Addiction is a primary chronic illness that can manifest in various forms, including food addiction.
This is what Bitten Jonsson wants to emphasize. She was a nurse who struggled with smoking and alcoholism at the onset of her career. She was forced to enter rehab and during that time, she learned addiction medicine, which helped her overcome her drinking and smoking habits. Yet she continued to struggle with compulsive eating of ice cream and chocolate. That was when a doctor diagnosed her as a "food addict.”
This conversation brings to light the importance of understanding addiction as a primary illness and the work our brain does to heal from addiction. Bitten recounts her own battle with addiction and road to recovery. She also emphasizes how social media, screens, and processed meals all contribute to the development of addictive behaviors.
Quick Guide:
01:01 Introduction
10:49 Different addictions we may not be aware of
19:03 Addiction is an illness
24:06 We get addicted to processed foods
29:34 Substance overload
36:32 Energy drinks, processed foods, screens, and social media lead to a foggy brain
42:05 Process addiction and marrying addiction and metabolic health
48:57 Components of processed food
49:28 The shape-shifting beast called addiction
1:05:53 Hydrochloric acid’s function in the body
1:06:39 Closing and contacts
Get to Know Our Guest:
Bitten Jonsson now continues her work on addiction medicine by training professionals which she calls holistic addiction medicine.
"But it's important to understand that addiction is a primary chronic, progressive, and deadly if not arrested illness, but you die of the consequences. So, it is a brain illness, with physical, psychological, social, and spiritual consequences." - Bitten Jonsson
Connect with her:
Website: https://www.bittensaddiction.com/en/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/BittenJonsson
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjACTQb2C2J6yRhd7dcX5rw/playlists
Links:
The End of Overeating by David Kessler: https://amzn.to/3ZxpJCe
Terence Gorski, Six Stages of Recovery: https://www.taratreatmentcenter.org/terence-gorski-six-stages
Chances are, you wouldn't be listening to this podcast if you didn't need to change your life and get healthier.
So take action right now. Book a call with Dr. Ovadia's team.
One small step in the right direction is all it takes to get started.
How to connect with Stay Off My Operating Table:
Twitter:
Learn more:
Theme Song : Rage Against
Written & Performed by Logan Gritton & Colin Gailey
(c) 2016 Mercury Retro Recordings
Addiction is a primary chronic illness that can manifest in various forms, including food addiction.
This is what Bitten Jonsson wants to emphasize. She was a nurse who struggled with smoking and alcoholism at the onset of her career. She was forced to enter rehab and during that time, she learned addiction medicine, which helped her overcome her drinking and smoking habits. Yet she continued to struggle with compulsive eating of ice cream and chocolate. That was when a doctor diagnosed her as a "food addict.”
This conversation brings to light the importance of understanding addiction as a primary illness and the work our brain does to heal from addiction. Bitten recounts her own battle with addiction and road to recovery. She also emphasizes how social media, screens, and processed meals all contribute to the development of addictive behaviors.
Quick Guide:
01:01 Introduction
10:49 Different addictions we may not be aware of
19:03 Addiction is an illness
24:06 We get addicted to processed foods
29:34 Substance overload
36:32 Energy drinks, processed foods, screens, and social media lead to a foggy brain
42:05 Process addiction and marrying addiction and metabolic health
48:57 Components of processed food
49:28 The shape-shifting beast called addiction
1:05:53 Hydrochloric acid’s function in the body
1:06:39 Closing and contacts
Get to Know Our Guest:
Bitten Jonsson now continues her work on addiction medicine by training professionals which she calls holistic addiction medicine.
"But it's important to understand that addiction is a primary chronic, progressive, and deadly if not arrested illness, but you die of the consequences. So, it is a brain illness, with physical, psychological, social, and spiritual consequences." - Bitten Jonsson
Connect with her:
Website: https://www.bittensaddiction.com/en/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/BittenJonsson
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjACTQb2C2J6yRhd7dcX5rw/playlists
Links:
The End of Overeating by David Kessler: https://amzn.to/3ZxpJCe
Terence Gorski, Six Stages of Recovery: https://www.taratreatmentcenter.org/terence-gorski-six-stages
Chances are, you wouldn't be listening to this podcast if you didn't need to change your life and get healthier.
So take action right now. Book a call with Dr. Ovadia's team.
One small step in the right direction is all it takes to get started.
How to connect with Stay Off My Operating Table:
Twitter:
Learn more:
Theme Song : Rage Against
Written & Performed by Logan Gritton & Colin Gailey
(c) 2016 Mercury Retro Recordings
S3E29 Bitten Jonsson
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
addiction, people, eat, processed food, alcoholics, sugar, brain, food, addicted, sugar addict, understand, addict, drinking, dopamine, food addiction, drug, create, training, craving, thought
Announcer 00:10
He was a morbidly obese surgeon destined for an operating table and an early death. Now he's a rebel MD who is Fabulously Fit and fighting to make America healthy again. This is Stay Off My Operating Table with Dr. Philip Ovadia.
Jack Heald 00:37
Welcome back, thanks for joining us today at the Stay Off My Operating Table podcast with Dr. Philip Ovadia. We are joined today by Bitten Jonsson, I believe this is our first guest we've ever had from Sweden, or at least, who's recording in Sweden during the podcast. So, Phil, give us a quick introduction. And let's find out what this girl is working on.
Dr. Philip Ovadia 01:01
Definitely. And yeah, I do believe that Bitten, you're our first from Sweden, really honored to have you on. Bitten has been at the forefront of the food addiction issue. Now for many, many years. And I know this is a topic that we sort of touched on a little bit with some other guests and had some discussions, but now we can really get into it. With that in this you've truly is one of the world's experts on this. So, with that, Bitten if you wouldn't mind introducing yourself, giving a little bit of your background to our audience?
