Your Baby's Metabolism is Being Decided Right Now | Jessie Inchauspé

Key Takeaway

What you eat during pregnancy literally programs your baby's genes. Your womb isn't just an oven—you're co-creating your baby's genetic plan. Simple changes like eating 4 eggs daily for choline, stabilizing blood sugar, and avoiding sugar spikes can reduce your child's lifetime diabetes risk by 15% and support optimal brain development. Start with a protein-rich breakfast and aim for under 25g added sugar daily.

Episode Overview

Jessie Inchauspé (The Glucose Goddess) discusses her new book on pregnancy nutrition with Dr. Mark Hyman. After experiencing a miscarriage and then a successful pregnancy, she dove deep into research revealing how maternal diet during pregnancy epigenetically programs a baby's health outcomes for life. The conversation covers four critical nutrition pillars: blood sugar management, choline intake, protein consumption, and nutrient density—all backed by studies showing measurable impacts on babies' cognitive development, metabolic health, and disease risk decades later.

Full Transcript

Transcript of Your Baby's Metabolism is Being Decided Right Now | Jessie Inchauspé from The Dr. Hyman Show. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

Your boom is not just an oven. It's more like your baby is a seed and you're the soil. And if you plant this seed in your driveway full of gravel, it's not going to grow as strong as healthy as if you plant it in a nice piece of soil. You're co-creating your baby's genetic plan with your diet. The placenta is not a filter. The placenta does not keep out all the bad and give only the good to your baby. 90% of pregnant moms are below the minimum recommended amount of choline during pregnancy.

Even though this nutrient builds their baby's brains, we're lying to moms. What happens during pregnancy is very important for the health of their baby. At conception, your baby's DNA is set. But the epigenetics, which genes are switched on, which genes are silenced, that has to do with your diet during pregnancy. The food you eat sends this sort of like postcard to your baby telling him what world he's going to be born into. born into. born into. Jesse Insepi is a French biochemist. She's a founder and international bestselling author behind the global glucose guidance movement, helping millions stabilize blood sugar for better energy, mood, and metabolic health.

health. health. If a mom has low protein intake during pregnancy, her baby is epigenetically programmed to have lower muscle mass. Muscle is the organ of longevity. You're literally writing a genetic expression software. expression software. expression software. Hey, it's Dr. Heyman. I'm so excited to share this episode with you today. But before we dive in, I want to get your help. Please take a minute to hit that subscribe button. Whether you're watching here on YouTube or listening on your favorite podcast platform. It truly means the world to me and it helps my team and I bring you this podcast every single week.

Plus, I don't want you to miss a thing. So, thanks so much for being part of this community and I'm glad you're here. Jesse, it's so good to see you again and have you on the podcast. I can't believe the journey you've been on for the last I guess 4 years since we first talked. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think I was in Maui. It was co you just come out with your new book and my friend's like, "Hey, would you talk to my friend Jesse?" I'm like, "Sure.

It's a good topic. The glucose goddess sounds good. I'm all about blood sugar." And you've blown up. It's amazing. It's amazing. Congratulations. Because I've been, you know, beating the blood sugar horn for quite a while. And uh Well, you're the OG of blood sugar. Let's be real. I wouldn't exist if it weren't for you. I don't know about that. But I think I think, you know, people are finally coming to terms with this. And now the new dietary guidelines have basically said, "Hey, eat more protein, eat less sugar, sugar, sugar, don't eat ultrarocessed food, highly processed food." I mean, it's pretty amazing the turnaround we've seen in just just just Absolutely.

Absolutely. Absolutely. So, you got a new book. Uhhuh. Uhhuh. Uhhuh. And a new baby. Absolutely. Yes. Absolutely. Yes. Absolutely. Yes. And I imagine that your new baby inspired your new book completely, completely, completely, which is called my prototype. Nine months that count forever. It drives me absolutely crazy when OB obstatricians obstatricians obstatricians say to their patients, "Eat whatever you want. It's important to gain weight when you're pregnant." And I'm like, "Have a pint of ice cream. Eat cookies." I'm like, "Are you out of your mind?" So, we're going to get into all all the nutrition and pregnancy details and why it matters so much and some of the research particularly around epigenetics and help people understand that.

Before we dive in, I want you to share a bit about your story. You know, your book is nine months that count forever and it's very personal for you. Uh, you had a baby. So, take me back to when you were 31 and when you had your first pregnancy and kind of walk me through the journey to how you got to this moment where you wanted to tell the world that pregnant women should pay attention to what they eat. eat. eat. Well, I was very naive.

I thought, you know, hey, I'm the glucose goddess. I'm going to have a perfect pregnancy. I'm going to have no nausea. Everything's going to go perfectly great, you know, cuckoo. Um, and I was proven very wrong. So, my first pregnancy, first of all, I was very nauseous in the first trimester. It's brutal. And then unfortunately I had what's called a silent miscarriage at 3 months. Meaning the embryo had stopped developing but I had no idea. I didn't experience a miscarriage. I learned at the 3-month ultrasound that the embryo had stopped developing 3 weeks earlier that I was carrying a dead embryo in my uterus for this long.

So it was it was awful. I would say probably the hardest emotional challenge of my life. I remember telling my husband that if feelings could kill, I feel like I would be dead. be dead. be dead. Like that was the amount of angst and depression that I felt for months afterwards. afterwards. afterwards. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was very tough. And I realized, you know, many women experiences experience miscarriages, but it's not talked about at all. I learned after I went through the journey, I learned that my mom had had miscarriages and she had never told me that my stepmom had, that my grandmother had.

All of a sudden, people started talking. So, I wanted to share my story about this cuz it can happen to everybody. Even if you're doing all the quote unquote right stuff, these things happen, chromosomal abnormalities, things we don't yet understand. And I share my story in the book cuz it's very important for me that anybody going through this feels less alone. I felt so alone. You know what I did? I And you blame yourself. You blame yourself. And I was like, maybe it's cuz I had too much coffee because there are studies showing high levels of caffeine can impact early pregnancy.

And I was googling like celebrities who have had miscarriages. I just wanted to hear stories. I wanted to know that it happens to a lot of people and it's it's not our fault. So after that, I got pregnant again. And by the way, as a doctor, I've delivered 500 babies. Miscarriages are are the body's natural way of taking care of something that's not right. Like you said, you said, you said, I know, but it's still super hard. But yeah, but usually you don't know that. Like you don't you don't know that.

