Dr. Eric Westman

A public health measure that could be taken to reduce obesity, diabetes and, for that matter, dental issues like cavities and periodontal disease, would be to get rid of sugar in drinks. Let me explain why: it’s everywhere! Unless it’s a diet drink or just water, sugar is in many

Sugar is the bad guy in terms of health, unless you can moderate it. It is very difficult for many people to moderate it. We are going through a paradigm shift from worrying about fat, cholesterol, and saturated fat in food to worrying about sugar in food and drinks. The

If you’re learning about nutrition and following any sound nutritional program, you’ll learn that protein comes first. As a basic nutritional principle, you have to first find protein. Why is protein so important? Protein is what we’re made of. The amino acids that are found in protein are broken down

More and more people who come to me are checking their own blood sugars when in the past, they wouldn’t have. The availability of meters and continuous glucose monitors (CGMs) now makes it simple and relatively easy to check blood sugar at home. Continuous glucose monitors A continuous glucose monitor

The theme that I’ve been working on and trying to get into everyone’s knowledge is that a teaspoon of sugar is all that there is in the bloodstream of an average person. If you go to two teaspoons of sugar, (in your blood) you have diabetes. That’s not a big

There’s a lot of news about using drugs, like Ozempic, for weight loss. Apparently, many celebrities or rich folks have lost weight using this shot that takes away hunger and you can lose a lot of weight, especially if you add it to a dietary program cutting out sugary, starchy

Why is juicing bad? I have to be honest, I don’t know much about juicing. I think it’s because, in the low-carb world, my impression is that it’s mainly done with fruit or berries or things that are sweet. Those things have carbohydrates and so it wouldn’t make sense to

Let’s first get some definitions out of the way. I’m not going to be technical about sugar – whether it’s lactose, sucrose, or glucose. Let’s lump all the sugars together and just call them “sugar.” I’m going to define starches as sugars that are linked – starches get digested into

I use the concept of “a teaspoon of sugar in the bloodstream” when I teach people with diabetes because I want them to understand that diabetes is a problem of too much sugar (glucose, specifically) in the bloodstream. When you check your blood sugar it’s usually about 100 mg/dL (5.6

You see lots of products that say “no added sugar” and apparently that means they’re better for you, right? Not really. I’m here to tell you that added sugar or sugar that’s naturally in the food is the same. What does it mean when the label reads “no added sugar”?

Dr. Eric Westman: Hi, I’m Dr. Eric Westman and it’s my great pleasure to introduce Dr. Vera Tarman. Dr. Tarman is the Medical Director of one of Canada’s largest treatment centers for substance abuse. She is an internationally renowned expert on sugar and food addiction and is the author of

Sugar levels in the blood There are only five grams of sugar in the blood. By “carbs,” you know by now that I mean sugars and starches – starches get digested into sugars. When you eat a potato, pasta, rice, or fruit, it gets turned into glucose. This gets absorbed

There is something about nuts that makes you want to eat more nuts… Have you noticed this to be true? Most people who do consume nuts put them into little bags or little containers or get them in self-contained packages so that they don’t have access to the full tub

At Duke University we’ve been studying and using keto – low-carb, high-fat diets – for the last 20 years. We were one of the first research groups to look at the low-carb diet. It used to be called the Atkins Diet, and we looked at it in terms of safety.

One of the medications that needs to be monitored by your doctor is blood pressure medication. Why is this so important? Blood pressure medication has become so common. I’m in an obesity medicine or internal medicine clinic – a keto medicine clinic, specifically, and just about everyone in their 40s,

If we only have between five and seven grams of sugar circulating in our bodies at any given time, what happens when we ingest sugar or carbs? When we eat sugar, it will raise our blood sugar – glucose, more specifically. Carbohydrates contain sugars and starches. When you eat those,

Eric, you’ve built your entire career on helping folks fight chronic illnesses like type 2 diabetes, obesity, and other metabolic conditions using nutrition as therapy. The success rate in reversing these conditions is so profound that you have often mentioned to me that it’s more powerful than a drug… Absolutely.

This blog is an adaptation of Dr Westman’s video on ‘Sweeteners and sugar alcohols on keto’, which we have included at the bottom of this article. Can you help us understand the difference between sugar alcohols and non-nutritive sweeteners? Let’s just step back a minute and think of why we

This blog is an adaptation of Dr Westman’s video on ‘Foods to Avoid’ which we have included at the bottom of this article. Q: First question I’ve got for you is concerning your Page 4. For people that don’t know – Page 4 is a famous food list that Dr.

This blog is an adaptation of Dr Westman’s video on ‘Why You Don’t Need To Eat Fruit on a Keto Diet’, which we have included at the bottom of this article. I came to visit you in your clinic about six years ago. One of the things that was very