Starbucks holiday drinks also known as a cup of diabetes have been released again
this year and today we're going to talk about what's in them what is it that we
need to be concerned with and what sort of damage can they do to your body and
your vital organs coming right up
hey I'm doctor Ekberg I'm a holistic doctor and a former
Olympic decathlete and if you want to truly master health by understanding how
the body really works make sure that you subscribe and hit that notification bell
so that you don't miss anything around this time of year for the last several
years Starbucks have introduced a series of specialty coffees in special mugs for
the festive occasion and this year of course it was such great news that
there's already multiple news channels such as CBS FOX NBC and ABC that have
posted videos on the internet who tell us about how important this news is and
what a big deal it is that we can now have these specialty drinks this year
there are five drinks that they have introduced and as always when people
comment on the nutritional value then they're only talking about how many
calories there are in them they say and this may not be so good for you because
they have so many calories we don't really care about calories though we
care about the things in there that upset the balance in the body the
hormonal balance in this review we won't comment on the taste or flavor we won't
pick any favorites we're just gonna talk about what are in these drinks and is it
really worth to indulge in them if we take the example of a grande that's not
the biggest drink the grande is 16 ounces and the largest is 20 ounces it
seems like most people are selecting the the grande the 16 ounces and then just
the average among these five drinks not the highest or lowest but average they
contain on average 48 grams of sugar and 60 grams of carbs
one drink and just for comparison a Snickers bar is 28 grams of sugar about
half of that and it has 32 grams of carbs again about half so you could have
essentially have two Snickers bars and get the same amount of sugar as you
would a grande now the Snickers bars probably won't give you even as much of
a blood sugar spike because it also has more fat and some protein in there to
slow down the sugar a Coca Cola has 39 grams of sugar and of course that is
rocket fuel in terms of blood sugar because there's nothing there to slow
down that blood sugar absorption but again a Coca Cola has about 2/3 of the
sugar and carbs of a grande specialty drink this video is not a bash on
starbucks I love Starbucks I think they are pretty much single-handedly
responsible for bringing real coffee to the United States
I remember when coffee was completely undrinkable it had the color of tea and
nowadays you can actually get a good cup of coffee in almost any place and that
is much due to Starbucks so I like them and it is my choice if I go someplace
because it's reliable I know what I'm gonna get what they found as they were
gaining popularity obviously they're in business to make money and they realize
that caffeine is sort of addictive it's something that people really like to
have on a regular basis but what's about a thousand times more addictive is sugar
so if you combine the caffeine with the sugar now you have the perfect business
idea so they have started introducing more and more specialty drinks they have
the ice-t's and the frappuccinos and the lattes and the mocha sand all of these
and they have all these pumps of syrup that adds chemical flavors and sugar and
sometimes artificial sweeteners to the to the drinks and on a rough count
I counted at least 50 I didn't go through all the menus and these were
basically just the lattes and the mocha sand the frappuccinos more than 50
specialty drinks and all of these are going to be roughly in the ballpark of
of this much sugar so what they're doing is they're getting people hooked that
they're creating a habit where people it's sort of a sneaky way of getting
candy in there that a lot of people who said that oh well I don't eat any candy
I wouldn't touch a Snickers bars I don't eat anything like that I just have a cup
of coffee once in a while and they don't realize or maybe they do but they don't
sort of want to realize it that every drink they have is like having multiple
candy bars but again I don't blame Starbucks I think they're doing what
they need to do to make money and we need to do what we need to do to stay
healthy and we just need to keep that in balance so why is Starbucks introducing
it at this time of year why is the holiday season such a perfect moment
well the holiday season some people set it to start after Thanksgiving and run
through the Christmas holiday but in reality it's being stretched more and
more and more and now it pretty much goes from Halloween which is last of
October so like Halloween or the day after November 1st often marks the
beginning of the holiday season so now it's sort of a free-for-all in terms of
indulging we've we've created that culture so what happens is people spend
more money during these two months a lot of businesses make most of their profit
in the last quarter of the year because we were spending money we're spending
money on presents but we're spending more money on everything we're indulging
and it's also the time that we change our mindset we figured oh I've been good
all year and there's all these Christmas parties and all these opportunities and
all these holiday drinks this is the time to indulge we are good
to ourselves we set certain limits but during the holidays we just let
everything fly and again Starbucks is in business they're a for-profit company so
they will do everything smart that they can to to make sales I can't blame them
for that but what else is that that we want to think about that happens during
the holiday season well the holiday season is also the sugar season that's
where the cookies and the candy and the drinks and all these things the parties
come out it is also the stress season okay people have their usual workload
but in addition to that they have all these parties and all these presents and
all these trips to take so people probably stress more in these two months
than they do any other time of year so because it is a sugar season and a
stress season that means it's also the flu season because the two things that
ruin that interfere with your immune system that weaken your immune system