It's kind of nature's way of taking care of things that aren't. It is. Yet, you know, as a mom to be, you're projecting. You're like, "Oh, my baby's going to be born in December." and you create this whole story in your head. So when you have the miscarriage, you have to disconnect and detach and grieve that story that you had. So I get the I get the scientific reason, but the emotional journey was just very very hard. And I just want to hold space for people who go through that to say even though it's nature doing its job, it's still really really freaking hard.

Yeah, it's hard. It's emotionally really hard. hard. hard. In any case, I got pregnant again. And I was very lucky. And uh my boy was born in May 2025. So he's about 7 8 months now. And as I was pregnant, you know, because my job is scientific research, I was like, hm, let me see what I can do during pregnancy because my doctor was just saying take folate and don't stress. And a bit like you said, you know, eat enough so that your baby has enough calories essentially.

But the research showed otherwise. I found incredible studies, incredible data showing that what I ate during pregnancy was influencing my baby. Like DNA is one thing, but your diet during pregnancy impacts the baby that you give birth to. You're co-creating your baby's genetic plan with your diet. You say your baby's your your womb is not just an oven. It's like Exactly. You're not It's not just a bun in the oven. It's more like your baby is a seed and you're the soil. And if you plant this seed in your driveway full of gravel, it's not going to grow as strong and as healthy as if you plant it in a nice piece of soil, fertilized and dense and rich.

So, you're co-creating your baby's genetic plant. You're not just an oven. Your baby will not just take what he needs from you. That's another big myth of pregnancy. If you don't eat enough of the right stuff, your baby's not going to get enough of it. You are co-creating your baby's plan. Although, although it does, it does deplete you. Like, if you It depletes you. Then for example, if you don't eat enough, let's say choline, which comes from eggs or animal foods, your baby will pull from your reserves up to a point, your baby will never get all the choline that he needs if you're not eating enough of it.

And the placenta, as you know, is this temporary organ that we grow in our uterus. That brings our bloodstream and our baby's bloodstream in very close connection. The placenta is not a filter, Mark. The placenta does not keep out all the bad and give only the good to your baby. The placenta kind of trusts that whatever is in your bloodstream belongs in your baby's bloodstream. bloodstream. bloodstream. Like mercury. Like mercury. But also like glucose. Like glucose. So the higher a mom's glucose levels during pregnancy, the higher the baby's glucose level in the womb.

womb. womb. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And a baby has to deal with high glucose levels in the womb as well in case they're too high. So your baby will feel inflammation. Your baby will put on fat to protect himself. Um so blood sugar was the first place I dove in and it was just so incredibly interesting. Yeah. Yeah, I mean one of the biggest things, you know, the doctors check for is gestational diabetes. At 28 weeks, you get a blood sugar test where they give you this two Cokes equivalent of sugar basically and you drink it and you measure blood sugar, you know, an hour and two hours after.

And it's amazing how how many women have blood sugar dysregulation and it's a sign that they're already kind of on their way to insulin resistance. And the problem in America is that 93% of us have some degree of that, right? 75% overweight, but 93% even if you're thin, you could have sugar issues. And you know, we have now, you know, one in two people in America with pre-diabetes or type two diabetes. But I think it's it's actually more than that because I think the criteria are too strange actually.

strange actually. strange actually. Yeah. And and the gestational diabetes is not just about the mom. So if you have gestational diabetes, the studies show that your baby's DNA will be epigenetically programmed to be more likely to get diabetes himself during his lifetime. So at conception when the egg meets the sperm, your baby's DNA is set. But the epigenetics, meaning the sort of programming of your baby's DNA, which genes are switched on, which genes are silenced, that has to do with your diet during pregnancy. I just want to stop you there cuz you know what you're talking about is epigenetics.

And most people may not know what that means. I'm going to just take two seconds to summarize it, but you've got 20,000 genes, more or less. How do how do genes work? They they have to be expressed. So the gene has to be turned on or off and there's a mechanism for that which is epi the epiggenome which is a regulator which genes get turned on or off depending on what you do and they have massive influence on our health and what has come out in the research which is is quite stunning.

It's not just about diabetes. Everything, so cancer, heart disease, diabetes, everything that is is happening inside the womb that the baby's exposed to, we call it the exposome, is influencing the epigenetic programming that's laid on top of your genome that determines the health outcomes of the baby when they're 20, 30, 40, 50. It's really, so it's really important. important. important. And that's the thing we don't tell moms. We say just eat for two, you know, eat enough and you're going to gain weight anyway, so you might as well eat more pancakes.

We're lying to moms. No, what happens during pregnancy is very important for the health of their baby. And the epigenetic data is interesting. So we see in gestational diabetes that genes uh that encode for type two diabetes risk are higher in the babies of uh in the babies of moms who had just diabetes. And in animal studies, Mark, which is really interesting, they see that when a mom eats a high sugar diet during pregnancy in rats, even if she doesn't have diabetes, her baby has fat storage genes epigenetically activated.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, high sugar diet during pregnancy could also in humans be leading to this epigenetic switch, which means that your baby from the moment he's born is more vulnerable to fat gain, to weight gain. And it makes sense biologically because if you have a lot of sugar in the womb, your baby needs to convert that sugar into fat to protect himself from high sugar levels. And that's one of the consequences, you know, high glucose diet is that you transform some of that glucose. That's one of the reasons that high glucose levels lead to more fat gain because you're transforming that glucose into fat to protect yourself.

And so in these rat studies, we see that the children the moment they're born, they have this fat storage gene activated and they end up having more fat mass on their body than their peers even if they eat the exact same diet from birth onwards because of the epigenetic changes. Exactly. And we need to tell moms about this. We need to explain that epigenetics is something that you control. Now, I don't think we should guilt trip moms and say never eat any sugar. It's really hard.

I had cravings. I was nauseous. I could only eat like pound chocolate the first three months. So I know firsthand how hard the wheat's different, the croissants are smaller. Yes, for sure. But there's actually data marks. Oh, now you make me crazy. I'm going to go to Paris croissants. Yeah, come hang out. But there's data actually in animals also showing that during pregnancy you get more dopamine from the same amount of sugar that you eat. So you may be getting more pleasure from that when you're pregnant.

So you have cravings, you have nausea, you don't feel so good. And so eating sugar becomes something that is uh more common. And in fact, today most moms eat more sugar during pregnancy than when they're not pregnant. This is from a survey in the US. So what do we do about all this? Well, we learn about the glucose hacks, which I've been talking about for years, but these can also help in pregnancy. So no sugar first thing in the morning. You have a protein richch breakfast because sugar first thing in the morning is just going to exacerbate those cravings and you really don't want to go there.

