This is the second in a series of articles about obesity. In this and upcoming articles, Dr. Gardner discusses how obesity happens; why losing weight is seemingly easy for some and nearly impossible for others; common misunderstandings about weight loss and gain; and some exclusive information from Dr. Gardner that proposes a unique theory and answers many of your questions.
Announcement of Upcoming Seminar in Salt Lake City
Dr. Gardner will be in the Salt Lake City area on Friday, June 25, to give a seminar on “The 3-Step System for Feeling Fantastic in 30 Days.” If you’d like to learn more, and perhaps register, please click here.
Your answers to my survey have come in droves, nearly overwhelming me with their intensity, their urgency, their fierce and determined expressions of a desire to get healthy and feel better. Weight loss seems secondary to most of you.
But the excess weight you wrestle with is a burden that extends far beyond physical discomfort. It is an indicator of other burdens that weigh you down: the inability to move quickly and easily and gracefully; the difficulty of getting dressed; the embarrassment; the sense of being judged with no acknowledgment of who you are and what you have to offer.
Carrying excess weight pulls and strains at more than your seams: it wears on your muscles, joints, tendons – your whole body. And then there are the stereotypes you wrestle with: a fat person is supposedly “jolly” – which means able to crack jokes at personal expense. A fat person won’t mind the subtle, or not so subtle, wisecracks about weight…
The message you have sent to me is this: I need help, and I need it now. I’m tired of trying; I’m tired of the repeated failures. I don’t think I believe that you can help me. I’d like to think so, but I’ve tried too many things, and I don’t know what to do.
I want you to know I read you. Loud and clear. I hear you. And I want to help you.
Your Stewardship; Your Options
First, let’s get clear about a few things. My purpose is to help people to feel better; to get healthier. I have spent my life learning how to do that. Sometimes what a patient needs is more than what I can provide. More often, I find that there are answers, and those answers often involve healthy alternatives to drugs and surgery.
But I’m not a magician, and I don’t have all the answers. Maybe I have the answer for you. Maybe I do not. What I do have is more than 30 years of practice as a medical doctor, and many years as a Certified Nutrition Specialist. I understand the anatomy of the physical body, and the anatomy of digestion, food processing, fat storage, and weight loss.
If you would like to explore the options I can offer – if you choose to read this article and take action based upon what you learn, I invite you to do so. But your body is your body. You only get one. It is your stewardship, and ultimately your responsibility, to care for your body, to learn to listen to what your body is telling you, and to prayerfully learn of your options and then make the best decision you know how.
I’m not here to dictate what you should and should not do. And neither should anyone else. I can provide you with the benefits of my training, research, and experience, and others can do the same with what they have to offer. And then you can make your decision.
So, let’s get down to business.
Getting Down to Business
What makes us fat? How do we lose weight? In my last article, we reviewed that what works for one person does not necessarily work for another, and how frustrating that can be. In order to figure out what is going on – why the discrepancy – let’s look carefully at some observations we can make that may lead us to learn some causes. Once we know the causes of obesity, we can follow the trail (sort of like CSI agents) and figure out our next course of action.
First, different people gain weight in different ways. They can gain it through excessive eating. They can gain it through stressful experiences. They can gain it through hormonal imbalances. They can gain it through injuries that cause imbalance in the system. They can gain weight by taking certain medications. They can gain it through choosing the wrong types of food, or eating junk food, or eating at the wrong times or in the wrong ways (more on this in a subsequent article).
People can also gain weight to create a protective “cushion,” or “cast,” around their body. This shield then acts as an emotional or mental deterrent to triggers that could cause pain or remembrances of past painful experiences. It creates a physical barrier representative of a fortress against further injury.
Our excess weight sources, then, are almost as varied as we are in our personalities and appearances. What makes this whole mystery even more mystifying, however, is that weight gain is unintentional. Very few people set out deliberately to gain “a whole lot of weight.” (All right, I read once about someone who wants to be the fattest person in the world, and is actively pursuing that notoriety – and I’ve also read about people who have to gain weight to portray a character in a play or movie. But I’m talking about normal people like you and me, who live relatively normal lives.)
