Do you think
[1:14:25] it's the time you wake up that is causing you to be more or less hungry or it's the dinner you
[1:14:30] had the night before that is causing a crash that is causing you to wake up? Like what's the chicken
[1:14:34] once the egg? Because it sounds to me like maybe at 3 a.m. if you're having a glucose crash because
[1:14:38] you had a big carb heavy dinner, then it's your body waking you up and making you feel very hungry.
[1:14:44] For me, it's kind of similar. Like in the morning, if I feel extremely hungry, it's usually because
[1:14:48] I went to bed and I had just had a bunch of carbs before bed. Well, thanks to the ability to do
[1:14:54] very quick research. I now know the answer or at least solid hypothesis. And the leading answer
[1:14:59] is to why when you're sleep deprived, you end up eating horses because of the hormone imbalance
[1:15:03] of leptin and grelin. Sleep deprivation directly alters the hunger hormones produced in your gut
[1:15:08] and fat cells. If Grelin increases known as hunger hormone, Grelin signals the brain that it's
[1:15:12] time to eat. Studies from Stanford University show a sleeping for only five hours increases
[1:15:17] Grelin by approximately 15%. Leptin decreases. The satiety hormone tells your brain you are full.
[1:15:23] The same sleep loss decreases leptin by approximately 15%. And therefore, the result is that your
[1:15:29] brain receives a loud, I am starving signal and a very weak, I'm full signal simultaneously.
[1:15:35] And leptin is the hormone we talked about at the beginning, which when you're breastfed as a baby,
[1:15:39] you're repeatedly making more leptin. And the setting can stay with you for life. So it's
[1:15:43] possible that also there's some stuff going on in early life that makes you more or less hungry.
[1:15:50] To speak to my mom. You know, every once in a while, you come across a product that has such a
[1:15:56] huge impact on your life that you'd probably describe it as a game changer. And I would say
[1:16:03] for about 35 to 40% of my team, they would currently describe this product that I haven't
[1:16:09] front of me called ketone IQ, which you can get at ketone.com as a game changer. But the reason I
[1:16:15] became a co-owner of this company and the reason why they now are responsive to this podcast
[1:16:19] is because one day when I came to work, there was a box of this stuff sat on my desk. I had no idea
[1:16:23] what it was. Lily in my team says that this company have been in touch. So I went upstairs, tried it
[1:16:29] and quite frankly, the rest is history in terms of my focus, my energy levels, how I feel, how I work,
[1:16:35] how productive I am, game changer. So if you want to give it a try, visit ketone.com slash
[1:16:39] Stephen for 30% off. You'll also get a free gift with your second shipment. And now you can find
[1:16:45] ketone IQ at target stores across the United States, where your first shot is completely free of charge.
[1:16:52] For the first 10 years that I was a founder, I didn't prioritize getting a good night's sleep
[1:16:56] at all. But over time, I started to realize that it was the key metric that influenced everything in
[1:17:00] my life. I moved my focus, my ability to show up and to think clearly and to lead well. So now,
[1:17:04] with my lifestyle being pretty crazy, traveling across time zones, working late, training late,
[1:17:08] I still fight to protect my sleep, which sometimes means starting the day a little bit later.
[1:17:12] It was my work that helped me to make this connection. They are one of my sponsors for the show.
[1:17:15] And for the last four years, every day, my work has given me insights into my sleep and my recovery,
[1:17:19] the strain I'm taking on, and more broadly, how my daily behaviors influence my overall
[1:17:25] holistic health. It's the difference between guessing and knowing why I might be feeling the way
[1:17:30] that I feel. Sometimes it will nudge me, sometimes it will get me to slow down, sometimes it pushes
[1:17:34] me to go even harder, but all the time it provides me with data that gives me a deeper understanding
[1:17:38] of myself. And without it, it'd be hard to optimize how I live and perform it. Right now, you can
[1:17:42] get one month free through my link at join.woop.com slash CEO, one month free join.woop.com slash CEO.
[1:17:53] Make sure you keep what I'm about to say to yourself. I'm inviting 10,000 of you to come even
[1:17:58] deeper into the dire of a CEO. Welcome to my inner circle. This is a brand new private community
[1:18:04] that I'm launching to the world. We have so many incredible things that happen that you are never
[1:18:09] shown. We have the briefs that are on my pad when I'm recording the conversation. We have clips
[1:18:13] we've never released. We have behind the scenes conversations with the guests and also the episodes
[1:18:18] that we've never ever released. And so much more. In the circle, you'll have direct access to me,
[1:18:24] you can tell us what you want this show to be, who you want us to interview, and the types of
[1:18:28] conversations you would love us to have. But remember, for now, we're only inviting the first
[1:18:33] 10,000 people that joined before it closes. So if you want to join our private close community,
[1:18:38] head to the link in the description below or go to doccircle.com. I will speak to you then.
