The Center for Disease Prevention & Reversal Blog

In the early nineties, the buzz word for anyone seeking out alternative views on chronic illness was candidiasis. Candidiasis is an overgrowth of Candida, a yeast that is normally present in our environment but is opportunistic and can overgrow when normal bacteria are missing or reduced.

Candida was blamed for everyone presenting with chronic inflammation, chronic fatigue and food intolerance.

It is true that antibiotic use can lead to an overgrowth of Candida, and it is true that antibiotics are over prescribed. But, often patients would not improve on treatments to reduce Candida and they were subjected to months of medications and highly restricted diets.

Along comes Alessio Fasano MD, a pediatrician involved in intestinal barrier research. Dr. Fasano has identified a protein termed Zonulin which is responsible for regulating the "tight junctions" of the intestines and other tight barriers in the body such as the blood brain barrier.

From a medical evolutionary standpoint, there are times where a leaky gut might come in handy, like when we come into contact with infectious agents such as Cholera. A leaky gut in this instance would stimulate an immune response and memory antibody production which would help fight the infection. This is a theory but help explain why the body would create a protein like this in the first place.

Zonulin created gaps where our bowels leak and once proteins leak into our blood stream, lots of things happen like inflammation, antibody production and in some cases, auto-immune disease develops such as Celiac, MS, Rheumatoid Arthritis and the like.

It is interesting to note that Splenda is suspected as a stimulator of zonulin along with heavy metals, stress, and most likely other triggers not yet discovered. Gluten is one of the many proteins that seems to be involved in inflammation and autoimmune problems when leaked out of the gut.

One of the tests I perform for my patients in my Chicago area office is the food inflammatory response test. It is based on the inflammatory response of cultured white blood cells to different food antigens and is a true test of not antibody production but inflammatory response.

If patients have many foods they are inflamed by, they have a leaky gut and are at risk for autoimmune disease. The patient is then put on a protocol of supplements to repair the bowel and to down-regulate the zonulin. It is also recommended that they avoid the foods they are negatively responding to for a few months. Gluten and often dairy are on the list when it is a situation of leaky gut syndrome. And if gluten is involved, often lifelong avoidance is the best choice due to the risk of autoimmune diseases.

Heavy metal testing is often implicated in this situation and chelation therapy might be warranted to help rid the body of heavy metals.

The latest fad in dieting has been the HCG diet. In addition to taking or injecting HCG, patients eat a 500 calorie a day diet. The biggest problem with this is it's a DIET!

According to the American Obesity Association,the failure rate for dieters is well over 95%.
This is based upon research they published in 1959 but also concurs with ore recent surveys.

When patients in my Evanston Illinois area office express a wish to lose weight, I do not give them a diet to go on for a prescribed period of time. I work with them to change their diet, their attitudes about food and eating and about exercise and meditation.

My Patients lose weight slowly but more importantly, they keep it off and have better energy and moods. Often the health issues that brought them to my office improves without any other changes or medications.

I do see many obese patients who want lipodissolve, but this is inappropriate for them as lipodissolve is a spot fat removal process not a weight loss process. Unless the fat is in the chin, neck, dowagers hump or a lipoma, I wait until the obese patient loses enough weight from lifestyle changes before I would consider performing lipodissolve on their bodies.

Patients who opt for diets, always put their weight back on because nothing has really changed. This is akin to smokers who tell you they've quit numerous times. Unless one examines the reasons behind the addiction ( and, yes, obesity is due to an addiction), they fail.

One of the many techniques for tackling the physical obstacles to addiction recovery is altering the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) pathway via reflex biofeedback. This technique works wonders and is being utilized for recovery from all kinds of addictions.

Altering the signals to eat once and for all is the only way to deal with obesity.

Why chose a non-surgical procedure involving many injections that might involve a few visits over a single surgical procedure?

The answer is the risk/benefit ratio.

Liposuction, also known as lipoplasty or suction-assisted lipectomy, is cosmetic surgery performed to remove unwanted deposits of fat from under the skin. The doctor sculpts and recontours the patient's body by removing excess fat deposits that have been resistant to reduction by diet or exercise. The fat is permanently removed from under the skin with a suction device. The patients is typically under general anesthesia.

The morbidity and mortality from liposuction is reported from several studies to be on average, 20-100 deaths per 100,000 surgeries. Higher with general anesthesia and higher when combined with other procedures like a tummy tuck. Tummy tucks have a death rate of 1 per 600 procedures just by itself.

Lipodissolve is a non-surgical procedure where phosphatidyl choline (lecithin) and deoxycholate (bile salt) is injected directly into the subcutaneous storage fat. The fat cells are lysed open from the substances and the patient's immune system sends macrophages to the area to clean up the debris. Swelling ensues enabling many macrophages or clean up cells to enter the area and the body then eliminates the macrophages and dead fat cell debris via the lymphatic system and the intestinal tract. This procedure is performed for the same reason liposuction is performed and in the same areas.

