Leptin for laymen
Claire Aslangul - Wednesday, October 10, 2012
I really love the work of
Neurosurgeon, Dr Jack Kruse, his blog is completely mind blowing. Unfortunately
on an understandability scale of 1-10 where one is "My first ABC
book" and 10 "Quantum: Einstein, Borh and the Great Debate About The
Nature of Reality", it does sit at about 11 sometimes. So, here is a bit
of a rundown of what Leptin is, what it does and why this is probably the
single most significant thing you could learn about with regards to your
health.Welcome to Leptin for Laymen.
What is Leptin?
Leptin is a hormone that is produced
in our white fat cells. The more white fat cells you have, the larger volumes
of leptin your body produces. Its major function is give the brain updates on
the amount and availability of energy at any given time. It is a hormone that
is associated with that lovely "full" feeling after we eat.
The body has 2 major forms of
communication, the first being our amazing nervous system, where our spinal
cord is an information super highway keeping the brain with millisecond to
millisecond accounts of what is happening in every organ in the body. The
second form is our endocrine system (hormones). These hormones are released,
they go into the blood stream and activate certain processes by connecting with
hormone receptors on the membranes of certain cells. A hormone is completely useless
without a receptor and likewise a receptor is not activated without contact
with its corresponding hormone, think keys and locks.You can't unlock the door
with out the right key and if a lock is worn out, the right key might not work
well at all.
Both your central nervous system and your hormonal systems have a
master switch, something that is so vital that if it is not working optimally
it can have major impacts on every aspect of your health. For your central
nervous system, this is your spine and for your endocrine system this is Leptin
and it's receptors.
Why Leptin is The Master of The Universe.
As I mentioned, leptin lets our brain
know when we have eaten enough and gives us that nice full feeling, but that is
just a small part of why leptin is important.When leptin enters the brain
(remember it is not made in the brain like many of our hormones, but made in
our fat cells and crosses over the blood brain barrier via a fairly complicated
chain of events) it bonds with the receptors on the hypothalamus. The
hypothalamus is one of the key hormonal centres in our brain. Here it let's us
know exactly how much energy we have so we know how we can spend it. This
process is so important it controls ALL hormonal releases in the brain, which
then impacts the release of all hormones in the body. So remembering that
hormones are one of the major communication tools in the body, when leptin is
not working properly it becomes like a game of Chinese whispers played next to
the take off path of a 747 in a thunderstorm while green ants bite your feet
and you really need to sneeze.
Leptin also has a major role in how
you use the energy present in your body. If you are a healthy metabolically
optimal person,when you ate a meal, 40% of the energy would be sent to your peripheral
tissues, this being your muscles, ligaments, tendons, bones etc. all the bits
that are needed for movement. This energy would enter the cells and stored as
glycogen to be used as fuel for these tissues.The other 60% would be packaged
up in the liver, to be dished out to fuel the body between meals using a
hormone called glucagon.When leptin is the master of the universe, this all
works perfectly, your body draws on the stores in your liver when you are
sleeping or fasting and any excess calories activate a protein called UCP3.
This protein facilitates the burning of fuel as free heat without using what is
called Kreb's cycle. (Kreb's cycle is the conversion of ATP to ADP using
glucose and oxygen, we are taught in basic biology that this is how the cells
convert your food into energy to perform functions such as muscle contraction)
When this production of free heat occurs, it means we have nothing to worry
about if we overeat, we aren't creating excess fat just burning the extra fuel
straight away. Basically you use up all you have eaten, you start to feel
hungry and then you eat again.
Leptin is also a major player in
immunity and inflammation.
How it can all go horribly wrong.
On the day we are born we have no
leptin at all, so no way to signal fullness. Most mothers can attest to the
seemingly insatiable appetites of newborn baby. We get our first load of leptin
in our first few breastfeeds. It is a component of colostrum. Now remember how
I mentioned about hormones have lock and key type components, well one of the
most amazing things happens to us in around the first 24 hours of our lives. It
is then that we set a base number of hormone receptors (locks) that sets up our
endocrine (hormonal) system FOR LIFE.This is incredibly important for a whole
range of hormones like oxytocin (hormone of love, bonding, giving and trust
among other things) and beta endorphin (the body's natural pain killer) but
let's stick to leptin for now.
