Chosen2
New member
Ron Rosedale, MD
Friday Session
September 26th, 2008
Learning about life through leptin research
“Your health and your life span will be
determined by the amount of fat and
sugar you burn over a lifetime.”
-Ron Rosedale
What is life? Some of the
best minds in the world
have been mulling over
this question for decades
and nobody has an
answer, Dr. Ron Rosedale
said at Friday’s General
Session. He went on to
say that all we know for
sure is that life is “not
dead.” What is health? It
certainly must be tied to life. If I want you healthy,
I certainly want you alive. If you’re dead you’re not
healthy. We know that. On that subject, what is
death? If you examine the composition of the body
before death and after, it is very similar. The cells
of the body can be kept alive for a remarkably long
time independent of the body. What dies is not the
parts but the interaction of the parts.
Because there are not clear cut definitions for what
sustains health, we make them up. Directions on how
to be healthy are sometimes given, but no defined
destination. You can give direction all you want and
it will take you somewhere and if that somewhere
is what you define as health then you are satisfied.
For instance, there is no such thing as good and bad
cholesterol. The body requires cholesterol to live. Yet
we say that reducing cholesterol is a good thing.
A drug was developed that was proven to reduce
cholesterol, yet it increased mortality and incidence
of cancer. They finally had to stop testing the drug
because too many people were dying. In fact, more
people were killed than helped during testing.
That drug is still on the market. Why? Because it
effectively lowered cholesterol. So you died with
lower cholesterol.
Another test showed that a drug dramatically reduced
blood sugar in diabetics. But they had to stop the
study because so many people in the treatment
group were dying. Yet we supposedly know lowering
blood sugar is a good thing, so what is going on
here? They’re not recognizing what a disease is.
They don’t know what to treat.
If I’m lying there dead you can measure all of my
parts. Carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, phosphorous,
oxygen, and you’d find they’re virtually identical to
life. Cells can live independent of the body and be
kept alive for an indefinite period. Virtually every
cancer institute in the world has cultures of Henrietta
Lacks’ cells. Henrietta Lacks died of cervical cancer
in 1951. A section of her tumor was placed into a
petri dish, bathed in nutrients. The cells multiplied
at a rate unlike anything witnessed outside the
human body. It was a breakthrough in cell research.
Researchers studied the cells of Henrietta Lacks to
determine what dies in the event of a heart attack.
Few cells die. What dies are not the parts but the
interaction of the parts working as a collective
republic. Each of us is a republic of cells, a society
that works in harmony and remains healthy through
effective communication between the cells. All
disease, without exception, is due to failure in cells
to communicate effectively.
People regularly get their cholesterol levels checked
but how many have had their leptin levels tested?
No life can exist without cholesterol, and leptin tells
all the other cells what to do. Leptin is perhaps one
of the most important structural agents we have in
the body. You cannot have life without cholesterol.
The chances of cholesterol causing heart disease are
absolutely nil. Our liver creates cholesterol to keep
us alive, not to kill us. There is no such thing as good
and bad cholesterol, it’s just cholesterol.
You have to look at disease in a different way. Disease
is never going to be due to the heart. If cholesterol
doesn’t know where to go it goes to the wrong
place. Diabetes is not a disease of blood sugar, not
at all. At the very least, you can say it is a disease of
insulin communication. Either the signal is too much
or too little, so your sugars go up. Even that is a
kindergarten way of looking at it. We know that, just
like leptin, insulin is controlled by other hormones.
We can learn a lot by knowing nature’s purpose for
us. What does nature want from us? There are two
biological imperatives that need to take place for life
to take place. To eat and to reproduce. Nature wants
the instructions to pass on from one generation
to the next. Nature wants to keep us around long
enough to accomplish those goals. That’s why the
information has to survive. We have a complex
system of turning genes on and off. Hormones work
by telling the genes what to do. If genetic expression
determines health, we have to determine which
ones to turn on and which to turn off. Turn off the
genes that give you disease and turn on the ones
that protect you. That’s what nutrient sensors are
all about, that’s what insulin and leptin are about. If
you control leptin you control everything else.
Many labs are now measuring levels of leptin but most
doctors don’t know what it is. Leptin is a hormone
made by fat. People become diabetic the same way
they become obese, through hormone resistance.
People with type-2 diabetes, and 95 percent of all
diabetics are this type, have too much insulin, but
it’s not able to work because the cells have stopped
listening. They are overexposed and start behaving
as if insulin is too low and become diabetic. The
same thing happens in leptin resistance. The cells
that have to listen to leptin are really critical. Even
though most cells have to listen there is a critical
area of your brain, the hypothalamus that controls
everything else. We now know that leptin, which is
produced by fat, controls your hypothalamus.
