Dear Reader,
Staying lean remains one of my top health concerns. It probably ought to be high on your list too. Outrageous claims by fat loss products are everywhere. Today’s Doctor’s House Call is the first of a two-part series that takes at look these “fat burners.”
Let’s take the top selling over-the-counter diet pill, CortiSlim. Their message is something like “It’s not your fault that you can’t lose weight. It’s cortisol’s” But is there any truth to this claim over cortisol?
Cortisol is your body’s main long-term stress hormone. Long-term distinguishes it from the short-term stress responder, adrenaline. You secrete adrenaline rapidly when you encounter stress. It’s like an espresso for your state of alertness.
Then, if the stress goes on for more than a few minutes, cortisol becomes the dominant hormone. Cortisol turns off other metabolic functions that aren’t critical during times of stress so your metabolism can focus on the pressing, more emergent challenge. It regulates blood pressure, energy production, immune function and inflammatory response.
Your cortisol levels are at their lowest when you’re healthy and calm. There’s no doubt you release more cortisol during times of stress. But does cortisol make you fat?
These weight loss products have tried to link cortisol to weight gain by pointing to the Yale University study published in 2000. It showed that women who respond poorly to stress tend to have a belly. This is because excess cortisol can effect where your body stores fat.1 Yet cortisol itself does not cause weight gain.
Have you ever seen a stressed out animal? When a dog is under stress, increased cortisol will cause the dog to lose its appetite. Over time, the dog becomes very thin and starts to waste away. The same is the general rule for most animals including humans.
Cortisol suppresses reproduction and long-term management. It gives your body the chance to pool all of its resources to deal with a crisis. Under these conditions, your appetite will disappear. Nature designed us not to want to stop and eat when we know we are being tracked by a pride of lions. Think back to the last time you panicked – having lunch was probably the last thing on your mind.
There is no credible evidence that these products would lower your cortisol anyway. And even if they did, there is no evidence that that would make you lose weight. They are empty promises based on incomplete science.
Fat burners are another category of fat-loss products with hyped-up promises. They help you lose weight by raising your metabolic rate. Or so they claim…
Contrary to the hype you may have read, no product can dramatically raise your metabolic rate. Ephedra was the best. This natural herb was modestly successful at raising your metabolism – but only by a fraction of a percent. This is not enough to make a lasting change in your body. It was banned by the FDA, but that ban was overturned by an appeals court in August 2006. Today, Ephedra is starting to make a comeback.
Ephedra, like the caffeine in your coffee, is a neuro-stimulant. Once inside your bloodstream, your body will down regulate the metabolic process to counter balance the effect of the stimulant. This is why you crave coffee in the morning. You need that jolt to get you back to where you would have been had you not had the coffee in the first place.
One of the more popular fat burners claims that you can eat anything you want and still lose weight. This product uses a less effective Ephedra substitute, synephrine, which is supposed to increase your metabolism without the “harmful stimulants” used in other weight loss products. Also included are caffeine, glucuronolactone, and taurine – the same ingredients found in Red Bull. If you feel any effect, it will be the combination of synephrine and caffeine.
You should think of these as stimulants – not fat burners. They may help wake you up and give you a temporary jolt of energy, but so does a good cup of coffee.
I have a better method of weight management. The idea is simple: Eat the foods that help you feel full. The absence of satiety – the feeling of fullness – is the one reason most diets fail.2
Telling yourself to eat less will not likely solve your problem. Instead, put the emphasize on what you can eat. It’s more sustainable for the long term. How do you know which foods will make you feel satisfied without making you fat? One excellent tool is: Energy-Density.
Foods with low-energy-density will fill you up without the calories you would consume to feel the same way from other foods. In other words, you can eat more for less.
Foods with water and fiber are among the lowest-energy-density foods available. Foods that are dry and made with vegetable oils – with all the water and fiber removed – are the highest.
You could eat watermelon until you burst and never get fat. Potato chips, on the other hand, which are dry and cooked in oil, are five times more energy dense than a baked potato. If potatoes are a high carb indulgence, potato chips will really pack on the pounds. The bottom line is simply to choose whole foods over the dried higher energy-density processed counterpart.
We’ll talk more about energy density in future Doctor’s Calls.
To Your Good Health,
Al Sears, MD
1 September/October 2000 issue of Psychosomatic Medicine.
2 Spake, Amanda. Eat More Weigh Less. U.S. News & World Report. March 7, 2005