High glycemic foods (sugar, high fructose corn syrup, whole wheat bread), vegetable oils, xenoestrogens, and other poor food choices found in grocery stores and fast food outlets are highly toxic to your body’s metabolism and should be avoided in a healthy diet.

SUGAR

It is widely known that sugar makes you fat, and gives you excess calories with little in the way of healthy nutrients. Small amounts of natural sugar are not a problem. However, when you eat a piece of cake and ingest 40-50 grams of sugar in one sitting, or a bag of candy with 35 plus grams of sugar, or drink a soft drink with 45 grams of sugar or more… Or even a so-called “healthy smoothie at the local smoothie shop that contains a whopping 80 grams of sugar, equal to 320 Calories, because of the many fruit syrups that are included in them.

• Sugar causes extreme fluctuations in blood sugar, and excess blood sugar causes Glycation inside the body, which accelerates the rate of aging in organs, including skin, arteries and joints.
• Sugar also raises triglyceride levels to dangerous levels, which can lead to heart disease.
• High sugar levels can cause type 2 diabetes because, over time, high glucose levels lead to insulin resistance.
• High sugar levels also diminish the activity of white blood cells, making infections more likely, and even allowing cancer cells a better chance to spread throughout your body.

WHOLE WHEAT BREAD

There are 3 main reasons why wheat is toxic to your health:

Reason #1: Wheat has a higher glycemic index than most other carbohydrates

All breads, bagels, cereals, muffins, and other baked goods cause higher blood sugar levels than carbohydrate sources found in vegetables.

However, wheat contains an unusual type of carbohydrate not found in other grains called Amylopectin-A, which has been found in some tests to spike blood sugar levels higher than even pure table sugar. In fact, Amylopectin-A (from wheat) raises blood sugar levels more than almost any other carbohydrate source based on blood sugar response testing that has been documented in numerous studies.

For example, Mike Geary, a certified nutritional expert, performed a blood sugar test using his blood glucometer 45 minutes after he had eaten 2 slices of wheat bread vs a bowl of oatmeal, with equivalent grams of carbohydrates.

The blood sugar test results of wheat versus oatmeal:

2 slices of whole wheat toast:

45 minutes after consumption, blood sugar spiked from 86 fasting level to 155.

1 Bowl of Oatmeal

45 minutes after consumption, blood sugar increased from 86 fasting level to 112

Because wheat has a higher glycemic index, it maximizes blood sugar elevations leading to cellular glycation, rapid aging, weight gain and increased diabetes risk. First off, High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) has been added to whole wheat bread to improve the taste. Second, most of the wheat bread found in stores is actually white bread dyed brown.

High blood sugar levels cause “glycation” in the body due to Advanced Glycation End Products (AGEs).  AGEs speed up the aging process throughout the body damaging all of your organs and tissues, including joints, arteries and skin.

Over time High blood sugar levels dramatically increase the levels of AGEs in your body. This is why type 2 diabetics frequently look older than their real age. However, this age-increasing effect is not just limited to diabetics.

Reason #2: Gluten and other gut-damaging compounds

The truth is that even if you are not officially “gluten intolerant” or “gluten sensitive“, there are numerous published studies that indicate that gluten can cause inflammation in your digestive system, and even cause “permeability” changes in your gut, which can lead to a health condition called Leaky Gut, as well as other digestive issues and autoimmune problems.

Scientists theorize that the reason gluten is causing these digestive system problems is due to the excessive hybridization of wheat over the last 50 years, which has created newly modified gluten molecules that are foreign to the human digestive system compared to the ancient wheat that humans ate for several thousand years historically, and even compared to the wheat that your grandparents ate 50+ years ago.

Reason #3: Antinutrients and mineral blockers

One of these antinutrients, called phytates, block the absorption of certain minerals like zinc, iron, manganese, and calcium.

