blood sugar

Dr. Cates: Hi there. I’m Dr Trevor Cates. Welcome to The Spa Dr. Podcast. On today’s podcast, we’re talking about sugar, how damaging it is to your health and what you can do to effectively balance your blood sugar for optimal wellness. This is so important for the health of your skin and the health of your body to help prevent and address many chronic diseases that are so common today. My guest is Dr. Ritamarie, who is passionately committed to transforming exhausted high achievers all around the globe into high energy people who love their lives and live in their full potential. Sounds pretty great, right? So she founded the institute of Nutritional endocrinology and specializes in using the wisdom of nature, married with modern scientific research to restore balance to hormones. Ritamarie is a licensed doctor of Chiropractic with certification and acupuncture and is a diplomat of the American clinical nutrition board. She is certified clinical nutritionist with a master’s degree in human nutrition and has completed a 500 hour herbal medicine certification program.

Dr. Cates: In today’s interview we discuss how imbalances in your blood sugar are related to how you look and feel, including the health of your skin. And again, so many diseases are related to imbalances in blood sugar. So we’re going to talk about that today. And Dr. Ritamarie shares her top tips for reducing sugar intake and balancing blood sugar for optimal health and longevity. She has great experience with doing this and shared some valuable tools in today’s interview. So please enjoy this interview.

Dr. Cates: Ritamarie, it’s great to have you on my podcast. Welcome.

Dr. Ritamarie: I’m so excited to be here. I love what you’re doing in the world. We love your products and we love that you’re approaching it from a standpoint of helping people to, to take care of themselves naturally and put all those chemicals in hormone disruptors and all those other things on their faces and their skin. So yeah, I love what you’re doing and I’m glad to be here.

Dr. Cates: Yeah, great. All right, so we’re focusing on sugar today and talking a lot about sugar and imbalances in sugar. Now, I know that there are some people out there, quite a few people actually that think if they’re not trying to lose weight, they don’t have to worry about sugar. Like that’s really, it’s just about weight loss. But you and I know there’s a lot more involved with the impact that sugar has on an imbalances in blood sugar have on our health. So you know, kind of what is your take on sugar.

Dr. Ritamarie: So when I, when you say sugar, I’m thinking blood sugar, but there’s sugar as far as what people should eat. And I’m just going to say my take on it is they shouldn’t, you know, because sugar is just not a real food and we should be eating real foods that nourish the body and we ought to have healthy skin. We want to have healthy hormones that we need to have balance in the body. We need to have the right nutrients, we need to have our blood sugar managed nice and steady because blood sugar actually controls all the rest of the hormones, which people don’t realize either. So eating sugar is like, it’s obsolete, it’s old fashioned. We don’t do that anymore in this world where we’re educated, and in the world of fasting and Keto diets and people are much more aware of the impact of sugar, Paleo diets, all of these diets that just really skew people away. So eating sugar is not a good thing. It’s just a, it’s just pure calories. And I don’t care whether you need to lose weight or not. And if you need to gain weight, eating sugar is not the way to do it. There are other ways to do it. Right?

Dr. Cates: Right. And so we’ll talk about alternatives to sugar and what people can do about blood sugar and what creates imbalances in blood sugar, cause it’s not just about eating sugar, right?