Bitten Jonsson 01:41
Great. Thank you very much. I'm a nurse since 1973, and intern internal medicine was my specialty when I worked in the hospital and so forth. And I was very happy lucky go bird that started smoking because I wanted to lose weight when I was 19 as appetite suppressor. The big girls taught us that. When we were in nursing school, we always dieted. Dieted and dieted and beaten and dieted. But we didn't know anything else. But I started smoking and I love smoking. And then we went out dancing, and we started drinking and I love drinking more than anything. I thought why I haven't done this before I was 19? And to make a long story short, when I was 33, my ex-husband, American, we lived in California, we lived in Redding, California, he forced me into treatment by threatening me to tell the hospital I worked as a head nurse that I was an alcoholic. And of course, you don't want them to know that. So, I said, okay, I'll go to rehab. And I thought I'll be there a few weeks, and it's gonna be nice to relax and sort of, but boy, I didn't know what I was getting into. I got into one of the best treatment centers in the world Capistrano by the Sea in California. And I hated it because I was so filled with shame. And I thought I can’t be an alcoholic. I mean, that's sick. But they convinced me by teaching me addiction medicine and neuroscience. That's what got me understanding what it was. So, I've been in love with addiction medicine since I started training, never went back to nursing in that way. And I started to learn and read and train and do anything addiction medicine. And I worked with alcoholics, pill addicts, and drug addicts in the traditional rehab. And then, in ‘92, I met Terence Gorski, Synapse Corporation. And he was the world leader of relapse prevention. And I went to the training because I wanted to help all the alcoholics I was working with because they went to four weeks of rehab, went out, went back to drinking, and we didn't understand how they could do that after a good treatment. So, when I was listening to Terry for two days here in seminar in Sweden, he started talking about warning signs and hidden warning signs. You sit there and think I'm learning so I can teach the clients, and suddenly dawns on you, oh, Jesus, I do that. Check. Check. Check. It was a 37-point-long warning sign list. And I had very good sobriety. I went to support meetings. But I was a very highly stressed person. I worked as a program director at the treatment center, loads of pressure to get the sensors up all the time from the owners and so it was really tough, and I'm a high-strung speed-free person, that's my personality. I talk fast, I walk fast, everything goes fast. So, that's when it dawned on me that something has to happen. And then he says it like this, people that keep smoking, recovering alcoholics and drug addicts if they keep smoking, drinking loads of coffee, and eating junk food, he mentioned those three things, they have a much higher risk to relapse.
Jack Heald 05:22
Smoking, coffee, and junk food
Bitten Jonsson
Yeah, yeah.
Jack Heald
Even in recovering alcoholics leads to entire alcoholic...
Bitten Jonsson 05:32
Yeah, much higher risk. And he talked about a study that showed that after two years, people that did that, 86% had relapsed. Whereas another group, which taught them healthy living, good food, quit smoking, quit or cut down on coffee, 28% had relapsed. So, 86 and 26. And this is ‘92 in February. I was just incredibly taken. And I thought, how is this connected? So, I'm driving home, and I called Terry at the hotel and said, Whatever gonna happen, I'm going to come and train with you, I have to train with you. So, then I went to Chicago and did a lot of his trainings several times. And of course, the day after I quit smoking, like the speed freak I am, I knew nothing about what's going to happen. So, I thought, tomorrow, I quit smoking. And I cut down on coffee. And then I had another thought, thank God, I don't eat junk food. Because to me, junk food is a Swede that was only McDonald's. It wasn't sweet. It wasn't ice cream and chocolate and stuff. That's not junk food. Only McDonald's. So, talk about twisted thinking, and not understanding how twisted my thinking was at that time. But that's what I was taught over in Sweden. So, when I quit smoking, you can imagine, I had chocolate sauce up to my ears. I mean, you guys, I couldn't stop. Every day, I said, because I started gaining weight. And I didn't have a weight problem before that. So, I thought, what's wrong? Well, I know you gain a few kilos when you quit smoking. But I passed that limit, and I kept gaining. So, then I said, in the morning, I said, Tonight, I'm not going to eat chocolate and ice cream. And I mean, we’re talking huge amounts. It increased. Every evening, I ate more chocolate because it was my last evening eating chocolate, right? Tomorrow, I’m gonna quit. And then the next evening, I ate even more, and I said, but only today, I’m going to quit on Monday, and so on. And then I worked with this American lady, she worked for Parkside Medical Corporation, huge corporation that had treatment centers all over US. She was over in Sweden training us because I'd moved back to Sweden then. And so, I said to her, come on, what's wrong with me? I could quit alcohol. I've been sober since 1985. And I could quit nicotine. I've been sober, without that for almost a year. How come I can't quit sugar and ice cream, which was my favorite drug? And she said to me, you might be a food addict. And I almost fell backward. I’ve never heard the terminology. And I stared at her. What is the food addict? And by the way, I don't want to be a food addict. But she convinced me by talking to me, pointing out the loss of control all the same, exactly same symptoms as when I was drinking. I was hiding. I was lying. I was sneaking. I was not denying, fooling myself. Everything was there. So, in October of 1993, I got the opportunity to go to a Lutheran General Hospital in Chicago and train with the founders of using the same model for alcohol pills and drugs on food addicts. So, that's how my story started you guys and then you know the rest is just story I almost said but that's how I got into this. So, I didn't choose it. It chooses me is what I say. And I love every minute of it. But what I've done through the years is I've developed the model. So, today I call myself, I say I have the illness of addiction. My outlets were alcohol, nicotine, sugar because it is the psychoactive substance that makes you addicted. I'm not a food addict. I never binged on boiled corn or cucumbers.
Dr. Philip Ovadia 10:05
So that's one of the first questions, I think that always comes up when you bring up food addiction to people. And they'll say something along the lines of, well alcohol isn't essential to life. Tobacco isn't essential to life. Gambling isn't essential to life. All these things that people become addicted to aren't essential to life, but food is essential to life. And so how do we kind of define when you've become addicted to food? And then the related part of it, which is, I think what you were just touching on is it all food? Or is it just certain components of food that we get addicted to?