Since most people eat wheat with every meal (cereal in the morning, bread on sandwich at lunch, and pasta or bread at dinner), excessive wheat intake may also cause a mineral deficiency in your body over time that leads to other health issues.

Wheat has other mineral blockers and antinutrients aside from phytates, such as lectins.  Lectins are another constituent of wheat that causes gut irritation.  This is another reason to minimize or eliminate wheat from your diet.  There’s absolutely nothing “essential” about wheat in the human diet…It simply does more harm than good.

VEGETABLE OILS

Vegetable oil actually comes from any combination of corn oil, soybean oil, canola oil, safflower oil, and/or cottonseed oil, all of which are loaded with toxic chemicals that appear during the harsh conditions used to process these oils. Here are three important reasons why processed vegetable oils are toxic to your health.

Reason #1: Vegetable oils contain trans fats

You know you should stay away from foods that contain partially hydrogenated vegetable oils. However, refined vegetable oils contain trans fats due to the extremely high heat, solvents, and pressure they are exposed to during the refining process.  And this includes so-called “expeller pressed” vegetable oils as well.

All of this high heat and high pressure processing along with the use of hexane solvents actually forces some of the polyunsaturated content of vegetable oils (yes, even so-called “healthy” canola oil) to be transformed into trans fats and something even worse called “MegaTrans” fat.

According to Mary Enig, a nutritional biochemist, “Although the Canadian government lists the trans fat content of canola at a minimal 0.2 percent, research at the University of Florida at Gainesville, found trans fat levels as high as 4.6 percent in commercial liquid canola oil“.

Reason #2: Vegetable oils contain oxidized fats

Free radicals formed during the refining of vegetable oils create these “oxidized” or “mutant” fats, which may damage cell membranes and chromosomes, which lead to massive inflammation in your body.

All vegetable oils contain oxidized fats due to the refining process, which alters the polyunsaturated fat contained in vegetable oils. Expert Nutrition author, Catherine Shanahan, MD, calls the fats in vegetable oils “MegaTrans”, because they are similar in chemistry to trans fats, but appear in higher concentrations.

And MegaTrans from vegetable oils are found in virtually ALL restaurant fryers and almost ALL processed packaged foods, as well.

French Fries Harm Arterial Function:

Catherine Shanahan, MD, cites in her book Deep Nutrition a study from New Zealand that showed that subjects who ate french fries from a restaurant fryer displayed immediate harm to endothelial function in their arteries, going from a normal 7% dilation before eating the french fries to 1% dilation AFTER eating french fries.

Reason #3: Vegetable oils alter the ratio of Omega-6 to Omega-3

Vegetable oils are mostly made up of inflammatory omega-6 fats, while having very little anti-inflammatory omega-3 fats.

The healthiest ratio from the scientific literature appears to be a ratio of 2:1 or even 1:1 for your omega-6 to omega-3 ratio.  However, most vegetable oils skew your ratio as high as 20:1 or even 30:1 in favor of harmful inflammatory omega-6 fats.

These omega-6 fats are the “mutant” damaged MegaTrans type that harm the tissues of your body.

As a quick note, the solution to all of these major problems with vegetable oils is to use healthy oils like coconut oil, olive oil, macadamia oil, avocado oil, and grass-fed butter, all of which are much healthier than vegetable oils and don’t cause any of the problems described above.

XENOESTROGENS

Xenoestrogens are chemicals in the food supply and the environment such as pesticides, herbicides, and certain petrochemicals from air and water pollution, household cleaners, plastics, cosmetics, etc. that can react with your hormones and make your body store excess abdominal fat.

Xenoestrogens have an estrogenic effect in your body.  Excess exposure to these chemicals can cause hormone balance disruptions for both men and women. When exposed to these estrogenic chemicals on a daily basis, they can stimulate your body to store belly fat, along with many other problem, including cancer risks. Hence, they are called “endocrine disrupters.”