Dr. Ritamarie: No, it’s got so much more and I think it’s like one of the most overlooked hormone imbalances in medicine today, even in naturopathic medicine today. That’d be, we’ll just go, yeah, you’re fine. You know, your fasting blood sugar is, you know, below 90 or below hundred, whatever, and you’re fine. And everybody gets that tested on their annual general blood scans regardless of the doctor. But we know that fasting blood sugar is not a good indicator that you have an imbalance in the way your body processes sugar and the way your body processes sugar impacts everything in the system and impacts cardiovascular health, impacts skin health, it impacts liver, it impacts blood pressure. It puts you at a risk for cancer if it’s not balanced Alzheimer’s. So it’s this, it’s this global thing that people are overlooking until they have a disease called diabetes, the d diagnosis, right? And they think they don’t have to worry about it because the doctor said they’re fine. And I have seen people who developed retinopathies, lack of being able to see out of an eye, because of sugar imbalances over the years that were not detected by conventional medicine, medical testing because their sugars were going up, but not in the morning. It was going up throughout the day and they got high enough to cause damage to the retinas. And those are known complications of diabetes, right? That somebody has diabetes, “for a long time”. They develop problems with their retinas, problems with their peripheral nerves. They’re numbness and tingling. But in reality, those changes are happening probably about 30 years before the diagnosis of diabetes. And it’s just cumulative, cumulative. And a lot of people, in fact, the studies show that a good percentage, like close to 50% of the people who develop retinopathies don’t even have blood sugar imbalances according to the way diagnosis it. So I believe people need to take it into their own hands and figure out, do you have a blood sugar imbalance? It doesn’t mean do you have diabetes? It doesn’t mean do you have a disease, but is your blood sugar swinging in such a way that it’s causing damage to the body throughout the years of your life and damage to the hormones. So a lot of people with thyroid imbalances, I just did a webinar on that. A lot of people with thyroid imbalances in year after year, and they’re changing their medication and just can’t get it straightened out. It’s because they have an underlying blood sugar imbalance that’s not being addressed.
Dr. Cates: So what do you recommend them for people to, truly see if they have a blood sugar imbalance? Not that you’re there just fine and that they’re there. They don’t have diabetes or prediabetes, but what is it that you recommend?

Dr. Ritamarie: Yeah, there’s three main tests that I recommend that people get. Two of them can be done through the doctor and one they can do at home. One of them is hemoglobin a1c and most doctors don’t run it unless you’re diabetic already. Unfortunately by the time they run it, it’s way out of range and it’s actually could be a much earlier predictor for a lot of people. It’s not all 100%, but it definitely can be a predictor. The other thing I recommend is insulin. Get your fasting insulin levels down because if they start creeping up, that means you’re overproducing a hormone called insulin and you’re going to get into trouble. It’s just a matter of when and you really should be addressing. And the third is what I call postprandial glucose mapping. It’s a big mouthful, but it’s basically where you buy yourself a little $15 device that helps you to measure your blood glucose at home and you measure what is it before your meal? How high does it go at the peak after you meal? how quickly does it come back down? Does it go down below the starting point and get you into a hypoglycemic type attack? And when you can map that out, wondrous magic things happen. I done this, I’ve led thousands of people through a program where we teach people how to do this and the changes are miraculous and people go, I had no idea. I had no idea, had a blood sugar problem. And now that I’ve gotten this under control and mapped it out and changed my diet and lifestyle, not just diet, I am now like I lost weight. I couldn’t do it before my blood pressure’s down on. One person reversed her Hashimoto’s within four months of starting on getting her blood sugar balanced and she’d been on thyroid medication for 50 years. So miraculous things happen. Arthritis goes away, fatty liver goes away. So it’s really something that not 100% of people have, but you owe it to yourself to make sure that you don’t, before you just live your life in such a way that suddenly you’re blind or you can’t feel your feet, or you’ve developed an autoimmune disease or cancer.

Dr. Cates: Yeah, I love what you’re talking about. It’s really about being proactive. It’s the technical conventional approach in medicine is to wait until we have a serious problem and then address it, but then it’s so much harder to treat it. Plus you’re not living your life optimally. You’re not feeling your best. If your blood sugar is out of balance, you’re going to have ups and downs in your, in your energy and your mood and your food cravings and all of that, you don’t want to live like that. And it’s really, it’s not just about preventing diabetes. I mean, of course that is important, but there’s so much else you could do. So I love this idea of being proactive and yeah, you might do these tests and find that everything’s going great,

Dr. Ritamarie: But check it again in five years though, because you don’t know what happens. Right. It’s something that we just don’t do and forget. Right. Five years later you go, you know what add these tests into my thing. I just want to make sure that I’m still good. Right?

Dr. Cates: So this is a different approach. So this is being proactive and I love this approach. I think it’s so, and really it’s about taking your health in your own hands and being empowered with by yourself and not just being told, yeah, you’re fine. Come back. You know when you’re sick, you know exactly right.

