Dr. Ben Bikman

No doubt it works.

Berberine absolutely works.

I love apple cider vinegar as a personal favorite.

Maybe it's because of my old man palate where I like really tart things the older I'm getting.

So I just love the taste when I dilute it in water or sparkling water.

But apple cider vinegar, that really, that's the shortest of all short chain fats, that acetic acid.

And the short-chain in the human diet, as much as we eat a lot of fat, most of it is from seed oils and soybean oil, but we lose out on the full spectrum of fats because we don't really eat a lot of fermented foods anymore.

So we don't get the medium-chain fats, and because we don't eat any much fermented foods, we don't get any short-chain fats for the most part.

So short-chain fatty acids, which is what apple cider vinegar is,

That's a small little molecule that punches well above its weight, where the acetic acid will reduce hepatic gluconeogenesis to help control glucose, which is very relevant in a person with diabetes, especially type 2.

There's so much glucagon always in their bloodstream, it's constantly pushing the liver to make more glucose.

Apple cider vinegar will inhibit that.

And so it helps the blood glucose by just having the liver dump less glucose into the blood.

But it also stimulates AMPK.

And you'd mentioned GLUT4 at the muscle.

The reason exercise is able to open GLUT4 or translocate it and get the glucose in without insulin is because of AMPK.

So it's that interesting paradox of exercise where insulin comes down and yet glucose is taking in more – the muscle is taking in more glucose than it ever was.

It's because of this kind of backdoor of the muscle exercising.

AMPK gets turned on through a series of events that moves GLUT4 down.

Well, apple cider vinegar will do the same thing in the absence of exercise, albeit to a more modest degree.