Leptin The Lord and Master of Your Hormonal Kingdom
Back in 1994, a discovery was made that shook medical science down to its core. Scientists discovered a major hormone they didn't previously know existed. Moreover, it wasn't just a major hormone; it was the major hormone that ultimately influences all other hormones and controls virtually all the functions of the hypothalamus, in the brain. They found it in the last place they would have expected to: in our fat cells.
The name of the hormone is leptin.
Until the discovery of leptin, scientists believed that body fat was just an unwanted, ugly mass of excess, cumbersome energy storage. This view of fat has been changed forever. Body fat is now understood to be a complex, sophisticated endocrine organ.
A primary purpose of leptin is to coordinate the metabolic, endocrine, and behavioral responses to starvation, which, of course, is as fundamental to basic survival—our number one priority—as it gets.
As such, it powerfully impacts our emotions, cravings, and behavior. Everything is secondary to survival. It turns out, in fact, that leptin isn't the only hormone secreted by adipocytes (fat cells) and that dozens of other hormones are produced there as well. Many of them are proinflammatory in nature. In fact, leptin itself is an inflammatory cytokine and has a major role to play in the body's inflammatory processes as well. It additionally mediates the production of other inflammatory compounds in your adipose tissue throughout your body. It's also one reason why overweight and obese people are so much more prone to inflammatory issues.
Who Knew the New Kid on the Block Ran the Whole Neighborhood?
If you haven't heard of leptin, even if your doctor hasn't heard of it, don't be surprised. Drug companies have yet to create any drug that can positively influence leptin function. Diet is the only thing that can effectively do this. (So much for fat pharmaceutical profits there.)
Therefore, little about this important hormone is taught in medical schools or discussed in the media, despite its extreme importance. In all likelihood, you have either never heard about it or have only heard very little.
Leptin is a good hormone to get to know, though its function in the body is extremely complex. Understanding leptin is tantamount to understanding how to regulate the rest of your endocrine system, conquer your emotions, dramatically improve your health, and even prolong your life. In many ways, it's the single most important hormone in the body.
No other hormonal imbalance in the body, in fact, can ultimately be restored to healthy balance without leptin functioning normally. Keeping leptin levels healthfully moderated can prevent most diseases of aging and greatly extend the normal, healthy life span. Chronically excessive levels of leptin have been associated with most known degenerative diseases and inflammation as well as obesity and a short life span. The more you can increase your brain and receptor sensitivity to this critical hormone, by far the healthier you will be.
Leptin essentially controls mammalian metabolism. Most people think that is the job of the thyroid, but leptin actually controls the thyroid, which regulates the rate of metabolism. Leptin oversees all energy stores. Leptin decides whether to make us hungry and store more fat or to burn fat. Leptin orchestrates our inflammatory response and can even control sympathetic versus parasympathetic arousal in the nervous system. If any part of your endocrine system is awry, including the adrenals or sex hormones, you will never have a prayer of truly resolving those issues until you have brought your leptin levels under control.
This is a key thing to understand: The endocrine system is an exceedingly complex system of interrelationships that ultimately is regulated via an intricate hierarchical system of management.
At the top of the management pillar is leptin. Immediately below it is its subservient sidekick, insulin, which serves as somewhat of an antagonist to leptin. Beneath that are your adrenal hormones, adrenaline and Cortisol. Then come the pituitary hormones, which regulate the thyroid and growth hormones (and others), then your thyroid hormones, then your sex hormones, and on down. It's a chain of command.
There is not a single endocrinologist in the world, no matter how brilliant or talented, who could possibly replicate the intricate and delicate balance that is orchestrated by the interrelationships of your own innate endocrine symphony, nor is there a single "bioidentical hormone" that can be prescribed that can truly replace what the body does naturally.
Anything you do to micromanage a single hormone in the body affects them all-and often in unpredictable and unanticipated ways. This is not to say that bioidentical hormone replacement is never necessary or useful, but care must be taken not to reach blindly for this option instinctively without first seeking to comprehend the underlying mechanisms and foundational interrelationships involved. Sometimes a depressed hormone level is better treated as a clue to an underlying disorder than as a deficiency state requiring supplementation.