Dr. Ritamarie: That’s what this woman who reversed her Hashimoto’s and four months was told when she went in and her blood sugar was like 111 or 112 and they said, Huh, you’re heading towards diabetes? And she says, oh, mother had it. Uncle had it. They had real severe complications. I don’t want diabetes. What do I do? And they said, come back in six months, we’ll check you again. And if you’re heading, if you are continuing to progress to diabetes, we’ll put you on medication. And she said, no, that’s not acceptable. She took her health in her own hands. She was 65. She wasn’t like, you know, in her twenties. She reversed it and now she’s in her seventies and she’s like working and feeling great and teaching Yoga and meditation and you know, this is what the life can be, right?

Dr. Cates: Right. If that’s the life that we want, we to be able to just, I mean, I feel like I keep feeling better as I get older.

Dr. Ritamarie: I do. People say that to me. Like, what? You’re crazy? I’m like, no, I don’t. What do you mean? Oh yeah, the aches and pains you get when you’re in your sixties, 50s, and sixties. I’m like, what? Or what’s that like your energy that goes down and you gain weight. I’m like, really? We don’t have that issue, right? It’s not that we have good genes, it’s that we’ve taken on a lifestyle that supports us in being optimally well and creating balance in our bodies.

Dr. Cates: Right? So let’s talk about that lifestyle now. And of course, if somebody does these tests and it shows that they’re not optimal, then they will need to be a little bit more proactive. They need to be a little more vigilant and, uh, about this. But really living, you know, eating healthy and balancing your blood sugar is something that we should all do it. Right? So what are some of the big things that you think are super important for balancing blood sugar with the diet?

Dr. Ritamarie: Absolutely. So first of all, it’s avoiding those foods that spike it. And you know what? Here’s the thing, there’s a glycemic index and you can look it up, but that’s not going to be universal. I mean, certain things will be, but I know people who just eat from the sugar bowl and their sugar doesn’t go up. So it’s not really universal, but it’s very different from person to person. So what I found sugar foods that spiked my sugar were pineapple and mango two my favorite foods, but my blood sugars were going into the 160s after I ate them. That’s not good. Right? Every time my sugars going up, there’s a little more damage to my retinas and my peripheral nerves and my arteries. And that’s the part that scared me because everybody in my family died of heart disease, so. Right. Um, so you have to avoid the, you have to avoid the bad stuff, right? The quote unquote bad stuff that we all agree like hydrogenated oils, heated, processed, oxidized fats, processed foods that are just white flour, whatever, the bagels and the whatever.The process stuff, the obvious stuff. But then we have to look at what’s our ideal diet, right? I don’t eat pineapple unless I eat it with a big salad cause then I eat it with a big salad. I can eat my little pieces of pineapple and my sugar doesn’t go up. Why am I so sensitive? Well, I look at genes too. I have lots and lots of genes that predispose to diabetes and obesity and heart disease. So I’m going to be more careful or need to be more careful than somebody who doesn’t have that. But overall it’s avoiding the GI really. It’s really eat real food and eat food that’s in the glycemic range that your body tolerates. Right. So some people in my program, they, they did try and they can get this much apple into their diet, you know, but before they couldn’t get any of that in. So we take people through what we call metabolic reset, a hormone receptor metabolic reset that not only helps reset the insulin receptors to make them more sensitive, but it also helps other hormones. And that’s a whole nother topic for another day about hormone resistance and hormone receptor problems. But overall when people make these changes and they optimize their diet to their particular set of findings, it’s great. But if you’re just going to start out, it’s eat those whole real foods, lots and lots of vegetables, good whole foods, plant based fats that haven’t been processed like Avocados and olives and nuts and seeds and nut butters and things like that that you can add to your diet and add to your vegetables to make them amazing and as much fruit as your body allows. And then grains tread lightly with, because a lot of people have grain and intolerance. We see a lot of people do well on a Paleo Diet and Keto Diet. Some people don’t. Right? So it’s really a matter of how do you respond to it. Yeah. And organic as much as possible obviously because those are hormone disruptors. They are endocrine system disruptors. And then from the other standpoint though, it’s not just about diet cause they do see people eating really well but they’re still having problems. And we have to look at the other lifestyle factors like stress, like the amount of sleep people are getting hugely related to blood sugar imbalances, and hunger and over eating. Because when you don’t get enough sleep here, increased Ghrelin, decrease Leptin and you’re like, I don’t know how to eat everything really bad. And then fitness, you know, keeping the right level of fitness and stress management and, and how you time everything because so many people are doing the old fashioned, eat every two hours to maintain your blood sugar. And that’s the worst thing you can do for blood sugar balance. So all of those things are to blame.

