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HCG Fat Loss >
Dr Simeons HCG Protocol >
The Nature of Obesity
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Obesity a Disorder
As a basis for our discussion we
postulate that obesity in all its
many forms is due to an abnormal
functioning of some part of the body
and that every ounce of abnormally
accumulated fat is always the result
of the same disorder of certain
regulatory mechanisms. Persons
suffering from this particular
disorder will get fat regardless of
whether they eat excessively,
normally or less than normal. A
person who is free of the disorder
will never get fat, even if he
frequently overeats.
Those in whom the disorder is severe
will accumulate fat very rapidly,
those in whom it is moderate will
gradually increase in weight and
those in whom it is mild may be able
to keep their excess weight
stationary for long periods. In all
these cases a loss of weight brought
about by dieting, treatments with
thyroid, appetite-reducing drugs,
laxatives, violent exercise,
massage, baths, etc., is only
temporary and will be rapidly
regained as soon as the reducing
regimen is relaxed. The reason is
simply that none of these measures
corrects the basic disorder.
While there are great variations in
the severity of obesity, we shall
consider all the different forms in
both sexes and at all ages as always
being due to the same disorder.
Variations in form would then be
partly a matter of degree, partly an
inherited bodily constitution and
partly the result of a secondary
involvement of endocrine glands such
as the pituitary, the thyroid, the
adrenals or the sex glands. On the
other hand, we postulate that no
deficiency of any of these glands
can ever directly produce the common
disorder known as obesity.
If this reasoning is correct, it
follows that a treatment aimed
at curing the disorder must be
equally effective in both sexes, at
all ages and in all forms of
obesity. Unless this is so, we are
entitled to harbor grave doubts as
to whether a given treatment
corrects the underlying disorder.
Moreover, any claim that the
disorder has been corrected must be
substantiated by the ability of the
patient to eat normally of any food
he pleases without regaining
abnormal fat after treatment. Only
if these conditions are fulfilled
can we legitimately speak of curing
obesity rather than of reducing
weight.
Our problem thus presents itself as
an enquiry into the localization and
the nature of the disorder which
leads to obesity. The history of
this enquiry is a long series of
high hopes and bitter
disappointments.
The History of Obesity
There was a time, not so long ago,
when obesity was considered a sign
of health and prosperity in man and
of beauty, amorousness and fecundity
in women. This attitude probably
dates back to Neolithic times, about
8000 years ago; when for the first
time in the history of culture, man
began to own property, domestic
animals, arable land, houses,
pottery and metal tools. Before
that, with the possible exception of
some races such as the Hottentots,
obesity was almost non-existent, as
it still is in all wild animals and
most primitive races.
Today obesity is extremely common
among all civilized races, because a
disposition to the disorder can be
inherited. Wherever abnormal fat was
regarded as an asset, sexual
selection tended to propagate the
trait. It is only in very recent
times that manifest obesity has lost
some of its allure, though the cult
of the outsize bust - always a sign
of latent obesity - shows that the
trend still lingers on.
The Significance of Regular Meals
In the early Neolithic times another
change took place which may well
account for the fact that today
nearly all inherited dispositions
sooner or later develop into
manifest obesity. This change was
the institution of regular meals. In
pre-Neolithic times, man ate only
when he was hungry and only as much
as he required to still the pangs of
hunger. Moreover, much of his food
was raw and all of it was unrefined.
He roasted his meat, but he did not
boil it, as he had no pots, and what
little he may have grubbed from the
Earth and picked from the trees, he
ate as he went along.
The whole structure of man's
omnivorous digestive tract is, like
that of an ape, rat or pig, adjusted
to the continual nibbling of
tidbits. It is not suited to
occasional gorging as is, for
instance, the intestine of the
carnivorous cat family. Thus the
institution of regular meals,
particularly of food rendered
rapidly assimilable, placed a great
burden on modern man's ability to
cope with large quantities of food
suddenly pouring into his system
from the intestinal tract.
The institution of regular meals
meant that man had to eat more than
his body required at the moment of
eating so as to tide him over until
the next meal. Food rendered easily
digestible suddenly flooded his body
with nourishment of which he was in
no need at the moment. Somehow,
somewhere this surplus had to be
stored.
Three Kinds of Fat
In the human body we can distinguish
three kinds of fat. The first is the
structural fat which fills the gaps
between various organs, a sort of
packing material. Structural fat
also performs such important
functions as bedding the kidneys in
soft elastic
tissue, protecting the coronary
arteries and keeping the skin smooth
and taut. It also provides the
springy cushion of hard fat under
the bones of the feet, without which
we would be unable to walk.
The second type of fat is a normal
reserve of fuel upon which the body
can freely draw when the nutritional
income from the intestinal tract is
insufficient to meet the demand.