CRUCIFEROUS VEGETABLES

Cruciferous vegetables such as broccoli, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, kale, bok choy, cabbage, etc. contain very specific and unique phytonutrients such as indole-3-carbinol (I3C) that help to fight against these estrogenic compounds.

MILK

Healthy alternatives to soy milk, which is loaded with inflammatory substances, are coconut milk and almond milk that contain healthy fat and protein.

POOR FOOD CHOICES

Here is a more extensive list of toxic foods on the market:

• Whole grain breads
• Whole grain cereals
• Whole grain crackers
• Soy milk
• Tofu or “veggie burgers” (non-fermented soy can have adverse effects on hormone levels)
• Orange juice (added HFCS)
• Apple juice (added HFCS)
• Skim milk or homogenized milk
• Margarine (loaded with trans fat, even “MegaTrans” fat)
• Pre-packaged “diet” dinners
• Sport drinks (loaded with sugar and HFCS)
• Protein bars (most are candy bars in disguise!)
• Overly processed meal replacements (with more junk than healthy ingredients)
• Rice cakes (excessive blood sugar spikes)
• Pasta (excessive blood sugar spikes)
• Diet ice cream or diet desserts
• So-called “energy” drinks
• Low-fat foods (usually replaces fat with more sugar)
• Low-carb processed foods (processed foods contain unhealthy fats)
• Soybean oil, corn oil, canola oil and other toxic vegetable oils

CONCLUSIONS

Because sugar, wheat, and vegetable oils are toxic components, you should think twice about eating cereals, breads, bagels, muffins, candy, and processed foods or fried foods from grocery stores and restaurants. Foods that are fried or cooked in hot vegetable oils are particularly toxic to one’s health.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/26/opinion/sunday/the-global-diabetes-epidemic.html

• The solution in India and other developing countries has to include prevention, which means promoting healthy eating and physical activity. It’s not easy: We have by no means succeeded in the United States. In India, it will require better policies that favor fruits and vegetables over refined-food products.
• Here is where Factor4 comes in:
• F4 induces weight loss
• F4 combats insulin and Leptin resistance
• F4 reduces blood sugar levels
• F4 stabilizes diabetic symptoms and chemistries
• F4 dramatically reduces the need for pharmaceutical drugs and therefore lowers cost.
• F4 educates individuals about lifestyle changes related to dietary choices

Dr. George Scheele, creator of Factor4.

By KASIA LIPSKAAPRIL 25, 2014

Photo

Credit Alex Walker

Continue reading the main story Share This Page

Twelve years ago, my husband and I packed up all of our belongings and moved to Trivandrum — a steamy, tropical town at the southern tip of India in Kerala. At the time, I was a medical student interested in studying stroke. For the next six months I dressed in a sari and walked to work on jungle roads. At the hospital, I immediately began seeing a steady stream of young patients affected by strokes, many of whom were so severely disabled that they were unable to work. I initially suspected the cause was tuberculosis or dengue fever — after all, this was the developing world, where infections have long been primary culprits for disease. But I soon learned that my hunch was wrong.

One of my first patients was a woman in her mid-30s who came in with a headache, vomiting and an unsteady gait. Her scan showed a brainstem stroke. Her blood sugars were very high. The underlying cause of her stroke was most likely untreated Type 2 diabetes. Here I was, halfway around the globe, in a vastly foreign culture, but I was looking at a disease — and the lifestyle that fostered it — that was startlingly familiar.

A Disease on the Rise

The portion of the population with diabetes is higher in the United States than in India or China. But the number of people with the disease in India or China is much greater — and expected to increase.

2013: Cases of diabetes among ages 20–79

• China 98.4 million
• India 65.1
• US: 24.4 million

2035: Projected cases

• China 142.7 million
• India 109.0 million
• United States 29.7 million

Source: International Diabetes Federation

Today, I am an endocrinologist, and diabetes has become a full-blown epidemic in India, China, and throughout many emerging economies.