Dr. Cates: Yeah. So let’s talk about that because that is something that I think when I came out of naturopathic medical school, that was kind of a trend. Like you need to eat throughout the day. And you shouldn’t wait more than three hours to eat. Right. So what, when did that change? I mean, you know, it’s been interesting to see, there’s definitely been a big change in that. So tell, let’s talk about that.

Dr. Ritamarie: Ya let’s talk about it. So it didn’t change from a standpoint of it being a bad idea. It’s always been a bad idea when you look at the biochemistry three and physiology. So when we think about this insulin which gets secreted when we eat anything really cause it’s what helps to get the fuel into the cells. Insulin gets secreted when we eat. Insulin is what’s called a fat storage hormone. It’s an anabolic hormone. You cannot burn fat in the process presence of elevated levels of insulin. So if people are trying to get to their optimal weight, does it make sense to have insulin elevated in the system all day long? Because what you’re basically doing is putting the brakes on fat burning. Right? And we need that break in between meals for the insulin levels to go down, growth hormone levels to come up Leptin levels to signals satiety. And so we just use stored fuel if we have it right, if we’re trying to lose weight. And the exception is people who are like really underweight with high metabolisms do need to eat more often, I will give you that, but it’s been told to the people who need to lose weight and they’re going, why is this not working? And sometimes all I do is say, let’s just spread your meals out from every two to three hours to every five to six hours. Just try that this week and see what happens. If people come in and like, well it worked, right? Because you get the levels of insulin down and you’re allowing the levels of growth hormone to come up and growth hormone burns fat and stores lean. Who do you want elevated throughout your day? The one that’s gonna store fat or the one that’s going to burn it? Personally, I want the one that’s gonna burn it.

Dr. Cates: Right. And that also has to do with what you’re eating when you’re eating every 5 or 6 hours.

Dr. Ritamarie: Yes. Because if you’re eating celery sticks every two hours, the amount it’s going to raise your insulin is slim to none. You know, it’s not going to do that. But once you add foods that have more of a carbohydrate content, even some of the nuts and seeds, right? They have a balance of fat, protein, carbohydrate. Yes, it’s more fat than protein and carbohydrate, but they still have that. Like cashews have more than other nuts. And coconut has more carbohydrate know it’s very high fat, socially fat, carbohydrate. So you have to look at that and that’s where the testing, it really helps. So, but having, if you’re like, I cannot stand this, I just need to put something in my tummy, high fiber, what high water content, low calorie will do the trick. And so I have what I call the snack attack strategy. So you absolutely can’t make it to your next meal. Here’s your hierarchy of what you can include to try to break that. But a lot of people get hungry because it’s habitual and a lot of people get hungry because they’re thirsty. And so I always tell people, satisfy the thirst. Make sure you drink some water first. And if you’re still hungry in a half an hour later, use my snack attack strategy and figure out what to eat.

Dr. Cates: Right. And sometimes it’s emotional or boredom. Any suggestions on that? I’m going to guess you can just, you know, you eat them as the foods that just satisfy that, you know, I’m eating something but it’s celery and it’s not.

Dr. Ritamarie: Yeah. So how many people do you know that get emotional eating cravings for celery or broccoli,or kale. It’s usually they want those either the crunchies or the sweet. And so that’s dealing with the emotions. Like I have a, an emotional eating strategy that I give people as well as you can stop yourself. Okay. Oh, I feel hungry. Stop tune in. Is it hunger or is it thirst? Okay, and let me just try some water. Is it hunger, true hunger, like my body needs fuel and nourishment or is there an emotional component to this? So is it real, true physiologic hunger or is it an emotional need? And if it is, what are you needing right now? Are you lonely? Are you sad? Are you feeling deprived? Are you frustrated? What’s the emotion? And then how can you deal effectively with the emotion, whether it’s call a friend or take a bath or meditate or something, but just still, even the stopping and evaluating, is it really hunger? I do that myself. You know, I get frustrated and I grab a bar. It’s a good healthy protein bar. And I’m like, what’d you just do? Are you hungry? Like, no. Are you frustrated? Yes. Okay. How are you going to deal with the frustration and is the eating the bar going to help you with that feeling? And then we create strategies and there’s some great programs out there. I’m one of our, one of our colleagues, Trisha Nelson has a great program for helping people with emotional eating and there’s others out there, so you might need that support. But the first thing is to recognize, am I eating right now? Am I feeling hunger because I’m trying to satisfy an emotional craving? And then just, you know, have strategies to walk down that, that path.