[1:18:47] What is the most important thing we haven't talked about as it relates to nine months that
[1:18:52] count for ever your new book that we should have talked about? I think protein. Protein. Yeah.
[1:18:58] By the time your baby is born, he is about 50% protein if you exclude water. So protein is not
[1:19:05] just for your muscles. Protein forms your immune system, your skin, your organs, many, many tissues,
[1:19:11] many, many signaling molecules in your body. So when you're pregnant, you need to eat more protein
[1:19:16] to give more protein to your baby. An animal studies show something fascinating, Steven. They
[1:19:20] show that when a mom is slightly protein restricted, meaning she's eating a bit less protein than she
[1:19:26] needs to. There's a little epigenetic switch happening in the baby that says, dear baby, keep your
[1:19:33] muscles small because there's not a lot of protein in the world you're about to be born into.
[1:19:38] So what we're eating during pregnancy is an essence sending a little postcard to our baby
[1:19:44] in our uterus, telling him what kind of nutrients will be available in the world that he's about to
[1:19:49] be born into. And so these animal studies suggest that if you have a low protein diet, your baby will
[1:19:55] be programmed to stay smaller and have a smaller muscle mass throughout his life. And the thing is,
[1:20:01] Steven, you need a lot of protein when you're pregnant because your baby is very protein.
[1:20:06] So here I have four chicken breasts, which is basically the amount of protein that I needed to
[1:20:11] eat every single day in the third trimester of pregnancy. Yeah, per day. Per day. It's a lot.
[1:20:18] So I would have four eggs in the morning. That's about 30 grams of protein. And then I would have to
[1:20:24] have three good servings of proteins represented by the three chicken breasts here. So I would have
[1:20:30] fish at lunch, probably a meter of chicken at dinner, and then a high protein snack. For example,
[1:20:35] Greek yogurt, I would add some way protein powder in there to make sure I was having enough protein.
[1:20:39] So you need about 1.6 grams of protein per kilo of body weight per day in the third trimester
[1:20:46] of pregnancy. And this is where most of us fall short because nobody's telling moms they eat
[1:20:50] more protein. So the result is that moms lose their muscle mass because the muscles are being broken
[1:20:56] down to give protein to the baby, but there's a limit to it. Like you can't, your muscle mass cannot
[1:21:02] compensate for a low protein diet. And this is why we see across all women's studies, low protein
[1:21:09] diets lead to smaller babies. And potentially this epigenetic programming of staying smaller throughout
[1:21:15] life. So protein is key. On that subject of muscle loss. Have you thought much about the
[1:21:21] impact of GLP ones, these sort of fat loss drugs during pregnancy? Oh, wow. I don't think they're
[1:21:28] recommended during pregnancy. I hope not because they prevent you from feeling your hunger hormones.
[1:21:33] They prevent you from feeling hungry. So pregnancy would be a very dangerous time to take these.
[1:21:39] Because during pregnancy, you need to eat a little bit more in terms of quantity and calories,
[1:21:44] but also you need to eat differently. So you need to learn about the protein, the calling,
[1:21:48] the omega-3s. And I think it would be quite dangerous to take a GLP one during pregnancy.
[1:21:54] Do you know the vinegar thing you talked about to me before where you said you have vinegar
[1:21:58] before eating something that's high in glucose? Do you recommend that for mothers as well?
[1:22:03] You can, but if you're going to do that, you need to make sure the vinegar is pasteurized.
[1:22:08] Because you want to make sure that during pregnancy, people are like only eat pasteurized foods,
[1:22:12] because you want to prevent any food contamination. So make sure you look on the back of the vinegar
[1:22:16] bottle and make sure it's pasteurized. Apple cider vinegar is usually not pasteurized. So do I recommend it?
[1:22:25] I think it's okay to do. Like vinegar is fine during pregnancy, especially if you really want
[1:22:29] like a cookie or muffin, it could be helpful to reduce速 glucose spike. But truly, pregnancy is
[1:22:34] kind of the moment where you need to be eating as little sugar as possible because it's impacting
[1:22:39] your baby's development. So ideally, you don't have to use the vinegar hack.
