Have you been struggling eating the right diet, be it gluten-free, macrobiotic, raw-vegan or otherwise, and not feeling the way you should or losing the weight you’d expect? At this point, it’s not the food—it’s your body’s function. This is a problem I see with many of my patients. It is frustrating and can sometimes cause people to throw in the towel. I believe understanding the true issue at hand can be empowering. To begin, calories-in, calories-out is not a direct equation. The efficiency of food energy use is far more important. Those with a so-called “slow metabolism” will not efficiently utilize energy and get rid of waste. A slow metabolism can have a variety of causes, but most can be summed into three basic functions of the body.
Digestion, hormone balance and inflammation control. These three functions impact how the body will use your food and to what means and ends. Digestion is how our body takes the food we eat, breaks it down, absorbs it, transports nutrients to their target tissues, utilizes and then excretes waste. Any interruption in those steps is a breakdown in the digestive process. Over time, digestive problems will cause hormonal changes due to developing nutritional deficiencies and response to growing inflammation as a result of undigested food particles being attacked by the immune response both in the small intestines as well as the blood. The so-called “leaky-gut syndrome.” As you can see, a digestive problem all on its own can cause hormone and immune changes. Digestive problems will also cause “malnutrition,” a state that will cause constant hunger and often a craving for carbohydrates, the food most easily digested.
Hormone imbalances run the show when it comes to weight any many other health concerns. We are not just talking about reproductive hormones. Thyroid, cortisol, leptins, and the entire HPA-G axis (hypothalamus pituitary adrenal gonadal). These hormones tell your body what to do. If they are not sending the message due to imbalance, or even deficiency, you are not losing weight almost no matter what you do. It’s important to try to rebuild the body’s ability to manufacture and balance all the body’s hormones. Usually one hormone out of range is a sign of a multitude that likely have not even been tested.
Inflammation is a powerful process that not only directly causes swelling, but also causes major shifts in hormone balance, primarily causing the over release of cortisol. Cortisol controls the inflammatory process, but also blood sugar and likely has the strongest influence on weight of any hormone. Even a chronic shoulder, headache or low back pain can contribute to the body’s inflammatory load and effect cortisol levels. Over time, breakdowns of the digestive tract, difficulty managing and manufacturing hormones, and mitigating inflammation will cause the body to gain weight, but not lose it. There are multiple ways to determine if you have issues in any of these areas, especially because sometimes there are little to no direct symptoms letting you know you have a problem. I recommend a competent and experienced holistic wellness practitioner to help find and solve these incredibly important health issues to unlock the potential to lose weight and keep it off.
Source: Dr. David Pollack. Location: Pollack Wellness Institute (formerly Creating Wellness Center) is located at 66 Commack Rd., Commack. For more information, call 631-462-0801 or visit CreatingWellnessLI.com. See ads on pages 21 and 35.