Dr. Cates: Yeah. That’s a great tip. And definitely having those strategies and um, because being able to identify as a trick and then having the tools is another thing, right?

Dr. Ritamarie: It’s like, yeah, I’m not hungry and I’m frustrated. I’m going to eat that bar anyway. Huh.

Dr. Cates: Right. You don’t beat yourself up about it. Just like, like let’s say.

Dr. Ritamarie: Exactly. It’s like I’m doing it and I’m doing it and I’ll figure it out.

Dr. Cates: Yeah. And so when we talk about sugar … Are there alternatives to sugar that you recommend for people so that you know, if you, you know, you do get a little bit of like I want little bit as a treat of some sort. What do you think is okay or what do you think is a good substitute?

Dr. Ritamarie: Absolutely and I, I do that, you know, if I’m in the middle of a launch and I’m in the middle of lots
of work and I’m like, I’m not getting my outdoor time, I’m not getting my downtime. I just want chocolate. So I will, you know, get some raw cacao powder and I’ll mix it with some almond butter or coconut butter. And then I sweeten and it’s a simple thing I can do in 30 seconds. Unfortunately it’s quick. So I can do it more often than I probably should. But then I sweeten it either with stevia and either the Green Stevia, not the white processed stuff is not as good, but green Stevia, which is just dehydrated stevia, which is a plant I’ll leave or those drops, sweet drops, has a really nice little, no added sugar or anything. It’s just Stevia. And you could just put butterscotch flavored sweetness to it or chocolate flavor or vanilla. And then lo han is another one, monk fruit, That’s getting more popularity these days to Chinese or um, but it’s got that sweetness to the tongue but no calories. Erythritol, not everybody can tolerate cause it’s one of the sugar alcohols so some people who have got imbalances can’t eat it. But most people can tolerate erythritol but not xylitol. So those are all options and they give the food a sweetness. I’ve made people candies and cookies and pies and I need ice cream yesterday. Um, which was really amazing and I just, I just mixed in, I blended up some nuts and made a nut milk and I added some protein powder, chocolate flavored collagen support protein powder. And I put that in there and I didn’t even need sweetener cause that had some Stevia in it and I blended it up and put it in an ice cream maker. And an hour later I had this amazing chocolate ice cream that was really healthy for me, right? I threw Broccoli sprout powder in there as well to give it some Greens. So there’s a lot of really cool ways that you can trick your taste buds into thinking they’re eating your old favorite because ice cream has always been my favorite. And you’re eating your favorites, but it’s in a way that’s going to support you, not just from our blood sugar but from a weight and from a hormonal perspective.

Dr. Cates: Right. All right, perfect. What do you think about coconut sugar?

Dr. Ritamarie: I have had people that have coconut sugar added to something and it doesn’t do anything to their blood sugar. I’ve also seen people put coconut sugar in and it spikes their blood sugar. It actually has carbohydrate and it’s considered low-glycemic, but it’s not for everybody. So it’s a, it’s one of those try it and see if it works for you. But if you’re not testing your blood sugar and you have issues with fatigue or hormone imbalance or excess weight, don’t do it. Just get these, these non caloric ones.

Dr. Cates: Yeah, cause I’ve seen a lot of, uh, like Paleo desserts and things, um, contain coconut sugar.

Dr. Ritamarie: Yeah. And if you look at the grams of sugar in there, they’re higher than I think I would want to put in my body. But lo han is really nice. It’s just a plant that’s got this sweet taste that tricks your taste buds into thinking it’s sweet but it doesn’t provide any calories and actually provide some protective effects like Stevia on the dental end, like Xylitol, those on the flora in the mouth. So it helps to protect teeth.

Dr. Cates: Yeah that’s great. And so these don’t increase blood sugar, they don’t impact the blood sugar where something like coconut sugar or honey or maple syrup they all raise the blood sugar. Cause people ask you about these all the time. Like I know you’re saying no sugar, but what about these other things? What about honey honey? You know it comes from nature, like what about that.