And I think we should look at the uh WH guidelines of 25 grams of added sugar per day being the maximum today. Most moms eat 80 g of added sugar per day during pregnancy. So if we could just get below that 25 gram, it would be super super helpful. That's actually twice what they wanted to do. But Donald Rumsfeld when he was working for President Bush went to the WHO when they were trying to lower the sugar because he was in the food industry before. He said, "We're going to pull $400 million of funding from the WHO if you do this." Are you serious?

Did not know that. Yeah. I wrote about my book, Food Tra. It's it's so corrupt. So basically WA wanted 5% of diet added sugar and then RFL wanted 10% and the food industry won. So basically you're really talking about this in a way that I've really never seen before. I mean there's books on pregnancy nutrition but like to really go into the depth of understanding what should be a way to create a healthy baby through food. I mean there's many other things you can do when you're pregnant, exercise and sleep and rest and you know so forth.

But how do you help people think about the big topics, the building blocks of of building a healthy diet when you're pregnant? Because people, you started with, you know, don't eat sugar for breakfast, which is basically what everybody else muffins, bagels, croissants, you know, sugary yogurts, um, pancakes, French toast, waffles, fruit smoothies, fruit smoothies, fruit smoothies, smoothies. I mean, what makes me crazy, especially, is this new protein uh, trend, uh, trend, uh, trend, Dunkin Donuts, Dunkin Donuts, Dunkin Donuts, muffins. Yeah, Dunkin Donuts now has protein smoothies, but they're just full of sugar.

of sugar. of sugar. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, you got to eat real food. So, tell us more about how you think about this. So, the first one is has to do with blood sugar and glucose management. It's very important. And the second, so I have four basically pregnancy pillars I talk about in the book. The second one is choline. is choline. is choline. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Choline is a nutrient that builds your baby's brain cells and builds the neurotransmitters, meaning the way that your that his brain cells communicate with each other.

Okay. Choline is super important. It's in foods like eggs. Highest source is eggs. Well, actually highest source is animal liver. So, it depends if you eat it during pregnancy or not. Egg yolk. Exactly. Liver, if you can eat it, is one of the most nutritionally dense foods. I love it. I mean, I grew up on it. Like I'm Jewish, so chicken liver, you know, chopped liver was a big thing. But it's it's really incredibly nutritious. nutritious. nutritious. Google, you know, compared to any of the most nutritious vegetables on the planet, it's orders of magnitude more nutritionally dense.

nutritionally dense. nutritionally dense. And today, we don't eat organ meat anymore. We eat just, you know, muscle meat, which has very important nutrition in it. But so egg yolks are very high source of choline. Um, any animal food, actually. So, we're talking, you know, a chicken, salmon, beef, those are really good sources of choline. There's a little bit of choline in plant foods, but really not that much. To get as much choline as in one egg yolk, you would have to eat 2 kilos of soybeans.

So, four pounds of servings. So, if you're vegan, you have to supplement in choline. And actually, today, Mark, 90% of pregnant moms are below the minimum recommended amount of choline during pregnancy. pregnancy. pregnancy. Wow. Wow. Wow. Even though this nutrient builds their baby's brains. And in animal studies, when you deplete a mom's choline levels, you give her no choline during pregnancy, the development of her baby's brain is deeply affected. That's such an important thing. fewer neurons, brain development stopping earlier than it should in animals. In humans, we can't do that.

We can't say, "Let's take a group of moms and another group and deplete one group and see the outcomes in the babies." What we can do is supplement moms and see what happens because most moms need to eat more choline. And in fact, the American Association of Pediatrics says that failure to provide choline during this critical time can lead to irreparable brain damage. even if there's more choline during the child's life afterwards. afterwards. afterwards. That's crazy. I mean, and we don't talk about it even though these big guidelines exist.

The top source is egg yolks, which often were seen to be a bad food because it has cholesterol in it, but actually the the dietary guidelines in 2015 said cholesterol is no longer a nutrient of concern in like the fine print. I didn't want to advertise it. They've been wrong for so many decades. But when you're talking about neurodedevelopmental issues, people don't realize that one in six babies is born with a neurodedevelopmental issue. And it ends up as learning disabilities, ADD, autism, the whole spectrum. And that's a lot.

One in six kids. Um and and so when you say that 90% of women are deficient in this, it seems easy to fix. So fix. So fix. So four eggs a day and you fix it. Four eggs a day. And in this there's two really interesting clinical trials I want to mention where they've supplemented moms with enough choline. So the first one is from Cornell University and they took two groups. One group of moms got 430 milligs per day which is basically the bare minimum recommendation and the other group of moms got 900 mg a day which is even more than the recommendation.

recommendation. recommendation. And then the scientists wanted to see if they could measure differences in the kids. kids. kids. Yeah. And they saw that in that first year of age, the kids who had had more choline in the womb were reacting faster to this very important test which is just a image reaction test like how quickly does the baby react to images but it's connected to IQ as an adult. That's why this test is used and they saw that in the choline babies there was 10% faster reaction time during those that first year of age.

So, the amount of choline available in the womb seems to be shaping the development of the brain in a way that we can measure. And there's many things we can't measure. We can't measure how it feels to be in someone's brain. It's possible that if you have enough choline, you'll just feel better in your brain. And when I learned about the studies, I called my mom because I've had a lot of mental health issues in my life. So, I was like, "Mom, how many eggs did you eat when you were pregnant with me?" And she was like, "Oh, honey, I ate barely any eggs." She ate special K, sugar, and orange juice.

So, for sure, I didn't have enough choline. So for sure my mom is to blame for everything. No, I'm kidding. But it matters. There's another study also showing placebo group that's receiving zero choline and another group that's receiving 930 mg of choline during pregnancy. And the scientists then looked at the kids at 3 years old and they sent the parents a questionnaire asking their asking about their kids. So is he patient? Is he cruel to animals? Um how welltempered is he? as he this is a questionnaire that it's linked to adults mental health issues and the choline group did better on the results of this questionnaire.

So we could detect differences in the baby's behavior at 3 years old depending on how much choline was given to the mother. mother. mother. So should women take choline supplements? supplements? supplements? You don't need to. You don't need to because it's much better absorbed from eggs for example. So if you have four eggs a day you're getting the bare minimum. Plus if you have two other sources of animal uh food during the day you're going to get to 700 milligrams which is really high. You can supplement, especially if you're vegan and you don't eat any animal foods.

You must supplement with choline. It's very important. important. important. I mean, four eggs is 600 milligrams and but you were saying 900 milligrams and people don't really want to eat four eggs. So, eggs. So, eggs. So, I know, but it's important. I didn't really want to eat four eggs. I did it anyway cuz I was like, I need to get enough choline, you know. And you're saying it's better utilized than taking oral coating. It's it's better absorbed. Yes. You can also take supplements of choline if you want.

