Everyone, including some of the world’s most highly paid top scientists, has been searching for the “magic pill” for fat loss. There have been several multimillion-dollar flops that have wound up hurting or killing people. Phen-Phen comes to mind as the worst recent one.
Alli or Orilistat, a fat blocker, works marginally and has some nasty gastrointestinal malabsorption side effects.
Phentermine is basically legal speed and results in fairly rapid habituation and withdrawal side effects, as well as some addiction potential.
Meridia has high blood pressure as a side effect. Sadly, heavy people already often have high blood pressure, so this makes it difficult to use and usually requires more blood pressure medicine.
Remonabant, the next wonder drug couldn’t pass the FDA for weight loss for many reasons including that it didn’t work (gee, since when did that stop them!?)
In my clinical practice, I had used all of the available medicines and the pros and cons led me to design my own fat blockers from natural ingredients.
After all, about 85% of drugs come from natural ingredients that are heavily modified anyway. Even in cases where the Big Pharmaceutical companies won’t admit it, ultimately the compounds are found in nature.
I have no doubt that all of our biggest discoveries in medicine for health, longevity and weight loss all will start in nature.
So what actually works and how?
Drug companies and lab scientists alike are notorious for what I call “diving down the rabbit hole”. In other words, they find one tiny little speck of something and try to make it the be all and end all treatment for a problem. They dive down the rabbit hole and tunnel along further and further, looking for the one signal or molecule that will flip the switch for fat loss in the body.
I do not believe that one tiny chemical exists. I do not believe that you can go deep inside the human brain and find a specific switch and turn it off, to the exclusion of everything else and get fat loss.
I think we already have the answer.
The answer is in controlling our hormones on a much bigger level, not some tiny little level.
So things like leptin, endocannabinoids, adipokines and ghrelin, all specific signals you may have heard about and will certainly hear more about, are not the answer based on 25 years of experience in the field and plenty of research.
The answer, to me, lies in much more common controls and what I call macro or BIG hormones found everywhere, affecting every cell.
These have names like insulin, cortisol, epinephrine and norepinephrine (epi, norepi) and of course we’d have to throw thyroid in there too. Believe you me, these have a much bigger impact on how your body works and in most cases modulate the effects of the other hormones that are now the focus of anti-obesity drugs and supplements.
I know from almost 20 years of helping people get thin, that if they have normal thyroids, mild to moderately elevated epi and norepi and low insulin and cortisol levels they will burn fat, lose weight and have elevated RMR’s (resting metabolic rate compared to their prior baseline).
I also know this is an artificial state, if done with drugs or supplements and eventually, no matter what, they will have to adopt the lifestyle of a thinner, leaner, healthier person.
Using supplements as I do for this purpose buys them time and it does one even more important thing.
It teaches them they can have success at changing their body and losing the fat they want. And especially in the case of weight and fat loss, success is an inside job. Occasionally some irate person (often a doctor) writes in and says, “Stop sugar coating it; tell them to just eat less”. If that worked in the bulk of cases I would do it. Like it or not, most people need some kind of help when they are significantly overweight. Our obesity epidemic speaks to that so I chose to be proactive about it.
I also believe that the long-term effects of successful weight loss are worth a short-term crutch! This makes me unpopular with a lot of medical personnel.
So my goal, and one I have done quite well with, in supplement design, is to increase the RMR by the use of epi and norepi compounds that target fat release, improve fat usage as fuel, and suppress appetite without undue side effects like sleeplessness, higher blood pressures and dependency (unlike Phentermine).
In the process of lowering a person’s appetite, they don’t starve but they eat less. Most times a lot less.
Now you made it easy for them to reach that 300 to 500 calories less a day intake, you’ve given them some incentive and energy to exercise and you’ve cut out their sweet tooth.
The only thing that remains is to teach them the right way to eat and workout, which I do in my daily newsletters and courses.
Finally, I should mention the effects of fish oil and a multivitamin.
The safest fat loss supplement of all is one that works in a very different way and that is fish oil.
Fish oil works through insulin signaling and has an “anabolic adipokinetic” effect; it moves fat out of storage and burns it and it helps build lean muscle, which ultimately contributes to RMR. It also improves insulin sensitivity.
I need to stress that no other forms of “alternative” Omega 3 fatty acids have been tested or can make these claims, as the research on fish oil alone numbers in the 10’s of thousands of human studies, all the way back to the 1970’s. And fish oil is the only form of long chain Omega 3 where population based studies have been done, since no one eats the other stuff in large populations.
As for multivitamins, if you are on a diet, cutting calories and doing more activity, it just makes good sense to support your nutrition with a solid multivite. Look for one with green tea extract in it as well, since this may aid you in your fat loss.
Losing fat is not complicated. It’s actually very straightforward. It just takes some good old-fashioned perseverance and the ability to follow direction. In these 4 parts of the series I’ve written for you, you have all the knowledge you need to choose the best tools for you!
Click here for part 1 of this series.
Dr. Dave Woynarowski, MD, was born in the 1950s in the heart of Southeastern Pennsylvania. Raised in a family of doctors and scientists, “Dr. Dave” continued the tradition, graduating from Temple Medical School in the 1980s, after earning his Bachelor of Arts degree at the University of Pennsylvania with a dual major in Biology and English.
After completing his Residency in Internal Medicine, Dr. Dave passed the Internal Medicine Boards and joined his father who had been practicing Family Medicine for three decades.
Dr. Dave later embarked on a worldwide pursuit, researching the best-of-the-best in anti-aging medicine. His exhaustive search has made him one of the foremost authorities is preventative health, anti-aging, and nutritional supplements. For example, he may have more scientific research in his medical library on the health benefits of pharmaceutical grade fish oil than any other person in the world. In addition to study and research, Dr. Dave began the development of a new category of nutritional supplements, formulated from his expertise as a physician, and made from only pharmaceutical-grade ingredients.
"“I traveled the globe for many years, searching the four corners of the earth and left no stone unturned,” says Dr. Dave. “What I found is that most people can be significantly healthier through the use of high quality, properly formulated supplements. The problem was that most of the available products did not use a high enough grade of active ingredients, or did not combine the correct amount of ingredients for a multiple-pronged rather than a single-focus approach to the issue. So I developed Dr. Dave’s Best to meet the need."
Dr. Dave is also co-author of "The Immortality Edge" a book dedicated to teaching everyone about the newest hottest field in anti-aging technology, Telomere Biology and giving practical proven advice for better health and a longer life that everyone can use RIGHT NOW!
Latest posts by Dr. David Woynarowski (see all)
- A simple explanation of telomeres and aging - February 19, 2011
- More on telomeres and cancer - February 11, 2011
- Could anti-aging telomeres contain the cure for cancer? - January 12, 2011
