Lose fat plus prevent diabetes and heart attacks....

Today's post: Tuesday, 4-7-2009

There are several things that tend to make you fat or keep you that way. And, many of those same things also tend to cause type 2 diabetes and heart attacks and other cardiovascular diseases.

So, anytime I read something with important information on how to prevent this situation or help fix it if it is already in bad shape, it really gets my attention.

For example, if you are sedentary and never active and never get any very vigorous exercise from competitive sports or strength training or interval cardio AND you eat lots of fast carbs (high glycemic foods) such as foods with high fructose corn syrup, sugar, and refined grains and very little fiber, you will get “insulin resistant” which means you get high levels of insulin in your blood that no longer lowers excess levels of blood sugar. And, if that becomes excessive or goes on too long, you get fat; you get high blood sugar to the point it begins destroying your capillaries and the parts of you that that depend on them; and your chance of getting a heart attack or becoming senile skyrocket.

If you get lucky and your doctor finds out in time to reverse this with diet and exercise instead of the many type 2 diabetes drugs with nasty side effects, you will be lucky indeed.

But there’s more. Eating (or drinking) such high glycemic junk is a direct cause of high triglycerides and all kinds of cardiovascular disease.

So, you can find out how to do the reverse of the causes of this and take supplements that help reverse it BEFORE it harms you. If you know how & do it, you can avoid many really nasty drugs and diseases AND avoid many doctor visits you’ll have to pay for in some way. AND you’ll be a lot less fat.

So, anytime I read something with important information on how to prevent this situation or help fix it if it is already in bad shape, it really gets my attention.

And, if you want to stay healthy, live long, and avoid unnecessary suffering and doctor visits, I recommend you take that same interest.

Today’s article in the Total Health Breakthroughs email I get has several really important points to make that are really important in this area. And it includes some very valuable information that is new or very little known.

Here’s that article.:

"This article appears courtesy of Early to Rise's Total Health Breakthroughs, offering alternative solutions for mind, body and soul. For a complimentary subscription,
visit http://www.totalhealthbreakthroughs.com"

“Falling Off the Diet Bandwagon? Read This

By James LaValle, R.Ph, ND, CCN

A New York Times article this week confirmed my worst fears – stress is sending Americans to candy stores in droves.1

While at first glance this little headline, "When Economy Sours, Tootsie Rolls Soothe Souls" seems amusing, from my perspective it unwittingly brings up two important issues in healthcare today:

The simplistic assertion that to manage our weight, all we have to do is control calories in and calories out.

There are many factors that influence our ability to lose weight and keep it off, and this headline is an example of an important one – stress. Stress from economic crisis is doing what we see over and over again in patients at LMI -- reducing serotonin and inducing carbohydrate cravings.

So what's the harm in eating a little candy if you're stressed? Nothing if you can stop at "a little," but if you make that stop at the candy bowl too much of a habit, you can quickly undo weight loss and start to increase health risks.

Stress management is such an important factor for long term weight control, I have made it one of the key components of my approach to weight loss.

What do you do when stress is causing candy cravings -- give in? Not in my book. You take steps to better manage your body's response to that stress. What we do is choose from a variety of supplements that we have found to be very effective in combating stress – Relora for example for carb-related cravings. If you can enhance Relora's effect with stress reducing mind-body exercises like Missy discussed in her February 24 article – all the better.

The belief that sugar and sweets are relatively benign foods.

For example, many diets allow the intake of refined sugars in candies and desserts as long as the overall caloric intake is controlled. The rationale is that by allowing yourself to eat a small amount of sweets, you won't feel deprived. It seems reasonable, but in my experience, this approach will not work for many people for a number of reasons.

One reason is because once some people start eating the sweets they just can't stop; instead of eating one of those little 100-calorie snack packets, they end up eating the whole box.

A study published in a journal called Eating Behavior looked at people with low mood who crave sweets, just like we are seeing now with people who are stressed and trying to lift their mood with candy. The study found that those people who get the biggest mood boost from sweets also have the worst control over their intake of sweets.2 So, it gets to be a vicious cycle. And according to this study, the better the sugar makes you feel, the more likely you are to over eat sweets.

Unfortunately, eating too much sugar is indeed harmful. For one, studies show it raises triglycerides, blood fats that increase heart disease risk and that are deposited as fat in our fat cells. A very recent study found that while all sugars consumed in excess of our caloric needs are quickly converted to triglycerides, when the proportion was 50% or more of the sugar as fructose, the production of body fat increased significantly -- and it even increased the production of fat from foods eaten later at lunch.3

Sugar also depletes chromium 4 and magnesium,5 two minerals that are needed to properly process glucose. For example, insulin receptors need 4 molecules of chromium for them to become active; if you don't have the chromium, the receptors simply don't work. In fact, chromium depletion is a hugely under-recognized cause of insulin resistance, in my opinion.

Interestingly, a study from 2004 found that depressed individuals who had the highest level of carbohydrate cravings had significantly reduced carb cravings and improved mood and energy when given 400 mcg and then 600 mcg of chromium.6 (Instead of reaching for the candy bowl, try some chromium instead.)

Magnesium is also important for insulin to function properly; a recent study found that magnesium intake was one of only two dietary factors that can significantly increase our production of adiponectin, a hormone that improves insulin receptor function and helps control weight.7 (The other factor that increased adiponectin was high intake of non-starchy vegetables, in my opinion another important part of any good weight management program.)

