Weight Loss – Women’s Health Issue
One of the biggest health concerns in America today is the obesity epidemic that is affecting young and old people alike. America is one of the unhealthiest nations in the world and obesity has a direct and indirect connection to almost every known chronic disease we suffer today.
Most women focus on dieting for weight loss. However, the constant complaint about most diets is we lose the weight, but it comes back as soon as we stop dieting, and in many instances we gain more weight than what was lost. Now, there are surgical procedures for becoming thinner, which in some cases may be necessary and even life saving, but in the majority of cases surgeries set you up for other debilitating or life threatening disease processes. By only concentrating on your weight and becoming skinnier, diets fail in the long run. The primary focus for weight loss is body composition.
Body composition is the ratio of muscle, fat and water. It is impossible to sustain weight loss when we increase fat and decrease muscle and proper body water. This process happens with all diets on the market today and it is the reason diets fail. At the Functional Medicine Center, we use modern diagnostic testing to make sure you are losing fat, not muscle and water. What does this mean to you? With more muscle mass your metabolism increases and constantly burns calories at a very high rate. With less muscle and water and increased fat your metabolism is much slower, burning calories at a slower rate. At the Functional Medicine Center, we use BIA testing that measures your body composition. (See below for more detail). Once this is calculated, Dr. Ozzie will provide a natural wellness program to help you lose weight.
A major contributing factor to obesity is environmental toxicity. If you are toxic, your body will increase the fat to store the toxins causing you to gain more fat. Remember, more fat = slower metabolism. You may work out all the time and have a healthy diet but still can’t lose weight. Why? Because your body is toxic. If you are too toxic you cannot burn fat because the toxins will enter your bloodstream and make you very sick. The body’s wisdom is to minimize its ability to burn fat preventing you from losing weight. How do you fix this issue? DETOX naturally at the Functional Medicine Center.
Another reason for obesity is due to increased stress which raises your cortisol levels which in turn slows down your fat burning potential. There could be a number of reasons why you may not be able to lose weight.
At the Functional Medicine Center, we focus on the individual patient and determine what their issues are and fix them naturally, so that you can be happy with your natural self.
Bioelectrical Impedance Analysis (BIA) Testing
At the Functional Medicine Center, we use BIA testing. BIA measures two values, electrical resistance and electrical capacitance. With these two values along with your height, weight, age, and sex, we can calculate your body composition, fluid distribution, basal metabolic rate, and your phase angle.
Total body water tells us the amount of water presently in your body. The intracellular and extracellular water values show your cellular water balance. You want more water inside of your cell than outside. The first sign of decreased health is a shift of intracellular water to extracellular water. There are 15 different reasons for this water shift, and all of them are
related to poor health.
A little about Detoxification…
The seven symptoms of chronic poisoning are fatigue, sleep disturbances, gastrointestinal distress, headaches, allergy symptoms, confusion, and anxiety. You might wonder what the poison is. It’s toxicity. Every chemical reaction in your body produces toxins in the form of acid, which we measure with the BIA test. Your detoxifying organs (liver, kidneys, lungs, large intestine, and skin) are able to handle this burden. We ingest toxins through our food, water and air. There are over 10,000 chemical additives in our food supply. The average American ingests 14 pounds of additives, 158 pounds of sugar, and 8 pounds of salt per year. This is way more than your organs were designed to handle.
If you have dysbiosis, which is an imbalance of the intestinal tract, you can greatly increase your toxic burden. Dysbiosis is an overgrowth of yeast, bacteria, and parasites. These are all living organisms, and living organisms eat, and when they eat, they go to the bathroom. Their bowel movements are very toxic to you.
We are constantly ingesting heavy metals such as mercury, lead, arsenic, and many more everyday. This ingestion comes from the food we eat, the water we drink, and the air we breath.
All these chemicals, metals and toxins can be stored in your body, usually in body fat and in the extracellular space. This can cause cellular fluid shifts that are measurable with the BIA and will indicate levels of toxicity, all which can be done at the Functional Medicine Center.