Such normal reserves are localized
all over the body. Fat is a
substance which packs the highest
caloric value into the smallest
space so that normal reserves of
fuel for muscular activity and the
maintenance of body temperature can
be most economically stored in this
form. Both these types of fat,
structural and reserve, are normal,
and even if the body stocks them to capacity this can never be called
obesity.
But there is a third type of fat
which is entirely abnormal. It is
the accumulation of such fat, and of
such fat only, from which the
overweight patient suffers. This
abnormal fat is also a potential
reserve of fuel, but unlike the
normal reserves it is not available
to the body in a nutritional
emergency. It is, so to speak,
locked away in a fixed deposit and
is not kept in a current account,
as are the normal reserves.
When an obese patient tries to
reduce by starving himself, he will
first lose his normal fat reserves.
When these are exhausted he begins
to burn up structural fat, and only
as a last resort will the body yield
its abnormal reserves, though by
that time the patient usually feels
so weak and hungry that the diet is
abandoned. It is just for this
reason that obese patients complain
that when they diet they lose the
wrong fat. They feel famished and
tired and their face becomes drawn
and haggard, but their belly, hips,
thighs and upper arms show little
improvement. The fat they have come
to detest stays on and the fat they
need to cover their bones gets less and
less. Their skin wrinkles and they
look old and miserable. And that is
one of the most frustrating and
depressing experiences a human being
can have.
Injustice to the Obese
When then obese patients are accused
of cheating, gluttony, lack of willpower, greed and sexual complexes,
the strong become indignant and
decide that modern medicine is a
fraud and its representatives fools,
while the weak just give up the
struggle in despair. In either case
the result is the same: a further
gain in weight, resignation to an
abominable fate and the resolution
at least to live tolerably the short
span allotted to them - a fig for
doctors and insurance companies.
Obese patients only feel physically
well as long as they are stationary
or gaining weight. They may feel
guilty, owing to the lethargy and
indolence always associated with
obesity. They may feel ashamed of
what they have been led to believe
is a lack of control. They may feel
horrified by the appearance of their
nude body and the tightness of their
clothes. But they have a primitive
feeling of animal content which
turns to misery and suffering as
soon as they make a resolute attempt
to reduce. For this there are sound
reasons.
In the first place, more caloric
energy is required to keep a large
body at a certain temperature than
to heat a small body. Secondly the
muscular effort of moving a heavy
body is greater than in the case of
a light body. The muscular effort
consumes calories which must be
provided by food. Thus, all other
factors being equal, a fat person
requires more food than a lean one.
One might therefore reason that if a
fat person eats only the additional
food his body requires he should be
able to keep his weight stationary.
Yet every physician who has studied
obese patients under rigorously
controlled conditions knows that
this is not true.
Many obese patients actually gain
weight on a diet which is
calorically deficient for their
basic needs. There must thus be some
other mechanism at work.
Glandular Theories
At one time it was thought that this
mechanism might be concerned with
the sex glands. Such a connection
was suggested by the fact that many
juvenile obese patients show an
under-development of the sex organs.
The middle-age spread in men and the
tendency of many women to put on
weight in the menopause seemed to
indicate a causal connection between
diminishing sex function and
overweight. Yet, when highly active
sex hormones became available, it
was found that their administration
had no effect whatsoever on obesity.
The sex glands could therefore not
be the seat of the disorder.
The Thyroid Gland
When it was discovered that the
thyroid gland controls the rate at
which body-fuel is consumed, it was
thought that by administering
thyroid gland to obese patients
their abnormal fat deposits could be
burned up more rapidly. This too
proved to be entirely disappointing,
because as we now know, these
abnormal deposits take no part in
the body's energy-turnover - they
are inaccessibly locked away.
Thyroid medication merely forces the
body to consume its normal fat
reserves, which are already depleted
in obese patients, and then to break
down structurally essential fat
without touching the abnormal
deposits. In this way a patient may
be brought to the brink of
starvation in spite of having a
hundred pounds of fat to spare. Thus
any weight loss brought about by
thyroid medication is always at the
expense of fat of which the body is
in dire need.
While the majority of obese patients
have a perfectly normal thyroid
gland and some even have an
overactive thyroid, one also
occasionally sees a case with a real
thyroid deficiency. In such cases,
treatment with thyroid brings about
a small loss of weight, but this is
not due to the loss of any abnormal
fat. It is entirely the result of
the elimination of a mucoid
substance, called myxedema, which
the body accumulates when there is a
marked primary thyroid deficiency.