A person may wonder why he gets fat in his forties
when he eats the same thing he ate in his twenties,
when he was skinny. Then the lines of communication
were open but lines slowly close like an old telephone
wire and we become leptin and insulin resistant.
As the line of communication from your fat to your
brain becomes corrupted, you start getting fat. The
message doesn’t get to your brain, you start becoming
leptin resistant and start making more leptin. The
hypothalamus hears low leptin even though your fat
is saying high leptin. The hypothalamus tells you to
eat more, be hungry, make more fat and don’t burn
the fat you’ve got, so you get even fatter. If the brain
doesn’t hear the message you will not be able to
burn fat and if you don’t burn fat the only other fuel
you can burn is sugar. But you don’t store that much sugar and don’t have a lot to spare. You start craving
sugar and carbohydrates.
When you get fat you put it in all the wrong places. If I had to condense everything I know about health
into one sentence, it is this: Your health and your life span will be determined by the amount of fat and
sugar you burn over a lifetime. If you burn fat you will be healthy unless you get run over by a truck. If you
burn sugar you’re not going to be healthy. When you’re burning sugar your leptin and insulin levels are high.
When burning fat, leptin and insulin stay low and you increase maintenance repair and tone down cellular
reproduction. Why is that good? When you’re constantly revving up cellular reproduction what does that lead
to? Cancer. That’s not hypothetical. We know that’s the case. Almost all cancers are associated with high levels
of insulin and or leptin. When you keep those levels low, your risk of cancer goes way down—tenfold.
Leptin controls virtually everything. It controls your body temperature, insulin and every other hormone in
your body. It controls not just whether you are fat but where you gain weight. Belly fat chokes off your liver
so it can’t produce insulin, and therefore produces too much sugar. It chokes off your pancreas; it chokes
off your heart. Belly fat is really bad. We know now that visceral fat and belly fat is controlled also by leptin.
That’s extremely important.
Life is not in the parts. It is only in the instructions and communications between the parts. We’re all made
of the same parts. Your heart cells and liver cells and kidney cells all have the same genetics. There is not
a single difference in the genes. Genetic expression is affected by your hormones. If you change leptin and
insulin, you will change five to ten thousand genes out of the 16,000 to 18,000 we’ve got. That’s huge. You
change who you are, how you think, how you behave, how healthy you are by changing leptin. You change
leptin by changing what you eat. Your fat controls your brain by way of leptin and then your brain controls
everything else. That’s an important thing to know.
Friday Session
September 26th, 2008
Learning about life through leptin research
“Your health and your life span will be
determined by the amount of fat and
sugar you burn over a lifetime.”
-Ron Rosedale
What is life? Some of the
best minds in the world
have been mulling over
this question for decades
and nobody has an
answer, Dr. Ron Rosedale
said at Friday’s General
Session. He went on to
say that all we know for
sure is that life is “not
dead.” What is health? It
certainly must be tied to life. If I want you healthy,
I certainly want you alive. If you’re dead you’re not
healthy. We know that. On that subject, what is
death? If you examine the composition of the body
before death and after, it is very similar. The cells
of the body can be kept alive for a remarkably long
time independent of the body. What dies is not the
parts but the interaction of the parts.
Because there are not clear cut definitions for what
sustains health, we make them up. Directions on how
to be healthy are sometimes given, but no defined
destination. You can give direction all you want and
it will take you somewhere and if that somewhere
is what you define as health then you are satisfied.
For instance, there is no such thing as good and bad
cholesterol. The body requires cholesterol to live. Yet
we say that reducing cholesterol is a good thing.
A drug was developed that was proven to reduce
cholesterol, yet it increased mortality and incidence
of cancer. They finally had to stop testing the drug
because too many people were dying. In fact, more
people were killed than helped during testing.
That drug is still on the market. Why? Because it
effectively lowered cholesterol. So you died with
lower cholesterol.
Another test showed that a drug dramatically reduced
blood sugar in diabetics. But they had to stop the
study because so many people in the treatment
group were dying. Yet we supposedly know lowering
blood sugar is a good thing, so what is going on
here? They’re not recognizing what a disease is.
They don’t know what to treat.
If I’m lying there dead you can measure all of my
parts. Carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, phosphorous,
oxygen, and you’d find they’re virtually identical to
life. Cells can live independent of the body and be
kept alive for an indefinite period. Virtually every
cancer institute in the world has cultures of Henrietta
Lacks’ cells. Henrietta Lacks died of cervical cancer
in 1951. A section of her tumor was placed into a
petri dish, bathed in nutrients. The cells multiplied
at a rate unlike anything witnessed outside the
human body. It was a breakthrough in cell research.
Researchers studied the cells of Henrietta Lacks to
determine what dies in the event of a heart attack.