[1:22:45] You know, I've often seen people talk about like an obesity gene and stuff and ask if
[1:22:49] obesity is genetic. I guess one of the things I've kind of deduced from today is that the genetic
[1:22:55] component might be that during pregnancy, our mother had a certain lifestyle or diet and that
[1:23:03] increased our predisposition to having a different reaction to certain foods. Completely.
[1:23:11] And the studies show that. So in animal studies, when a mom has a lot of sugar during pregnancy,
[1:23:15] there's little epigenetic switches in the baby's DNA that encourage fat storage.
[1:23:20] Why is that? Because if you eat sugar, your baby's getting sugar in his bloodstream.
[1:23:26] And how does the baby protect himself from high sugar levels by turning the sugar into fat?
[1:23:32] So by eating a high sugar diet, you're sending a little postcard to your baby because like,
[1:23:35] hey, baby, you're going to be born into a world with a lot of sugar. So it'll become really good at
[1:23:40] turning that sugar into fat to protect yourself. And this is why we see across studies on tens of
[1:23:45] thousands of moms that the higher moms glucose levels during pregnancy, the more fat mass a baby
[1:23:52] is born with. Higher glucose during pregnancy, baby had to turn that glucose to fat to protect
[1:23:58] himself so he's born with more fat mass. And it doesn't just stop after birth. Studies show
[1:24:03] that this continues. Babies born to high glucose mothers are more likely to have obesity as children,
[1:24:09] as teenagers, and as adults. So the cycle continues. The programming of stirring a lot of fat
[1:24:15] continues, even though they no longer connect it to their mom's bloodstream.
[1:24:20] In the process of producing this book, did you think much about the evolutionary sort of backstory
[1:24:25] of where we came from and how our ancestors used to eat? Did you consider, I don't know, the
[1:24:30] orangutang where we share most of our DNA? I think it's like 19% of our DNA. Because if you look
[1:24:35] at sort of what we used to eat, meaning nutrient-rich organ meats, and not just like a chicken breast,
[1:24:41] which is just muscle, which is actually very poor nutrients, if you think about how we didn't
[1:24:45] used to eat processed foods, we had a diet that was much more conducive to baby having more of what
[1:24:51] he needed in the room. Today, our food system is failing us. We're all deprived of proper nutrition
[1:24:57] with what we're eating with all these ultra-processed foods, and that includes pregnant moms. So I
[1:25:02] tried to write a book that was going to help people navigate this very toxic food landscape to
[1:25:09] see these four simple things they could do to try to optimize a little bit with the baby
[1:25:12] was getting. But it's a lot to think about. And also being pregnant comes with, I think, innate
[1:25:17] pressure. Like, I felt pressure during pregnancy. I'm like, man, I'm making another human like,
[1:25:22] this is a lot. And then you're bombarded by messages online and Instagram, what to do,
[1:25:26] what not to do. And it feels like whatever you do, you feel guilty. So I'm hoping this book
[1:25:31] gives clear scientific evidence to help people navigate that pressure. But listen, I just want
[1:25:36] babies to be healthy. Like, I want my baby to be healthy. I want everybody's baby to be healthy.
[1:25:40] I want moms to feel as little stress as possible. And that's just the truth that I'm hoping that
[1:25:46] this book brings a little bit of reassurance and light in this complicated world-redivid.
[1:25:55] Stress is something we haven't talked about, but I guess that also is an important factor in this
[1:25:59] story of raising a healthy child. I was extremely stressed my entire pregnancy because of my
[1:26:05] miscarriage. Like, I probably the diamonds of my pregnancy with my son were the nine most anxious
[1:26:10] months of my life. And that's probably not very good for my baby. But hey, you do what you can,
[1:26:15] you know, I tried everything to reduce my stress levels. I just couldn't. I was so nervous about
[1:26:20] losing the pregnancy. You tried everything. Yeah, I mean, everything. I didn't take anxiety
[1:26:24] medication, but I was, you know, doing your good and breath work and working out and talking to
[1:26:28] my therapist and blah, blah, blah, but I was still anxious because they really didn't want to
[1:26:33] lose the pregnancy. And I was scared I would. More smiling. But you didn't. No, I didn't. Yeah.
[1:26:40] And you have a happy, healthy, little baby. Yeah. You'll have more babies. I would love to.
[1:26:49] But man, now it's like logistics. Okay, so I'm doing this project and that project and this work
[1:26:54] thing. So where can I find nine months plus six months where I can't really work in this crazy
[1:27:01] schedule that I create for myself? By the way, I just love my works. I'm always planning new things.