Moreover, patients suffering only
from a severe lack of thyroid
hormone never become obese in the
true sense. Possibly also the
observation that normal persons -
though not the obese - lose weight
rapidly when their thyroid becomes
overactive may have contributed to
the false notion that thyroid
deficiency and obesity are
connected. Much misunderstanding
about the supposed role of the
thyroid gland in obesity is still
met with, and it is now really high
time that thyroid preparations be
once and for all struck off the list
of remedies for obesity. This is
particularly so because giving
thyroid gland to an obese patient
whose thyroid is either normal or
overactive, besides being useless,
is decidedly dangerous.
The Pituitary Gland
The next gland to be falsely
incriminated was the anterior lobe
of the pituitary, or hypophysis.
This most important gland lies well
protected in a bony capsule at the
base of the skull. It has a vast
number of functions in the body,
among which is the regulation of all
the other important endocrine
glands. The fact that various signs
of anterior pituitary deficiency are
often associated with obesity raised
the hope that the seat of the
disorder might be in this gland. But
although a large number of pituitary
hormones have been isolated and many
extracts of the gland prepared, not
a single one or any combination of
such factors proved to be of any
value in the treatment of obesity.
Quite recently, however, a
fat-mobilizing factor has been found
in pituitary glands, but it is still
too early to say whether this factor
is destined to play a role in the
treatment of obesity.
The Adrenals
Recently, a long series of brilliant
discoveries concerning the working
of the adrenal or suprarenal glands,
small bodies which sit atop the
kidneys, have created tremendous
interest. This interest also turned
to the problem of obesity when it
was discovered that a condition
which in some respects resembles a
severe case of obesity - the so
called Cushing's Syndrome - was
caused by a glandular new-growth of
the adrenals or by their excessive
stimulation with ACTH, which is the
pituitary hormone governing the
activity of the outer rind or cortex
of the adrenals.
When we learned that an abnormal
stimulation of the adrenal cortex
could produce signs that resemble
true obesity, this knowledge
furnished no practical means of
treating obesity by decreasing the
activity of the adrenal cortex.
There is no evidence to suggest that
in obesity there is any excess of
adrenocortical activity; in fact,
all the evidence points to the
contrary. There seems to be rather a
lack of adrenocortical function and
a decrease in the secretion of ACTH
from the anterior pituitary lobe.
So here again our search for the
mechanism which produces obesity led
us into a blind alley. Recently,
many students of obesity have
reverted to the nihilistic attitude
that obesity is caused simply by
overeating and that it can only be
cured by under eating.
The Diencephalon or Hypothalamus
For those of us who refused to be
discouraged there remained one
slight hope. Buried deep down in the
massive human brain there is a part
which we have in common with all
vertebrate animals the so-called
diencephalon. It is a very primitive
part of the brain and has in man
been almost smothered by the huge
masses of nervous tissue with which
we think, reason and voluntarily
move our body. The
diencephalon
is
the part from which the central
nervous system controls all the
automatic animal functions of the
body, such as breathing, the heart
beat, digestion, sleep, sex, the
urinary system, the autonomous or
vegetative nervous system and via
the pituitary the whole interplay of
the endocrine glands.
It was therefore not unreasonable to
suppose that the complex operation
of storing and issuing fuel to the
body might also be controlled by the
diencephalon. It has long been known
that the content of sugar - another
form of fuel - in the blood depends
on a certain nervous center in the
diencephalon. When this center is
destroyed in laboratory animals,
they develop a condition rather
similar to human stable diabetes. It
has also long been known that the
destruction of another diencephalic
center produces a voracious appetite
and a rapid gain in weight in
animals which never get fat
spontaneously.
The Fat-Bank
Assuming that in man such a center
controlling the movement of fat does
exist, its function would have to be
much
like that of a bank. When the body
assimilates from the intestinal
tract more fuel than it needs at the
moment, this surplus is deposited in
what may be compared with a current
account. Out of this account it can
always be withdrawn as required. All
normal fat reserves are in such a
current account, and it is probable
that a diencephalic center manages
the deposits and withdrawals.
When now, for reasons which will be
discussed later, the deposits grow
rapidly while small withdrawals
become more frequent, a point may be
reached which goes beyond the
diencephalon's banking capacity.
Just as a banker might suggest to a
wealthy client that instead of
accumulating a large and
unmanageable current account he
should invest his surplus capital,
the body appears to establish a
fixed deposit into which all surplus
funds go but from which they can no
longer be withdrawn by the procedure
used in a current account. In this
way the diencephalic "fat-bank"
frees itself from all work which
goes beyond its normal banking
capacity. The onset of obesity dates
from the moment the
diencephalon
adopts this labor-saving ruse. Once
a fixed deposit has been established
the normal fat reserves are held at
a minimum, while every available
surplus is locked away in the fixed
deposit and is therefore taken out
of normal circulation.
Part 3 -
Three Basic Causes of Obesity
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