Few cells die. What dies are not the parts but the
interaction of the parts working as a collective
republic. Each of us is a republic of cells, a society
that works in harmony and remains healthy through
effective communication between the cells. All
disease, without exception, is due to failure in cells
to communicate effectively.
People regularly get their cholesterol levels checked
but how many have had their leptin levels tested?
No life can exist without cholesterol, and leptin tells
all the other cells what to do. Leptin is perhaps one
of the most important structural agents we have in
the body. You cannot have life without cholesterol.
The chances of cholesterol causing heart disease are
absolutely nil. Our liver creates cholesterol to keep
us alive, not to kill us. There is no such thing as good
and bad cholesterol, it’s just cholesterol.
You have to look at disease in a different way. Disease
is never going to be due to the heart. If cholesterol
doesn’t know where to go it goes to the wrong
place. Diabetes is not a disease of blood sugar, not
at all. At the very least, you can say it is a disease of
insulin communication. Either the signal is too much
or too little, so your sugars go up. Even that is a
kindergarten way of looking at it. We know that, just
like leptin, insulin is controlled by other hormones.
We can learn a lot by knowing nature’s purpose for
us. What does nature want from us? There are two
biological imperatives that need to take place for life
to take place. To eat and to reproduce. Nature wants
the instructions to pass on from one generation
to the next. Nature wants to keep us around long
enough to accomplish those goals. That’s why the
information has to survive. We have a complex
system of turning genes on and off. Hormones work
by telling the genes what to do. If genetic expression
determines health, we have to determine which
ones to turn on and which to turn off. Turn off the
genes that give you disease and turn on the ones
that protect you. That’s what nutrient sensors are
all about, that’s what insulin and leptin are about. If
you control leptin you control everything else.
Many labs are now measuring levels of leptin but most
doctors don’t know what it is. Leptin is a hormone
made by fat. People become diabetic the same way
they become obese, through hormone resistance.
People with type-2 diabetes, and 95 percent of all
diabetics are this type, have too much insulin, but
it’s not able to work because the cells have stopped
listening. They are overexposed and start behaving
as if insulin is too low and become diabetic. The
same thing happens in leptin resistance. The cells
that have to listen to leptin are really critical. Even
though most cells have to listen there is a critical
area of your brain, the hypothalamus that controls
everything else. We now know that leptin, which is
produced by fat, controls your hypothalamus.
A person may wonder why he gets fat in his forties
when he eats the same thing he ate in his twenties,
when he was skinny. Then the lines of communication
were open but lines slowly close like an old telephone
wire and we become leptin and insulin resistant.
As the line of communication from your fat to your
brain becomes corrupted, you start getting fat. The
message doesn’t get to your brain, you start becoming
leptin resistant and start making more leptin. The
hypothalamus hears low leptin even though your fat
is saying high leptin. The hypothalamus tells you to
eat more, be hungry, make more fat and don’t burn
the fat you’ve got, so you get even fatter. If the brain
doesn’t hear the message you will not be able to
burn fat and if you don’t burn fat the only other fuel
you can burn is sugar. But you don’t store that much sugar and don’t have a lot to spare. You start craving
sugar and carbohydrates.
When you get fat you put it in all the wrong places. If I had to condense everything I know about health
into one sentence, it is this: Your health and your life span will be determined by the amount of fat and
sugar you burn over a lifetime. If you burn fat you will be healthy unless you get run over by a truck. If you
burn sugar you’re not going to be healthy. When you’re burning sugar your leptin and insulin levels are high.
When burning fat, leptin and insulin stay low and you increase maintenance repair and tone down cellular
reproduction. Why is that good? When you’re constantly revving up cellular reproduction what does that lead
to? Cancer. That’s not hypothetical. We know that’s the case. Almost all cancers are associated with high levels
of insulin and or leptin. When you keep those levels low, your risk of cancer goes way down—tenfold.
Leptin controls virtually everything. It controls your body temperature, insulin and every other hormone in
your body. It controls not just whether you are fat but where you gain weight. Belly fat chokes off your liver
so it can’t produce insulin, and therefore produces too much sugar. It chokes off your pancreas; it chokes
off your heart. Belly fat is really bad. We know now that visceral fat and belly fat is controlled also by leptin.
That’s extremely important.
Life is not in the parts. It is only in the instructions and communications between the parts. We’re all made
of the same parts. Your heart cells and liver cells and kidney cells all have the same genetics. There is not
a single difference in the genes. Genetic expression is affected by your hormones. If you change leptin and
insulin, you will change five to ten thousand genes out of the 16,000 to 18,000 we’ve got. That’s huge. You
change who you are, how you think, how you behave, how healthy you are by changing leptin. You change
leptin by changing what you eat. Your fat controls your brain by way of leptin and then your brain controls
everything else. That’s an important thing to know.