Bitten Jonsson 10:49
Well, we have to understand the progression of addiction, food addiction, sugar addiction, and that is I do a diagnostic interview on people which have developed the instruments sugar, where I can map a whole person's life from the first symptom of addiction until today. And usually, they come to us when they are 40, 50, 60 years old. So, they have had a battle of 30, 40 years with food addiction. And there is no other illness that has so many diagnoses or labels like binging, bulimia, anorexia, restriction, binge-overeating, overeating, volume eating, I could go on and on. I usually present a long list of all those names. And so many people are trained in one part of seeing all these they don't see the whole picture. So, what is going on? I don't work with eating disorders because I always make sure that I diagnose somebody, if it is addiction, the restriction, the bulimia, the purging, the volume eating is a process addiction, which is a consequence of the sugar addiction in the brain. Because you're trying to control it, you're trying to diet. So many people said to me, yeah, but I'm a food addict. I can overeat anything. And I said, of course, you can. Because your reward center is screwed up. Your brain is hampered, it’s faulty wired, due to the sugar, flour, processed foods that you've been eating for years. So, when we look at them, you see that as a kid, you love sugar. You go for the goodies. But when you come up as a teenager, you start gaining weight. And the interesting thing with tuffer, since we know that those processed foods and sugars give you insulin swelling, you know as a doctor, that people can be fat on the inside. So, I think that is many times the cause for people trying to starve because not everybody will be overweight of the way they're eating. We know that too. They can eat a lot. So, in the teenage year, they start dieting. And you also know the biochemistry with dieting, the on-off, high insulin, volatile blood sugar, trying to restrict and then you eat again, your binge, and so forth. And that is one good way to destroy your metabolic system, right? And your microbiome and your reward center, the neurotransmitter. So now the whole body is in havoc. So, then some people get high from starving so they can go into what other people would call anorexia, but I call it restriction. As a process addiction, they get high on starving.
Jack Heald 13:56
I want to ask you to just clarify something. That's a second time you've said the phrase process addiction.
Bitten Jonsson 14:04
Yes.
Jack Heald 14:06
So, they’re literally, okay, they're addicted to a particular process.
Bitten Jonsson 14:12
Yes. And the researchers the professor Lars Olson and Stefan Bruni at Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, where I used to work as a clinical supervisor, they did all the groundbreaking research on game, gambling, which they could prove that when you gamble, and you get addicted, you have the same effect on the reward center with the dopamine, all the other neurotransmitters, it plays the same havoc, and it creates the same addiction as if you take something. So as an addiction specialist, I talked about intake addiction, things you put in your body, nicotine, alcohol, drugs, food, certain foods, but you also have process addictions. Like some people are addicted to exercise, they get high from that, they get a rush. Starving is a process addiction for the clients that are sugar addicted from the beginning. Binging is a process addiction. Purging is a process addiction. They have many other ways too.
Jack Heald 15:31
I was gonna ask you about that because you'd mentioned anorexia and bulimia.
Bitten Jonsson 15:36
But I don't use it since that is something that the people in the psychiatric, in psychology ward uses, even though I think that they many times have a sugar addict on their hands, but they don't have the knowledge and understand how to diagnose it, how it started. So, they think it is an emotional psychological problem, right? But I have met so many so-called anorexics and bulimics. But I call them overeaters or purging or restriction just to make sure that I want to tell you that I do only work with addicts. If I were to diagnose somebody coming to me, that is anorectic, and they are not addicted, I will not work with them. Do you understand why there’s a difference? Yeah. Okay.
Jack Heald 16:27
So, what we're saying is that things that present and are currently labeled anorexia, and or bulimia...
Bitten Jonsson 16:38
Or overeating of every food we call volume addiction.
Jack Heald 16:42
Yeah, these can be addictions but are not necessarily physical addictions. All right. That's, you cleared it up, thank you. I didn't want to throw you off track there. But I wanted to straighten that out on my head.
Bitten Jonsson 16:59
They could be, of course, they could be harmful use when it comes to sugar, flour, processed food. And it could be caused by something. So, we differ between social users, people that had no loss of control, no problem, they can have a glass of wine, nothing happens. They can have a piece of chocolate, cookie, cake, nothing happens. No craving, no loss of control, no negative consequences. We call those social users or jokingly normie. And then you have another group called harmful users. They are the ones that eat because they're stressed, because they're sad, on emotions of party style culture. So here, you have to ask, why do you do this? But they don't have the addiction picture, they don't have loss of control like an addict. So, with them, you treat the cause. Okay? You have to be skilled in asking the why and looking for why and then you treat the stress, the emotions, the trauma, the PTSD, whatever caused it, and they are the people you can help moderation therapy. They could improve their food, they don't have to be as strict as a sugar addict. We have to be 100% abstinent if we want to recover. So, people that drink too much could also have a harmful use and learn to moderate drinking because they weren't alcoholic. Are you with me? Okay, and then we'll take the third group, which is the only group that I'm interested in, which is addiction. I only want to work with addicts, I think they are the most wonderful people in the world to work with. The other two groups bore me to death.
Dr. Philip Ovadia 19:03
So, but just to dig into a little bit more, so there are people who are basically physically addicted, biochemically addicted, that may not have the emotional underpinnings of that. So, because many of the people that I work with who, and I'm working on the end effects of the addiction, the metabolic health problems that come from that addiction, but when you get into it, it seems to me that most of them have an emotional component. There's a reason that they started overeating, or, well, maybe, as I think through it, I guess maybe that's not exactly true, but that's really the question. Does the processed food would lead to the biochemical addiction and the physical addiction, or do most people have an emotional tie to the food that leads them then to overeat, and it gets to the point where it becomes harmful?
Bitten Jonsson 20:16
Processed food causes addiction. Addiction is a primary illness, and it starts very early, three or four years of age is when you diagnose an addict. You can see that the first symptoms come 3, 4, 5 years of age. And you haven't developed emotional problems or trauma at that age, but you start getting hooked on the drug. And most people become very depressed. If you look at the symptoms of volatile blood sugar, you see that the mild thing could be irritation. If you go down the curve, which I teach all my clients, suicidal thoughts are very common in the end, panic anxiety. I mean, you have very severe symptoms, they are caused by the addiction, they aren't the cause of the addiction. So, the whole society plus the patients themselves think that they eat for a reason. But they eat for the problems that the sugar causes. So, I like to say that I work with teaching professionals and clients how to put the horse in front of the cart, and not the other way around.
Jack Heald 21:30
Would you explain a term real quick? Because I'm not a medical professional. Sure. You said addiction is a primary disease.
Bitten Jonsson 21:41
Yes. It's not caused by something else. It's an illness in itself. It's caused by a psychoactive substance or a process hitting your reward center. It's not because of a trauma or something that happened to you. But of course, people do experience trauma, but then it's...
