Here’s The Thing With Alec Baldwin WNYC (Mary Ellen Matthews) Host: Alec Baldwin Robert Lustig: Transcript Monday, July 02, 2012 Alec Baldwin: I’m Alec Baldwin and you’re listening to Here’s the Thing from WNYC Radio. One of every three American adults is obese. Some reacted to Mayor [Michael] Bloomberg’s recent proposal to limit the sale of plus size sodas as just another example of a super sized government, but the truth is stark. Children today are the first American generation to have a shorter life expectancy than their parents, in large part due to obesity. As you probably already know, obesity is linked to diabetes, heart disease and even cancer and is arguably becoming the most pressing public health issue of our time. Last year this issue became a personal one when my doctor told me I was pre-diabetic. So when I read about Dr. Robert Lustig and his widely popular anti-sugar lecture posted online, I paid attention. And next, I gave up sugar. Robert Lustig [video clip]: So why do I call it the Coca-Cola conspiracy? Well, what’s in Coke? Caffeine, good, good. So what’s caffeine? It’s a mild stimulant, right? It’s also a diuretic. It makes you pee free water. What else is in Coke? We’ll get to the sugar in a minute. What else? Salt, 55 milligrams of sodium per can, it’s like drinking a pizza. So what happens if you take on sodium and lose free water, you get? Thirstier, right. So why is there so much sugar in Coke? To hide the salt. Alec Baldwin: Dr. Lustig is a pediatric endocrinologist at UC San Francisco. Back in the '80s he became interested in diet and obesity while working at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis. He was treating kids recovering from brain tumor surgery. Robert Lustig: I had a stable of kids who were enormously obese. And thing was they weren’t obese before the tumor, but they started gaining weight at 30 to 40 pounds a year after the tumor. Alec Baldwin: Per year? Robert Lustig: Per year. With no cessation, nonstop. Alec Baldwin: These kids suffered from something called hypothalamic obesity, an especially heinous form of obesity that doesn’t respond to diet or exercise. Robert Lustig: In 1994 when the hormone Leptin was first discovered it became very clear that these kids, because that area of the brain was dead, they couldn’t see their Leptin signal. Now normally Leptin will tell you, you don’t need to eat so much and you can burn energy properly. Alec Baldwin: It literally is the signal about appetite. Robert Lustig: Right. And these kids were constantly hungry and worst yet, they were the world’s biggest couch potatoes. They lost interest in every single thing around them. They would sit on the couch, eat Doritos and sleep. This was their life. And the parents would come to me and say this is double jeopardy. My child has survived the tumor only to succumb to a complication of the treatment. They are non-functional. [Crosstalk] Alec Baldwin: Why did they become couch potatoes? What was the link there? Robert Lustig: Because when your brain sees Leptin, you want to burn energy, you want to exercise, you want to be physically active, you want to concentrate, you want to go do things. Alec Baldwin: So Leptin signals the body to exercise? Robert Lustig: Leptin signals the body that you have enough energy on board to exercise. Alec Baldwin: Right. Robert Lustig: When your brain can’t see it, your brain thinks you’re starving. And my job was to figure out a way to take care of these kids. So my research in obesity started back in 1995. We said okay, these kids brain--that area of the brain is dead. I can’t bring it back. I’m not a neurosurgeon, I can’t transplant the hypothalamus. What can I do? So after doing some research [I] realized that we could work downstream of the brain. The brain was signaling the pancreas to make extra insulin. Insulin makes you store energy. So these kids are known to have enormously high insulin levels. So I said, all right let’s give these kids a medicine that will block the release of insulin. We did a study and low and behold patient starting losing weight. But more importantly they started exercising. One kid started competitive swimming; two kids started lifting weights at home. One kid became the manager of his high school basketball team, running around collecting all the basketballs. Alec Baldwin: Right. Robert Lustig: I mean, you know parents were calling me up within a week saying 'I’ve got my kid back.' Alec Baldwin: Right. But some people also link this - who you talk about the activity or the lack of activity to political things and economic things like cuts in school budgets for activities and so forth and technology. That kids are much more interested in virtual games and not getting out there and playing a game. Do you see that with the kids you work with as well? Robert Lustig: There’s no question that all those things are true. The question is are those cause or effect. There are a lot of correlations and a lot of ‘em have nothing to do with anything. The point was this was cause because we were interfering with insulin release and these kids changed their behavior. And that was the first key to what I think is the entire enchilada in terms of the obesity epidemic. Alec Baldwin: And then what happened for you? What did you do next? Robert Lustig: So then we said maybe there are adults out there who have the same problem; they just don’t have a brain tumor. Let’s look for it. So we did a whole study, pilot study, with 44 obese adults and we gave ‘em the same drug to do the same thing. And low and behold, 8 out of the 44, not all of ‘em by any means, but 8 out of the 44 lost a lot of weight, a pound a week over 24 weeks without doing anything. And what was even more amazing was their fat intake didn’t change, their protein intake didn’t change. Their carbohydrate intake dropped on a dime. They went from 900 calories a day to 350 calories a day in carbohydrate. They stopped snacking between meals. And the most important -- Alec Baldwin: Crackers. Robert Lustig: Right. Bugles, you know. Alec Baldwin: I can’t believe you just said Bugles. Robert Lustig: You bet. Alec Baldwin: Pringles. Robert Lustig: Absolutely. Alec Baldwin: Yeah. Robert Lustig: And these kids needed to get their insulin down and the medicine did it. And these adults needed to get their insulin down and the medicine did it for them too. And most importantly, when we got their insulin down guess what, they started exercising. So this all of a sudden became very clear what’s going on. For these kids with the brain tumors they couldn’t see their Leptin, their insulins were sky high because their brain was starving. And because their brain was starving they would eat everything under the sun and it still wouldn’t be enough ‘cause they could never see their Leptin. And what we realized was this is obesity too. They can’t see their Leptin either. Alec Baldwin: Well, why? They don’t have brain tumors. Robert Lustig: That’s where sugar came in. Alec Baldwin: So sugar was a culprit that enabled other bad eating. Robert Lustig: Exactly. And we’ve learned that the higher your insulin goes the hungrier you get. Alec Baldwin: The hungrier you are. Robert Lustig: That’s right. Alec Baldwin: So sugar is an appetite stimulant. Robert Lustig: In a sense, yes. Alec Baldwin: Accelerant, whatever you want to call it. Robert Lustig: You can call it that. Alec Baldwin: Right. Robert Lustig: Absolutely. We know that because David Ludwig at my opposite number at Boston Children’s, he prepped a bunch of kids with a soda, a can of soda, 150 calories, and then he let ‘em lose at the fast food restaurant. So the question is did they eat more or did they eat less. What do you think? Alec Baldwin: They ate more. Robert Lustig: They ate more. Alec Baldwin: Right. Robert Lustig: Their insulin was high and also there’s a -- Alec Baldwin: High insulin makes you hungry. Robert Lustig: That’s right. High insulin makes you hungry and also there’s a hormone in your stomach that signals hunger called Ghrelin and when Ghrelin’s high you’re hungry and sugar doesn’t knock it down. Alec Baldwin: When I gave up sugar it was amazing. It was like pushing a toboggan along a track to eventually get down the slope. The first couple weeks, the first couple months, early May through June. By the time I get to July and August we’re going downhill and the weights just coming off me. Now I cut out carbs and I gave up pasta because that was the mega dose of carbohydrate. I mean I would eat you know the fish tank sized bowl of pasta. You know I ate a lot of pasta. Robert Lustig: And it’s easy to do. A lot of people think that the Italian diet is the Mediterranean diet. Alec Baldwin: No.