The cleansing route to weight loss

Offering a detox strategy can help your patients regain health and build your practice at the same time.

By Suhail Al-Sahli, DC

A whopping seven out of 10 Americans are overweight. Excess fat is linked to many diseases including heart disease, cancer, and diabetes.

As a doctor, can you ignore these troubling trends? You shouldn’t — not if you have your patients’ best interests in mind.

Patients who are desperate for a solution will try many weight-loss products and crash diets. And many will lose some weight, but it almost always comes back with a vengeance. Some will even consider gastric reduction surgery.

They need not go that route. Instead, they may benefit from a system of gentle cleansing that can help them lose unwanted pounds and regain their health.

As a chiropractor, having a proven weight-loss system available in your practice not only helps your patients lose weight and regain their vitality but it is also a fantastic practice-building tool.

The secret about weight loss

The body regulates its weight through a fat-burning hormone called leptin.

Leptin is actually produced by body fat. Leptin tells your brain to burn fat to use as energy. Leptin is also associated with suppressing appetite and regulating the metabolism, two factors that play a major role in weight control.

How leptin works

Simply put, leptin tells the brain when to burn fat. When researchers first discovered this, they assumed that overweight individuals were leptin- deficient and drug companies scrambled to develop a synthetic form of leptin. But it was soon discovered that overweight people weren’t deficient in leptin at all. In fact, they had elevated leptin levels.

After more research, it was found that when there is too much leptin present in the system (from excess fat), the brain can go into a state called “leptin resistance” in which leptin actually stops having an effect on the brain.

When leptin no longer works, the brain stops triggering the body’s natural process to burn fat. The result is fat buildup.

Why the body ignores leptin

A peer-reviewed study published in the Journal of American Neurotoxicology and Teratology in March 2008 showed that even small to moderate amounts of pesticides in rats cause excessive weight gain by damaging the hypothalamus and pituitary structures in the brain. In other words, the rats gained weight because of toxins.

When the body becomes overly toxic, the leptin receptors in the brain are overwhelmed and stop working. Therefore the brain doesn’t send “burn fat” messages to the cells.

The term “toxins” here refers to the unnatural elements found in today’s food. These include pesticides, preservatives, heavy metals, antibiotics, synthetic hormones, trans-fatty acids, artificial sweeteners, processed sugar, and processed carbohydrates.

Another factor that creates leptin resistance is a lack of exercise. The human body is designed to move, not to sit all day, or stand in confined areas.

The keys to permanent weight loss

Weight-loss fads come and go. As it happens, there are five things you need to do to put a person in better health and permanently reduce fat:

1. Cleanse the body of toxins,
2. Enact an exercise program,
3. Decrease caloric intake,
4. Reduce simple carbs, processed foods, and sugars in the diet, and
5. Alkalize the body.

Some practitioners are currently using the HCG diet with their patients. HCG is a hormone produced during pregnancy by the cells that form the placenta. This synthetic hormone “fools” the body into thinking it’s pregnant. In theory, taps into stubborn fat reserves to use them as energy.

In a pregnant woman, once the fat is released, it sends nutrients into the placenta, fueling the fetus with the energy needed to grow.

In a non-pregnant person (including men), the fat is simply released, causing weight to drop.

In practice, HCG diets are often seen to cause weight loss. But if the patient doesn’t also do the five things above, the weight will come rushing back.

Anyone who is considering an HCG diet should first do a detox cleanse that promotes alkalinity in the body and involves some exercise. Of course, a person can also lose the weight they want by doing the above steps without using HCG.

A promising study

In a study to determine if a cleanse program for patients actually does decrease toxicity in the body, 43 patients with high liver enzyme levels (per blood testing) were divided into three groups.

Group A members were sent to their MDs for treatment to lower their enzyme levels, group B focused on hydrating with water and exercising, and group C performed a detoxification weight-loss cleanse employing the five steps mentioned above.

Among the group C (cleansing) participants, 92 percent saw a drop in liver enzymes down into the normal range after one week of cleansing and a second week of a standard healthy diet.

Of the group A (sent to MDs) members, 38 percent achieved lower enzyme levels into the normal range, and 41 percent of the group B (no doctor assistance) members were able to reduce their enzyme levels, but only by an average of 12 percent.

Diets that don’t cleanse the body of toxins are likely to fail in the long run. Even if a patient loses weight on a standard diet, the toxins that are still present in the body will inhibit the hormone leptin from doing its job, and thus the excess weight will probably come back.

We live in an overweight, toxic society. If you want to be the “go-to” doctor in your area, consider using a good weight-loss cleanse with your patients. They will not only lose weight; they will detoxify and gain their health in ways they’ve never imagined.

Suhail Al-Sahli, DC, practices in the Houston Texas area. He and his staff have helped hundreds of people lose thousands of pounds. For more information regarding the weight-loss cleanse program he utilizes, contact him at dralsahli@yahoo.com or 832-630-4065.