the most are basically sugar and stress so now everybody also gets the flu and
in on top of everything it's also the weight gain season because we let loose
because we eat all this sugar and now this gets us ready for our new year's
resolutions so we can start another round of yo-yo dieting so if you think
about it I don't believe that's what most people really want
I think it's tempting to indulging these things but I also think that we don't
have to we can make some smarter decisions if we have been on a low-carb
diet if we have created some good habits to get fat adapted then if we're truly
honest we don't have that much cravings anymore that most of these temptations
are emotionals it's not something that the body is really screaming for it's
just there and so easy to jump on we also have we can make very satisfying
keto desserts and if you take for example dark chocolate if you get my
favorites about 70 eight percent cocoa in the chocolate
then you can eat a half a bar and only get eight grams of sugar then that means
you could have half a bar of dark chocolate every day and only equal about
one of these drinks per week okay but the drink is going to create a huge
blood sugar spike whereas this is going to be spread out and most of the
calories are going to be from fat so you're not really going to see hardly
any blood sugar fluctuations so once you are fat adapted your taste buds change
and you enjoy these things the dark chocolate is very very satisfying if you
get a piece of 60% chocolate it's almost unable it's just too sweet so once
you've developed these good habits don't let yourself fall back into those bad
habits okay be strong it's not worth it so what is all this sugar do why is it
not a good idea what's the the really big reasons except for the weight gain
and the flus and all that what is it really doing inside the body well the
brain it really likes stable blood sugar it loves if you're in ketosis it loves
ketones but what it does when you're fat adapted is your blood sugar is just rock
solid super stable and when you eat sugar especially when you drink it then
it's absorbed very quickly and you get blood sugar fluctuations you get a blood
sugar rollercoaster and for some people the down part the bottom part of that is
called hypoglycemia so now you get Moody you get irritable you have poor focus
you get cravings you get more prone to anxiety and depression and in the long
run so the first few are in the short run that's what happens kind of
immediately but in the long run glucose causes triggers insulin causes
insulin resistance and as far as the brain goes that will also be very
strongly correlated with dementia there is a strong cause
have link between insulin resistance and dementia today then when we look at the
liver the liver is the first organ to be to become insulin resistant because the
sugar is 50% fructose and fructose is the thing that really really clogs up
the liver and creates fatty liver so most non-alcoholic fatty liver disease
is caused by sugar and especially sugary drinks because they're absorbed so
quickly and we don't even realize that that we're getting all that sugar
because it's just a drink when we look at the heart and the cardiovascular
system it's all of the things associated with metabolic syndrome so high blood
pressure increased cardiovascular disease increased risk of stroke just to
name a few when we look at the pancreas the pancreas has to produce all that
insulin to handle all that sugar so we're putting a tremendous burden on the
pancreas and it's got a lot of other things to do it likes to digest food and
even though there was a different areas in the pancreas that do the food
digestion and the sugar handling it's still one organ that kind of depends on
the same resources and blood supply so the longer you push the pancreas the
more likely that you're gonna have some trouble with it the immune system like
we said at first here the flu season is because sugar weakens the immune system
but the other thing it does it feeds all your pathogens it's a virtual buffet for
all the stuff in the body that you don't want there the yeast fungus bacteria
parasites and even cancer cells they thrive on sugar your immune system
suffers greatly from all that sugar so there are many many reasons why you
would want to avoid it if you care about your vital organs and and your long-term
health and something sort of humorous occurred to me that you know with
cigarettes they have realized now for a while how bad
rats are so all over the world they have to put warning labels on cigarettes so
on every package you buy that basically tell you this product kills you it's
almost like a skull and crossbones on every package so if you get if you use
that product then at least you know what you're getting into and if we compare
the number of people dying from cigarettes versus insulin resistance the
cigarette deaths are basically a drop in the ocean and it'll be a generation or
so before they realize this in the official lines but insulin resistance is
the biggest killer of mankind that we have and once we realize that what if we
actually had to go the same way as the cigarettes what if everything that had
refined sugar especially large quantities had to have a warning label
then I think those those Starbucks cups would look a little bit different what
if they had a skull and crossbones on them and it says warning cup of diabetes
this will kill you and you'd hear in in the Starbucks restaurant then and what
will it be for you sir a cup of diabetes okay and then when you pick up your
order they say alright mr. Smith a cup of diabetes alright next oh you just
want a cup of coffee all right here you go and next a cup of diabetes you get
the picture but it's not as ridiculous as it sounds if we called it for what it
is then I think people would make smarter choices at least they'd think
twice so what if you stick to your guns this year and you stay with your New
Year's resolutions from last year you keep your good habits and you maintain
them through the holiday season then when new year comes you don't have
to start from scratch you are ahead of where you would have been and now you've
got something to build on so your scale will show it your mood will show it and
your vital organs will thank you if you enjoyed this video
I'm sure that you're gonna love this one thank you so much for watching and I'll
see you in the next video