Jack Heald 22:00
Okay. I want to make sure I understand. So, what you're saying is that a primary disease is something that has a biological root cause? Okay, whereas things like PTSD may have a behavioral or a not necessarily a biological root cause.
Bitten Jonsson 22:26
Also, social or cultural or something that happened to you, or trauma or anything in that way, and trauma could be in one people's eye very small, in another as to something you think the one-person thing is not that severe, but another person could react severely to that. It has to do with your sensitivity, the way you’re raised, the bonding, there's so many factors that, I mean, it would take a long time to get into that. But it's important to understand that addiction is a primary chronic, progressive, and deadly if not arrested illness, but you die of the consequences. So, it is a brain illness, with physical, psychological, social, and spiritual consequences.
Jack Heald 23:22
We could just stop it right now. This is I mean, that's just this I've got a good friend...
Bitten Jonsson
Never heard of this before?
Jack Heald
Well, I don't think I've ever heard all the dots, ever seen all the dots connected. Heard all the pieces. I'm using all the wrong words here. But yeah, well, first of all, the idea that addiction is a primary disease now that I understand what primary disease means. And you said something else, I wrote this down, and you said processed food causes addiction.
Bitten Jonsson 23:55
Yeah. What do you think alcoholism is caused by? Would you be an alcoholic if you never drank?
Jack Heald 24:04
Very good point.
Dr. Philip Ovadia 24:06
Yeah, so along those lines, I guess that becomes the question does food addiction exist outside of a processed food environment? And unfortunately, in our modern environment, that's a theoretical discussion because no one exists outside of processed food environment these days, I guess, maybe, except for some of the few ancestral populations that we still have. I guess, theoretically would someone or do the people who have this potential for processed food addiction, if they didn't have processed food, would they not be addicted? I mean, you kind of said it earlier, no one gets addicted to boiled cod, no one gets addicted to steak. We only get addicted to processed foods.
Bitten Jonsson 25:07
But it's very interesting to see that I've had a few clients that grew up in communities, rural communities, they only had lived on meat, butter, cheese, veggies. Potatoes were part of it, but not a lot, but they ate very, very good food. Cooked from things on one ingredient. I say that's how we should eat. In an egg, there’s only egg. Don't mix things. So, but they had a grandfather that was an alcoholic, or you know that it was in their genetic makeup. So, when they are 10, 11, 12 years old, and they are exposed to sweets, sugars. Remember that this is every flour. Flour is sugar, processed food. They are exposed to that. And they go bonkers. They immediately start losing control and get the craving. And when you look at the research Professor Heurgangel at Sahlgrenska did many years ago about sensitivity, you can see that the person which is born with a genetic sensitivity, which I think is a superpower, Phillip, to have a super sensitive brain, but you need a driver license on it, so when they get exposed to this, they just start wanting more and more. So, it is the site... We have to start understanding how dangerous psychoactive substances is on our brain. So, they go for it immediately. And during an angle showed that normies, as I call them, the people that doesn't run for the store after one piece of chocolate, they have one piece of chocolate, never satisfied. And half a glass of wine never satisfied. Nothing happens. There's no hula and they only
Jack Heald 27:19
There’s no what?
Bitten Jonsson 27:22
Hula, hula. Yeah, right, right. But anyway, what I'm trying to say is that for some people, that creates an intense experience in their brain, it's physiological, you didn't choose it. So, this person thinks, oh, yeah, I love this, I want another glass of wine. I want this and that. So, they start using this substance more and more. And if you understand neurotransmitters, synapses, and all that in the brain, you know that in the beginning, the brain will up-regulate, because it tries, the brain wants to create homeostasis. So, if you are flooded with dopamine, it has to make more receptors, right? So, it up-regulates. Wuhoo, more fun, and then we have to have more of the substance, but then you run out of neurotransmitters.
Jack Heald 28:21
I want to, okay, we've hit another medical thing that I don't understand, I've never heard this before, I want to make sure I understand it. We just have to take a baseline, you've got X number of d dopamine receptors in your brain. You flood your system with something that creates, let's call it an excess of dopamine, the brain's response is to create additional dopamine receptors in order to bond to the dopamine. And that leaves you...
Bitten Jonsson 28:58
In order to create balance.
Jack Heald 29:03
And now your brain has a whole lot more dopamine receptors than it did prior to the flood. And now you're in a state where in order to fill them, you got to do whatever it was that flooded your system with this excess, that created this excess... Oh my god.
Bitten Jonsson 29:28
You have to take more.
Jack Heald 29:30
Now, I want to know how you back out of that. How do you get back to normal?
Bitten Jonsson 29:34
Yeah, I’ll tell you how. I’ll tell you why. Well, first of all, when it comes to food addicts, you have to remember that the brain is 60 to 70% fat, but it has to be a special fatty acid. So, if you think about it has to be EPA DHA, animal fat. You can't have what you call canola oil in your brain. But so, what's going to happen when you start flooding, in order to keep this going with the neurotransmitters and the receptors, you have to eat more and more or drink more and more, that's high tolerance. That's what we call high tolerance. So, what's gonna happen, you're gonna come to a point where you're gonna get so sick of everything you eat or drink so. So, the brain says, oh, this is really bad. Now we have to downregulate. So, because you run out of dopamine, because what does the body make dopamine from? Well, meat is one of the good sources of making dopamine, but you have you have to understand the whole system. With the fatty acid in your neurons, with the microbiome, with how your body will process and break down foods so that your intestine can make neurotransmitters, and yeah, and produce it. And a person that is eating like crazy on junk food or drinking, if we use that as a parallel example, they're not going to take good care of their nutrition, right? Or the stomach, the microbiome, and so forth. So now the body starts being really, really low energy, really moody, depressed, angry, pain, inflammation. I mean, I could go on and on for an hour about that. Do you understand what I mean?
Jack Heald
I think I get it. Yeah.
Bitten Jonsson
Yeah? So, what's gonna happen here now is you don't get a kick. But if you look at the curve, you're at an angle so beautifully did on this sensitivity chart, the effect goes down over time, the effect of the drug, the hoopla goes down, right? Are you with me?
Jack Heald
I think so.
Bitten Jonsson
But if you look at craving, that curve goes up. Craving goes up.
Jack Heald 32:08
Oh, yes. They’re actually the same thing?
