Dieting: How can we diet successfully

April 19, 2024
Hosted by Susan Downs, MD

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Episode Description

n our strives to be healthy, most of us are dieting. Yet, the conventional dieting approaches make our health worse, not better. Also, the conventional dieting approaches do not work. Have you noticed that most of the participants in The Biggest Loser TV reality Show gain their weight back. Why is that? While most of us are overweight, what can we do to become healthier? Obesity is a major health problem in the Western world. Not only is obesity embarrassing and demoralizing, it is unhealthy. Excess weight is accompanied by inflammation, oxidative stress , metabolic disorders, a path towards insulin resistance and chronic disease. It is life shortening. Conventional weight loss approaches include reducing caloric intake, GLP 1 agonists, and bariatric surgery. While these conventional weight loss strategies may have short term success, most times, the weight returns after the dieting stops. These conventional weight loss methods impair health and shorten lifespan. They result in muscle loss and a preferential loss of subcutaneous fat over the more harmful visceral fat (fat surrounding organs). Typically 25 % of weight loss in these conventional weight loss approaches is from loss of muscle mass. The muscle mass is necessary to keep our metabolic rate and the ability to burn calories at a good rate. The remaining visceral fat adversely affects triglyceride levels, HDL and small LDL levels, fasting glucose and insulin levels, blood pressure, c reactive protein and uric acid levels. The weight typically regained after the use of GLP 1 agonists and is nearly all fat, not muscle. Hence, our preoccupation with caloric restriction, GLP 1 agonists, and bariatric surgery we are not losing the harmful visceral fat and the weight returns with our muscle mass lessened. When visceral fat loss is targeted, glucose regulation, insulin resistance, and inflammation all improve. Lean muscle mass is preserved, there is faster weight loss and no weight regain. In order target harmful visceral fat loss, Dr. Davis recommends not cutting calories, reduce food that trigger blood glucose and inulin increases. He recommends addressing nutrient that influence insulin resistance. – magnesium, vitamin D, iodine/ thyroid and omega 3s. He recommends lactobacillus reuteri and high collagen peptides, hyaluronic acid, carotenoids especially astaxanthin. However there are some factors, lost in modern people that gives some control over weight and body composition. These include probiotics, collagen, hyaluronic acid and carotenoids.

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Susan Downs, MD

Dr. Susan is boarded in Integrative Medicine and in Psychiatry, is a certified IFM practitioner and certified in the American Academy of Antiaging Medicine. She works at the University of California, San Francisco and is on the Psychiatry Consultant Registry (UK). She has Masters Degrees in engineering from MIT and Stanford and a Masters in Public Health from Loma Linda Medical Center.

Based between San Francisco and Bloomsbury (London), she is the president of the cutting edge, Silicon Valley Health Institute (SVHI), has worked in ten countries and studied many healing modalities. Previously, she worked for the NHS in the UK, was an assistant professor at INSEAD (European School for Business Administration), and was a foreign service officer managing alternative energy projects in Asia. She is also a film-maker with two multi award winning films on health. Her interests include medicine, economics, spirituality and making the world a better place.



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