In the United States, diabetes tends to be a disease that, while certainly not benign, is eminently manageable. Just this month, federal researchers reported that health risks for the approximately 25 million Americans with diabetes had fallen sharply over the last two decades.

Elsewhere on the globe, however, diabetes plays out in a dramatically different fashion. Patients often lack access to care and can’t get insulin, blood pressure pills and other medicines that diminish the risk of complications. As more and more people develop the disease, hospitals may soon be overrun with patients experiencing all of its worst outcomes: blindness, limb amputation, kidney failure (necessitating dialysis), coma and death.

Within the last few decades, South Asia has experienced a rapid economic transition paralleled by an epidemiological shift in disease patterns. Recently, when I returned to India for a yearlong fellowship, I saw this for myself. Indians are now living more sedentary lives, working in banks, labs and call centers; all the while, their diet is changing, as they eat out more and consume foods higher in calories, sugar and saturated fats.

GENETIC PREDISPOSITION

What’s more, evidence suggests that Indians may be especially predisposed to diabetes, so even those who are slightly overweight are more likely to be at risk. India also has a high malnutrition rate among children, and poor nutrition in early life appears to trigger metabolic changes that lead to diabetes in adulthood. The result is a perfect storm of commerce, lifestyle and genetics.

According to the International Diabetes Federation, there are now an estimated 65 million adults with diabetes in India. That number is projected to increase to 109 million by 2035. China also has a diabetes epidemic — with an estimated 98 million people affected. Indonesia has nearly 9 million, and Pakistan nearly 7 million. All told, 382 million people worldwide are living with diabetes, a vast majority in low- and middle-income countries — places where many cases go undiagnosed and untreated.

The costs associated with diabetes are enormous; they include expenses related to acute and chronic complications, the costs of therapies to prevent them, and the fact that those affected may be unable to work and support their families. Many patients are pushed into bankruptcy. In India, only 10 percent of people have medical insurance, and patients cover most expenses out of pocket.

In some low- and middle-income countries, diabetes patients living on $1 or $2 per day would need to spend as much as 50 percent of their monthly income to buy just one vial of insulin.

• Additional materials such as syringes, needles and glucose monitoring tests push costs even higher.
• Need for low cost improvement in diet, incluindg fermented products like yogurt.

There is much to be done to prepare for this global epidemic. The sheer size of it means that strategies focused solely on treatment will be far too costly. If nothing changes in the next two decades, India will need to provide chronic care for more than 100 million people with diabetes — close to the entire adult population of Russia.

THE SOLUTION

The solution in India and other developing countries has to include prevention, which means promoting healthy eating and physical activity. It’s not easy: We have by no means succeeded in the United States. In India, it will require better policies that favor fruits and vegetables over refined-food products.

Here is where Factor4 comes in:

• F4 induces weight loss
• F4 combats insulin and Leptin resistance
• F4 reduces blood sugar levels
• F4 stabilizes diabetic symptoms and chemistries

One opportunity involves India’s Mid Day Meal Scheme, a program that provides lunches to 120 million children. The program has been tainted by corruption and deadly contamination problems, but as the Indian government addresses these issues, it also has a chance to reshape the dietary habits of many young people. Exercise is the other crucial element. Taking a jog or even walking to work in Indian cities often means choking on exhaust fumes and dodging speeding cars. Creating more sidewalks and bike paths could go a long way.

The second step is providing diabetes patients with medicines that are effective, safe and affordable. On the bright side, for at least a decade, India has manufactured affordable generic insulin. But in recent years, pharmaceutical companies, sensing the potential for profits, have begun to market their products aggressively.

In one major government hospital, I saw lines of pharmaceutical representatives with glossy pamphlets and drug samples waiting to speak with clinicians.

