Are your hormones making you fat????
Written on February 26, 2010 at 4:14 pm
a growing problem
Doctors used to poo-poo the idea that your hormones could make you fat. That’s until we found out there is an entire group of people (a group growing in every sense of the word) whose hormones are doing just that.
Take my quick quiz;
1. Do you have a spare tyre around your middle?
2. Do you eat reasonably well and do some exercise but can’t shift your weight?
3. Are you tired all the time?
4. Do you have yo-yo blood pressure?
5. Are your cholesterol tests a bit dodgy?
You might have insulin resistance.
Insulin is the key that unlocks the doors that allow glucose into your cells so it can fuel up the cell. Insulin resistance is when the locks on your doors get dodgy and the keys aren’t working that well any more. The locks go wonky when you put on weight and a vicious cycle starts.
As a result, your glucose isn’t making it into the cells at quite the rate it’s needed (you feel tired). Secondly glucose backs up out the door waiting to get into the cells. Your body responds to all that sugar hanging around and pumps out more insulin. Your insulin levels start creeping up.
Now don’t get me wrong; I have nothing against insulin. It’s a really useful hormone. But when it is at higher levels in your blood, your body takes it as a signal that there is plenty of carb/ sugar around. So it decides to turn off all fat burning and starts turning every sugar in its path to blubber. Hence you get saddled with far too much fat and no ability to break it down. At that point, going for a walk every day and eating like a Weight Watcher on steroids gets you nowhere fast!
Put together with the spare tyre around the middle and blood pressure that Yo Yos its way upwards and some high triglycerides and you have the metabolic syndrome. Believe me that is not one you want- because it delivers you a 500% increase risk of dying a cardiovascular death.
Could this be you? To find out for sure, go to your GP and ask for three blood tests;
1. OGTT (oral glucose tolerance test)
2. Triglyceride test
3. CRP (C-reactive protein)
The OGTT is a barrel of laughs. It takes 2 hours and follows a few days of strict dieting. It measures how well your body processes carbs you eat.
The triglyceride is one of the fat storage molecules that tends to be up in people with metabolic syndrome, and the CRP measures the state of inflammation in your body. Scientists are toiling madly to understand exactly what the role of inflammation is in all of this; is it the chicken or the egg? What we do know that is that a high CRP means more inflammation in your body and greater chances of heart disease, strokes and diabetes.
And if you work out your hormones are out of whack and making you fat? What then?
You can sign up for our FREE Women’s Health Update on March 16th at 8pm where I’ll be talking about hormones and weight loss in more details. Interested? Email susie@susieburrell.com.au
For those of you who have tried and failed, we are fully booked but mention my blog and we’ll MAKE space for you!!
Or keep reading the blog and I’ll post some info up on how to combat the fat hormones over the next week.
x