In a lot of like sort of forward cutting edge prenatal supplements, you'll find choline, but moms are not told about this, Mark. And actually, in formula, which is, you know, milk for babies, they put choline in there because they know it's important. But somehow, nobody's telling pregnant moms to also do that during pregnancy. Like, what's going on? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Why is this information not being communicated? It's very confusing. Yeah. It's it's one of those things you bring up that was, you know, I was aware of, but it it's something that, you know, most people don't know and and doesn't get talked about and most obstatricians don't recommend for their patients and needs to change if you can tolerate liver, highly recommend it.

Beef liver has, you know, a lot more. It's a very good source of choline. Chicken liver is great. So, I think that's a that's an important aha that I think most people will not know about. We kind of jumped over the glucose. There's four pillars. She said, "I want I want to come back to the glucose thing because it's such a big thing and we have such an epidemic of diabetes and obesity and it's literally programmed in your genes if you eat a lot of sugar when you're pregnant." And it's not just sugar, it's anything that turns to sugar.

So, white flour, refined starches, ultrarocessed food, it's it's everywhere. It's it's it's almost impossible not to eat that if you're, you know, a freeranging human and and you have to be you don't grow your own food. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, if you have to be very diligent. You know, most people's shop and buy stuff, they're not even aware of what's in it. And you go out to eat or you go to, you know, try to food graze when you're in the airport or I mean, it's everywhere.

Like it's just amazing. You go to Starbucks and it's like just sugar, you know, like it's just sugar. And I I went to buy like a green juice. I'm like, "Oh, green juice. Let me look. I'm like 37 gram of sugar. That's how much almost is in a can of Coke." And that's way past the 25 grams recommended maximum amount by the WHO. There's a really cool thing that I want to share. So So So in the UK in 1940, uh the government started a sugar ration.

I don't know if you knew this, but for 13 years, the entire population of the UK was given only only only 40 grams of sugar per day versus before the ration, they were at about 80 grams per day, which is very high. But it was the war and they had to ration the the import of sugar. And this meant that everybody in the country including pregnant moms all of a sudden dropped their sugar intake by half. And so recently scientists looked back and called 60,000 of these babies who were born just at the end of the sugar ration or just after and they wanted to see did this small very precise change have any impact on their health.

What do you think happened? think happened? think happened? Obviously it did. So the babies who were developing in the womb during the sugar ration had 15% less lifetime risk of diabetes compared to their peers who were born just after the ration ended. So who had moms who ate more sugar. So just by reducing your sugar intake by 40 grams, you can be protecting your child from diabetes. It's huge It's huge It's huge because what happens in the womb really sets you up for life. It's it's the moment where your organs are being created, your metabolism is finding its set point.

And something really interesting from the research, Mark, is I started to understand that the food you eat when you're pregnant sort of sends a sort of like postcard to your baby telling him what world he's going to be born into. So if you're eating a lot of sugar, your baby's thinking, "Oh man, I'm going to be born into a world with so much sugar. I have to prepare my body for this." So insulin goes up, fat storage goes up, and you're priming your baby from birth to be more likely to get the sugar-driven diseases.

It's wild. But you also say in your book that it's not just diabetes or obesity that you're going to get or heart disease. That that the high amounts of sugar lead to neurodedevelopmental issues, neurodedevelopmental issues, neurodedevelopmental issues, brain development and cause more inflammation in the brain. Let's talk about that. And can lead to autism and ADD. Well, is associated with it. In your womb, your baby's developing all of his neurons and his brain cells. And there are these tiny little cells called micro ga, which are in the baby's brain, and they're sort of like the rangers.

They're patrolling. Oh, is this neuron developing properly? Is this one not okay? I need to go and kill that neuron because it's it's not doing okay. These are immune system cells that are patrolling, surveying, and pruning your baby's brain as it develops. Now, when you have high glucose levels as a mom, your baby also has high glucose levels that leads to inflammation. And scientists believe that high inflammation in the womb makes these micro ga a little bit overactive because they they respond to inflammation. Microglea are your your brain's immune system.

system. system. Exactly. So, they start essentially pruning neurons they shouldn't be pruning. And this is why scientists believe this is the leading sort of theory behind why we see that moms with gestational diabetes are slightly more likely to have a baby who has autism. So if we look at millions of mom baby pairs, we see that on average if you've had gestational diabetes, your baby has a 25% higher likelihood of developing autism. Now I want to be very cautious here. I'm not saying that the diabetes is causing the autism.

It's association. It's an association and the overall strong one. What was the uh the overall risk is still low. So three in 100 to four in 100. That's the overall prevalence, right? So it's it's 25% increase. And so if you have diabetes, have diabetes, have diabetes, in moms with diabetes, four in a 100 kids have autism versus in moms without diabetes, three in 100 kids have autism. There's there's signal there. It's it's not necessarily causing it, but we know that high inflammation in the womb is not good news for your baby's brain.

I mean, you're just to put it in plain English, like if you eat a lot of sugar when you're pregnant, your baby's going to have high risk of obesity, diabetes, and heart attacks and maybe even neurodedevelopmental issues and many other things. So, really important. And you're you're the glucose goddess. So you you teach women how to eat sugar the right way in a way that doesn't in a way that doesn't create more cravings and in a way that creates fewer glucose spikes. So it's protective for your baby also.

I mean this is something called the glycemic load of a meal which is essentially the way in which a meal in total affects your blood sugar. So for example I always make the joke if you put like you know three tablespoons of metamucil in a can of coke it's going to not affect your blood sugar as much because you got all the fiber. It's going to swell up. the sugar won't be absorbed as fast. So, the matrix of your meal matters. Protein, fats, sugar. If you eat protein and fat, you're going to slow the absorption.

You're going to mitigate the rise in blood sugar. You're going to mitigate the rise in insulin and the inflammation. Yeah, the inflammation. So, not that you can eat huge amounts, but it it's not like don't eat anything, right? So, talk about how what are the simple steps? And you you've written about this in your other books, but I think it's important because if just for everybody and also especially for pregnant women, what are the like simple steps and the what are the like simple steps and hacks that you can use so that you keep your blood sugar more even and balanced and now we have these amazing glucose monitors which really almost didn't really exist even on a widespread level when you sort of we started talking years ago and now people can see.