• Some classes of drugs they’re pushing, such as incretin mimetics — which are injected to lower blood sugars — are very costly, and though they are approved for use in both the United States and India, we don’t know enough about their safety in the long run.
• They don’t appear to lower blood sugar levels any better than cheaper alternatives like metformin, which comes as a pill and is considered the best first choice for many people with diabetes.
• In America, expenditures on diabetes medications have soared as newer drugs have been rapidly adopted.
• India desperately needs to create evidence-based guidelines that take into account cost-effectiveness so that marketing doesn’t drive treatment.

But even the best medicines will not work without a well-functioning health care system. Diabetes care is not a quick fix.

• You can’t take a pill for 10 days and be cured.
• It means working with a clinical team to control the disease month after month, year after year.
• This requires a system that is geared toward chronic care, which in many countries simply doesn’t exist.
• In India, there is now a call for universal health care. This is encouraging but is a long way from being realized.
• In the meantime, India could leverage the lessons learned from many successful H.I.V. programs throughout the developing world that have empowered communities to deliver complex clinical services to millions of people at low cost.

In order for policy makers and health officials to bring about these changes, we must change how we think about the disease. Most of us in the West assume we know what the risks and burdens of diabetes are. And if we’re talking about a patient in Kansas City or Tokyo, we’re probably right. But when it comes to diabetes, location is everything, and much of the world is now vulnerable to the most devastating consequences of this disease. If we’re going to be any help at all, we need to make a conceptual shift. We think we know diabetes — and that’s the problem.

Kasia Lipska is an endocrinologist at the Yale School of Medicine. 

Confidential Document: All rights reserved. No part of this document may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any other information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher.

Factor4: Superior to Protein Powders
George A. Scheele, M.D.

When people compare the list of amino acids on the labels for Factor4 and Protein Powders, they appear to contain the same amino acids. Further when they compare the amount of total amino acids in grams, protein powders have more amino acids than Factor4. At first blush, then, the consumer would seem to prefer the protein powder to Factor4 given the increased quantity of amino acids. In a market brimming with numerous protein products why did Dr. Scheele formulate Factor4 as an amino acid powder rather than a protein powder.

The answers to this question lie in the 40 years of scientific investigation that Dr. Scheele conducted on amino acids and proteins at some of the most renowned institutions in the United States. The answers lie in the 1200 page book which Dr. Scheele conceived and edited, entitled The Pancreas: Biology, Pathobiology, and Disease, published by Raven Press in 1983 and in revised form in 1993. This book reviews more than 50 years of scientific research supported by the National Institutes of Health related to dietary intake, gastrointestinal digestion, and body metabolism. The answers are more fully developed in The Obesity Cure, Dr. Scheele’s recent book which will appear in bookstores in June, 2012.

The crux of the comparison lies in understanding the differences in how the body handles “free” and “protein-bound” amino acids.

This document is designed to provide the critical differences between amino acid products such as Factor4 Weight Control® and protein powders which appear in health-food stores. Once you review this document you will be astonished at the superior efficacy of Factor4 over protein powders.

PROTEIN-BOUND VERSUS FREE AMINO ACIDS:

Commercial protein powders may be obtained from plants (Soy, Pea, Rice) and animals (Whey, Casein, Egg white). Each of these products feature complete proteins, meaning they contain all 20 of the amino acids that are necessary to produce proteins in our body. Protein products, particularly Whey protein, have been used by body builders since WWII. Body builders and fitness experts typically take protein shakes twice a day and consume up to 100 grams of purified protein in this manner. All of the listed proteins contain a rich source of amino acids that build up muscle size and strength, especially in athletes who engage in strength training, and particularly those who “pump iron.”

Protein powders are excellent for building muscle and maintaining body health. However, protein powders have never been shown, in clinical studies, to work beneficially as weight loss products. This is why the FDA has never allowed any of the protein products to provide “hard” claims related to weight-loss health.

When proteins are consumed by the body they need to be digested to release their protein-bound amino acids for absorption into the body. The digestion process takes hours to days and relies on the secretion of pancreatic enzymes and the release of bile into the intestinal tract. Without stimulating pancreatic secretion and gallbladder contraction, most of the protein remains undigested and passes into the stool.