Too often doctors (even natural doctors) assume that the body is somehow stupid and doesn't know how to function in its own best interest. Medical science is too often overly literal in its interpretations. Got high cholesterol? That must mean we need to artificially lower it with a drug (rather than look at why it might be elevated to begin with and address that). Got low testosterone? That must mean that your body is too stupid to make what it needs and we should supply it with more (rather than looking at the mechanisms that functionally regulate this hormone and determining the underlying problem).
Hormones are measured in nanograms and picograms—billionths and trillionths of a gram! Hormones are not supplements (despite what "Dr." Suzanne Somers says). They are extremely powerful substances that are used in minute amounts in the body in extremely intricate and complex ways to manage your entire physiology. If you want to improve the functioning of your adrenals, thyroid, or sex hormones, talk to leptin. Restoring healthy leptin functioning is the first major step toward ultimately restoring healthy endocrine balance, at any age, assuming your endocrine organs are intact and have not been destroyed, attacked by autoimmune processes, or removed.
Just what dysregulates leptin and upsets your entire endocrine applecart?
The most potent triggers of hormonal dysregulation are the blood sugar surges that result from chronic carbohydrate consumption.
It turns out that leptin and insulin are birds of a feather. The same things that tend to disrupt insulin also powerfully impact leptin.
The worst offenders by far are dietary carbohydrates that are composed of either starch or sugar and the blood sugar surges they produce; this includes bread, cereal, potatoes and other starchy vegetables, pasta, rice, and alcohol (yes, unfortunately, even wine and beer).
"Natural" sugars, like honey, lohan syrup, agave (even more concentrated in damaging fructose than high fructose corn syrup), and maple syrup, as well as the refined versions, can all be similarly problematic. High fructose corn syrup, manufactured using a plethora of nasty synthetic chemicals combined with GMO-engineered corn, is deadly. Medications of all kinds also contribute to leptin and insulin signaling problems. Caffeine and other stimulants similarly cause blood sugar levels to surge. The consumption of these substances, in turn, causes leptin levels to surge, which overwhelms cellular receptors in a way that (not unlike insulin resistance), over time, causes them to stop hearing leptin's messages.
The next casualties in line are the adrenals and what is called the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, which becomes dysregulated and may even additionally suppress thyroid function, effectively turning down the idle in an effort to preserve your overheated engine. The adrenals, constantly bombarded with the unnatural task of chronically regulating blood sugar extremes, become overburdened and may additionally tune down the thyroid to prevent total burnout during states of chronic stress.
That's where things start to unravel. The combination of leptin dysregulation, glycation, excess insulin, adrenal exhaustion, and glucose oxidation is a superhighway to chronic fatigue, degeneration, and disease. Toss in some trans fat to pound the last nail in the coffin.
The only thing that can possibly restore healthy leptin functioning is a diet that is very low in sugar and starch (which includes eliminating grains, breads, pasta, rice, and potatoes as well as sweets) and is sufficient in healthy natural fats.
It's very simple and very cut-and-dried. Your ice age primal body and mind are ruled by leptin.
Adequate, not excessive, dietary fat—in the absence of dietary carbohydrates—is the optimal key to unlocking its power and potential for controlling your health, your well-being, and your life span.
Remember: To our primal physiology, sufficient dietary fat means survival.
How Do I Know if I Am Leptin Resistant?
Any, but not necessarily all, of the following symptoms (borrowed from The Rosedale Diet, by Ron Rosedale and Carol Coleman) can indicate that you are leptin resistant:
• having high fasting triglycerides, over 100 mg/dL—particularly when equal to or exceeding cholesterol levels
• having a tendency to snack after meals
• having problems falling or staying asleep
• no change in how your body looks, no matter how much you exercise (Rosedale and Coleman 2004).
• being overweight
• fatigue after meals
• the presence of "love handles"
• high blood pressure
• constantly craving "comfort foods'
• feeling consistently anxious or stressed out
• feeling hungry all the time or at odd hours of the night
• having osteoporosis
• being unable to lose weight or keep weight off
• regularly craving sugar or stimulants (like caffeine)
Any of this sound familiar?
There is definitely also a program going on somewhere. I can feel an internal resistance - like something just won't let go. It's is not rational or presenting arguments as to why it just doesn't want to let go. Why? Because it seems as if the sacrifice is greater than the gain (from the perspective of the programed part of the identity). 
