What if I told you that your struggle with excess weight is not your fault? What if your weight struggles are actually the result of a poison you have unknowingly ingested for decades? And what if I told you that simply avoiding this poison could help you drop most, if not all, of your unwanted pounds? Would you believe me?
I know it sounds crazy. But I am about to show you proof that millions of people around the world are overweight and obese because of this poison. But are not most people obese because they overeat or eat unhealthy foods? While these factors definitely play a part, they are not the full story.
You see, many people eat unhealthy foods every day, but they never gain weight. While others simply cant overcome the desire to eat. Its too strong. That is where this poison comes into play.
This poison actually affects your appetite. Heres how: Your appetite is controlled by hormones. You may have heard of the pituitary gland. Its the master hormone gland in your body. It sits right under your brain and regulates your hormones. But it is not really the one in charge. That job belongs to a region of your brain called the hypothalamus. Its directly connected to the pituitary. And it also plays a huge role in controlling hormones.
One of the jobs of the hypothalamus is to regulate your food intake. Scientists did studies on rats many years ago to demonstrate just how much the hypothalamus affected obesity. Animals rarely become obese. They simply eat what they need to survive. The only way we can force them to become obese is to change their natural food, biochemistry, or genes. So in one experiment, researchers inflicted lesions in one part of the hypothalamus. And the rats became massively obese.
In another test, they inflicted lesions in a different region of the hypothalamus. This blocked the rats urge to eat. And the animals actually starved to death! So you can see how important the hypothalamus is for controlling your appetite.
But how does the hypothalamus know when you need to eat? Well, Jeffrey Friedman MD, PhD, a professor at Rockefeller University in New York, along with his research group, helped answer this question. They discovered a hormone called leptin. This hormone sends a crucial signal to your brain that allows you to control your eating.
Your fat cells make leptin in proportion to the amount of energy they have stored. So the more fat you have stored in your fat cells, the more leptin the fat cells will produce. When your system is working properly, leptin turns off your appetite. A lack of leptin will cause you to have a voracious appetite.
So basically, if your body needs more reserve calories, it wont produce leptin, and you will eat more. If your cells have plenty of calories in reserve, the cells will produce leptin to tell your body to stop eating.
Leptin controls your appetite by regulating two different types of cells in the hypothalamus. One suppresses your appetite and one stimulates your appetite. Leptin activates the appetite-suppressing anorectic cells. At the same time, it prevents orexigenic cells from stimulating your appetite. If something damages these cells, then they cant respond to the leptin — and they cant tell you to stop eating.
Remember the rat experiments? The researchers damaged the cells of the hypothalamus. That shut off the cells ability to respond to leptin. Without their hypothalamus sending appetite-suppressing signals, the rats ate until they were obese.
So heres the bad news. Theres a good chance you are eating a common food additive that can destroy these critical cells in your hypothalamus. This additive is hard to avoid, but we need to stay away from it. It can cause neuronal damage and serious weight gain. This additive is MSG, or monosodium glutamate.
I realize you may know about many of the problems MSG causes. Even its effects on weight are well known. Reports as far back as 1978 show that MSG causes hypothalamic lesions and subsequent obesity. Back then, German researchers discovered that giving IV MSG to rats damaged their arcuate neurons in the hypothalamus.
But these reports dealt with injected MSG, not oral. The MSG you get is by eating it. Well, now there is clear evidence that taking MSG by mouth causes the same problems.
New research shows that oral MSG also damages your cells, preventing them from receiving leptin. When researchers fed MSG to animals, the animals increased their water intake by threefold. They almost doubled their food intake. Overall, the study found that oral MSG is very likely to damage the hypothalamic regulation of your appetite.
But oral MSG can cause even more problems. When the cells in your hypothalamus do not respond to leptin, your body thinks it needs to produce more leptin to turn off your appetite. This creates a vicious cycle, which results in excessive leptin production.
If your body produces too much leptin, it causes a disorder called leptin resistance. And leptin resistance can over-stimulate your sympathetic nervous system and cause hypertension. It also induces other symptoms that are similar to insulin resistance.
You can see how dangerous it is. But why do not food companies get rid of MSG? Its simple. They want to make a profit. So if MSG increases your appetite, you will need to buy more food. And theyll make more money. They do not want you to know how bad MSG is for you. And they definitely do not want to remove it from their products.
Since people are getting wise to MSG, many of the food companies now hide it on their labels. They hide it by listing other foods that have MSG in them. And the FDA is not helping. They require that each item be listed by its common name. For instance, any foods that have the following ingredients may contain MSG: autolyzed yeast, barley malt, broth, bouillon, calcium caseinate, carrageen, flavoring, natural flavoring, gelatin, hydrolyzed oat flour, hydrolyzed vegetable protein, natural flavors, pectin, plant protein extract, soy protein, soy sauce, textured protein, whey protein, yeast extract, and yeast food. And that is just a sample. There are over 40 ingredients that can contain MSG.
Obviously, not all of these will contain MSG all the time. So how can you know a food has MSG in it? The most obvious way is to look for products that specifically say, MSG-free.
Unfortunately, most companies do not want to go this direction. Like I said, they want you to eat MSG, so they are not going to make it easy for you. You will need to take action to protect yourself. Here are a few things that will help you know if the food you are eating has MSG:
•Be aware of very salty foods. These are more likely to contain MSG.
•Avoid processed foods. Most of them contain MSG.
•Buy foods with a very short ingredients list (less than six items). The more ingredients there are on the list, the more likely it is to contain MSG.
•Ask your grocer if the wax used on the fruits has MSG in it (yes, many waxes contain MSG).
•Check the labels of your cosmetics and other personal care products, as they can contain MSG too.
•Ask your pharmacist if your prescription drugs contain MSG. Even some supplements can have it. Make sure you find out if the brand you use has MSG in it. All Healthy Resolve and Advanced Bionutritionals products are MSG-free.
And one final note: just because you buy it at a health food store and it says natural or organic does not mean you can trust the manufacturer. Read the label on everything you buy. Believe me, your waistline will thank you.
Ref: Neuron, August 1999; Exp Neurol, 1978 October; J Pediatr Endocrinol Metab, 2003 Sep;16(7):965-8; Eur J Clin Nutr, 2006 January;60(1):25-31; J Perinat Med, 2003;31(6):489-95.