Health On The Blog

Losing Weight the Healthy Way
People frequently enroll in a Stronger-Leaner-Better Personal Program to lose weight, increase their energy levels, and feel better. They’ve usually tried the classic combination of calorie restriction and excess cardio. Their diets often include a lot of shakes, bars, and other processed foods. This approach frequently leads to short term weight loss, followed by the inevitable rebound. Once the rebound occurs, frustration sets in, followed by another bout of calorie restriction and cardio.

The reality is that this tired old approach doesn’t work because it doesn’t address the underlying function of three key body systems.

If you want to finally lose weight and keep it off in a healthy way, you need an integrated approach to getting fit. For most people there is no simple, single solution for losing weight, all three body systems need to be addressed along with a program incorporating intelligent exercise and lifestyle changes. If you’re using fad diets and spending mindless hours in the gym, you’ll eventually hit the wall.

The three body systems and their role in healthy weight loss

The three body systems are:
1. The hormonal system
2. The digestive system
3. The detoxification system

The hormonal system regulates your metabolic rate and controls how you burn body fat. The digestive system provides you with the nutrients you need to burn body fat. And the detoxification system helps keep you from storing excess fat.

Most weight problems are brought on by years of poor lifestyle choices such as eating crappy processed foods and not getting enough sleep. These lifestyle issues add up to hormone imbalances, digestive trouble, and detoxification problems.

The Hormonal System
Most weight gain can be traced to the adrenal hormones, known also as the stress hormones. The adrenal hormone cortisol, best known for its pivotal role in responding to stress, also promotes the burning of body fat, helps regulate emotions, and counters inflammation - all part of the body’s “fight or flight” response to threatening situations.

Cortisol levels rise under stress, but if stress continues without enough rest for recovery, which is common these days, the adrenal glands become exhausted and cortisol levels drop. This has a chain-reaction impact on metabolism, slowing down your metabolic rate. The result: a fatter you. The more stress you’re under, the more body fat you store.

Adrenal Exhaustion
With stress, a surge of cortisol prepares the body to fight off an attack or flee. For millennia this mechanism operated under conditions that would be followed by long periods of rest and full recovery. Today, however, we are essentially locked in a 24/7 “fight or flight” state. Poor diets, lack of exercise and sleep, and long work hours leave your body in a chronic state of stress, with many restorative functions perpetually lagging behind.

Adrenal exhaustion leaves people feeling lethargic and fatigued. It also impacts:
Muscle and joint function, leading to a series of aches, pains, and injuries.
Sleep quality, causing trouble falling asleep and staying asleep
Immune function, resulting frequent colds and/or illness

Reversing adrenal burnout requires a well-designed exercise program, improved sleep habits and stress reduction. If left unchecked, fluctuations in cortisol have a profound impact on the sex hormones, leading to problems in women such as PMS, and to low sex drive in both women and men.

The Digestive System
The second body system, the digestive system is sometimes referred to as the “mother” system because it feeds your body the nutrients you need to function. A perfectly functioning digestive system is an important first step in any weight loss program, as your body needs to absorb proteins, key vitamins, minerals, and fatty acids to properly regulate metabolism and burn fat. In many patients I have treated, weight gain has been connected to hidden infections in the GI tract.

Sensitivity to gluten (found in many grains) is the most common food reaction triggering hormone imbalance and weight gain, yet it often goes undiagnosed or misdiagnosed. If untreated, gluten intolerance can bring low energy, depression, obesity, and diabetes as well as high risk of osteoporosis.

The Detoxification System
Detoxification pathways remove harmful chemicals generated from normal body functions such as physical exertion and breathing. If you are taking in more toxins than you can flush out through the liver, kidneys, stool, and skin, you will have a backlog of waste products in the body that can cause a number of symptoms including fatigue, skin problems, irritability and poor concentration or memory.

Toxic build-up also leads to weight loss resistance. Toxins are stored in fat tissue in your body. People who are overweight will hold on to fat tissue tenaciously in an attempt to protect the body from the damage that would be caused by the release of these stored toxins.

Toxins build up in the body as by-products of what you consume including alcohol, prescription drugs and over the counter medications. Additionally in your daily life you are exposed to environmental toxins in the air, water and food supply. These chemicals accumulate over the course of your life and contribute to over-burdening the liver detoxification pathways.

Improving the Three Systems
All three body systems - hormonal, digestive, and detoxification - can be improved by applying the principles of the Stronger-Leaner-Better Programs. Get at least 8 hours of sleep each night. Reduce stress with relaxing activities like yoga, tai chi and walking. Make sure you get enough high quality protein (3-5 ounces) at each meal. Look for lean, all-natural meats as your primary protein source.

And last but not least get regular exercise. All of these sensible approaches let your 3 key systems heal and rebalance themselves.