Bitten Jonsson 32:11
Yeah, well, yeah. Now you have cravings, but you don't get any effective. And if you eat 40 cakes, right, you just get sick as hell, then something else kicks in. You, your brain, which now is only a reward center and the reptilian brain, the rest is pretty much shut off. Your neocortex, limbic system, and prefrontal cortex, it doesn't function well anymore. So, what you're going to do, you go into drug-seeking behavior. So, what do people do now? They start drinking on top of this because then you can start all over again. That's why I work with something called addiction interaction disorder. I look at one illness, many outlets, and how this is connected to each other. So, this basically also can explain to you guys why it takes about two years of working intense biochemical repair to heal the brain to get the mental horsepower back, to get somebody clear in their head, take away the foggy brain before you can start doing therapy on the people that need therapy. But see, we work in the opposite way, we start doing therapy right away when their brain is absolutely foggy and very, very, very low on energy. And then we ask people, why do you eat? Which is the most stupid question you can do with a food addict, or a sugar addict. You don't ask why when it is a primary illness, you ask, how can I help you? Because there is no why. Because the brain has been overtaken by this monster, which we call the shape-shifting beast. Because it does shapeshift into storing, into bulimia and in alcohol and God knows what. Screens, social media, that's the big thing now. Well, so I mean, this is the process of addiction that we have to understand. So, if you look at it, kid sweet tooth, teenager dieting, older teenager starving, restricting, then losing control, binging, purging, trying to control, lose weight and then no more energy volume eater, become fat. Can you see the picture?
Jack Heald 34:42
I think I do.
Dr. Philip Ovadia 34:43
Yeah, and it's so interesting the addiction interacts and that you've mentioned because again, this is something I see all the time, that when we get a hold of people, when we get them off processed food how many of them end up cutting back on other things in their lives that they probably didn't really recognize as addiction? Alcohol is one of the common ones. I mean, my personal experiences when I have eliminated processed food from my diet, my drive, my desire for alcohol just kind of went away. And I don't think I had any of the components of alcoholism, I mean, I was able, I had no trouble moderating my alcohol use, it's just now when I drink alcohol, I just don't really get an effect from it. So, I don't really seek it out anymore. And again, I've seen that in many of my patients as well.
Bitten Jonsson 35:48
Yeah, but this is, I did a small study once on 202 clients that were all diagnosed sugar addicts, right, with all those symptoms I described, and 74% had pathological reactions to alcohol, but they don't drink like alcoholics, because food is the main drug for them, right? So, but when they drink, they lose control, even if they drink twice a year. So, once they get one drink in, they can't stop it, and they get negative consequences. And the definition of addiction is that if you have negative consequences of the substance and you can’t stop, that’s addiction, basically. Short one.
Dr. Philip Ovadia 36:32
So how, how prevalent do we think this food addiction is? Because again, I deal with, what you could say, is the end effect of the food addiction, metabolic disease. We know the statistics show that 9 out of 10 people have some element of metabolic disease. And again, you don't really get metabolic disease if you're not eating processed food. So, do we think that all of these people are basically addicted to processed food?
Bitten Jonsson 37:09
No, I don't think so. But I think most of them have an addiction. If I were to screen them and do my diagnostic interview with them, I would probably see addiction all over the place. But I think also you do have some harmful users that have other problems they need to work with. But they are a very small group. Today, they are. I think, if I look back these 30 years that I've been in this field, it has increased tremendously. I would say that it is scary. And the next generation... I'm 70. So, if I look at my, I don't have any kids myself, I have lots of nieces and nephews that I am very close to, but if I look at them, and even younger, the ones 15, 16 I would say that we are in for a disaster. I think I think it is. And since energy drinks came together with the processed food and the screens and social media, I think we have so many, many, many, that it is unbelievable, that has foggy brain. And the hard part that I see is that they all get this diagnosis or kinds of diagnosis and here in Sweden, I'm not so sure I know a little bit about US, but here, they put them SSRI and SNRI, which is a totally, absolutely disaster. That chemical treatment for something that's caused by the energy drinks, the lack of nutrition in their brain, and we have another big scare over here, which is veganism. All the vegans because our brain cannot run on vegan fat. It is made for animal fat. And you could argue to death with these people. I stopped arguing with them. And many, many years ago, maybe 10, 15 years ago, I said no to treating people that are vegans if they don't change the food because I could never help them because all they eat is carbs. How can you do that on a carb-sensitive brain? It doesn't work. So, I don't work with them.
Jack Heald 39:32
I would like to go down a road we don't, we've never gone down on this show before. You talked about social media, our screens. I've been aware for quite some time that many of the apps that we run on our phones are specifically designed to create a dopamine hit. Many of these social media companies Have neuroscientists on staff who explain the reward behavior that can be programmed into our applications. However, having said that, it never occurred to me that this could create literally the exact same physiological pathology that too much alcohol can create. Am I understanding you right?
Bitten Jonsson 40:34
You really do. And I said, okay, go ahead and grab 10 young people with their phones, lock them up, take off their phones, and you're gonna see detox from a detoxing withdrawal from health.
Jack Heald 40:47
Not metaphorical. You're not talking about metaphorical doom.
Bitten Jonsson
No, no no.
Jack Heald
You're talking literal brain screwed-up-ness exactly as if they were alcoholics or drug addicts. It is the same thing. It's the same primary disease.
Bitten Jonsson 41:06
Yes, yes, absolutely.
Jack Heald 41:09
Phil, is your brain boggled here?
Dr. Philip Ovadia 41:13
I mean, I see it. I have young children. And I see the addictive behaviors in the kids these days. And so, we had Jen Cleveland on previous episode, and she works with a childhood metabolic clinic dealing with childhood diabetics, and she was talking about the increase that we are seeing in metabolic disease in these children. And yeah, I think it's related to all of this stuff. They have the processed food addiction. They have the screen addictions. The screen addictions lead them to be less active.
