Hildreth: Looking at our weight challenge

Hildreth on Health

Dr. DeWall J. Hildreth

Are we missing something in our effort to lose weight?

Carrying extra pounds has a profound impact on our health. The majority of adults in the United States are overweight and the trend is increasing.

Obesity in the United States has almost doubled since 1980. Obesity is the second leading cause of preventable deaths, tobacco being the first.

Overweight and obesity are known risk factors for diabetes, heart disease, strokes, hypertension, gallbladder disease, osteoarthritis, sleep apnea, and some forms of cancer.

There are several hormones that impact how many ingested calories are stored as body fat.

If any of the hormones that have to do with metabolic function are out of balance, a person can gain weight even though they may eat less food.

This we see and hear from patients in the office consistently. One hormone that exerts a significant effect on hunger and fat storage is insulin.

Insulin enables the liver to store excess serum glucose. Insulin also stimulates the liver to form fatty acids that are transported to adipose cells and stored as fat.

The net effect of insulin is the storage of carbohydrate, proteins and fats in the body. A hyper-insulin state creates a hypoglycemic state in the blood by increasing body fat. Because of the increasing number of patients examined in the office having found to be hypoglycemic with chronic related symptoms, I was encouraged to dig back into the past research and see what we may have been overlooking.

The anti-obesity potential of reducing serum insulin was reported in a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association, which is JAMA, that describes the effects of serum insulin increase (hyperinsulinemia), hunger, and weight gain that ensues. The study concluded by stating it is possible that the hunger incident to hyperinsulinemia may be a cause of over-eating and therefore the obesity that often proceeds diabetes.

Insulin does have an insidious dark side even though the discovery of insulin in 1922 saved untold numbers of young diabetics that were doomed to death in their 20s.

Because the aging process and poor diet deprives cells of insulin sensitivity, many people produce excess levels of insulin to force serum glucose into the cells. This excessive insulin production is a contributing cause of a host of degenerative diseases including cardiovascular disease and cancer. The most immediate and noticeable effect of excess insulin production is unwanted weight gain.

Excess insulin drives the blood sugar into body fat and creates a low blood sugar which increases hunger, mainly for carbohydrates, to replace the depleted blood sugar.

Caloric restriction diets and low-carbohydrate diets have dominated for years because they induce quick weight loss. Unfortunately, they do not cause significant fat loss.

This is because of the persistent high blood insulin that has been established in the obese person and particularly the older obese person because of the increased amount of metabolic changes that take place with age and lifestyle habits. Multiple metabolic changes are involved.

People respond to a drop in food intake by immediately lowering production of an enzyme that converts a relatively inactive thyroxine or T4 that the thyroid puts out to T3 which is the thyroid that is active at the cell level and increases metabolic activity and energy output.

In another response to the lowered energy output and the lethargy that is experienced, the blood sugar drops causing more insulin output. Because of the increased insulin resistance that had been created at the cell level, excess blood insulin accumulates increasing the tissue fat storage. This, in turn, adds to the low blood sugar and hunger.

Somehow the abnormal metabolic cycle must be reversed and corrected, improve the insulin sensitivity at the cell level, correct the increasingly altered hormonal balance, and reduce chronic hyper-insulin blood level that has developed. This I will spell out in detail in the next article.

I want to make a comment about the interesting comment that Dr. Wiles made in a Tucson newspaper last week about the utilization of salivary testing for monitoring hormonal balancing. Later, I will give a complete and understandable report about a very complicated biochemical test. However, at this time, I want to elaborate on two very important points that will help set the records straight.

Number one, Dr. Wiles was referring to a test to determine changes in FSH, which is follicular stimulating hormone, that is produced by the pituitary to activate the production and output of the egg from the ovary at the time of ovulation. As menopause time is coming near, the ovary reduces its activity at ovulation time and the pituitary responds by increasing the FSH or follicular stimulating hormone output, indicating to the doctor and the patient that menopausal activity is truly taking place.

This is not what I would order the salivary test for at all.

Secondly, the salivary measurements of hormones has been performed in clinical research for almost 30 years including studies conducted at the National Institute of Health (NIH), and it has remained a mainstay in clinical research studies ever since. The hormones most extensively investigated include estradiol, estrone, estriol, progesterone, DHEA and cortisol.

This paragraph was pulled from “The Clinical Evaluation For Women” written by Kenna Stephenson, M.D., FAAFP, at the Women’s Wellness Center

at the University of Texas Health Center, Tyler, Texas.

They have been using this particular study there for years and go on to say why.

Another quick note from Rebecca Glaser, M.D., FHCS, at Alliance Cancer Center in Dayton, Ohio, and I quote; “Salivary hormone testing has been shown to be as accurate as blood testing and more cost effective. In many cases for the group of steroid hormones that we are testing including estradiol, estriol, estrone, progesterone, testosterone, DHEA and cortisol, it is superior in many cases to the blood or serum testing.”

Salivary testing of steroid hormones has been documented in scientific literature for almost 30 years and is used in a scientific research setting and is standard textbook material for students of Endocrinology and Internal Medicine, and this is from the “Williams Textbook of Endocrinology.”

I am sorry Dr. Wiles did not take note of some of the literature out there and became a little bit more informed before he made the statement about use of salivary hormone testing.

I hope you all made it to the end. The next article will also be very important in concluding “The Obesity Challenge.” Take care, and keep smiling.

Contact Dr. LeWall J. Hildreth at 625-1101 or cahcgv@yahoo.com Dr. Hildreth specializes in horne balancing and muscul,.oskeletal degeneratin. He prctices with Continental Natural Health Clinic, 210 W. Continental Road, suite 130. He column appears byweekly.