So if what we’re seeing in terms of weight gain are results that are unintentional – in fact, in direct opposition to what people want – where’s the disconnect? What is creating this onslaught of obesity, when nobody, and no body, wants to be fat?
Possible Historical Triggers
In searching, we find several potential, suspicious candidates for the obesity epidemic, on three levels: personal, national, and worldwide. Here are a few, but by no means all:
Industrialization (as I mentioned in my previous article)
Invention and popularization of sedentary habits, beginning with the television and continuing with the computer
Popularity of passive entertainment
Chronic stress
Toxic overload
Malnutrition
Allergies
My Epiphany
As I stare at these and other potential triggers, my mind ponders: what is the commonality here? Is there something or some way that any or all of these could possibly contribute to the obesity epidemic?
One of the things we as medical doctors do when we want to get at, and solve, issues at the root of their problems is, we examine the end-organ, or resultant manifestation of diseases. We follow the trail backwards, based upon what we observe in our patients. In observing my obese patients, getting their histories, and upon physical exam, I have discovered that their excessive weight and size reflects a similarity to what I observe when I see an infectious or allergic reaction: they are swollen and inflamed.
This bears repeating!
I’m going to say it again: fat in the body is created as a swollen, inflamed, end-organ manifestation, from allergic reactions, or any of the above or additional triggering factors that I have mentioned.
From my observations, I have deduced that obesity is often a result of chronic, low-level inflammation. Further research documents that this is indeed a theory worth pursuing, and yet, astonishingly – even though obesity is such an enormous problem – I have yet to read of these studies in current, commonly cited literature! Let me share with you some of the studies and resources I have uncovered (these breakthrough concepts have been published within the past 10 years):
“Obesity is often accompanied by excess fat storage in tissues other than adipose tissue, including liver and skeletal muscle, which may stimulate inflammation… Some of these secreted proteins, including several proinflammatory mediators, may be produced by macrophages resident in the adipose tissue. The changes in inflammatory status of adipose tissue and liver with obesity feed a growing recognition that obesity represents a state of chronic low-level inflammation.” 1
Another source indicates that fat cells function as an endocrine organ, secreting hormones (which can explain the hormonal imbalances that also trigger weight gain).This study states: “Visceral fat, in fact, may act as an endocrine organ, synthesizing and releasing inflammatory cytokines, whose circulating levels depend on the individual’s nutritional state, and the extent and anatomical location of fat stores.” 2
I have a plethora of additional information and studies that I want to share with you, and they’ll be coming in future articles. Then, once you know what’s going on inside your body, you’ll be better equipped with how to solve the obesity puzzle, once and for all, in your body, and get on with living again.
In the meantime, what can you do to proactively start ridding your body of the inflammation? You can start by eliminating the ingestion of processed foods, with their inflammatory ingredients. While this is definitely not a complete list, here are some:
sugar,
flavorings,
dyes,
caffeine,
trans fatty acids,
hydrogenated oils,
sugar,
preservatives,
did I mention sugar before?
Start paying careful attention to what your body is telling you.
When you eat something, what is your body’s immediate response? Two minutes later? Two hours later? Two days later?
In the meantime, I’d appreciate it greatly if you would please fill out my survey on weight loss, so that I can determine more specifically what your needs are and how I may be of help to you. If you have questions or comments, please visit my website, https://www.stangardnermd.com.
To your dynamic health and energy! Dr. Stan
Notes
1 PPARs, Obesity, and Inflammation, Rinke Stienstra, Caroline Duval, Michael Muller, and Sander Kersten, Published online 2006 December 28. doi: 10.1155/2007/95974.
2 New paradigms in neuroendocrinology: relationships between obesity, systemic inflammation and the Neuroendocrine system. Toni R, Malaguti A, Castorina S, Roti D, Lechan RM; J Endocrinol Invest 2004 Feb(27:2): 182-6.
