Total Health Breakthroughs: Free Natural Health Newsletter and Alternative Health Articles

Most of you who read Total Health Breakthroughs know that Jim LaValle is a regular contributor to the newsletter and a very important member of our Editorial Advisory Board. Jim is also the Executive Editor of The Healing Prescription, our monthly paid newsletter.

MaryEllen Tribby, my boss and the publisher of both newsletters, credits Jim with restoring her health and saving her from the brink of type 2 diabetes. In fact, that’s the reason that we decided to launch The Healing Prescription. MaryEllen’s recovery was so dramatic, that she knew Jim could help thousands of people just like her if they only listened to his message and regained control of their metabolic health.

Having worked with Jim for over a year now, I knew he was a dynamic public speaker —he lectures frequently throughout the country, has his own radio show, and makes regular guest appearances on TV and radio health programs. So I was really looking forward to seeing him speak at the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine’s (A4M) continuing medical education conference in Boca Raton last week.

I can tell you that I wasn’t disappointed — and neither were the 200 doctors who came from all parts of the US to hear him speak on integrative medicine and clinical nutrition. At one point there were so many questions coming from the audience that Jim had cut them off, saying he would not get through the day’s presentation if he took anymore.

Is obesity genetic, or is lifestyle is a bigger factor? Over thousands of years, human genetics haven’t changed much; yet over the past couple of decades there’s been an exponential increase in obesity and its related problems like metabolic syndrome, a group of risk factors that leads to heart disease and diabetes.¹ So, even though it may seem that some people are hard wired to be overweight, the sudden increase in obesity indicates that something more than genetics is playing out.

As it turns out, our genetics can be steered toward obesity, but it is guided by something called our epigenetics, certain behavioral or environmental influences that tell our genes what to do. And guess what? Our epigenetics are heavily influenced by our nutritional intake, including what we eat too much of and what we don’t get enough of.

Let me explain. Everybody is born with a unique set of genes, your hardwired DNA. (That’s called our genome.) Your genes lie there and wait to see if they will be turned on or not as directed by tagging systems that sit on top of genes, called the epigenome. Our genes and epigenetics have been compared to a computer and its software.² Our genes are the hard drive; the epigenetics are the software telling the hard drive what to do.

Part 2: How HFCS Super-Sized Us

A number of studies have shown that when we drink our calories (as opposed to eat them), our brains will process information differently. Unlike solid food, liquid calories don’t satisfy hunger because they don’t suppress a hunger hormone called ghrelin which tells us to eat more. In an analysis of the eight-year Nurses’ Health Study II, it was shown that women who upped their caloric soft drink consumption from one soda per week to one or more per day gained weight and had a higher risk of type II diabetes.¹

Sodas are unquestionably linked to obesity, both the adult kind and the childhood kind. Research conducted in 2001 by David Ludwig, director of the obesity program at Children’s Hospital in Boston found that the odds of a teenager becoming obese increased a whopping 60% for each can or glass of sugar-sweetened soft drinks.²

Which brings us back to HFCS. “The low cost of high fructose corn syrup allowed the explosion of 20-oz sodas, Super Big Gulps and the like to happen,” C. Leigh Broadhurst, PhD, a research scientist and nutritionist at the USDA told me.

Part 1 of a 2 Part Series

In a world where the numbers of overweight and obese people only continue to climb, many people are desperate for any help they can get with weight loss. Sure, most people can lose weight following a low carb, or conversely, a low calorie, low fat diet — for a little while anyway. But long-term compliance continues to elude many people. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could eat all the carbs or all the fat you wanted and not gain weight?

In medical circles, the idea that sugar increases the risk of diabetes is considered to be an old wives tale. However, recent studies bring not just sugar, but all high glycemic index (GI) and high glycemic load (GL) foods into question. Two studies from last year showed that women with the highest intakes of high carb-containing foods (high GI and high GL) had the greatest risk of becoming diabetic.

One studied looked at all high GI and GL foods and found the highest intakes of these foods were associated with the greatest risks of becoming diabetic.

A study released last week in the Journal of the American Medical Association led the nightly newscasts and made for some interesting water-cooler talk over the next few days. But I can tell you flat out, this study’s conclusions were way off base.

All fat people say that they want to be thin. But research in the International Journal of Obesity shows that about 95 percent of overweight and obese people fail at weight loss.

Most overweight people eat to overcome, diffuse or “kill” certain uncomfortable feelings. We live in stressful times and high stress generates uncomfortable feelings. But very few of us have been taught effective skills to manage those feelings. So we handle them the best way we can — we eat.

It is hardly news that the world is more obese now than at any time in recent history. Nighttime binging, whether it is large meals or sugary treats, is one of the primary reasons for our obesity pandemic.

Arguably the most important question in the field of obesity is this: Why do some people do well on conventional weight loss diets and others do poorly?