[1:27:06] When you look at products in the supermarket, I think we all have a different thing we go straight
[1:27:11] to on the label. You know, sometimes people go to calories, sometimes they look at protein,
[1:27:15] sometimes they're looking at, is it gluten free? Sometimes they look at the carbohydrates or the
[1:27:18] sugars. What's you look for? Ingredients. I go straight to the ingredients list. Yeah. Because in
[1:27:24] the ingredients list, things are ordered by weight. So the first ingredient is going to be what
[1:27:30] there is the most of in that food. Oh, I had no idea. Yeah. So they're ordered by weight. So
[1:27:36] if there's sugar or any other type of sweet thing in the first five ingredients, like
[1:27:42] dates, like fruit juice, like molasses, like orange syrup, whatever, I know that's a dessert.
[1:27:50] And so I put it in my mind, okay, this is a food for enjoyment for dessert. So if you look at
[1:27:55] the sardines ingredients, sardine olive oil, salt, natural flavor. So I would try to look for one
[1:28:01] that doesn't have natural flavor because I don't know what that means. I don't think it's necessary.
[1:28:05] But as you can see, there's no sugar in here. So this is not dessert. This sardine can is not
[1:28:09] dessert. Isn't that helpful? Because I often just look at the back of labels and I just
[1:28:14] go straight for the carbs and sugar level. Really? Yeah, I don't know why. I always look at the
[1:28:18] sugar level. I think it's because I've done keto for a lot of while. So it kind of depends,
[1:28:22] though, because if you're looking at like carbon sugars for a pack of table sugar versus,
[1:28:29] I don't know, like protein shake. Yeah, protein shake. I mean, it's a helpful place to look.
[1:28:34] That's also where I look because carbs, carbs and sugars will tell you a lot about what the
[1:28:38] food is going to do to you, but also it depends on the ratio, right? If there's a lot of protein also
[1:28:43] than having carbs in there is not going to create that big of a glucose spike. If it's a product
[1:28:47] that has just carbs in yes. A lot of people look at the calories. Yeah. The calories are a very
[1:28:52] bad way of assessing a food because two foods can have the exact same number of calories and be
[1:28:58] completely different in terms of what they do to your body. So an avocado and a donut,
[1:29:03] both 200 calories, a vastly different impact. It's like saying two books are the same because they
[1:29:08] have the same number of pages. Calories and pages tell you nothing about what's inside the food or
[1:29:14] inside the book. We have to learn about molecules, which is why your reflex of going to carbs and
[1:29:19] sugars is much smarter because you're seeing what's actually going to happen when you eat the food.
[1:29:24] For example, avocado and donut, the avocado, mostly fat fiber, going to keep your glucose levels
[1:29:30] nice and steady. You're going to give your food healthy fat, your body healthy fats. Donuts,
[1:29:34] mostly sugars is going to create a big glucose spike, inflammation, aging, crash, cravings,
[1:29:41] fatigue. It's going to have a vastly different impact on your body. So only looking at your diet
[1:29:46] to the lens of calories is a very bad idea because two diets can have the exact same number of calories
[1:29:53] and you can have a completely different experience of life depending on what you're actually eating.
[1:29:59] And what's your diet generally? Like what time do you eat in the morning? Do you do fasting or
[1:30:03] anything like that? So no, I don't do fasting. So I'll have breakfast in the morning, always eggs.
[1:30:09] Right now my current kick is a bacon and egg quesadilla. Super good. With coffee, always with
[1:30:16] whole milk that I love. Then for lunch, I'll have a veggie starter if I'm having some carb-heavy lunch
[1:30:21] or I'll have like a collard green chicken wrap with avocado and peppers.
[1:30:28] After lunch, I always usually have something sweet because I love sugar. I love sugar. So I have
[1:30:33] like some chocolate or a nice cookie that I had and then I'll try to move my body if I can.
[1:30:37] This is the main thing I can get a bit difficult. And then the evening is when I have most carbs. I
[1:30:41] love having rice or pasta. And it just makes me feel cozy at as early as I can. I'm very
[1:30:49] un-french in that way. If I could have dinner at 5 p.m. I would. But I would have no more social
[1:30:54] life. So maybe after my baby's in bed, so like 738. And are you having the day before that meal?
[1:31:01] It depends. If I don't have a veggie starter, yeah. If I have a veggie starter, I'll put some
[1:31:05] vinegar on the veggie starter. What else are you working on? What's next for you, Jesse?
[1:31:09] One is mental health because I have a deep passion for mental health. It's the reason I got
[1:31:14] into glucose in the first place. So I want to see if I can start putting together some mental
[1:31:20] health hacks based on studies. There's something that's been in the back of my mind for a long time.