So, the more sweets you eat, the more you deplete the very nutrients that are needed to help your cells metabolize the sugar in them. It is via depletion of minerals that consuming too many sweets could indirectly be leading to insulin resistance.

Here's my point. You could constantly be regaining weight because you don't recognize that stress chemistry keeps leading you back to over intake of sugars. Or perhaps a history of high sugar intake has depleted your chromium and magnesium and contributed to insulin resistance and reduced adiponectin.

Perhaps you have just never learned how to eat more of those non-starchy vegetables that are so advantageous for your health and weight. If this sounds like you, maybe it's time to stop putting your hope in over simplistic approaches to diet and start looking for more comprehensive solutions. If that is the case I strongly encourage you to consider the approach in my Metabolic Code Diet, which will reduce your stress and help you attain permanent weight loss the healthy way.

References

1. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/24/nyregion/24candy.html?th&emc=th.

2. Kampov-Polevoy AB, et al. Eat Behav. 2006 Aug;7(3):181-7.

3. UT Southwestern Medical Center (2008, July 28). Limiting Fructose May Boost Weight Loss, Researcher Reports. ScienceDaily. Retrieved March 30, 2009, from http://www.sciencedaily.com­ /releases/2008/07/080724064824.htm.

4. Kozlovsky AS, et al. Metabolism. 1986 Jun;35(6):515-18.

5. Paolisso G. et al. Diabetologia. Sep 1990. 33(9):511-14.

6. Docherty JP, et al. J Psychiatr Pract. 2005 Sep;11(5):302-14.

7. Cassidy A, et al. J of Nutr. Feb 2009. 139(2):353-358.

[Ed. Note: James LaValle is the founding Director of the LaValle Metabolic Institute, one of the largest integrative medicine practices in the country. Dr. LaValle is Executive Editor of THB's The Healing Prescription and the author of The Metabolic Code Diet: Unleashing the Power of Your Metabolism for Lasting Weight Loss and Vitality…..] “

X*X*X*X*X*X*X*

Here are some of the key points in his article that I think are either useful or exciting. I also include some of my suggestions.

1. Many people are eating more candy now because of the recession and its related stress and the relatively low cost of candy as a treat people can still afford.

Read a good book from your local library or get a DVD from Netflix. This can be a better reward or even a better stress reliever instead of eating candy. Plus it can be free or cost as little as daily candy treats.

Stop eating or buying any soft drinks or foods that contain refined grains or high fructose corn syrup and most foods that contain sugar. Some people can cut their grocery bill or total “food’ money in half by doing that. Then you can afford more things you find rewarding but cost more than candy and STILL be money ahead!

For stress relief, try Tai Chi or meditating. (Tai Chi can be done in less time and gets twice the stress relief results as meditating and it also is an exercise that builds muscle and burns calories which meditation does NOT do. But for some people, meditation works well to relive stress and they like doing it. So that does work for some people.)

2. Get a good grip on the reality that soft drinks or foods that contain refined grains or high fructose corn syrup and most foods that contain sugar are about as good for your health (in any kind of quantity, more than once or twice a week total) as arsenic.

The closer you can get to zero on consuming them, the healthier you will be and the less excess fat you will carry around.

3. If you are fat, have elevated blood sugar or type 2 diabetes, or have simply been eating and drinking a lot of these fast, junky carbs, you will be healthier and less fat if you take one to three capsules of chromium polynicotinate that have 200 mcg of chromium. (Solgar makes the kind I take.) I believe this form avoids some problems people got from taking the chromium picolinate version and the nicotinate part means that you also get a form of niacin that helps to lower LDL & triglycerides and increase HDL.)

This article makes it very clear that taking chromium may be as valuable in turning off insulin resistance and lowering high blood sugar as vigorous strength training. So if you to all 3 – stop ingesting fast, junky carbs; take chromium; and do vigorous strength training at least two or three times a week, you can vastly improve or turn off insulin resistance.

4. Similarly, taking 200 to 600 mg a day of magnesium will help with insulin resistance and high blood sugar by improving adiponectin levels AND doing that has been shown to help control your appetite and prevent overeating -- plus taking that much magnesium insures you have it for the other functions your body needs to work right and will help prevent or improve high blood pressure.

So taking chromium and magnesium will improve your health, help prevent insulin resistance or stop it, do the same for high blood sugar AND help you turn down sugar cravings.

Personally, I already take them both. But I did not realize how valuable they were for fat loss and blood sugar control. (Note that taking magnesium AND a lot of magnesium and Milk of Magnesia or similar over the counter remedies that contain magnesium at the same time can overdose you and cause problems. So if you take those cut back on your magnesium to 200 mg a day until you stop taking the over the counter remedies that contain magnesium.)

5. He also shows in his article that if you stop eating or buying any soft drinks or foods that contain refined grains or high fructose corn syrup and most foods that contain sugar and take the supplement alpha lipoic acid your triglycerides will go down which will turn off much of the cause of heart disease – even to the level of reversing it!

6. Though he understates why, he does make it clear that eating a lot of nonstarchy vegetables instead of these foods can really help. (You can easily substitute water for soft drinks and have no problems with getting hungry. But if you eat no refined grain foods or sweets, you’ll get hungry if you don’t eat something else. Vegetables work as a substitute and not only fill you up and provide fiber, they give you important nutrients and virtually no calories or glycemic effect.)

Though it’s not in his article, it’s recently been discovered & recently reported in the health news that the increase fiber you get from doing this decreases your visceral and belly fat.

And doing those two things makes you look better and far less likely to have heart disease or get a heart attack.