Dr. Ritamarie: It does, but it doesn’t mean it’s going to be good for ya. Tobacco comes from nature arsenic, they all come from nature. Right?

Dr. Cates: Right. Exactly. So I think a, I think it is important for people to look at labels, because I think we’re starting, a lot of people get used to, oh, it’s Paleo or it says it’s gluten free, or it says it doesn’t mean anything. No sugar added or something like that. To actually look at the label and look at, your saying look at the grams of sugar. Right,

Dr. Ritamarie: Exactly. Like even like people are drinking Kombucha. Oh, Kombucha. Well some of them have one gram of sugar per eight ounces and some of them have 12 so if you drink that 16 ounce bottle of Kombucha, that’s 24 grams of sugar. Right. And that’s crazy. Into one drink that can shoot the sugars up way, way, way high.

Dr. Cates: Okay. And I know you’re not a fan of artificial sweeteners, but can you explain to people a little bit of why artificial sweeteners are not a good alternative?

Dr. Ritamarie: Yeah, so artificial, anything’s probably not a good idea. We shouldn’t muck with nature, but that’s been found that those artificial sweeteners actually affect microbiome changes. So, and they actually stimulate some of the cravings for more sweet than like the others. And some of them like what’s the one, sucralose, you may get anal, leakage from it. Sorry, I don’t want sweet enough to risk anal leakage. Thank you very much. Right? So yeah, those are why. Why bother? Because right now it’s so easy to get Stevia, Xylitol, or lo han. It’s all over the place. Like 10 years ago people didn’t really hear of them, but right now it’s Kinda like probiotics. They’re all the rage you can get. How many brands have, you know, unsweetened, very good probiotics, sauerkrauts, yogurts, etc. over the counter now, whereas 10 years ago it was really hard. Right? You had to make your own. So it’s so easy. Like why bother with sucralose when you can put Xylitol or not Xylitol but stevia or lo han or erythritol in there? There’s a couple of others that are, that have some, like inulin, you can get an inulin in a separated Inulin, which is a prebiotic. But people with gut issues do have to be careful about some of the prebiotics. So if you tend to towards irritable bowel or bloating or gas after you eat, the inulin kind of things may contribute to that. And that would come from Jerusalem artichokes or something like that.

Dr. Cates: Yeah. Yeah. So if you’re having those issues, you might want to have have that address and usually if you get that better in balance, then you can do it. Right?

Dr. Ritamarie: Yes, anytime I say people say that certain things like that caused them gut problems, we’ve got to get the gut and balance. It’s not the food’s fault.

Dr. Cates: Yep, absolutely. So when people follow the, the Diet that you’re recommending, what do they notice with their bodies? I mean we talked before about aches and pains going away and having better energy, but what about like the skin? What do you notice with, with people’s skin?

Dr. Ritamarie: Oh it’s amazing? People will say, Oh my God, my skin is glowing. People keep telling me my skin is glowing. They see things and see I have rashes and things. Rashes are an indication that there’s an imbalance in the body. And the detox mechanisms aren’t working properly and sugar feeds the bad gut flora, the ones we don’t want. So we see people’s skin clear, we see them say, oh my God, my friends are telling you I look 10 years younger and these amazing stuff people actually post. Sometimes they picture their pre and they’re post and they’re like, look at this, this is like two months later and look at how much different I look.

Dr. Cates: Right? Yeah. And I, you know, I just think of skin as being such an indicator of that

Dr. Ritamarie: Yes the internal, it’s an internal barometer.

Dr. Cates: Yes, and one of the first signs of you’re going in the right direction with the changes with your skin. And that’s a really good sign. It’s a lot of that inflammation that people will talk about. Like, why do I have, you know, like puffiness, why do I wake up and I feel puffy. And all of that, that just the swelling, the irritation, so much of it feels like it’s the sugar. So I mean, I, you know, I think it’s great. So I do want to ask, I know a lot of people ask me about this. What about um, alcohol? What about wine? Beer, cocktails. Because I think a lot of people think, okay, they don’t even associate that with food and drinks. It’s like this whole other thing. And then they’ll put all kinds of stuff and like their cocktails or, so what do you recommend when it comes to having a glass of wine or something like that?

