Leveraging Leptin to Lose Weight

CBN.com Pat Robertson talks with Dr. Leo Galland, the author of The Fat Resistance Diet, about the hormone leptin and how it ties in with weight issues.

PAT ROBERTSON: Dr. Galland is here with us. Doctor, we had Atkins: eat all the fat, eat all the protein, don’t eat any carbs. Then we’ve had all these diets that talk about eat a lot of carbs, but don’t eat too much fat. Are they all wrong, or what’s the story?

DR. LEO GALLAND: Well, they’re all missing the point because what really regulates your weight is the fat in your body itself, and the system of checks and balances, which is dependent upon leptin.

PAT: How long have we heard about leptin? That’s something that the average person is just learning about. When were these discoveries made? It’s a hormone.

DR. GALLAND: Well, it was first found 11 years ago at Rockefeller University, but there’s been some very exciting research about it lately.

PAT: Well, your body, I understand, when you have more fat, it creates more leptin, which tells your body to slow down your eating and speed up your metabolism. Is that the way it normally works?

DR. GALLAND: Yes. Leptin is part of a system of checks and balances, and your body is maintaining a healthy weight.

PAT: Well, how come people’s bodies don’t do it? The fatter they get, it seems, the fatter they get.

DR. GALLAND: Well, what has happened, and it’s especially happening today, is a condition called leptin resistance. What happens with leptin resistance is the leptin is there, it’s just not working. It’s like insulin in adult diabetics. They have insulin in their blood, but it’s not working.

PAT: Why doesn’t it work?

DR. GALLAND: It doesn’t work because of a condition associated with obesity called inflammation.

PAT: Well, inflammation is a big deal. They’re talking there as a precursor for heart attacks. You have tests now about protein that would cause heart attacks. What is inflammation?

DR. GALLAND: Inflammation is a very big deal, and it underlies so many chronic disorders, including obesity. Inflammation is actually a chemical state in the body, and it’s produced by inflammatory chemicals. In people who are sick, you can sometimes see evidence of inflammation: swelling, redness, heat, pain. But in people who are not sick, inflammation may be silent. You don’t know you have it, except that you start gaining weight.

PAT: Well, what about the average M.D.? I mean, this is something that your family physician doesn’t normally know anything about.

DR. GALLAND: Well, they’re just beginning to learn about it.

PAT: Really?

DR. GALLAND: And I think in another ten years all doctors will understand inflammation and its relationship to obesity.

PAT: All right. Well now, inflammation is caused by excess sugar, high-glycemic carbs, and that kind of thing?

DR. GALLAND: There are a lot of things that cause inflammation, and diet will do it: the wrong fats, excess sugar, the wrong carbohydrates. And even more important is a lack of anti-inflammatory nutrients. See, one of the problems with diets is they’ve all focused on what you shouldn’t be eating, not what you need. And you need anti-inflammatory nutrients that are naturally found in foods.

PAT: I’m really a fan of omega-3 essential fatty acids, but the average person thinks that you have fat that makes you fat, and so they say, “Stay away from fat,” everything is fat-free.

DR. GALLAND: Yes. I think the fat-free trend was a big mistake, just as the low-carb trend was a big mistake. And I explain that in The Fat Resistance Diet. You need healthy fats. You need omega-3 fats in particular. Most of us aren’t getting enough of them. And you should be getting them from food: from fish and from nuts and seeds and green, leafy vegetables.

PAT: How much of that are you supposed to get? I mean, with flaxseed, I go for a couple of tablespoons, but of flaxseed oil or fish oil or something.

DR. GALLAND: You don’t really need a lot. Instead of flaxseed oil in The Fat Resistance, I incorporate flaxseeds, ground up into recipes. A teaspoon to a tablespoon a day is ample, a couple of servings of fish per week. And, actually, the research studies have show that two to three servings of fish per week have tremendous health benefits.

PAT: Well, you’ve got a patient coming to you, and her name is Suzy. She has been struggling for 30 years to get fat off. She diets and she strains and she exercises an hour a day and nothing works. What do you tell Suzy to do?

DR. GALLAND: Well, I have a lot of patients like that. What I do is I put them on the fat-resistance diet. The first thing that I do, of course, is to look at the way that they’re eating: “What have you been doing? What diets have you tried?” And usually it’s always the same story. It is they’ve been trying to remove things from their diet, but they haven’t really understood what they need to be eating.

PAT: So on that leptin-resistant program, and the anti-inflammatory, what are some of the things you tell Suzy to start eating?

DR. GALLAND: Well, first of all, there are some fruits—blueberries and pomegranates and cherries—that are very rich in flavonoids that help leptin work better.

PAT: Strawberries maybe, too?

DR. GALLAND: Strawberries also. You can see it by the intense, bright colors. That lets you know those flavonoids are there.

PAT: Well now, what else?

DR. GALLAND: There are a number of vegetables and spices. The herbs and spices that you use in your food are very important, and I think one of the big problems with diet foods that are used in this country is that they leave out the natural flavors that have been traditionally used in favor of fake fats and sugar substitutes and things of that nature.

PAT: For example, give me a couple of the flavors.

DR. GALLAND: OK. Garlic, turmeric, cinnamon, ginger—these are all anti-inflammatory spices. They help leptin work better.

PAT: I noticed salmon and things like that, but what about beef? Do you tell people to stay off of beef?

DR. GALLAND: Well, there are some beef dishes in The Fat Resistance Diet. I think beef should be lean. And there are ways of preparing beef that make it much healthier, so that if you marinate in cherry juice or in pomegranate juice, for example, the antioxidants that are in those juices actually counteract some of the negative effects that have been associated with cooked meat.

PAT: I know that we’ve got a demonstration, and I’d like to talk to you for the next hour—but you’ve got some things in here about some of the toxins that come out in the air, especially formaldehyde you use to cure leather, that they’re in office buildings particularly. How do you get rid of all that stuff?

DR. GALLAND: Well, it’s really hard to purify the environment unless you can control your environment.

PAT: Yes.

DR. GALLAND: But it’s important to understand what it takes. I have a few tips on how to have a healthy home. Certainly your home should be a safe place. You can’t always control the office or the workspace. And again, the kind of diet that you follow impacts the way your body responds to toxins and gets rid of it.

PAT: Well, the cortisol from the stress and so forth, that’s another thing. And then, you got any tips about stress-free living?

DR. GALLAND: There’s no such thing as stress-free living, but you can control your stress by getting enough sleep, by exercising regularly, and it doesn’t have to be very strenuous. Just walking will do it. But most of us don’t walk enough. And also by prayer, and prayer is very, very important for controlling stress and lowering our cortisol.

PAT: And if somebody gets four or five hours sleep a night, what happens? What is it, ghrelin?

DR. GALLAND: One of the things that happens is there’s a hormone that is not leptin, a fat-produced hormone. It’s called ghrelin. It’s produced in the stomach. Ghrelin levels go up. And what ghrelin does is it stimulates appetite.

PAT: So when you lose sleep, you’re ravenously hungry. I think most people assent to that.

DR. GALLAND: Right. And you find that people who tend to work very late at night are often eating, they’re snacking a lot. It’s because of the ghrelin that goes up.

PAT: Well, this book, ladies and gentlemen, obviously, there’s a lot more in here and some tremendous recipes. It’s loaded with recipes.