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Getting rid of fat, part 15. My free belly fat book talks about the kinds of food that you should eat and shouldn’t eat. The most important information is to know what the worst food additive in human history is for fat loss and how to avoid it. Read more… »
Aspartame side effects are so nasty that there is no good reason to consume this artificial sweetener, ever. By approving this substance for human use, the FDA has ignored its responsibility to protect the public. Read what credible scientists and medical researchers have to say about aspartame. Your health depends on paying attention to what they have to say. Read more… »
Scientists argue that natural weight loss supplements do not work. Could it be that they are influenced by financial support from big drug companies that make weight loss drugs? Here is my perspective on the latest scientific commentary on weight loss and what it means in reality.
Before you read the article below, keep in mind that scientists are not the objective robots that you might expect them to me. They (we) are biased. The good ones recognize their bias and deal with it appropriately. My bias is natural approaches to health as opposed to using prescription medications. After you read the article that I link here, read more about the natural approach to weight loss below. Thanks!
No Evidence That Popular Slimming Supplements Facilitate Weight …
The analysis summarizes the state of evidence from reviews of studies involving nine popular slimming supplements, including chromium picolinate, Ephedra, bitter orange, conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), calcium, guar gum, glucomannan, … However, more rigorous research is needed, he said, as only very few trials have been of long duration and the number of patients in most of the trials has been small — factors which together limit the conclusions that can be drawn about …
Publish Date: 08/25/2010 3:05
http://www.sciencemagnews.com/no-evidence-that-popular-slimming-supplements-facilitate-weight-loss-new-research-finds.html
Every study or commentary almost has to include the same basic, meaningless criticisms as follows:
“There is no evidence…” (Does NOT mean, “The evidence contradicts…” It just means we have no evidence one way or another.)
“We need larger, long-term clinical trials…” (This will never happen. It costs several thousand dollars per person in a clinical trial. Only drug companies that have a lot of money can afford to test something via such clinical trials.)
“We don’t understand how it works…” (Common criticism of everything. Physicists still have no idea of how gravity works, and yet they still know that it works!)
“No better than a placebo…” (The concept of placebo is completely misunderstood in modern medicine and used inappropriately in almost all medical research. The so-called golden standard of placebo-controlled, double-blind, randomized clinical trials is really a big bad joke that is designed to get drugs approved by the FDA. Caveat emptor!
Note that one of the researchers quoted in the article above receives financial support from GlaxoSmithKline. That does not automatically mean anything. It is sure a big red flag, though.
I feel as though I’ve vented a little bit here. My apologies. Sometimes I just get worn down by all the propaganda and disinformation against natural therapies that bombard the us all. My bias.
In balance, I do feel it important to say that the supplements industry is also fraught with bias, propaganda, and disinformation. Weight loss supplements seem to be the worst offenders. Nevertheless, plenty of good information and good products are out there. You just have to have a good eye for them (or keep in touch with me!)
Dr. D
Man problems are rampant, if the prevalence of commercials about taking baths outdoors with your honey is any indication. One prominent naturopathic doctor calls this increase in ED, man boobs, etc., as the wimpfication of American males. Belly fat might be the main culprit.
The idea for posting on this topic occurred to me while I was out jogging in the heat this afternoon. Delirium sometimes spurs creativity that way.
The naturopath that I refer to is Dr. William Wong. He blames the overdevelopment of the feminine side of men, so to speak, on soy. Soy products are everywhere, so this is an easy target. He objects to the widespread exposure to a particular phytoestrogen, called genistein, that is made by soybean plants. Never mind that genistein is the active ingredient of a patented natural cancer treatment, which is a rare thing indeed. And forget that phytoestrogens such as genistein are, in fact, not steroids; nor are such molecules in any way chemically related to steroids.
The fear of phytoestrogens from soy is misplaced, anyway. The most potent phyoestrogen of all is produced by hops plants, which means that it is common ingredient in beer. Can you imagine a campaign to eradicate beer because it contains a powerful phytoestrogen that might downgrade your manliness? Nah. I didn’t think so. Soy is a much easier target.