[1:31:25] And I'm trying to find the time to go there. And I'm working on new types of content. I'm just
[1:31:31] endlessly inspired by what I'm able to do and how lucky I am to like dream of something and be
[1:31:37] able to put it together. So lots of surprises coming. As you know, we have a closing tradition
[1:31:45] of this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next. I do know. And the question
[1:31:48] left for you is if you could make the world a better place in one way, what would you change?
[1:31:54] How could you make the most impact? I would maybe outlaw food marketing or maybe outlaw
[1:32:01] sugary breakfast foods. Something about making very bad foods that are that look healthy,
[1:32:09] making those illegal. It would be illegal to put any health claims on a product. For example,
[1:32:16] no added sugars or vegan or gluten free. I would outlaw all of those to help people navigate a bit
[1:32:20] better. Or if I could have like one magic wand to do one thing, maybe I would say no more fruit juice
[1:32:27] in schools. Even that would be really cool. Nine months that count forever. How your pregnancy
[1:32:32] diet shapes your baby's future? What is the closing message Jesse for pregnant couples and
[1:32:40] anybody who is who is once conceived for themselves? The closing message is pregnancy is complicated.
[1:32:48] The food system we live in is complicated and toxic. And this is a very simple four step trimester
[1:32:54] by trimester plan that doesn't require a lot of money that is going to help you give your baby
[1:32:59] the best foundation during development. Do you think there's things from a legislation perspective
[1:33:04] that can be done? The most important is for the system, the support system around the moms
[1:33:09] to help make it really easy for them to eat eggs and sardines and vegetables and healthy fats.
[1:33:17] We have to all support moms because they're creating the next generation and they can't change
[1:33:22] the food industry. Things have to shift around them to make it easier. I think it's also about
[1:33:26] education. For example, Colleen, you know, I said 90% of moms are not getting enough. And when
[1:33:31] people run surveys to see whether doctors are talking to moms about Colleen, only six percent
[1:33:37] of doctors are talking to moms about Colleen during pregnancy. So there's also just a big
[1:33:41] information gap somewhere. Things are broken in lots of different areas. And maybe it's like,
[1:33:47] oh, moms can't handle it. Or maybe it's just that doctors are focused on very short-term,
[1:33:52] like emergency things to manage. Maybe they don't have time to talk about nutrition. I don't know,
[1:33:56] but there's a real gap. And I'm hoping this book will fill it. I'm hoping like, this is pie in
[1:34:02] the sky. Like, why don't we prescribe nine months that count forever to every parent that gets
[1:34:08] pregnant. This will be a very good nutrition guide for them and very simple. I have many people in
[1:34:14] my life that are currently pregnant. People that are very, very close to me. And it's funny because
[1:34:18] you hear the conversations they're having. And it does kind of sometimes feel like horoscopes and
[1:34:23] guessing. No, that's to people that love horoscopes. But it does feel a little bit sort of pie in
[1:34:29] the sky. What's your sign? Yeah, I know fucking that. You don't know your sign. I'll let go. Okay,
[1:34:33] okay. People play, I knew it was a fair game. I'm not really I'm Sagittarius. But it is. It's
[1:34:40] it's confusing because there's so much information out there. So it's wonderful to have a manual
[1:34:44] like this that demystifies an area where there's just so much information coming at you. And there's
[1:34:50] so much conflicting information. And your book is so importantly based on scientific consensus
[1:34:56] and facts and studies versus just experience alone. And I think that's why it's so important.
[1:35:03] Whenever the time comes that me and my fiance are fortunate enough hopefully to have our own
[1:35:10] baby, we're both going to reread this book because it's hard to find books on this subject that
[1:35:15] are so succinct that break it down stage by stage. And you as an author, you'll have a wonderful
[1:35:20] way of making things accessible. Even in this conversation, I don't need to ask you to define
[1:35:25] complicated words. And that's reflected in all the work that you do and all everything that
[1:35:29] you write. So I highly recommend. Great book to buy for someone as a gift if you've just found
[1:35:33] out that someone in your life is pregnant, but also a great book to buy for you and your partner
[1:35:36] if you're going through your own pregnancy journey or thinking about getting pregnant soon.
[1:35:40] It's also a good book to buy for your kids for all the grandparents to be out there. It's a
[1:35:45] good book to buy for your kids if they're going to have a baby soon. Amen. Just so thank you.
[1:35:50] Thank you so much for having me back Stephen. It's always a pleasure.

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