Ask The Naturopath About Weight Loss

Posted by | March 11, 2010 | Blog | No Comments

Dear Doctor Diana;
I have been on a weight loss program that you have designed for me and I have lost a significant amount of weight, but I now find Iam plateauing. Are there any nutritional supplements that can get me over this hurtle?

Dear Patient,
Congratulations on your successful weight loss program. In fact there are many nutritional supplements that can assist  you during this plateau stage. One of the first recommendations is for you to lower your cortisol level through the use of an adrenal supplement. The hormone cortisol is produced in the adrenal cortex in response to adrenal cortical stimulating hormone (ACTH) produced in the pituitary gland. Cortisol plays an important role in regulating blood sugar, energy production, inflammation, the immune system and healing.
If you have too little cortisol, you may suffer from fatigue, chronic fatigue, exhaustion and a disease of the endocrine system called Addison’s disease. If your adrenal glands are producing too much cortisol, you may develop conditions such as weight gain, especially around the abdomen, depressed immune function with all of the consequences, accelerated aging and stomach ulcers.

Recently, a lot of attention has been directed to the effects of excess cortisol on weight gain and on the difficulty in losing weight. Collectively, the various diet plans being promoted by a long list of diet gurus have a failure rate of approximately 93 to 97 percent. There are several reasons for this. One is clearly the difficulty in achieving behavioral modification in the face of easy availability of the wrong kind of foods, inherently sedentary lifestyles, and intense media programming. Another reason is that our hormones work against us, in the weight loss perspective. High cortisol levels is one of the culprits.

To reduce this cortisol level I recommend a product called cortrex. Cortrex is a combination of specific vitamins and minerals that reduce this cortisol level. I recommend that you take one to three capsules daily. The effect of this formula should be seen within one month of starting this product. You can contact our office at (905) 477-0200 for futher information on this product.

Lorenzo Diana ND
Doctor Of Naturopathic Medicine