Yes. I mean I just as an anecdote I got to go smarter. I want to try it out. It was kind of like I don't know 3 years ago or something and and I was at my friend's house with the summer and he or he's like a food fanatic. He just only is perfectly clean regenerative or organic, no sugar, nothing. And he ordered this incredible meal from this farm in Martha's Vineyard. It was like lamb and veggies and and we just gorged ourselves. Like we both had the blood sugar monitor on.

We didn't eat bad things. We just ate a lot of things. We were stuffed. And uh I do that occasionally, but not too often. And we both called each other like at, you know, 9:00 at night and said, "What's going on? Our blood sugar is like 160." Which is crazy because both of us are thin. We're fit. And so it's not just the what you're eating. It's also the volume can can be a thing too with blood sugar and so Well, if you eat like, you know, 10 pounds of sweet potatoes, sweet potatoes are fine for you, but that's going to be a big glucose load anyway.

Exactly. Right. Uh, okay. So, first thing we already mentioned, a protein richch breakfast. super important because it sets your glucose levels for the day. Second thing, Second thing, Second thing, wait, what is protein richch breakfast? Okay, so a breakfast built around protein. So good protein sources are well eggs. We talked about it. It can be some full fat dairy. It can be some leftover meat or fish from the night before. Crack it in the pan. You can use protein powder, unsweetened if you want to make a smoothie, for example.

Uh you just want to make sure there's always a protein source. And honestly, for me, it's eggs or dairy. That's my favorite go-to in the morning. Yeah, I also like leftovers from dinner. It's an easy way to get some animal protein. And you could like have, you know, full fat uh Greek yogurt, which has more protein protein protein and you can add nuts. Yes. Yes. Yes. Walnuts, almonds, pumpkin seeds, whatever. whatever. whatever. And some berries. So, the more nuts you eat eat eat and you know, the more thick the yogurt is, the Greek yogurt has higher protein.

So, that's that's important to know. And a key thing for breakfast also is to avoid anything sweet except whole fruit if you want for taste, right? But the base should be really the protein and the healthy fat. Don't worry French toast. Huh? For desserts, Mark. You can have that for dessert. That's another hack. So if you want to eat something sweet, if you want to eat something sweet, have it for dessert. dessert. dessert. Hey, is French toast French? No. No. No. Okay. Cuz you're f from France.

I'm like, like, like, it's like I mean, yes, we have a French version of it. I don't know if it was invented in France. Okay. Did Americans just call it French toast? Maybe. Cuz we don't call it French toast. And you probably don't call French fries French fries either. No. You know what we call French toast? We call it fries. American fries. We call it pomper which means lost bread. And I think maybe it is French. I think we use sort of old bread. Yeah. So lost bread.

Uh so French toast or anything sweet. Have it for dessert after a meal. Okay. At any point, even if you're pregnant and you want a donut, have it after your lunch or after your dinner, not on an empty stomach. That's going to reduce the glucose spike for you and your baby. Okay? Okay? Okay? So that's helpful. Uh move after eating. After that big feast, if you had gone for an 1-hour walk, you would have seen a much smaller spike. Even 20 minutes. Even doing 50 squats uh in the living room for fun would have helped because as you move, your muscles absorb some of the glucose you just ate.

Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. So, you should have uh thought about that, Mark. Not very glucose goddess of you. you. you. No, I was just so stuffed. I was like a stuffed pig and just need to like Well, if you're very stuffed, I have a trick. So, you can do calf trick. So, you can do calf raises. So, if you were really stuffed after the meal on your couch, just do little calf push-ups. You know what I mean? You go up and down on the balls of your feet like this, and your calf muscle will soak up glucose that you just ate.

Think about me next time. Finger push-ups. Finger push-ups. Finger push-ups. Um, yes. So, this is something that Mark Heyman just invented. Everybody, finger push-ups, very effective for glucose spikes. You heard it here first. Um, another one. Okay. Put clothing on your carbs. So, that means never eat your carbs naked. So, if you want bread or pasta or rice or cookie, don't have them naked. Add some protein, cheese on a bread. Yeah, like cheese on bread, like um almonds with your cookie, like a Greek yogurt with the donut, like chicken with your pasta.

Always add clothing. Okay, we're not recommending donuts here, folks. Just No, but you know what I mean. I try to get the message. Listen, if you're going to eat the donut, have some almonds with it. So, those are some core hacks that you can use anytime. use anytime. use anytime. I think that's important. Put clothing on your cars, meaning don't eat them alone. alone. alone. It's the Metamucil and the Coca-Cola. That's what you're doing. You're putting clothing on the coke. And one more thing I would say is try to start your meals with vegetables because studies show that if you eat the vegetables first at the beginning of your meal, you're creating this sort of protective mesh in your intestine that slows down how quickly the glucose from carbs arrives in your bloodstream.

Yes. Fiber. Exactly. There's some interesting studies on wine uh and you know and and and eating when you eat what in a meal and what that does to your weight and metabolism and you know and everybody knows that if you if you are hungry and you have a glass of alcohol or wine or whatever you'll feel a buzz but if you wait till halfway through the meal and then you have the same amount of wine you don't get the the rapidity of this buzz and you don't get the same spike.

So that's the idea. You're just trying to lower the glucose spike. Yes. Exactly. You're just trying to lower the spike. And so if you fill your stomach with fiber at the beginning of your meal, you can eat the same pizza or pasta afterwards, but it's going to arrive more slowly into your bloodstream. Therefore, a smaller spike. Therefore, you get a smaller crash. So, not more cravings. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, you don't have to get rid of all the carbs you eat, but if you eat them in the right order, time, combination, you're not going to kick off a cravings roller coaster, cuz that's what I used to be on.

I would have sugar in the morning and then at 10:00 a.m. at noon, at 2, at 4, at 6:00, at 8:00 p.m., I wanted more sugar. I was on a big roller coaster. coaster. coaster. I think that's such an important thing that you just mentioned is the cravings because a lot of people believe that this is just who they are. I'm just like a sugar addict and I can't stop these cravings and there's nothing I can do about it. I remember once teaching a workshop and it it was on ultra metabolism, one of my first books and it was really about like balancing your blood sugar and we had a very specific diet we had for them and we had protein shakes and we had green juices that were not sugary and broth and all that stuff and and this woman was just like look I'm going to try to do the program but there's no way I'm like 50 years old this my whole life I've never been able to not have cravings going to try my best but like I just telling you it's not going to work literally like the next day.

She's like, "This is amazing. I don't have any cravings." Um, and I'm like, "It's not that hard. It's like a day or two." And you sometimes will go through withdrawal depending on how much sugar you're eating, but you you literally can break the cycle if you eat the way you're talking. And it wasn't She was not somebody with cravings. The cravings were a symptom. I like to think of symptoms as messages. I like to think of symptoms as your body being like, "Hey, please Jesse, stop with the sugary breakfast." you know, those cravings were her body saying to her, her, her, you need to balance your blood sugar.

