By David Blyweiss, M.D., Advanced Natural Wellness

July 09, 2012

• The energy equation that might be working against you
• Three steps to a healthier appetite
• How to find balance without supplements

Second in a 3-part series on energy and aging

In the last issue, we looked at how you can have more energy at the cellular level – and the role CoQ10 plays in boosting and maintaining a more youthful level of energy.

Today, in the second installment of this series, we’ll look at another primary source of energy: food. Making the right food choices can have an enormous impact on your energy. But for the purposes of this issue, I want to discuss instead the importance of what happens before and after you eat.

There are two relatively newly-discovered hormones that control your appetite. Ghrelin, which tells you when to eat. And leptin, which tells you when you’re full. When these signals are not in synch with your body’s actual food needs, it not only effects how much you eat, but also, how much energy you have.

Of course, in our diet-crazed culture, these hormones are getting plenty of attention. With an obesity epidemic in full swing, leptin has already been labeled the “good” hormone and ghrelin the “bad” hormone.

But this is a major oversimplification of the relationship between the two. As with any system that includes checks and balances, both ends of the spectrum are needed to maintain a healthy equilibrium…

These two hormones prove we are designed to instinctively eat only as much as we need to remain healthy and energetic. Between eating the right diet, and depending on cues from your twin appetite hormones, food could go back to being what it is meant to be…

A source of energy fueling you through your day, and a source of information for your genes that keeps you healthy.

Because we have only recently discovered leptin and ghrelin, there’s plenty we don’t know or fully understand about the symbiotic relationship between them. And since neither is available as a supplement, there’s no fast track to finding a natural balance.

Drug companies are already hard at work looking for ways to suppress ghrelin and increase leptin levels. But we’ve already seen – with statin drugs and proton pump inhibitors – that interfering with the body’s natural balance often comes with unintended negative or even grave consequences.

Instead, I propose we look at what we do know about these twin appetite hormones, and how you might keep them in balance naturally. Striking a truce between them should give you maximum food energy, every time you eat.

Some of my recommendations might surprise you:

1) Get A Good Night’s Sleep: If you find it surprising that my number one recommendation for controlling your appetite hormones and boosting your energy is to get enough sleep… then I hope you really take this to heart and put it to the test today.

These two hormones reset themselves at night while you sleep. So if you aren’t getting enough sleep at night, you’re missing the refresh cycle. And it could be having a dire effect on your weight, your energy, and your mood.

2) Stop Dieting: The usual dieting roller coaster that many people ride is the absolute worst way to regulate these hormones. In fact, dieting is likely responsible for a condition called leptin resistance, which means we never get the signal from our hypothalamus to stop eating. Remember, the body sees severe dieting as “famine” and works to keep the calories from being burnt for fuel.

Which practically guarantees that overweight people who diet (meaning restricting calories as a way to lose weight) – are destined to remain fat.

Instead, eat a healthy, balanced diet – I recommend my Modified Mediterranean Diet – and stick to it.

3) Curb Your Fructose Intake: Perhaps the most important way to get your leptin and ghrelin hormones back into balance is to lay off fructose – specifically high fructose corn syrup (HFCS). Research has shown fructose depresses leptin production, and increases ghrelin production. And overusing fructose is one of the main reasons so many of us are getting “fatty livers.”

Granted, fructose is found in healthy food options, such as pulpy fruit and honey. But most Americans get the bulk of their fructose from high fructose corn syrup, which has become a staple ingredient in processed foods. In fact, if you read the labels of foods you regularly eat, you might be shocked at how much more HFCS you are eating than you realize.

These three steps will go a LONG way to getting your leptin and ghrelin levels back in synch. Which will have a dramatic increase on your daily energy levels.

And I have one last suggestion for you today…

Many of the patients I talk with about how to increase their energy level can’t even remember a time when they had robust energy.

That’s how long they often wait before they seek help.

If it’s been a while – like since your 20’s or 30’s – since you felt fully “yourself,” the energy reversal won’t happen overnight either. It might take a while – and a little trial-and-error – for you to get your diet, sleep and exercise schedule to a place where you feel fully energized every day.

Consider keeping a daily health journal that tracks what you eat, whether you exercise and for how long, a rating of your energy throughout the day, and how many hours you sleep at night. Do this for about 2-3 weeks, and see if you start to notice any patterns.

For example, you might notice that you think you’re getting 8 hours of sleep a night, but it’s closer to 6. Or that you consider your diet healthy – and are blocking out all the time you “cheat” and indulge in food that makes you feel bad after you eat.

Making these connections between your daily habits and your energy level will help you make better choices.

When you take supplements, you have a pillbox or maybe an alarm set on your watch, to ensure you don’t forget. Consider your journal your pillbox – a way to track the elements of your health that are difficult to measure.

In the final issue of this series on aging and energy, I’ll discuss the B-vitamin family – and vitamin B12 in particular – and how you can make sure you are getting enough.

References:

Hukshorn CJ, Saris WH., Leptin and Energy Expenditure., Curr Opin Clin Nutr Metab Care. 2004 Nov;7(6):629-33.

Teff KL,et.al., Dietary fructose reduces circulating insulin and leptin, attenuates postprandial suppression of ghrelin, and increases triglycerides in women. J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 2004 Jun;89(6):2963-72