Red's Health Tips

og 16JAN12 – Results Matter – Day 13

An absolutely fabulous day today!  Great weather and wonderful camaraderie!  I had a Mastermind meeting around noon-time – very productive I might add.  I had a Toastmasters’ Officers meeting with my fellow club officers late this afternoon.  Again, a very productive meeting!  I still working the bugs out of my book trying to get it accepted by Lulu.com in epub format, but I’ll figure it out.  I’ve learned a lot in this process.

I had a conversation recently with a friend about the benefit of eating multiple small meals every few hours – four or five or six meals throughout the course of the day.  I don’t think this is the smartest thing to do.  Many nutritionists will disagree with me.  I believe that you should eat when you are hungry – or – when you will be tied up for a period of time and can’t eat at a later time.

What happens when you eat a meal?  The carbohydrates that you ate cause your insulin to be secreted.  Blood glucose fasting levels are hyped as determining if you have diabetes or not.  If your blood glucose fasting levels are high enough, then you are pre-diabetic or diabetic.  However, the lower you blood glucose levels are the healthy you are.  Most physicians accept the limit of 100 at the ‘high’ of the normal level.  Literature that I’ve read recently indicates that the upper limit should be 85 rather than 100.  A true healthy range should be 75-85 for your fasting blood glucose.

The higher your blood glucose levels the higher risk of cardiovascular disease.  With a baseline starting around 80, the risk increases significantly for every 20 points rise in your blood glucose levels.  If your fasting level is 100, then you have a significant risk.  When you eat, your postprandial blood glucose levels can rise to 130-150 or higher.  Those high levels of blood glucose after eating are serious risks to your health.

Eating five or six small meals a day increases your blood glucose levels throughout the day.  It gives your body no chance to moderate and return to normal.  If you are overweight to begin with, you are feeding your fat cells continuously because of the extra blood glucose flowing through your blood vessels.  One might suggest that those small meals contain little carbohydrates; but, if you look at the typical composition of those small meals you will see more than enough grams of carbohydrates to keep your postprandial blood glucose levels above the optimal range.

If you are older and overweight, you have a couple more problems because your body might not recognize the ‘excess’ glucose flowing in your veins and your liver might be prompted to make more glucose.  Aging can cause certain biological functions to become dysfunctional.  Fasting has been shown to improve insulin resistance and improve your adiponectine levels.  Adiponectine is a hormone that tells your brain to start burning fat.  Insulin resistance causes your body to produce more insulin than is needed.  Your cells are not receptive to insulin and take up less glucose for energy.  As a result, you have more glucose available in your bloodstream to convert to fat and be stored.

It’s a vicious circle of hormones when resistance begins to set in.  The hormones that stimulate hunger and want to store fat are more powerful than the ones that want to burn fat.  Ghrelin is a hormone that tells you that you are hungry.  It can give your brain a false sense of satisfaction – almost like a drug.  It stimulates the pleasure center in your brain and you begin to eat ‘comfort’ food and enjoy it more.  The comfort food contains lots of carbohydrates which increases your insulin.  If you are stressed at all, cortisol is produced which supports insulin in storing fat.

Mother Nature did a good job of protecting your body when food is scarce.  However, when food is plentiful, it is easy for most of us to eat to our heart’s content and we develop new habits – a new lifestyle.  Those habits lead to extra fat being stored and significant health problems.

Today is the penultimate day of Week 2 for me.  I am looking very forward to having a glass of wine tomorrow night and weighing in on Wednesday morning to see my results after two weeks.  I remember quite well during my Atkins’s days that I would lose some weight and then plateau.  I’m sure many of you have had similar plateaus in the various diets you may have been on.  It’s difficult to lose weight and continue losing.  Your body had to adjust.  Hydration levels, in addition to other factors can make the difference of a couple or more pounds.  Instead of dropping an extra three or four pounds, you end up staying plus or minus one pound for a week or more.

I remember one week plus that I stayed almost constant and couldn’t figure out why.  I had lost the same amount for several previous weeks and that week was different.  I asked myself why and could not figure it out.  I changed from beef to fish – a change in my protein source – and, magically I began to lose weight again.  Was changing protein sources the answer?  I doubt it in retrospect.  I don’t know why your body plateaus.  I wasn’t smart enough at that time to determine if I were losing inches and not pounds.

Regardless of how Week 2 ends, I’m still committed to making a lifestyle change.  My wife is ready to start her Week 1 when I start my Week 3.  That will make cooking a bit easier.  My daughter has semi-started with me, and has made some good progress.  She did not do any measurements when she started, so she doesn’t know how much of this is related to her dietary changes.  She has a good start point now, but it is more than a week into her program.

Red O’Laughlin

Your Prosperity Professor

281-437-8114 H/W  281-687-1188 C