Welcome to the MSS Wellness Program - Obesity. We feel that this program will allow you to take personal responsibility for your health by understanding the causes of obesity and how to remove or modify these causes.
New Concepts in Health:
Critical Questions:
The Metabolic Syndrome Wellness Program - Obesity will help you answer these questions and hopefully give you the tools to deal with your own individual health and weight issues. If you keep thinking what you have always thought, you will keep getting what you have always got! - Walther Meyer MD
Nutrition "experts" have based their advice on the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. This nutritional belief system has been the standard for almost 30 years during which our obesity and chronic disease problems have reached epidemic proportion.
Experts have realized that there is something wrong with that picture, but there has been no evidence-based information on which to change nutritional advice.
This program is to give you correct information and empower you to recognize that the metabolic syndrome is the main cause of obesity. It will give you the information that you will need to get your insulin resistance down to normal levels. Another purpose of the MSS Wellness Program is to gather new nutritional data on which to base new approaches to the treatment of obesity. There can be little doubt that what we have been doing for the last 30 years isn't working! We hope that you will download your data (without personal identification) to a data bank, which will have the potential to change healthcare as we know it.
There is a need to obtain new data that can be incorporated into our war against obesity. The Metabolic Syndrome Study will show that most chronic diseases are related to insulin resistance. Insulin resistance can be most easily evaluated with a fasting blood insulin determination.
Insulin Level: Many laboratories have normal ranges between 2 and 22. This study considers normal levels to be between 2 and 7. Levels between 7 and 9 are borderline, especially if associated with elevated triglycerides. Levels of 10 or over indicate that you have insulin resistance and are in the early stages of the metabolic syndrome.
Fasting Blood Insulin: Insulin Resistance - Insulin is one of our key hormones. Insulin controls blood sugar; it stores nutrients; and is an anabolic hormone. (A process in which cells convert simple substances into more complex ones.) As one of the key hormones, our hormone balance is disrupted when insulin levels are elevated. We suspect that sexual dysfunction is related to the metabolic syndrome and are seeking to document this relationship.
Insulin has been shown to have a number of effects in the body: It stimulates cell proliferation; it is a mitogenic (cell division) hormone; it increases blood lipids (fats); it increases blood clotting; it causes retention of sodium, thereby causing fluid retention; it causes conversion of macrophages into foam cells; high insulin causes the loss of cellular magnesium (a muscle relaxer) and is a factor in hypertension; among other effects.
Various tissues in the body are affected by insulin at different concentrations. Liver, muscles, fat, and endothelial tissues are influenced sequentially in that order.
The body needs glucose for cellular energy, however too much is toxic, and when blood sugar gets to a certain level in our blood, insulin is needed to keep it from injuring our cells. Cells are not only injured by 'oxidation' (free radicals turn fats rancid), but also from 'glycation' (carmalization) from sugar levels that are too high. Glycated proteins are very pro-inflammatory.
If we ingest too much sugar, our body has to produce more insulin to keep the sugar from injuring our cells. If we continue to eat more sugar than we need the body continues to produce more insulin than it would with a healthy diet and develops a chronically high level of insulin. (Hyperinsulinemia) Blood sugar can also be raised by cortisone, growth hormone, epinephrine, and glucagons. (Stress related)
If the cells in our body are continually subject to higher insulin levels, they seem to turn off the insulin signal and our cell become 'insulin resistant'. All cells do not do it at the same time. Liver cells become resistant first, then muscle cells, then fat cells, and last are the endothelial cells, which line our blood vessels. A major effect of insulin is to prevent burning of fat, complicating the problem of obesity. High insulin levels are toxic to our cells and are the basis of all chronic disease. One of the best indicators of health is a low insulin level. Levels of 2 to 4 are ideal and levels of 10 or above are indicators of trouble.
High insulin levels (Insulin resistance) are directly related to aging and chronic disease, and are implicated in our national epidemics of obesity and cancer. This is directly related to our national high sugar consumption. One of the biggest stresses on our body is eating a large glucose load. One of the best things that you can do for your body is to eat low glycemic foods. - Walther Meyer MD
Metabolic Syndrome: There is a fairly general agreement that if you have 3 of the 5 problems listed below, you have the metabolic syndrome. This study will evaluate that clinical hypothesis.
Individuals who want to have nutritional information that will allow them to take personal responsibility for their health. They will get the informational tools needed to cut through the misinformation 'out there' about obesity and benefit from a weight loss program based on the science behind the metabolic syndrome concept. People lose weight naturally when they understand that insulin resistance can be brought to normal levels by 1. Eating low glycemic foods, 2. Exercise, 3. Eating healthy fats, and 4. Avoiding excitotoxins in their food.
The first step in your health assessment is to participate in the MSSWellnessPrograms - Obesity.
Walther Meyer MD., CMD.
Nutrimed@tds.net