Copyright © 2009
by Daniel Matthew Korn

All Rights Reserved

Many of the sensations we experience as we gain weight, such as stress, sleep disturbances, excess hunger, poor energy, and inflammation, reverse as we start to eat a healthful diet. In fact, how our food makes us feel is the best way to know that our diet is healthful. One of the reasons there are health food stores which sell foods made without artificial flavors and preservatives is because millions of people feel better when they eat these foods. These are the same foods that can cause weight loss. How we feel is an overlooked source of information about the quality of our food and nutritional supplements. If we want to know when we are doing something right or wrong, we need to pay attention to our bodies. Let us look at some of the signals that we are on the right track.

Stress has been found to occur not only in humans but also in many mammals. The same hormone which produces stress in humans, cortisol, produces it in other mammals. Researchers have found animals experience stress when they are in danger, in an inappropriate or unfamiliar environment, and when food is scarce. Stress causes increased hunger, decreases unnecessary physical activity, and temporarily boosts the immune system. Stress is appropriate when food really is scarce, but not when it is abundant, as in our modern diet.^1,2

People who have gone on successful diets have reported feeling relaxed even in situations that were normally stressful. Other signs of increased relaxation include a greater ability to concentrate and fewer negative thoughts. Some people have also reported feeling that the muscles in their back and neck have become more relaxed.

There is no scientific consensus on the function of sleep. It has been hypothesized that it conserves energy, heals the body, or stores memory. It would seem to make sense that if the body is in a state in which food is scarce, it should sleep more and not less.³ However, animals in danger of starvation have been found to sleep less. In humans, insomnia includes increased time that people spend in bed trying to fall asleep.⁴ Difficulty sleeping is actually a survival strategy to help cope with starvation. A full night of restful sleep increases activity level, while difficulty sleeping makes us spend more time in bed and use less energy. Just as people who gain weight spend less time sleeping and have difficulty falling asleep, the reverse occurs in people who go on successful diets. It becomes easy to fall asleep early, get up early, and sleep longer.

Obesity in the United States is increasing because Americans are eating more calories, and they are eating more calories because of hunger. It has been considered a mystery that people who have already overeaten are hungrier than those who have not. This assumes that under normal circumstances animals are always lean, but in nature animals gain weight to prepare for the winter and when they are in danger of starving. If we lose our healthful gut bacteria, we are in danger of starving. Rodents raised in a sterile environment without gut flora have to eat 30% more calories just to stay the same weight as normal rodents.⁵ Rodents rely on their gut bacteria to convert many carbohydrates to short chain fatty acids, as do humans.⁶ When we lose gut bacteria, we lose our ability to digest many carbohydrates, possibly explaining why some people feel better on low carbohydrate diets. The body responds to the loss of its gut bacteria by increasing hunger and storing fat. The hunger-obesity paradox is not a paradox at all. Instead, it is the body’s response to an impaired digestive system, in which the body gains weight as a defense against starvation.

Inflammation is a vital immune process. Without it, viruses and harmful bacteria would destroy the body. The body is more susceptible to infection without its healthful bacteria, which provide a “barrier effect.” Increasing levels of inflammation in the absence of healthful bacteria protect the body when it is in a more vulnerable state. An improved diet should correct this imbalance in the gut and cause a decrease in levels of inflammation. Signs of lessened inflammation include reduced skin redness, muscle relaxation, and an improvement in chronic inflammatory conditions. While better diet and weight loss can reduce the severity of or even cure certain inflammatory conditions, it will not cure all of them.⁷

There are examples of people with extremely healthful diets and lean bodies who still experience inflammatory diseases, so we cannot expect diet to totally cure them. Among such people are elite swimmers, over 40% of whom have been diagnosed with asthma.⁸ This rate is many times higher than in the general population, and it is believed to be because of their exposure to chlorinated pools. A significant number of asthma cases have been linked to having high levels of staphylococcal bacteria in the lungs.⁹ This is a type of bacteria that has been found to have some resistance to chlorine. Since chlorine is a gas that dissipates from water, swimmers inhale chlorine fumes that kill many good bacteria but leave behind chlorine resistant bacteria.

Swimming in chlorinated pools has been found to increase rates of not only asthma, but also of other inflammatory and allergic diseases. Chlorinated water and cleaning chemicals have been known to aggravate eczema, dandruff, and psoriasis, requiring many people to use natural cleaning products and home water filtration systems. Some of these conditions have also been shown to involve fungal overgrowth on the skin. It appears having the wrong type of bacteria on different parts of our skin can cause inflammation at specific spots, just as having the wrong type of bacteria in our gut can increase overall inflammation levels. Changing our diet can dramatically improve or resolve many skin and allergy problems, but not all of these problems are caused by diet. However, if we return our systemic inflammation levels to normal, our bodies will be healthier and will be able to maintain a normal weight.

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Citations:

¹ R. Ethan Pride. "Optimal group size and seasonal stress in ring-tailed lemurs (Lemur catta)." Oxford Journals. 11/13/2009 http://beheco.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/16/3/550.

² Holly Wagner. "A Little Stress Gives Beneficial Oomph! to Immune System." Research News. 11/13/2009 http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/strecels.htm.

³ Eve Van Cauter and others. "The Impact of Sleep Deprivation on Hormones and Metabolism." Medscape Neurology and Neurosurgery. 11/13/2009 http://cme.medscape.com/viewarticle/502825.

⁴ "Insomnia." Medic8. 11/13/2009 http://www.medic8.com/healthguide/articles/insomnia.html.

⁵ Cynthia L Sears. "A dynamic partnership: Celebrating our gut flora." Science Direct. 12/26/2009 http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S1075-9964(05)00068-5.

⁶ "Gut flora." Wikipedia. 12/26/2009 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gut_flora.

⁷ F. Guarner and J. R. Malagelada. "Gut flora in health and disease." PubMed. 12/26/2009 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12583961.

⁸ Oliver Wright and Craig Lord, "Chlorine in pools linked to childhood asthma." TimesOnline. 12/26/2009 http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1137041.ece.

⁹ J. Y. Lee and others, "Role of staphylococcal superantigen-specific IgE antibodies in aspirin-intolerant asthma." PubMed. 12/26/2009 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17063661.