There is a zero mortality risk from lipodissolve. Thousands of procedures have been performed world wide without any death risk. The morbidity is also close to nil. There have been a few cases of infection of the area treated, but these cases were not performed by medical personnel.

The results from lipodissolve can be remarkable. The skin shrinks over the area where the fat has been lysed as needles promote skin tightening and the fat disappears over a few weeks allowing the skin to shrink as well.

There is swelling and some bruising, this is part of the process and necessary for the process, but not a risky side effect.

Lipodissolve can be done in small areas such as the jowls, under the chin and on knee fat pads, liposuction is difficult in such small areas.

With a desirable outcome and little risk, lipodissolve is preferable to the surgical procedure liposuction.

There are two types of abdominal fat; visceral and subcutaneous.

While many studies cite the dangers of visceral fat because of it's association with heart disease and diabetes type two, subcutaneous fat can also pose some dangers.

All fat cells have the capability to transform cholesterol into hormones, particularly estrogen, and large amounts of subcutaneous fat can translate in to excessive estrogen.

Many patients visit my Chicago area office for lipodissolve but this can only eliminate subcutaneous fat. If they have visceral fat which is never good, I recommend dietary changes and either conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), or DHEA.

The studies on both of these supplements are very promising in reducing fat and increasing lean body mass.

The November 10 issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) published a study on the effects of DHEA on visceral and subcutaneous fat.

The study included the non-control group of elderly subjects taking 50mg per day of DHEA for six months.

The conclusion was that DHEA supplementation significantly reduced not only visceral fat, but subcutaneous fat as well. And, previous studies have shown an increase in bone density in subjects taking DHEA.

CLA has been studied and is associated with an increase in lean body mass and decrease in visceral fat. However, the studies were not as impressive as with DHEA. Non the less, many weight trainers body sculptors swear by CLA.

Lipodissolve is only good for someone with a medium to lean body weight who has stubborn fatty tissue in spot areas, like a mushy lower abdomen (women) and love handles (men and women).

Many patients that walk into my Chicago area clinic want to go on a cleanse. While it can be very beneficial to go on a cleanse, what you do after you've finished, is more predictive of the longterm gains you'll have made from doing it in the first place.

We all know someone who is a "yo-yo" dieter. There are "yo-yo" health eaters as well.

"Diets" in general do not work, no matter what the reason. It is imperative to learn to eat in a way that is the most beneficial to you. So if you need to shrink your shadow, this requires a change in your habits. Likewise, if you want to improve your health status and reduce toxins, this also requires lifestyle changes and not just a month of raw fooding or cleansing.

I highly recommend adding a low glycemic protein drink with great prebiotics such as inulin while starting to make lifestyle and dietary changes. The reason is that these drinks help you feel satisfied and if they contain inulin and low sugars, they can actually alter your bowel flora (the beneficial gut bacteria).

Recent research in obesity has revealed that many obese individuals harbor different bowel flora than thin individuals. The flora of obese individuals actually breakdown what is otherwise undigestible cellulose and obtain sugars and calories from it. And, rats fed a high sugar and fried food diet, actually change their bowel flora to those of obese individuals. This means, if you a eat high sugar, high bad fat diet, you are slammed with a double whammy as the bowel bacteria will be altered to grab even more calories from your food than if you didn't eat this way.

We all know that once we get on a carbohydrate binge, it is very difficult to stop the inertia. The best way I have found to stop the inertia is with a high quality low glycemic index protein drink. Occasionally, I'll add some herbs to help quell intense cravings.

Once a patient is off the carbohydrate merry-go-round, I find it is easier for them to make permanent changes in their eating habits.

Many patients come to my Evanston office expecting me to perform repeated sessions of lipodissolve for their weight problem. I won't and I don't. Lipodissolve is a localized fat loss procedure, not a weight loss procedure and is inappropriate as a treatment for obesity.

The exceptions are that I will treat a buffalo hump, double chin, or droopy jowls on an obese person, I just won't treat the body.

In these instances, I have the patient return for a one to two hour medical and nutritional evaluation. I examine closely the patients behaviors around food and choices. For patients with eating addiction, I recommend attending overeaters anonymous (OA). for patients making bad choices, I teach them how to reduce insulin levels.

Historically, we were all told that in order to lose weight, calories in had to be less than calories expended. and vice versa. now we know that not all calories are created equal.

When we eat something that turns to glucose quickly, we produce insulin. and if we don't utilize the glucose, we create storage fat via the insulin. the more carbs we eat, the more insulin we need. over time we become resistant to insulin and keep requiring more to deal with our glucose. This process creates more and more storage fat, or triglycerides.

If we eat half an avocado vs half of a bagel, we have no insulin stimulation although we've eaten the same amount of calories that the bagel might have. Over time, when we make smart choices, we become less insulin resistant, or more insulin sensitive. This enables us to feel more stable, less starved prior to meals and our triglyceride production is greatly reduced.

So remember, it's not the calories that ruin us, but our hormonal response to the calories.