May 2008
In This Issue:
High Triglycerides Are More Serious Than HIgh Cholesterol
Do you ever wonder why it is so difficult for people to successfully lose weight? All one has to do is eat less and exercise more, right? Did you know that no study has ever proven that eating less will help you lose weight? Each study consistently points out that it does not work to just eat less. The body will slow down to match the decreased calories. Eat more and the body speeds up. This is why skinny teenagers can eat a lot and stay thin. It has been shown again and again that calories basically don't matter. Studies on exercise found something similar. Exercising more will only increase your appetite to match your increased calorie burning. Long studies of restricted calorie diet pointed out a danger to this approach - hunger. People dieting get hungry as their bodies try to tell them to eat more. When the diet is over, the hunger remains. Some participants ate as much as 8,000 calories a day (as much as they physically could) and they still had hunger.
So how does one lose weight? In 1825, a French man named Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin wrote a book about losing weight by eating no 'starchy or flour-y' foods. In 1865 this diet was called the Banting diet in Britain. More recent titles that found carbohydrates to be the problem: Eat Fat and Grow Slim (1958), Calories Don't Count (1961), The Doctor's Quick Weight Loss Diet (1968), Dr. Atkins' Diet Revolution (1972), The Complete Scarsdale Medical Diet (1978), The Zone (1995), Protein Power (1996), Sugar Busters! (1998), and The South Beach Diet (2003). So the answer to losing weight has been presented to us for 183 years, again and again. The secret is to change your body's hormones. Hormones control our access to fat and when we can use it for energy. Reducing carbohydrates reduces insulin and allows us to burn fat.
This is a common problem today, but it is not given the attention it deserves. High triglycerides or triglycerides greater than half the total cholesterol are typically caused by high insulin. Triglycerides are driven up by insulin in high carbohydrate diets. This is the average diet in developed nations. We eat too many carbohydrates and convert them into triglycerides for storage since animals can’t really store carbohydrates. The elevated insulin is the real problem. Insulin is the biggest driving force behind: heart disease, strokes, cancer, diabetes, infertility, vascular diseases, Alzheimer's, obesity and a trigger for auto-immune diseases.
If you resolve this condition:
- your weight will normalize
- you will slow down the aging process
- your risk for cancer, heart disease and stroke will shrink
- your cholesterol will normalize
- your body can balance your hormones
- you will sleep better and have good energy through the day
- you will be free of sugar cravings
- you can be free of PMS, infertility and most peri- & post-menopausal symptoms
Carbohydrates turn on the insulin response. Insulin changes our hormones and increases fat storage, inflammation and is the beginning of many health problems. Almost all health problems faced by modern peoples that were rare in traditional peoples are related to increased insulin.
During my first pregnancy I suffered a severe cough that lasted from the 4th month through labor, suddenly disappearing a day after delivery. My regular doctor and Ob-Gyn tried everything from antibiotics to X-rays, which they usually avoid during pregnancies. Nothing worked. On my second pregnancy, I started coughing by the 2nd month, and my husband suggested to try something different since nothing had worked the previous time. We consulted with Dr. Will, where he explained that it's very common in pregnancies and is caused by a hormone imbalance. He gave me some herbal teas, and after the first 36 hours the cough was 90% gone. We couldn't believe it!
I'm now pregnant with my third and fourth child (twins!), and started coughing at the 6th month. After the first night coughing I woke up and immediately called Dr Will. I was so scared the cough was going to even send me to preterm labor. He saw me right away, and not even 24 hours later the cough was 90% cleared. Again we couldn't believe how "simple" it was to "fix" it, where Western medicine had no clue.
It is because of our successful and effective merging of Oriental Medicine, nutrition and Western-based testing that we’ve been asked to teach a series of classes to acupuncturists and acupuncture students at AOMA, the Academy of Oriental Medicine in Austin. There’s been quite a demand from people in our field wanting to know how we get the results we do, and we’re committed that everyone have access to the same information. The next two lectures are on Western Medicine diagnoses and the Oriental Medicine counterpart. That’s one of our specialties – translating the two and putting them together.
We’re also teaching a 4-hour course in September to professionals in our field and related fields (chiropractors, for instance) - this one is on Hormones Gone Awry – The Menace of Dysglycemia. We’ve mentioned that topic a few times in these newsletters – another one of our specialties. We’ll be demonstrating how nutrition, Cleanses, and lifestyle can be impacted to turn around stubborn hormone cases like: inability to lose weight, infertility, estrogen dominance, and Metabolic Syndrome.