When a baby has unlimited access to
the breast and colostrum in that first 24 hours, the number of leptin receptors
that are created is much greater than a baby who is removed for her/his mother
or is fed artificially. As I explain more, the weight of this single day and
it's impact on health will become more apparent.
So the problem with leptin is not
that we don't produce enough of it, the problem that occurs with leptin is with
our diet and lifestyle we tend to be on a continuous conveyer belt of leptin
production which leads to the breakdown of receptors.Imagine it a bit like a
busy highway, if you live in a quiet street in the country and you stayed in a
hotel near a busy highway, chances are you would be constantly aware of the
noise. Where as if you lived near a highway, you would most likely be totally
oblivious to even the noisiest trucks as they went by. In the same light, our
leptin receptors under constant bombardment of leptin begin to stop hearing the
message of "I am full, we have adequate energy on board to function
well".
So as I mentioned earlier, leptin is
produced by our White Adipose Tissue (WAT), in other words our fat stores when
we have eaten an adequate sized meal. The more fat stores you have the more
leptin you produce, because you have acceptable levels of energy stores to
function. The problems begin when we stop having breaks from leptin. This can
often start with having too short a gap between dinner and breakfast and then
followed up by constant grazing through out the day. In this way there is a
constant release of leptin to signal fullness for most of the 24 hr period.This
flow of leptin becomes the drone of an unnoticed highway the receptors stop
responding even though leptin is being produced. The hypothalamus (that part of
the brain we spoke about earlier) not longer hears the words "You can stop
eating now, I am full".It would be like the petrol gauge on your car not
working, you would never know how much fuel you had on board, so you would be
continuously filling up just incase you break down. Without energy our body
dies, so just in case we are constantly told to "fill up".
Unfortunately, the greater your fat stores, the worse this problem becomes.
But the problem doesn't stop there,
actually this is just the beginning of a terrible downwards slope into unhealth
and disease. This leptin resistance in the brain, leads to an imbalance of all
the rest of your hormones. You body does the best it can considering the
circumstances, but without knowledge on how much energy is available, it tends
to start trying to conserve what it has. There are many ways it does this from
lowering basal metabolic rate (the amount of energy you use when you are
resting or sleeping), decreasing production of sex hormones, increasing fat
stores, stops burning fuel as free heat, slows down thyroid function and stops
using fat as fuel in the muscles.
Can you see where this leads? So you increase
your fat stores, which increases your leptin levels, which increases your
leptin resistance and the whole thing goes around again.
The next step after leptin resistance
in the brain, is leptin resistance in the liver and muscles.As we mentioned,
40% of energy from a meal goes to your muscles (and peripheral tissues) to be
used for function there. When the muscles become leptin resistant, they stop
accepting energy and send it back to the liver to be processed and stores as
fat.This means the muscles never get the amount of fuel they require, leaving
you tired and making exercise really hard work.This tells your brain "
Hey, what are you doing, we are starving down here, go and eat something so we
can function."
When the liver is leptin resistant,
the amount of available space for energy stored in the liver is reduced so this
energy is packaged up as Low Density Lipids (LDL's), unfortunately leptin
resistance also reduces the function of LDL receptors, so rather than storing
all of this cholesterol, it sends some of it out into the blood stream, where
it oxidizes and causes damage. This is the beginning of atherosclerosis or
hardening of the arteries.The LDLs that are stored are packed around vital
organs such as liver, kidneys, heart and pancreas.
Another effect of high leptin levels
is that it attacks a protein called amylin, this protein is required for the
production of insulin. Type 2 diabetes is the end result, but leptin resistance
is always present 5-7 years earlier than insulin resistance (except in the case
of quick dramatic loss of pancreatic tissue, such as could occur in an
autoimmune disease).
