Leptin Resistance

Inflammation, especially chronic systemic inflammation (which means affecting your entire body), also plays a big part in leptin resistance.  The two often go hand in hand, although it can be difficult to ascertain which came first. 

So what problems does inflammation cause?  Inflammation triggers many different health conditions like arthritis, digestion problems, asthma, leaky gut, food intolerances and allergies and it now being thought that inflammation plays a key role even in conditions like heart disease and cancer, and yes, you guessed it … obesity.  (And the more fat you have, the more inflammation you have … another never-ending vicious cycle.)

This is an extremely important part of the puzzle that most of the diets out there do not take into account.  Most diets propose that weight gain is simply a matter of balancing the number of calories eaten against the number of calories burned off, and as I’ve said before, this is a much too simplistic view of weight gain.  Our bodies are much more sophisticated than that.  In particular, the hormone Leptin, amongst other hormones, plays a very important part in balancing our weight.  And inflammation also plays a very important part in this delicate balance.

There are many different things that can trigger chronic system-wide inflammation in the body, but one of the biggest causes is toxic overload, caused by eating processed junk food, food that is high in chemicals, preservatives and additives, and food that is high in sugar and fat content.  That's why this Liver Detox Diet program is so important ... we have to find a way to detoxify our bodies of all the chemicals and toxins we are bombarded with every day.

And surprisingly enough, even eating so-called “low-fat diet food” can also exacerbate this problem, because most of these foods are very low in vitamins and nutrients and very high in chemicals and sugar.

Toxic overload is also a by-product of living in our 21^st Century world with all the pollution we are surrounded by.  We are assaulted by chemicals in the air we breathe, the water we drink and in everything around us.

Our bodies work extremely hard to detoxify us of all these chemicals.  Our detoxification pathways eliminate as many toxins as they can through our bowels, kidneys, liver, lungs and even our skin.  But with the high levels of toxins assaulting us everyday, our bodies cannot eliminate them all.

Our survival mechanisms are very strong and these toxins are actually poisons to our body, so in order to survive our body stores away these poisonous toxins in the only place that is safe to store them until we have a chance to eliminate them through our detoxification pathways.  And this storage place is in our fat tissues.

When we get caught up in this vicious cycle of weight gain and toxic overload, the body stores more and more of these toxins in our fat cells and we create more and more fat cells to use as toxic storage sites.  Unfortunately, the fat cells that store these toxins usually reach a point where the cell becomes very unstable and begin to leak and break open.  When this happens, white blood cells called macrophages are called in to clean up the mess.  These macrophages are the immune system’s scavengers or “garbage collectors”.  Sounds good so far, but unfortunately, it doesn’t stop there. 

Once these macrophages are in the fat cell, they trigger inflammatory chemicals (like pro-inflammatory cykotines, tumor necrosis factor-alpha TNF-alpha, interlukin 6 and C-reactive protein) and these inflammatory chemicals actually interfere with leptin and because they interfere with leptin, we lose our built-in mechanism to speed up metabolism and burn off fat.  This is when leptin resistance happens. 

When leptin is working properly in a healthy body, it perpetuates a delicate balance of speeding up and slowing down metabolism, storing and burning fat and suppressing and triggering appetite in order to keep your weight balanced.  When this mechanism is tampered with, it doesn’t work properly and you develop leptin resistance.  Once leptin resistance happens, that delicate balance is destroyed and we are caught in an endless loop of slow metabolism, fat-storage, increased food cravings, hunger and increased appetite and of course the end result of this is endless weight gain.

And, as if the weight gain were not enough to contend with, a serious by-product of all this is chronic system-wide inflammation.  This inflammation causes many, many health problems including asthma, bronchitis, fibromyalgia, swelling, bloating, water retention, nerve damage, digestive problems, susceptibility to catching colds, flus and viruses, and much more.  If you are suffering from chronic system-wide inflammation it will affect every part of your body.  Your immune system will be working overtime trying to cope with putting out all these internal fires and as time goes on, you will get sicker and sicker.

Inflammation and leptin resistance go hand in hand and I think they are a major reason why we are faced with an epidemic of obesity and life-style diseases like diabetes, insulin resistance, syndrome x, heart disease and much more.

We may be living longer than we ever have in our history, but I don’t believe we are living those extra years with a high quality of life. 

I know that in my personal case, the last 25 years have been extremely difficult.  I have battled with yo-yo dieting and many health problems including leptin resistance, digestive problems, food intolerances, food cravings especially for sugar, increased appetite, swelling, bloating, water retention, hair loss, hot flashes, memory problems and mental fogginess, fatigue, insomnia, fibromyalgia, and peripheral neuropathy in my feet that causes a very painful burning sensation and numbness in my toes.  (And this is only a partial list!  There are actually too many symptoms to list!)

What I noticed was that when I developed my Liver Detox Diet program, that all these symptoms improved and most disappeared.  And I not only lost weight, but my food cravings stopped, my hunger stopped and I was able to eat normally without feeling hungry all the time. 

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