Okay. So, we did blood sugar, we did choline. choline. choline. Let's talk about uh you choose. We can do protein or omega-3s. Let's do protein because protein is like, you know, the new dietary guidance just came out and one of the big recommendations was eat protein, increase protein recommendations. And there's a lot of fast food companies that are just putting protein in foods like we put, you know, fiber, whatever. And tell us about protein. So, when you're building a baby, you're building a human body from scratch.

And the human body is very high in protein. So protein is not just muscles. People think protein is just muscles and bodybuilding. So many things in your body are protein. The the collagen in your skin is a protein. Insulin, the hormones that the hormone that keeps your blood sugar steady is a protein. Your immune system is made of proteins. So proteins are key. And by the time your baby's born, if you exclude water, he's 50% protein. 50% protein. So you need to eat protein to build that protein in your uterus.

So naturally the amount of protein in your diet should increase. But this is not something that pregnant moms are told. And there's new studies um the fancy word for them is the indicator amino acid acid oxidation method. There's a fancy word to say we now have better tools to understand how much protein you need to eat when you're pregnant. And it's more than we previously thought. previously thought. previously thought. What's the amount is there? So first trimester 1.2 minimum grams per kilo per per day. second and third trimester 1.5 grams per kilo and breastfeeding 1.9.

breastfeeding 1.9. breastfeeding 1.9. Yeah. And that and that by the way mirrors the new dietary guidelines which is 1.2 to 1.6. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And during pregnancy you have to be cautious and really consciously think okay I need to be getting more protein. And also what's tough is that as pregnancy goes on you have less space in your stomach. Your stomach gets smaller. So it's harder to eat bigger quantities. So you kind of have to focus almost entirely on protein. That should be the main thing around which you're building your diet cuz that's the most important thing for your baby and for you.

So increase the amount of protein that you eat. In animal studies, again we can do many studies in animals around pregnancy, not so many in moms as you can imagine because we can't, you know, manipulate pregnant moms and see what happens. But in animals, what they find is that again having to do with epigenetics. If a mom has low protein intake during pregnancy, her baby is epigenetically programmed to have lower muscle mass. muscle mass. muscle mass. Wow. Wow. Wow. Yeah, it makes sense. The baby's receiving not that much protein.

So, his body setting is like, we're not going to be born into a world with a lot of protein. I should keep my muscles small, prioritize essential organs. And we have dozens of ye decades of years of research on animals. When you reduce protein in the mom, the baby is born smaller with less muscle mass and a higher likelihood of disease later in life. life. life. Protein is key. And especially in these studies, if you keep calories adequate and you just reduce protein, this still happens.

It's not about it's not about not eating enough, it's about not eating enough protein. enough protein. enough protein. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And today, 70% on average of moms are not hitting the minimum protein requirements during requirements during requirements during That's incredible. 70%. I mean, there's such a protein debate in this country right now because the new dietary guidance came out and there's a whole group that are saying we don't need that much protein. The previous recommendations were8 grams per kilo. This is too much. There's no way we can feed the world with this.

I mean, there's a lot of criticisms and you know8 g per kilo was the amount to prevent protein deficiency. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. So, it's how much vitamin C do you need to not get scurvy? Exactly. It's like 60 milligrams. You know, how much vitamin D do you need to not get ricketetts? Maybe 30 units. Where how much vitamin D do you need to not get osteoporosis? Maybe 5,000 units. 5,000 units. 5,000 units. And for water, it could be the same, right? Like maybe one glass of water is enough to not die, but everybody knows you should be eating more than drinking more than one glass of water a day.

It's kind of the same concept. So, we need protein during pregnancy because we're building another body. So, what does that look like? So, listen, for me, that worked out to about 100 grams of protein a day minimum. So, I would have four eggs in the morning, which is 30 grams, and then I would just have protein at every snack and every meal. I built it all around protein. I have recipes in my book of all the stuff I ate. I was making this like supercharged snack almost every day.

It was a skier yogurt, which is higher in protein, plus two scoops of grass-fed whey. So, that snack was about 80 grams of protein. And I was putting passion fruit and berries and sea salt and tahini and peanut butter. I I had that every single day. the recipes in my book. book. book. But 80 g of protein right there. I'm not pregnant, but I'm going to eat that. that. that. Yeah, exactly. I'll send you the recipe. You could be pregnant. Who knows? I'm kidding. Um, so yeah, that was a great snack.

So, just make sure you're eating enough protein and you kind of have to spend time to measure how much you're eating. So, in the book, I have a big table where you can note what you're eating and kind of see where you fall. Like 4 ounces of chicken is 30 g, 4 oz of meat is 30 g. 6 oz of fish is 30 g. and protein powder like whey protein is great if you're it's it's an incredibly good thing. I use goey or regenerally raised weight.

I mean it's you know you want to get clean stuff that's not full of crap of crap of crap and just remember the amount of protein you eat is sending a message to your baby. Yeah. baby. Yeah. baby. Yeah. So it's important to give him enough because otherwise things shift. You know your DNA your baby's DNA might have a plan but then depending on the amount of protein available that plan changes and adapts and it can have lifelong ripples. So why why is it important then for people to have higher muscle mass?

Woo. Because muscle is the organ of longevity. Because having lower muscle mass is linked to a higher risk of all cause dis all cause mortality. Muscle mass is not only a sink for excess glucose levels. It's also a beautiful metabolic organ that keeps you healthy, that keeps you vibrant and alive. It's very, very key. And it also prevents, you know, long-term frailty, breaking bones, which are a big uh risk factor when you get older. I agree. In my book, Young Forever, I call it the currency of longevity.

I like that. I personally was a yoga teacher. I ran five miles a day. You know, I rode my bike. I, you know, I always exercised for the last 50 plus years. But I hated the idea of gym. I when I was 50, I couldn't do 10 push-ups. I didn't I was intimidated. I was kind of skinny and tall and I I didn't like to go to the gym with all these guys with giant muscles and and I smelled and it was like I don't know.

I didn't like it. Sounds great. And I thought it was just for meattheads and I had so much judgment about it. And then I decided I better get my act together because I was telling all my patients to do this. So at 59 I started working with a trainer and started and I I can show you pictures after. But like I I had a picture of me when I was 26 and now I'm 66. It's like a different body and and I and I didn't think I could do it at this age.