I digress.
The topic of this post is that belly fat is a more likely culprit, because abnormal fat is well known to be an estrogen factory. (Quick note to menopausal women: If you are carrying a substantial amount of unwanted fat around your belly, thighs, upper arms, or backside, then be aware that your estrogen production has most assuredly NOT come to a halt.)
Overproduction of estrogen (more specifically, estradiol) by belly fat puts a strain on your balance of steroid hormones. Although your body synthesizes more than 150 steroid hormones, a drop in levels of the one called progesterone as you age seems to be the most critical. Progesterone acts to oppose the effects of estrogen, thereby negating the onset of estrogen dominance. It also provides material that can be made into testosterone, so less progesterone leads to testosterone deficiency.
And heaven help you if you drink bottled water or eat canned foods. The BPA from plastic bottles and plastic liners in most food cans acts like a foreign estrogen (techie term is xenoestrogen), which makes everything in your body that is already going downhill just degenerate faster.
I’m not going to pop off with some sort of general, arm-waving recommendation to get more steroids into your system. You can, of course, get prescription testosterone shots or patches. That may help. You can more easily do what I do, which is to use a progesterone cream every day, in a formula for manly men. (Women have to use a different formula.)
Pointing out problems is easy, and giving simple-minded recommendations may or may not be effective. What I will say, though, is that all of the hormone imbalance that is associated with belly fat, regardless of whether it is the cause or the effect, can be put back on track when you start restoring your native levels of human growth hormone (HGH).
This is why I included a discussion about how to increase HGH levels as one of the steps in my report, “5 Steps to a Slimmer and Healthier You,” which is free through this blog. And it is why I have found out all the easiest natural ways to boost HGH levels, from dietary changes to supplements, exercise, and even the role of sleep.
The bottom line to finish this post, then, is this: Belly fat is a bigger problem than you might think (sorry for the pun there). It diminishes maleness, among other things. However, as long as you do what it takes to get your HGH levels to where they should be, then belly fat becomes less of a problem, as do all the secondary issues that are associated with it.
That is as far as my heat-stroke delirium can take me for the moment.
Dr. D
The whole business of calories for weight management is so misused that I am astounded. As a scientist, I understand the concept of calories as a measure of energy. Energy in this case specifically refers to heat.
Consider this regarding calories: they are not useful for metabolism. Once food or anything else is converted to heat, it is no longer useful metabolically. In fact, calories are only directly measurable as units of heat. For example, the calories that are stored in the chemical bonds of glucose are measurable when released in a device called a calorimeter (see figure).
When 1 gram of glucose is burned in a calorimeter, 4,000 calories are released. (Oh, by the way, reference to the potential energy of food is technically as ‘Calories’ – with a capital ‘C’ – one of which represents 1,000 lower-case ‘c’ calories. In other words, 1 Calorie equals 1,000 calories [also called a kilocalories or kcal for short].)
A calorie is the amount of heat that is required to raise 1 cc of water by 1 degree Celsius, at room temperature and at sea level. So 1 gram of glucose can yield enough heat to raise 4,000 cc (i.e., 4 liters) of water by 1 degree Celsius.
You will never, ever get all the energy out of a gram of glucose. The 4 Calories per gram statistic that has become dogma is only retrievable in a calorimeter. The efficiency of your fuel-harvesting metabolism is probably between 10 and 20%, and certainly never greater than 30%, of that potential. At least a dozen factors determine what the efficiency will be for you for any particular food at any particular time.
Consider this: in a calorimeter a gram of starch will yield the exact same number of calories as a gram of cellulose, which is indigestible fiber. As you and I both know, starch is a source of metabolic energy (i.e., food) for people. In contrast, cellulose is not.
I know that lots of folks want to focus on the concept of ‘available calories’ – whatever that means. So we can say that cellulose offers zero available calories. We can also say that starch offers available calories. We just have no idea how many. It is going to be in the neighborhood of 400 to 800 calories (or 0.4 to 0.8 Calories).
