Dr. Charles Zuker

I do as well.

And so this view that we have been working on for the longest time, because

you know, the molecules that we're dealing with are in the body, not in the head, you know, led us to, you know, to view, of course, these issues and problems as being one of metabolism, physiology, and so forth.

They remain to be the carriers of the ultimate signal, but the brain ultimately appears to be the conductor of this orchestra of physiology and metabolism.

Now let's go to the gut, brain, and sugar.

The vagus nerve is made out of many thousands of fibers that make this gigantic bundle.

And it's likely, as we're speaking, that each of these fibers, they carry meaning that's associated with their specific task.

This group of fibers is telling the brain about the state of your heart.

This group of fiber is telling the brain about the state of your gut.

This is telling your brain about its nutritional state.

They are, again, to make the same simple example, the keys of this piano.

Now, the reason this is relevant, because the magic of this gut-brain axis is the fact that you have these thousands of fibers really doing different functions.

Okay, let me tell you about the gut-brain axis function.

and our insatiable appetite for sugar.

This is work of my own laboratory that began long ago when we discovered the sweet receptors.

You can now engineer mice that lack these receptors.

So in essence, these animals will be unable to taste sweet.

And if you give a normal mouse a bottle containing sweet, and we're gonna put either sugar or an artificial sweetener,

All right, they both are sweet.

They have slightly different tastes, but that's simply because artificial sweeteners have some off tastes.