As I also mentioned earlier, leptin
plays a major role in immune function as it controls and modulates the immune
system. Leptin itself is chemically similar to an inflammatory immunity
molecule called interleukin 6 (IL-6). So with high levels of leptin, you
increase the levels of inflammation in your body dramatically. This
inflammation can cause chronic pain as well as chronic diseases. It puts
pressure on all the major organs in your body and is a major contributor to
diseases such as osteoporosis, high blood pressure, degenerative disc disease
and arthritis.
But wait, there is still more.
Eventually once you are severely leptin resistant and then insulin resistant
the next step is you become adrenalin resistant and have cortisol issues.When
high insulin meets high cortisol, you end up with the perfect recipe for
cancer.
Did I mention that this was big? We
are talking diabetes, heart disease and cancer. These are our biggest killers
today and they all have one root cause.
What about my skinny friend that eats loads Maccas and never gets fat?
If you are overweight or obese, you
no doubt have some level of leptin resistance, there is no doubt about that.As
for your skinny friend, she is just as likely to have a decent level of leptin
resistance too and is not necessarily any healthier than you are.The way it is
manifesting is just different. Your skinny friends thyroid is working over time
to cope with the excess, where as yours has slowed right down.Both paths lead
to the same place though, that is why there are just as many average sized
people in oncology wards as there are overweight or obese. The reason we are
seeing more obese people with heart disease and cancer is because we have a
higher percentage of the population that are obese.
If your skinny friend had a great
relationship with food and ate an amazing diet and was metabolically optimal,
the story would be very different though.But understanding that obesity is NOT
caused by over eating and under exercising, but is a disease of inflammation
which can also be found in skinny or average weight people is of paramount
importance.Firstly understanding, your size does not determine your health and
to help remove the insidious horrible plague of society that is fat-hatred.
How do I know if I am leptin resistant?
Your first port of call is to look in
the mirror. Are you overweight, obese or decidedly underweight? If the answer
is yes, you have a leptin issue.
Do you get cravings or find it
difficult to eat only at meal times? Does you body do poorly if you fast?
Do your muscle fatigue quickly when
you start exercising?
Do you suffer from any sort of
chronic illness, including eczema, asthma, chronic fatigue syndrome,
depression, anxiety, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes?
Do you have problems with sleep?
Do you suffer from infertility or
have difficulty maintaining pregnancies (miscarriages or threatened
miscarriages)?
Getting a blood test to check your
levels of reverse T3 is another way to check, but finding a doctor who will
both order the test for you and understand the results may prove difficult.
So, what do I do now?
Ok, here is one of Dr Jack Kruse's
blog posts that is easy to understand, his leptin reset prescription:
The basics are:
- Stop eating at least 4 hrs before bed time and get up first thing in the morning and eat a very low carbohydrate, high protein breakfast. Straight away. Then eat at lunch and again at dinner. No snacks, even be aware of drinks that you are consuming that will stimulate insulin and leptin.
- Add more seafood to your diet, a minimum of 4 meals per week. All meals need to be very low carbohydrate meals, no grains and paleo.
- Make it as dark as possible after sun down.
- Consider Cold Thermogenesis, among other things, this converts white fat to brown fat (which produces free heat and not leptin)
Leptin in a nutshell:
1. Leptin is made in our white fat cells.
2. We are born without leptin, but get a big dose with our first
breastfeed which also set our number of receptors.
3. More receptors means reduced risks of resistance
4. Leptin is the master of the universe, it :
Controls All other
hormones
Controls Energy
metabolism
Controls Thyroid
function
Allows fat to be
used as fuel in muscles
Stops muscles
fatiguing quickly
Increases resting
metabolism
Effects immunity
and inflammation
Resistance leads to
insulin resistance and adrenalin fatigue
Resistance
increases visceral fat, choking your vital organs
Resistance leads to
high oxidative cholesterol
Resistance leads to
heart disease, cancer, arthritis etc...
5. You don't have to be overweight or obese to have a leptin
problem, actually underweight is just as big an indication as overweight.
6. Leptin resistance is fixable not just through what you eat but
when/how you eat.
As you can imagine, there is much
more to this than the simple explanation I have given here. I will be adding
more as we go along.
Cheers, Claire
Great read Claire, I will be passing it around.
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