But at any age you can start to do this. There's a book I gave my mom. She got very mad at me for her 60th birthday. It's called Growing Old is not for sissies. And it was all about these elder athletes cuz she her thing was basically she would say every time I have the urge to exercise, I lie down till it goes away. So, and she suffered from it. She lost so much muscle. She was so frail. She got severe osteoporosis when she was older.

She I mean she it was her it was her frailty and lack of fitness that killed her. It's so important. And what you're saying, and this was really I didn't even know this data that that you're saying is that the protein that the mother eats during pregnancy determines the limit of the muscle that the child can build when they get older. And you see this, right? You might have two friends and they have the exact same workout routine. They both lift the same amount of weights, but one builds muscle easily and the other one doesn't.

So, there's many reasons for this, but what was taking place in the mother's womb during pregnancy could be a factor in determining your epigenetic uh ability to put on muscle. This blew my mind when I saw it because imagine the ripple effect, you know, imagine how much better life is if you can build a lot of muscle that protects you. Yeah. So, that's protein. It's really important. It's really key. Um, and I don't think people talk about this enough. So, as a pregnant mom, really, protein should be one of your main focuses.

And then the fourth pillar is omega-3s. I know you love omega-3s. So, DHA is an omega-3 fat that builds your baby's brain as well with choline. And in particular, what DHA does is that it helps guide the long arms of the brain cells that go and connect with each other. So, it's really, really cool. And in in lab experiments, you see that if you're trying to grow neurons in a in a petri dish, you have to add DHA, otherwise they don't connect with each other. And DHA is a fat that is made by micro algae in the ocean.

That's right. That's right. That's right. And then it's eaten by fish and it goes up the food chain. And us as humans, the way that we have it is by eating fatty, oily fish. So salmon, anchovies, mackerel, sardines, etc. Herring. Herring. Herring. Yeah, herring. The recommendation is 300 mg per day, which kind of works out to fish twice a week. Now, again, kind of like choline, you have the bare minimum recommendation, but studies show that having more than that could be even more beneficial for babies.

I mean, it's kind of crazy if you look at the data, 60 68% of US adults have like deficiencies in vitamin D and 95% have suboptimal levels. 95%. That's a huge number of Americans. So, think of the amount of women who are pregnant who have low levels of omega-3 fats. And it determines neurologic development, cognitive function, risk for neurod developmental disorders, for metabolic health. It's so important. It's so important for and the part of the problem is, you know, historically omega-3s were everywhere. That's why humans had them.

They were in all the wild plants. They were in all the wild animals we ate, all the wild fish. you know, if you eat a, you know, a deer or elk or bison that's wild, it's going to have a higher concentration of omega-3s. Obviously, fish. It used to be the um it was such a valued currency. I don't know if you know this, but in the Northwest, the Pacific Northwest, the Native Americans used these extremely oily fish. I forget what they were called, but they were like money.

like they were like money. Huh. Huh. Huh. They were so valuable. I don't think they knew about omega-3s back then, but they just knew that it was such an important source of fat and food. And it builds the brain. And in studies when you supplement moms with about a gram and a half of DHA per day, scientists can measure a four point increase in the IQ of the baby at four years old. years old. years old. If you want to eat healthier but don't want complicated recipes every week, I send out Mark's Kitchen, one simple, delicious, sciencebacked recipe you can actually make.

When you sign up, I'll also send you my eating 101 guide where I break down the daily eating habits that reduce cravings and improve your health. Click below and let's get cooking. It's huge. Can you imagine? And in in Europe, um you probably know this, but the formulas have DHA. In America, America, America, it's not mandatory. It's not mandatory. And and very few companies have it, and there's a few who do. And I just interviewed a woman who started a formula company, part of the podcast.

Bobby is the name of the company, and it has DHA in it. So, why is it in formula, but nobody's telling pregnant moms to also take it? Well, it's not mostly here. It hasn't been for years. Okay. Well, it's getting into formula in Europe. Even in Europe, you know, I my whole pregnancy was in France where DHA is in baby formula, but nobody told me to take it during pregnancy, which is even more important than doing breastfeeding and formula. So, it's wild. And also, there's another piece of information that's worth mentioning is that since the 80s, the rates of preterm birth, so baby being born too early, has gone up 30% in the US.

30% higher than in 1980, babies being born pre-term. And one of the main links is the increase in omega6 inflammatory fats and the decrease in omega-3 fat consumption. And in fact, and this is well established, when you supplement with omega-3s, you reduce the risk of preterm birth. So, all moms should be eating enough fish and also probably supplementing to make sure that they're getting enough for their baby because the recommendation of fish twice a week doesn't significantly increase the amount of omega-3s in your cells. Like really, you should be having more than that, like at least a gram.

I mean, part of the problem is that, you know, fish is really healthy until humans came along and poisoned the oceans through coal and burning of coal, which releases lead and mercury and other toxins. And then you get that in the oceans. Instead of acid rain, it's metal rain goes in the oceans and the algae absorb it. Then the little fish eat the algae and the bigger fish to the little fish and the the bigger bigger fish eat the bigger fish and go all the way up to the sharks and the swordfish and the tunas which are laden with mercury.

mercury. mercury. Yes. However, Yes. However, Yes. However, and they're also extremely high in omega-3s. So this is the problem. Well, it's actually not. I don't think it's that big of a problem because in the studies you see that during pregnancy, but also anytime the benefits of eating fish that are high in omega-3s outweigh the downsides of the heavy metals. Like, it's better to eat fish to get omega-3s than to not eat them. Even though today they're not as healthy as these. I would agree. Just don't eat fish that eat other fish.

Like, eat the little fish. Anchovies, sardines, herring, mackerel, those are the best. Even wild salmon, if eating small salmon, it can be okay. But even grass-fed, like we used to see, every it kind of makes me crazy. Everything we used to see was organic. Everything was grass-fed. Like there wasn't anything else, right? Everything was a pasture-raised chicken. It they didn't we just it was just normal, right? normal, right? normal, right? When my grandparents, you know, were alive, that's what they ate. And and if you have grass-fed butter, you get pretty good levels of omega-3s.

Yeah. But not as much as you get in fish. Like fish is even farmed fish today, Mark. Like they even supplement the fish with Do you say algae or algae? in English both tomato tomato. Okay, cool. So they even supplement the farmed with fish with algae oil to make sure they have high omega-3 levels. So even if the only thing you can get is farmed fish, it's still going to be beneficial. beneficial. beneficial. Absolutely. But Absolutely. But Absolutely. But so I did fish three times a week plus I supplemented with omega-3s and the omega-3 supplementation world is a whole other can of worms because you have to make sure it's like low in toxicity, etc.