Bitten Jonsson 42:05
Higher craving, the drug-seeking behavior, remember the picture with the tolerance, increased tolerance, the cravings, so they have to go somewhere, and they don’t start drinking. But everything has to have an app nowadays. And I started noticing this some years ago, I have an iPhone. And when you have a missed call, it says call box, alerts you in a message box. It was a little that icon. Yeah, laying eight, that's the sign. So, in the old days, when you push that one, you came immediately to your answering machine. Just some years ago, suddenly it said, do you want to open your answering machine? And I go, why do I have to click again? So, I had to do one more click, right? And I started asking people who earn money on the clicks. So, if you think about it, now, you have to, you have to push, push, click, click, click, push, push. So, you're more and more spending time on the phone doing all these clickety-click and push, push. And that I think is very addictive. So, they are made in that way. And you need an app for everything now. Soon you got... I got sick the other day when I needed another app. I don't want all these apps. But I said one day you need an app at home that is going to give you permission to go pee. I bet you. You have to log in. That's crazy this is starting to be, but I tell you one thing, one of the first lessons I had about this process addiction, I read about it, but I have a good friend. He's a doctor, and he's trained in US by Patrick Carnes in sex and love addiction. He's certified.
Jack Heald
Sex and love addiction.
Bitten Jonsson
And he's told his story about his love addiction, falling in love all the time creates incredible dopamine rush, I'm telling you, but anyway. So, anyone that fell in love knows that. But anyway, so he got really sick in the end with tons of consequences. And the reason I can tell you is because he has talked about this in all the magazines in Sweden, he's written the book, he’s very open with this. So anyway, the thing that's interesting in his book, which is only in Swedish, is that when he goes into treatment, and they detox him from love addiction, he has all the symptoms, the heroin addict test, the pain in the body, the sweating. So, it's really true that process addiction is an addiction. And if you haven't seen it, watch it, you're gonna see the same pattern. The same withdrawal, panic, nausea, diarrhea, pain in your body.
Jack Heald 45:08
These are not just psychological responses.
Bitten Jonsson
No, no.
Jack Heald
These are literally biological responses to withdrawal from whatever particular thing gives you the rush.
Bitten Jonsson 45:22
The dopamine. But it's not only dopamine, everybody thinks it's all about dopamine. But it has to do with GABA, endorphins. Dopamine, you could see it as the conductor, keeping the symphony beautiful, but it affects all the other neurotransmitters, you have to understand that too. So, it plays havoc with the whole symphony. And also remember what I said about the stomach like, gluten is abrasive, it takes away villi. So, you don't have any good nutritional uptake, your microbiome is screwed up from all the junk food. So, you have, it's like we used to say here, the cat on the rat, and the rat on the rope, and on and on it goes. So, you have to understand, and that's why I created this training, which I call holistic addiction medicine. And I love that you said because this is one of my favorite sayings. Traditional medicine is one ill, one pill, all the time. One ill, one pill. Yeah.
Jack Heald 46:32
I love that. One ill, one pill.
Bitten Jonsson 46:34
Yeah, yeah, we have to create multidisciplinary teams, and we have to connect the dots. That's one of my favorite sayings, connect the dots, and Philip, I really think it's wonderful to hear you talk about that you work with metabolic health. Because what I'm doing during March, I'm doing a special intense training for the professionals I teach to treat sugar addiction in metabolic health. Because in addiction medicine, nobody teaches metabolic health. And you know what, in addiction medicine, nobody cares about metabolic health, or they have to marry. So that's my aim, to marry those fields. And I married other fields orthomolecular medicine, integrative functional medicine, all kinds of areas because addiction is a very complex, confusing illness, but it affects the whole human being. So, you have to connect the dots, you have to create multidisciplinary teams. And that's what I've been doing for years. And I love that. So, we have some very, very exciting lectures in my MHA training. I don't know if you saw that little thing, I put out on Twitter. But I think this is incredibly important that everybody would know something about metabolic health. Every human being even if they don't have a symptom. They should know something about it, right?
Dr. Philip Ovadia
Oh, yes.
Bitten Jonsson
People say, what is insulin? I think God have you lived under a rock? But everybody should know about that.
Dr. Philip Ovadia 48:23
Yeah, it's the challenge that we're working on every day to get metabolic health more in the forefront. And, yeah, the relationships with mental health are becoming clearer and clearer every day.
Bitten Jonsson
Yes, yes.
Dr. Philip Ovadia
Chris Palmer's new book is fabulous on that brain energy.
Bitten Jonsson 48:44
I know. I read it. It's here. Yeah. So, then I've had Georgia Ede in my training for a couple of years, she’s part of this is part of this training.
Dr. Philip Ovadia 48:57
Can we isolate the components of processed food? I mean, is it truly just sugar? Other people will talk about vegetable and the seed oils, other people will just talk about the lack of nutrients in the food. Can we separate out what is really driving addiction? Or is it truly the combination of kind-of all of the things that go into processed food that end up leading to it?