Dr. Ritamarie: Abstain. I’m not popular on my views on alcohol. Yeah. A couple of things. Alcohol first of all gets into the system and raises just the similar things, it may not raise the sugar per se, but it has similar effects as raised sugar as sugar, more so it’s quickly, very quickly absorbed. It goes into the liver very quickly and it will actually, you know, it can more of a cause of fatty liver than anything else. So I, I say abstain because it’s like eating pure sugar. Plus it damages brain cells, you know, every drink you take, you’re damaging brain cells. I’m sorry. You know, I don’t want to lose any of my brain cells. I drank my way through college and high school and that was enough. You know, enough damage brain cells. I’m going to preserve them now. But yeah, I don’t think alcohol is a good thing. And especially the cocktail thing, right? That you’re putting all this sweetened crap in it. I’m totally opposed to alcohol. And I see a lot of people who are in the natural health movement. Oh, it’s organic. Well, the a organic or not organic wasn’t the problem. Sure. It’s a little better that way, but it’s still high sugar food and it’s a high-glycemic food and it’s going to throw your blood sugar off and it’s going to create problems. It may not even create that big an insulin spike, but it creates similar to fructose where it doesn’t raise the sugar, but it affects the liver pathways

Dr. Cates: Right, and also can plan into difficulties with sleep and ability to manage stress and things like that that are also tying into, like you mentioned, tying into the need to balance our blood sugar balance our hormones.

Dr. Ritamarie: Yeah. Yeah. I think there’s, there’s some currently illegal substances that are healthier than alcohol. If you really want a buzz just saying.

Dr. Cates: Okay, well maybe we’ll have it at least for the blood sugar levels.

Dr. Ritamarie: It doesn’t affect your blood sugar level and actually can have some beneficial effects.

Dr. Cates: But I might have to have you back on for another conversation.

Dr. Ritamarie: Wait till it gets more globally legal. But it’s happening. I don’t partake of that either. But I’m saying it’s a healthier alternative. It’s a safer alternative for traffic accidents, et cetera. Although you shouldn’t drive when you’re under the influence at all, it’s better on your liver and you know, it’s crazy that people are thinking alcohol is such this great thing and just everybody drinks it with their meals. It’s not, I don’t, I’m very anti-alcohol.

Dr. Ritamarie: Okay. Okay. All right. Well, Ritamarie, it’s been so great having you on with, so tell everybody where they can find you, where they can learn more about you, and then you also have a free gift for us.

Dr. Ritamarie: Oh I do. I love that free gift. You’re going to love it. I’m at DrRitamarie.com and we have lots of free resources there and we have a lot of programs that you know, guide you through hormonal changes. And then as far as the free gift, it’s hormone hacking breakfast menus and it’s breakfast menus I put together that can be either done first thing in the morning or for you people who are intermittent fasting, which I do. You can have your breakfast at two or one or 12 or whatever time. But it’s an idea of how do you eat a first meal of the day that breaks your fast, that’s balanced in terms of Omega threes and helps your gut flora and fiber and micronutrients and protein all balanced into a breakfast. And we have five different menu plans. We have the components of a healthy breakfast and there’s probably like 20 recipes in there to help you get started. And they’re amazing recipes.

Dr. Cates: All right, well great. Thank you so much for the gift and I’ll see you soon at mindshare, a bunch of artists, right?

Dr. Ritamarie: That’s right, I can’t wait to see you there. Yay.

Dr. Cates: Great. Thank you. Bye Bye.

Dr. Cates: I hope you enjoyed this interview today with Dr Rita Marie. You can learn more about her by going to TheSpaDr.com and going to the podcast page with her interview and you’ll find all the information and links there, including the free gift that she mentioned and while you’re there at TheSpaDr.com, I encourage you to join the spa doctor community so you don’t miss any of our upcoming shows. And if you haven’t taken the skin quiz yet, this is a great opportunity to find out what messages your skin is trying to tell you about your health and what you can do about that. And that might even be some of those blood sugar imbalances that we talked about today. You just go to theskinquiz.com to find out what messages your skin is trying to tell you about your health. Also, I invite you to join me on social media, on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, and Youtube, and join the conversation there and I’ll see you next time on The Spa Dr. Podcast.