Instead of comparing the metabolism of food with a furnace or calorimeter, it is much more meaningful to talk about what happens to different foods when they are digested, how they get into different kinds of cells (e.g., fat vs. muscle), and what happens to them once they are there.
By the way, once you understand those factors, you will be very clear on why calories have nothing to do with obesity. I hope you chew on that comment for a while (pardon the pun), because this is the kind of thinking that will guide you to success in any weight loss or muscle-building program that truly works for a lifetime.
Dr. D
The metabolism of fat – how we use it and store it – is truly fascinating. One of the mythologies of modern dietary recommendations is that eating fat will make you fat. This could not be further from the truth. Indeed, I have pointed this out recently to readers of my HCG weight loss diet blog. In thi post I explain what I like to have for breakfast, as shown in the photo to the right.
See the whole post here:
Eating After HCG – My Favorite Breakfast.
The reason that I bring this up here is that this is the kind of food that, if you had been eating it right along, would have prevented you from getting any extra belly fat in the first place. Weight loss and fat loss would be a thing of the past, because weight gain and fat gain would be nonexistent. The obesity epidemic certainly wouldn’t have happened. See what I mean when you read what I wrote there.
All the best in natural health,
Dr. D
…if I hadn’t already lost too much! Mindless dogma rules in the world of weight loss, specifically fat loss. The following drivel is an example from the blog article titled Guaranteed Fat Loss Workouts.
It starts out:
The Battle of the Bulge is created by a sedentary lifestyle and eating foods high in calories and beverages. It takes months or years to accumulate, and unless you opt for liposuction or another invasive type of surgery, the only way to undo the weight is diet modification and exercise. Fortunately, there is some guaranteed fat loss workouts, even the best hope to use food as May on the road to a body slimmer, trimmer and more fit.
Follow that link above for the rest of the story. Meanwhile, unless you know exactly what the scientific research literature says on this topic, you may not see the obvious holes even in the introductory paragraph above.
Here is one: The Battle of the Bulge is created by a sedentary lifestyle and eating foods high in calories… [bolded for my emphasis]
First off, a sedentary lifestyle does not cause weight gain. Secondly, eating foods high in calories does not cause weight gain. This is the kind of sloppy thinking and dogma-parroting that divert important attention from finding the real causes of weight gain and obesity. No matter what exercises are advocated in this article, I guarantee you that fat loss will be hard to accomplish by using them.
Just a little rant here. What I will guarantee is that nothing I say on this blog is unsupported by good scientific research. That is the whole point of BellyFatScience.com.
See my blog post at SupplementDocPros.com about how product labels are misleading.
I was just standing out in my yard, in the warm sunshine among the poppies in the desert landscape, sipping on my day’s starter shake. So it occurred to me to tell you about what a great way this is to start the day. Here’s what I do. First off, I throw a banana into the blender, today with a couple of large stawberries. Eve finds ripe bananas and other mature fruits at the dollar store. This is ironic, because the produce section there is supposed to be the dregs, the end of the line for stuff that the supermarkets couldn’t sell. It is great stuff, though.
Okay, I digress. On top of the fruit I add a serving of my protein powder (these days it is an unflavored soy protein product – I don’t buy into claims that soy is responsible for the wimpification of American males), a raw egg (dietary cholesterol is NOT a problem, regardless of what anybody else tells you), a scoop of greens powder, enough water for drinkable consistency, a powdered vitamin mix (means fewer pills today), and a collagen powder (a must every day for everyone! more on this topic soon). Just right, not too sweet, not to thick. I love these shakes! They are a great way to add a delicious and nutritious meal to my day. These are nothing like those crappy meal replacement powders (you know who you are!) that last about 20 minutes until I get hungry again. No, my shakes are solid and last for hours. In fact, in a couple of hours I’ll probably go out for a nice, easy 5-mile run just to get more oomph out of my liquid delectable.
All the best in natural health,
Dr. D
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