Bitten Jonsson 49:28
Well, okay, my first thought is just give a little example. When you start drinking, if you know alcoholism, and I work with a lot of alcoholics they keep switching from whiskey to wine because they think that's better. And they keep switching from one to another. And that's not going to work, right? But in the same way, drugs and pills and all that. So, the thing is that it is any sugar, sweetener, any flour, anything that becomes sugar in your body very quickly, processed food is just a combination of several things. Some people think fat is addictive, I don't. Salt, no way. Only if you mix it into something. Think eating unsweetened lard for a day. I dare you to do that. Nobody can do that or just eat salt one day. No. So, then it is the combination. And many years ago, I read Kessler's book, Overeating America, where he talks about how the food companies have specialists that combine flavors, chemicals molecules. Food that is broken down in molecules, and all that. And that creates bliss in your money. And it's also very fast uptake. We know about psychoactive substances, the faster your body can take it up, the more quickly you become addicted, right? Cocaine is one. Sugar is one of the worst. Because when you choose a piece of bread, that with your amylase enzyme in your mouth, it becomes sugar right away in your mouth and goes directly out to your blood. So, it's incredibly quick. So, I would say that you have to understand how it starts. So once addiction is established, it's going to try to eat everything in sight to get a bliss again. That's how people get so confused about what type of food it is that you become addicted to. But it starts with what I call sugars with an s in the end to talk about all these things that quickly become sugar in your body, rice, any high carbohydrate. And then you have to take the next step and think about how has this person eaten for years. Do they have leaky gut syndrome? Will their body leak things because the villi is broken due to gluten? Will it go quaker out in their system? We know that in order to produce oxytocin, which is your body's largest relaxation system, but for many women is not a female hormone which some people think, is you need protein and fat in order to build that. So, if you live on a lot of carbohydrates, your oxytocin levels will go low. And then in order to get a rise in oxytocin, you need to eat a huge amount of food. You need to extend your stomach. That's when you get a kick of oxytocin. So, now you have to start overeating everything. So, this is what makes this so complex. Yeah, exactly what pinpoint do we have? Well, and then I think it is in a way that if I look at the clients I work with, we have basically two types. We have what I call myself, the hardcore addict, chocolate and ice cream. Bread, pasta, pizza, never done anything for me, nothing happens, no fun, just stuffed. Then we have the people that are so incredibly addicted to flour, to bread, to pasta. They are much sicker, they are much harder to detox, they are much harder to keep abstinent, they relapse much easier. I think there are several reasons underlying that when you think biochemically. So, this is probably very confusing in some people. Well, I don't like chocolate, but give me bread. But they're both sugar addicts. Yeah. So, you have to understand the layers. That's why I call this illness like one of my counselors said, the shape-shifting beast, because it is so complex. and it does change all the time. And get new layers and new ways of triggering the addiction with all kinds of stuff once it is in place. But I think that sugar, flour, and processed food is one of the most highly addictive, most dangerous psychoactive substances we have in society today because it is the gateway drug into everything else. And it's highly accessible. Think about it. Early exposure, we give babies this stuff. Nobody gives a baby cocaine unless you're totally crazy. But I mean. And then the constant exposure and Paul Earley, one of my favorite addiction doctors. He teaches in my faculty too. He taught me, I think it was 2006, I met him the first time at seecab Atlanta, about cue-induced craving. So, once it is established, you are much more sensitive to see the drug. Think about the commercial, smell it, all the bakeries lined up on the street and chocolate fairs and all that kind of thing going to 7/11, you almost get high, just from the smell. So, the cue-induced craving and the constant craving make this addiction the hardest to treat, the toughest to be free from, screws up your brain and your body most because it's so insidious. And in many people's eyes, you can't be addicted to that stuff. That's what's so dangerous. But it's incredibly dangerous. I've seen people be so sick, you can't believe it. I had one woman that drank a gallon of coke, sugar-free Coke, a day when she came, it took three days to detox her. She got into migraines, she vomited. She was incredibly sick, but she was in group. On the fourth day, she looked at my colleague, and she said who are you? And my colleague said, well, I'm mod, I've been here with you for three days. She had a blackout, total blackout of three days, from sugar-free coke. So, you have to understand a lot about the body, a lot about biochemistry to see all these layers. And that makes it very tricky.
Jack Heald 56:46
Okay, there's an important question that I've got to ask. My understanding is that there is a genetic propensity for addiction.
Bitten Jonsson
Definitely.
Jack Heald
You either got it or you don't. Is that correct? Or is addiction a latent possibility for anyone given the appropriate trigger?
Bitten Jonsson 57:18
It's very hard to answer because we don't have any really good studies. But if you have asked me before high fructose corn syrup came around, I would have said that it has to be a genetic proclivity. And I think that is a big part of it. But I think there are so many people that are addicted now. So, there are so many around, you see what I mean. But also, I think that the food industry is making more and more insidious, dangerous foods. And I think that high fructose corn syrup, when that started coming around, whatever it is, came in a lab in Japan in 1971. And now it's put into everything. I think that would be like putting cocaine into everything. I don't think that every person would be a cocaine addict. But it could be harmful user. So there has to be, I used to say, you have to be born with a certain sensitivity. You don't inherit alcoholism or sugar addiction; you inherit a certain sensitivity. And then the interesting thing, which I would like to just, I would love to have the possibility to study this, but it would be very hard. But has that sensitivity increased? I think so. Because I think that...
Jack Heald
Across the population, you mean?
Bitten Jonsson
Yes, yes. Because I think malnutrition has increased. And I think that's a big part of it. If you don't have enough nutrition in your brain, in your body, I think very bad things can happen. Because then you get cravings. You need to eat because your body is 50,000 years old, genetically, it's gonna say eat. And we were also, when we were caveman, we should eat a certain period during the year, and we should look for sugar and fat to store and now we have that everywhere. So, there are some of those danger factors that if they add up, we are in bad trouble right now. But what I see when I work with people, and especially when I get them into recovery, and I meet them 10, 15, 20 years later, they are in recovery. They all have one thing in common which I have to, we are highly sensitive people. But to me, that's a superpower because to be... The Webb telescope is very sensitive, right? We can agree on that, it's not defect or bad. But I learned when I was in my treatment for alcohol 1985, they said that alcoholics are more pain, light, and sound-sensitive. Nobody talked about high-sensitivity people at that time. So, the interesting thing is that all my addicts in recovery are sensitive, very sensitive people. But they have turned it into a very good thing, into an actually superpower, not some defect, which they thought before when they were on the drug. But so, I think it's very complex. There are a lot of factors anyone could study. It's not as simple, simple problem and Phil, I wish I could be maybe more specific, what is the drug here the psychoactive substance. I think pinpoint did pretty good. But it is complex. I had a professor here in Sweden that didn't like what I was doing. And he said, well if sugar addiction existed, people would take a bag of sugar and pour it in the mouth. And I said, this poor guy has never been in the kitchen, never been to a grocery store, never read the food label.
Dr. Philip Ovadia 1:01:23
People essentially are, but I think what I was kind of getting at and you touched on it was it's not as simple as just take the sugar out of the food, because the lady you talked about that had the Diet Coke addiction. There's no sugar in that anymore. They're sugar substitutes, but it's not as simple as sugar.
Bitten Jonsson 1:01:49
But she started with sugar when she was a child, she was eating lots of sugar as a child. Right? Yeah.
Dr. Philip Ovadia 1:01:53
Yeah, no, I agree with you. I think processed food is a combination of dangerous things and a unique combination. And like you said, the food industry knows exactly what it's doing, and knows how to combine these things. Because you're right, no one sits there and eats a bag of sugar with a spoon, and no one eats salt with a spoon. But you can, but you start to combine these things in the right way. And then it's pretty interesting the sort of malnutrition component of it because that's another effect of the processed food. It's the void in nutrients. And as much as they say, well, we fortify it, we put the vitamins in. We know our bodies don't absorb that or can't use it. It's not in usable form, in many instances. So, you're right, we end up nutritionally deplete. And so that's going to make your body's responses get more hungry. Eat more, because we need our nutrition.