So in my book I explain how to find one, one, one, how to find a good one. But but I do I do think most women should take an omega-3 supplement. I do think they should take a vitamin D supplement. They definitely need obviously a prenatal with the right types of folate. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. So, I probably need, you know, antidot high in choline like you said, but I don't know if is it bad to supplement choline. choline. choline. No, it's not bad. I did actually.

Um, my prenatal contained choline, but nonetheless, you can't get everything you need from supplements. Like, you need to also make sure that you're getting it from food because just the the format of the molecules is better absorbed by you and your baby. But the supplements are an insurance policy. You need to make sure that your diet is also containing all this important stuff. You can't supplement yourself out of a bad diet. You can't just eat, you know, McDonald's every day and be like, "It's okay. I'm taking supplements." supplements." supplements." No, you can't.

You know, people do that. Or the same with stats. Oh, I can take, you know, whatever I want. I'm taking a statin. You know, doesn't work like that. So, your your book really lays out these principles. It gives people practical suggestions of how to do this, recipes that are delicious, and it it doesn't guilt trip women, but it just educates them about what to do to actually help take care of their own body. And by the way, the diet you're eating is not just good for your baby, it's good for you, too.

I felt great during pregnancy cuz I ate better during pregnancy than any other time, to be honest. And how much weight did you gain? 11 kilos. 11 kilos. 11 kilos. 22 lbs. Yeah. Is normal. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 25 lb. the baby's like six, seven pounds. Like you don't need you got a placenta, you got fluid, you got other stuff. But you know, some women get 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 100 pounds. And they don't like there's a cultural framework that that's okay cuz you're pregnant. And I think it's really a mistake.

Some of my friends were like, "Oh, when I was pregnant, I was going to be fat anyway, so I just ate everything I could never eat otherwise." And I was like, "This is actually really not a good idea for your baby." But we have so many myths and moms are not told about this stuff. And I think on the topic of guilt, it's important because as I was sharing this information on Instagram, I got a few DMs from moms like, "Oh, I feel guilty now." Like, listen, my opinion on this is that when you're pregnant, you're going to feel a sense of responsibility.

There's pressure. You're building another human. Like, it's complicated. You might feel stressed. You might feel overwhelmed. I don't think we can take that away. But what 9 months that count forever, the book, is trying to do is help you navigate the pressure in a healthier way. So, you know, if you do these four things, you're really setting up your baby with a good a good base. And it's simple. It's really simple. Balance your blood sugar, eat more protein, choline, choline, choline, get choline, and DHA. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. Pretty simple. Pretty simple. And I hope that this book becomes completely irrelevant very fast. Like, I hope everybody gets this, all doctors start talking about it, and this book is not useful anymore. Yeah. No, I'm so glad you wrote it because, you know, as I said, I delivered 500 babies. Can you talk about that a little bit? Like I want to know more about that about what how about delivering 500 babies. It was amazing. I mean I was a family doctor. I got trained in a community hospital in uh Northern California where there was only family doctors.

I learned to do C-sections. And then after my and I actually was really even in in uh an internship. I went to this small town in Sous St. Marie can no somewhere. I don't even know where I was. I didn't remember some little town and it was 24/7. And I lived in the hospital and just I basically barely slept and just delivered babies non-stop for a month. And then and then I went to work in a small town in Idaho called Orphino, which nobody had never heard of.

It's a logging town with 3,500 people, no stop lightss, and not even a McDonald's or any kind of chain of any any kind of chain of any sort. And uh there was five uh family doctors and one drunk surgeon. I was probably the most highly trained in obstetrics and also in C-section. So I was a C-section guy. So I had to cover all my own patients and I cover their patients and so I was exhausted after four years but it was an amazing experience. I mean delivering babies is just one of the highlights of my whole career.

I mean it's such a joy and um and I was very deliberate with my pregnant women about how to stay healthy and and and talk to them about it 100%. I didn't even know what I know now but I I studied nutrition in college. I was always a healthy eater. I I really um you know studied a lot about about this just out of my own interest uh before medical school and I actually uh took nutrition at Cornell. So I was really u very aware of it.

You know it was one of the highlights of my career and and and I and I was so frustrated that people just didn't understand this and then they didn't understand how important it was to regulate their biology in a way that you're you're in a s you have a sacred duty here to create a little human and how do you create a healthy little human and that's what we're talking about here. How do you how do you give your baby the best chance at a good and healthy life?

How do you not program it by eating the wrong things or by not eating enough the right things? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's about vulnerability. Yeah. And this whole the field of epigenetic research is so important. Um so I think I think people are starting to become aware of it. But you're literally writing in the the genetic expression expression expression software. software. software. You're the great programmer of your baby's DNA. baby's DNA. baby's DNA. That's right. That's right. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So you can program quite a responsibility.

Yeah, it kind of is. And I I'm that's why I'm like my daughter why I'm like my daughter just like I'm like she just you know just recently became pregnant. So I'm like oh god what is she doing? She's in she's exhausted. She's an orthopedic surgery resident. She's working 14 hours a day. a day. a day. The hospital food is you know like so I'm like I can't get you meals. Well any small step that you can take is going to be beneficial. And also you know if you already had kids before or you're learning about this late in pregnancy it's okay.

Like your baby will be okay. I was on the cusp of pre-diabetes at 25 years old, even though I was eating pretty healthily, probably linked in some way to my mom's diet, but I was able to fend it off. You know, you're you're able to work with your epigenetic programming and your vulnerabilities. But for my son, I was like, if I can set him up to not have pre be on the cusp of pre-diabetes at 25, I want to do what I can to do that.

So, when you know more, you know, you change what you do. But, um, just one part. part. part. This is so great. So, Jesse, people can get your book anywhere nine months that count forever. for how pregnancy diet shapes your baby's future. It's out now. And you also have written other books, The Glucose Goddess Method and The Glucose Revolution. Where can people find you and learn more about what you're doing? The best place is Instagram, Glucose Goddess. That's me at glucose goddess. Check it out. Thank you, Mark.

Yeah. Thanks for being here. Thanks for coming all the way from France. Your baby, I hope, is somewhere close by. by. by. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, he's back in France. He's fine. No, I'm kidding. I'm kidding. And uh and I wish you the best of luck and thank you for raising the awareness around sugar. You know, I was beating that drum for a long time, but I wasn't as smart or as good as you at it. So, I thank you for doing the work and and getting this out there.

Really? Thank you, Mark. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure. Mike, my pleasure. my pleasure. my pleasure. If you love that last video, you're going to love the next one. Check it out here.