Maintaining ideal body weight with diet and exercise is also crucial for avoiding diabetes and prediabetes.In overweight adults for each2.2 pounds(1 kilogram) gained per year the risk of developing diabetes increases about 50% over the next ten years. By losing 2.2 pounds per year the risk of developing diabetes is reduced about33% for the next 10 years (J Epidemiol Community Health. 2000; 54(8):596-602).

Speak to your healthcare professional to find out if you are at risk for developing diabetes and to learn ways you can avoid it.

Gary Pepper M.D.

Editor-in-Chief, Metabolism.com

The terms of service for metabolism.com apply to this and all posts; http://www.metabolism.com/2008/09/06/terms-conditions-service-agreement/

• Depression, anxiety, anger and mood swings.
• Absolutely no energy at all.  Literally, it takes effort to make a phone call and I am always tired.
• Weight gain, primarily around my midsection and some in my breasts.  I am about as pear shaped as you can get.
• Lately, can’t think straight, can’t remember simple names and places.
• Significant loss of muscle, feeling weak and body aches like I am 40 years older than I am.  Getting off the couch is a chore.

We thank those of you who submitted your thoughts to this contest and hope that by keeping up with Sally’s comments, problems and progress that you can gain useful information to help you achieve your own goals. We also plan to rerun the contest in the near future so keep your eyes open for more information.

Sally’s winning comment is as follows:

The biggest obstacle to acheiving my weight loss is many-fold and complex as I believe it is for most. I believe my sleep apnea is the worst “culprit”. I also have Hashimoto’s thyroid disease and in 2006 I crash dieted and lost 82 lbs in 11 months only to suffer a rapid rebound weight gain of 40 pounds. For over two years, I have not been able to get this weight off. I was previously insulin resistant and had surgery on PCOS. The fibromyalgia affects working out. I feel that all of these issues feed off one another. It is crystal clear to me that feeling poorly every day from debilitating fatigue is the biggest obstacle to acheiving the weight loss I so desperately need. I really do need help. I want to live before I die.

Being a strong advocate of t4 plus t3 therapy and of Armour Thyroid, I was in sync with most of the topics being discussed on the call. What was hard for me was hearing the out pouring of stories describing how endocrinologists had alienated (infuriated) so many thyroid patients. How to explain but not excuse the inflexibility, wrong headedness and arrogance of a whole field of medicine on a topic central to its mission, my own field for the past 25 years? My head still hurts thinking about it. For those wanting to hear how this played out can visit Talkshoe.com which hosts these shows and follow the instructions for listening to past episodes of Janie’s show. Perhaps Janie can give more specific instructions by posting them here.

I came away from Janie’s session with a firm recognition that the field of Endocrinology is in serious need of a make-over. Imagine a Democrat walking into a room full of staunch Republicans and asking everyone to join him in a sensitivity training program. It is a lonely job.

knowing why is more than half the battle

You’ll see a lot of articles about how to fight the occasional eat-fest, in fact I dare you to find one woman’s or man’s magazine near the holidays and at the beginning of summer that doesn’t address this issue.

In these magazines, and even on weight loss forums all over the net, you’ll see suggestions with how to beat it: eat this food, don’t eat that food. Go for a walk, take a bath. But let’s be honest, if these things worked, we’d all be prunes from taking all of those bubble baths and ben and jerry’s would be out of business….well, okay, they’d have to at least sell the summer home in Buenos Aires.

So here’s some more practical advice on discovering your reasons for binging and how to heal from them:

There are only 2 possibilities for eating past hunger:

1) you’re not getting enough nutrients from the foods you eat.

If this is true, your cravings will be for very particular food groups and will often come with other health problems like light headedness, cranky moodswings, headaches, muscle cramps, etc.

For example, someone that does not get enough protein or is getting too much protein will crave sugary foods because both proteins and sugars will show up in your blood sugar insulin levels, keeping the right amount of proteins in your diet will keep sugar cravings at bay. If this is you, you may feel fatigued in your workouts, have irregular periods or feel sluggish.