Bitten Jonsson 1:03:05
Yeah, and it's the same thing, the modern processed food depletes hydrochloric acid. And without hydrochloric acid and enzymes, you don't break down the good food, like the meat, like the eggs, like the fish.
Jack Heald 1:03:19
Say that again, say that again. You just answered a question I've had for a long time. But I mean, I'm probably not the only one. I remember when I was first. I had a health situation 17, 18 years ago, and my naturopath gave me HCL. And I thought, what the heck's going on here? I've got I came in to see you because I've got this awful stomach acid and you give me more acid; you just explain again what happened here.
Bitten Jonsson 1:03:52
I have taken so many people off protein pump inhibitors that they've eaten for years, which totally ruins their whole stomach, horrible side effects and put them hydrochloric acid and especially lipase, one of the fat down breaking, one of the enzymes that break down fat, and people think I'm nuts, but the stomach become really healthy, and they start breaking down food and get good nutrition uptake. Because just talking about all the gastric bypass surgery or all that, they have no hydrochloric acid. But these people, of course, because of the way they were eating junk for a long time, they had reflux. So, they had gastritis but that is the stomach. When the stomach gets full of this food, it pushes the little hydrochloric acid you have up so you think you have too much hydrochloric acid, but it is a sign that it is not enough so it can't break down the food. Right? So, then you have to give people hydrochloric acid and that's some of the things I learned from integrative functional medicine many years ago, and it is very cheap, very simple to test if you need it or not take three days. And it works wonders on people, in most cases, and you don't need it forever, maybe some people for three weeks, some for a couple of months, until the body has redone the production because you eat good food. So that's what it is.
Jack Heald 1:05:28
That's just fascinating. We just saw here in the last couple of weeks that this Prilosec, an over-the-counter drug proton pump inhibitor that's been just dumped on the market, was just pulled off because I can't remember what the particular part causes cancer. I mean, it's just a nightmare.
Bitten Jonsson
It's very dangerous.
Jack Heald
But I've never had anybody explain the mechanism of why I was supplementing with HCl, and it actually made my, severe heartburn go away.
Bitten Jonsson 1:06:13
And this is the reason, too, that people become so sick when they go to tropical countries because you need a high level of hydrochloric acid to kill parasites and bugs and all kinds of stuff in the new environment where you eat. So, it protects you. So, people come home with all kinds of stomach problems, because they didn't have hydrochloric acid when they went to this.
Jack Heald 1:06:39
Because they've been eating crap here in the developed world. And as a result of eating crap, they have an insufficiency of HCl in their gut. Yeah. Oh, my God, within. This is another one of those we could talk for hours and hours and hours. But obviously, we got to cut it off. What's the best way for folks to find out more about what you do?
Bitten Jonsson 1:07:04
Well, yeah, go to my website, bittensaddiction.com. Or they can find me on LinkedIn or Twitter. Those are the places I’m almost right now.
Jack Heald 1:07:17
Well, very good. we'll put it on the show notes.
Bitten Jonsson 1:07:20
Yeah, bittensaddiction.com. And I don't work with clients anymore. I quit 2019, after thousands and thousands of clients in 93. Because I trained professionals to work with it. So, I have a whole bunch of professionals that are trained in working like this, but people can email me on the website, and ask for help. And I connect them with somebody that I think is appropriate for the particular type of problem with the addiction. But mainly what I like to say, if anyone thinks they have a problem, they should definitely do the sugar diagnostic tool, because then you said, see your whole life story. And you'll get all the consequences. And you'll get a proper treatment plan. So that's where people should start actually.
Jack Heald 1:08:12
Is that available on the website?
Bitten Jonsson 1:08:15
Well, the people that are certified and trained, we have to be trained...
Jack Heald
To do the diagnoses?
Bitten Jonsson
Yeah, it's yeah, it's a very specific interview for a total of three hours. So, it's no guesswork. And then, if anyone like to work with this, I have my two online trainings is on my website.
Jack Heald 1:08:39
For folks who want to be involved in the treatment side who actually want to help people...
Bitten Jonsson 1:08:43
I want to work with this. They want to train and work with these things. Yeah, they are welcome.
Dr. Philip Ovadia 1:08:50
Amazing. Yeah, thank you so much for coming on. I think this is an issue that we need to talk more about, we need to acknowledge, so, it's been great having you, and certainly encourage people to come learn more about your work. Very important stuff.
Bitten Jonsson 1:09:12
And we need to work together. I’m very grateful that you take on addiction medicine, with the specialty you have, because we need each other dearly.
Dr. Philip Ovadia 1:09:27
Definitely.
Bitten Jonsson
Yeah. Good.
Jack Heald 1:09:30
Well, I’m glad you guys got together. I'm really glad I got to sit in on this conversation.
Bitten Jonsson 1:09:36
I'm gonna see you in front of me now, whoa, stop, stop.
Jack Heald 1:09:41
This is fantastic stuff. You're putting all the pieces together for me and it's just fantastic. But we're gonna call it. Thank you so much for being with us, Bitten Jonsson. This has been one of my I think I'm gonna put this one on my top three interviews that we've had over the last couple of years.
Bitten Jonsson 1:10:05
I’m honored. Thank you for letting me share.
Jack Heald 1:10:09
With Chris Palmer and Thomas Seyfried. The three of you have blown my mind. I am just... Well, thank you. Thank you very much. This is the Stay Off My Operating Table podcast. Thank you for listening or watching if you're on YouTube. Be sure to click and subscribe. Visit Dr. Ovadia’s website at ifixhearts.com Visit Bitten Jonsson's website at bittensaddiction.com We'll provide all that stuff in the show notes so y'all don't have to wreck the car while you're trying to write it down. And we will talk to you next time.
Jack Heald 1:10:48
America is fat and sick and tired. 88% of Americans are metabolically unhealthy and at risk of a sudden heart attack. Are you one of them? Go to ifixhearts.co and take Dr Ovadia's metabolic health quiz. Learn specific steps you can take to reclaim your health, reduce your risk of heart attack and stay off Dr. Ovadia's operating table.
Jack Heald 1:11:17
This has been a production of 38 atoms