I’ve written 33 Days to a Stronger-Leaner-Better You to help more people apply this approach to healthy weight loss. The 33 Day program is a step-by-step, day by day to changing the way you look, the way you feel, and the way you live. It addresses the 4 fundamental pieces of a healthy lifestyle: nutrition, exercise, sleep, and stress. It’s a great starting point for building a Stronger-Leaner-Better you. The 33 Day program is in the final stages of production, and will be available within the next few weeks.

It certainly takes some honest-to-goodness work to get to the root causes of weight gain. And it takes some commitment to apply a lasting solution. But what better reward is there than a Stronger-Leaner-Better you?

Dr. Glenn Hyman, D.C. http://strongerleanerbetter.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Glenn_Hyman http://EzineArticles.com/?A-Weight-Loss-Program-Based-On-Balancing-3-Key-Body-Systems&id=80321

During my recent visit to a local pharmacy to buy some allergy medicine, I noticed a profound trend while looking at some of the over-the-counter (OTC) products. About half of all the products, on their packaging, were touting that they either contained natural ingredients or used some sort of alternative healing modality.

The use of herbs, vitamin supplements, and homeopathic medicine is growing because of the multitude of side effects associated with conventional care. For the purposes of this discussion, let us take a closer look at each of these different types of natural products and some examples of products in each category.

Herbal medicine has been around longer than any other form of treatment. Ancient man used plants for almost everything, including food, shelter, and even clothing. So, they turned to their botanical resources for treating disease as well. Man developed herbal medicines by observing animals, and then through trial and error, they would assemble random concoctions of various plants until they found the remedy that worked best.

The most popular herbal remedies include echinacea, ginger, and ginkgo biloba. Echinacea is very adept at stimulating the immune system when the patient is suffering from an acute viral or bacterial infection. It is often found in cold remedies. Ginger has been demonstrated to reduce nausea and vomiting (and is used in most hangover cures). Ginkgo biloba helps combat various diseases of the circulatory system, and has also been shown to help treat people suffering from depression and even Alzheimers. Basically, there are a lot of herbs that do help treat certain conditions, but on the whole, herbal remedies do not seem to be as effective as conventional medicines and should only be used as a supplement to conventional treatment if the patient is severely ill.

The next category of natural remedies is the vitamin supplements. Between herbs, vitamins, and homeopathic products, vitamins are probably the least effective form of treatment when dealing with acute illnesses or serious medical conditions. The most popular vitamin supplement on the market today is Airborne, which is currently the number one selling OTC natural cold remedy in the United States.

Airborne is an effervescent tablet that contains a blend of vitamins, minerals, herbs, and amino acids. Following a powerful endorsement on the Oprah Winfrey show, sales of Airborne skyrocketed. Airborne was designed to prevent the common cold. So, it is not a treatment medicine. However, there is no conclusive evidence to suggest that ingesting a bunch of vitamins and minerals can prevent the onset of cold symptoms. In fact, one of the ingredients in Airborne, echinacea, which we touched upon earlier in this article, has been shown to be effective for treating an acute infection, not necessarily for preventing it. Also, Airborne contains 1000 mg of vitamin C, which most experts agree is not safe to take. Daily ingestion of this much vitamin C can lead to a wide variety of medical problems, such as kidney stones and other noxious ailments. Airborne has not undergone an independent study to confirm its effectiveness.

The last, and perhaps most important, category of natural medicine products that we will discuss is homeopathic medicines. Homeopathy is probably the best system of natural medicine, hands down. Simply put, it is a system of medicine that treats disease with tiny amounts of natural substances that mimic the symptoms of the condition being treated. For example, a homeopathic remedy for treating the common cold may contain a diluted concentration of substances that if present in high quantities, would cause you to become congested and develop a sore throat. But, because the medicine contains a highly diluted amount of the substance, it does not actually make you sick; instead, it causes your immune system to activate so that your natural defense mechanisms will kick into high gear and fight off any cold viruses you might have in your body.

Homeopathic products, when formulated properly, do not produce side effects because the ingredients are so diluted within the mixture that no effects are produced from the substances themselves. The ingredients in these brands often have an X or a C after them to indicate how many dilutions were done for each ingredient. Also, treatment with these sorts of products has been demonstrated to actually prevent recurrences of certain diseases over the long-term. Some of the best manufacturers in this category include Boiron, a French manufacturer with annual revenues in the hundreds of millions of dollars, and Liddell, a small American company whose products are sold primarily in health food stores.

So, next time you stop by the pharmacy, take a closer look at the ingredients for the various natural medicines on the shelf. You should try to stay away from vitamin supplements. You might want to try some herbal remedies depending upon your condition, but the homeopathic products are probably the best way to go. Also, you should consult your physician or a pharmacist before buying any medicine that you have never tried before, even if it is sold over-the-counter.

Article Source: ABC Article Directory

The Author: Jim Pretin is the owner of www.forms4free.com, a service that helps programmers make email forms.