People on over restrictive diets low on calories will crave carbohydrates and sugars because these are the sources more quickly turned into energy in the body.
If you know that you’re not eating well or are on a ___diet (fill the blank in with any one food item and you KNOW it’s a bad idea), this could be your reason. Do you feel hungry constantly, do you have trouble sleeping? These could be signs of imbalanced carbohydrates in your diet.

2)you’re not getting enough emotional outlets in your life.

Look, we’re emotional beings. We eat for hunger, yes, but we also eat because we’re stressed, tired, lonely, bored, celebrating. And we’re not the only ones. I’ve watched my cat eat until she puked (and then eat the puke, and then puke the puked food and eat it again) because she was lonely, so why should we expect more from ourselves? Okay, fine, don’t eat what you’ve puked.

If you know this is why you over eat, I ask you to think of one question: What feeling am I seeking when I eat too much?

This one question will get you a lot more than you may think. If you eat until you feel happy, what happened today or earlier that made you UNhappy? If you eat until you feel calm, what made you irritated? Generally, emotional eating form their own kind of food groups:

Crunchy salty foods = aggravation, irritation.

Sweet, soft doughy,creamy foods = sadness, need for consolation.

Soft, salty foods = boredom, loneliness.

Fatty, fried foods = feeling spacy, ungrounded, unsure.

Now of course there’s no science book that’s going to break down these parallels in what you eat, when and why. You could be ready to punch your boss in the face and reach for ice cream, not chips, but hey, don’t you want someone to console you after you punch him?

In the end, if you can start with knowing why YOU eat too much, that’s more than half the battle.

So I’m not saying the next time you go shopping to distract yourself from the Dorito aisle because it’s “bad”, but just think, what do I want to feel after I eat this? and see if that changes anything.

But we’ve also all wondered exactly HOW these 60 minute sessions of bends and twists can promise so much?

Here’s the key to the health benefits of yoga poses:

Like traditional exercize (running, walking, playing group sports etc), yoga can get your heart rate up and tone and strengthen your muscles. But the special qualities that yoga alone offers is the attention it gives to our internal organs. Here’s a quick fact about the major types of yoga postures:

All forward bending poses will help to massage the stomach, pancreas and intestines, bringing new blood to these organs and therefore helping them to work better.

All twisting poses massage and compress the different sections of the colon, helping to manually move food along it’s route from the stomach and onwards.

Also, all “chin to chest” simple poses will massage the thyroid and parathyroid glands which are responsible for our body’s ability to properly absorb calcium in addition to keeping our sleep and metabolism regular.

Like many things in life, it is the simple stuff that is often offering the most complex benefits. If you’re new to yoga, research the variety of DVD’s, classes in your neighborhood and of course, local practitioners that can help you learn more.

One of the best euphemisms ever for the “gift that keeps on giving” if you ask me. But! Cold sores are just as easy to prevent and heal in a natural way as they are to freak out about!

One of the easiest ways to treat an existing breakout:

Avoid acidic situations: spicy foods, tomato products, hardcore toothpaste/mouthwash, coffee, alcohol, processed sugars. Now I’m not saying to stay away from these forever, but just as you’re healing.

dancing raisin

This is of course easiest on a cold sore that’s on the inside of the mouth, but you can apply a bit of the raisin mush to a band-aid or use like a lip balm for an external sore. I know I know, NOT the hottest look, but please, you’re embarrassed already, why not?

Raisins have a high iron and potassium content which balances out the acidic environment that cold sores love.

Preventing more breakouts:

Discover L-lysine:

cold sore

The amino acid l-lysine, one of the key essential amino acids (meaning we have to get it from our diet) to fight, minimize and prevent viral herpes (sorry, that’s the real name for cold sores!) is a nutrient you can easily find in supplement form. It also comes naturally in foods, but brewer’s yeast is a unique food with a high lysine content. (sorta like vegan powdered cheese…sorta)

If you’re taking the supplement form, make sure to take at least 1250mg per day when you feel it coming on, and then back down to lower levels once you’ve been breakout free for a while. Also remember to consume plenty of Vitamin C, Zinc and Bioflavinoids (from a good multi-vitamin or better from dark leafy veggies) when taking this supplement to support it’s benefits.

As you already know, stress impacts metabolic functions in your body. It happens for a good reason of survival, as our nature to survive activates body’s basic ability to run for your life when stressful events happen. You will digest food and absorb your nutrients later when you are safe and out of danger. This is the basic survival mechanism. It is often not how much and what you eat and drink during these few holiday weeks, but how you eat, in what mood, and for what reason. Of course, if you already have issues with your metabolism, you should watch your diet however stress amplifies the damage while it doesn’t have to.

Holidays is a good time to apply any stress reduction techniques you already know – meditation, self-hypnosis, Epsom salt baths, aromatherapy, massage, and anything else you know. I would like to share with you two stress reduction techniques you can apply instantaneously so you will be able to dissipate the upcoming negative emotion.

1. www.emofree.com – Emotional Freedom Technique – EFT. Easy to practice it helps you to relax within seconds and neutralizes emotion, pain, or negative thought. Being so easy to learn and practice, it became one of the most widespread practices. You can do it anywhere – in the airplane, in your car, at your house, at the restaurant bathroom, etc. EFT process can be briefly described as tapping on specific face and body points while speaking out loud the affirmation of your choice. At first it looks unusual, but soon you will get used to it and enjoy the results it brings.
It is absolutely FREE to learn, and you can get materials and watch videos online. We can thank Gary Craig, EFT founder and wonderful person, for creating the system and making it so available.

2. Practice dissociating yourself from negative memories. For example, you are expecting visitors you associate some negative memories with. Even thought of seeing them makes your heart beat faster, and you get irritated. You can do the following to free yourself of this feeling. While sitting comfortably, close your eyes and vividly remember last time you had a confrontation with them. Do you see yourself in that memory as it is a movie, or you see everything around you from your own eyes? If you see everything around you in that memory, the chances are you are fully associated with it and reliving these emotions all over again. It is possible to change your emotional charge by simply changing the perception of this memory. Close your eyes again and watch this event as a movie with you playing one of the roles. See yourself in this movie. Now move it farther away from you on a TV distance and make it black and white – just like an old movie. Play with the distance, color, and/or quality, and move it farther or closer. Notice how your emotions are changing. Now, in your imagination, install a glass door between you and that movie. Notice how your emotions dissipate. This way you can override negative emotions associated with old memories. You can repeat this exercise a few more times with other memories associated with your upcoming visitors. After a while, you will be surprised to find yourself much calmer when your visitors arrive.

It is known that testosterone levels decline slowly as men age. Declining male hormone levels were found even in the 45 to 71 year age range, however. Other known causes of declining testosterone levels, the growing incidence of obesity and sedentary life style in Boston men, did not explain the findings, say the researchers.

Could other factors be at work here? Alcohol has a powerful effect on male hormone levels for many reasons. Some alcohol products like bourbon and beer may have estrogen (female hormone) like plant products in them. Liver disease from excess alcohol consumption can also reduce the level of male hormone. Other drugs may have a negative effect on male hormone production such as cannabis (marijuana, Mary Jane, pot, herb, weed, splif, ganja, the bomb, the shit etc.). Although not nearly as wide spread in its use are the opiate type drugs, heroine, methadone, opium, codeine, hydrocodone etc. which can severely depress male hormone levels.

Environmental pollutants are known to cause adverse hormonal effects in men. Pollutants such as PCB’s and DDT act like female hormone and could reduce a man’s testicular function (the testicle is the site of testosterone and sperm production in men). Even herbal products can have anti-male hormone effect such as soy, black cohosh, and white clover. Perhaps the Boston men are being exposed to these influences more now then in the past and the result is sinking male hormone levels.

Before concluding that Boston men are simply pot smoking, beer drinking, soy eating effeminate couch potatoes, the authors of the study call for additional research into the possible origins of this serious loss of virility hormone in the Boston area.

Gary Pepper M.D.
Editor-in-Chief
metabolism.com