The International Nutrition Research Center has studied the utilization of protein-bound amino acids extensively. They report that the net nitrogen utilization (NNU) of protein powders average 17%. This means that 83% of the protein is passed as waste from the body. By comparison, free amino acids delivered in the diet are absorbed by the intestinal tract and utilized by the body at levels which approach 99%. Thus, free amino acids show NNU levels that are 6-times more efficient than protein-bound amino acids contained in protein products.

By further comparison, food products (meat, poultry, fish and eggwhites) appear to be utilized at levels between 35% and 50%.

What we learn from 50 years of research reported in The Pancreas is that protein by itself does not stimulate the pancreas to secrete its digestive enzymes or the gallbladder to release its bile. So these scientific studies would explain why protein powders are poorly utilized by the body. Furthermore, release of amino acids from protein takes hours to be absorbed into the body. This means that the beneficial effects of protein-bound amino acids in controlling satiety are greatly limited and in most cases, undetectable.

Furthermore, while the amino acid profile contained in commercial protein powders is optimal for building muscle, it is suboptimal for building regulatory proteins, including positive-charged metabolic enzymes and DNA regulatory proteins.

FACTOR4 WEIGHT CONTROL®

From the research of Dr. Scheele and others, summarized in The Pancreas, we learn that essential amino acids and fatty acids are powerful stimulants of enzyme secretion from the pancreas and bile release from the gallbladder. Both essential amino acids and fatty acids release the hormone cholecystokinin (CCK) from the intestinal mucosal cells and it is CCK that is the potent stimulator of pancreatic secretion and gallbladder contraction. As such CCK is the most important hormone in the body to regulate the efficiency of digestive processes. CCK is also the most important hormone to signal satiety in the appetite centers of the brain and stomach.

Dr. Scheele discovered that essential amino acids had other beneficial qualities in weight loss health, in that they:

• Act as neurotransmitters to signal satiety to the appetite center of the brain (Arcuate Nucleus)

• Act as neurotransmitters to signal satiety to appetite centers in the stomach.

• Optimize the release of the hormone cholecystokinin from the intestine to provide further satiety signals to the brain and stomach.

Dr. Scheele discovered that metabolites and analogues of essential amino acids exert even greater satiety effects on the brain and stomach, so he included satiety amino acids together with the essential and positive-charged amino acids contained in the Factor4 Weight Control®. These satiety amino acids begin to act within 5 to 10 minutes of ingestion and continue to act for hours to reduce appetite.

Dr. Scheele discovered, through his invention of 2D gel electrophoresis, that protein deficiencies, which accompany the high carbohydrate content in the Modern American Diet (MAD), lead rapidly to a profound loss in positive-charged proteins throughout the body. These deleterious changes lead to an imbalance in metabolic pathways that result in the metabolic diseases associated with the metabolic syndrome, including overweight disorders and obesity.

Because humans and other vertebrates do not produce essential and positive-charged amino acids, including the positive-charged amino acids Lysine, Histidine and, in certain cases, Arginine, which is conditionally essential, this constitutive deficiency in amino acids corroborated the loss of positive-charged proteins observed in his 2D-gel nutritional studies. In accordance with these new discoveries, Dr. Scheele created a proprietary blend of essential, positive-charged, and satiety amino acids that he trademarked as Power Amino Acids®.

To complete the formulation of Factor4 Weight Control® Dr. Scheele added 10-12 grams of protein to sustain the positive benefits of Factor4 Health overtime following the absorption of the free power amino acids. In the presence of essential amino acids to stimulate pancreatic secretion and bile release from the gallbladder, the efficiency of protein digestion can be expected to increase up to 20-times. Thus 10 grams of protein in a single serving of Factor4 provides amino acid utilization levels comparable to 100 grams of pure protein.

The successful formulation of Factor4 Weight Control® depended on Dr. Scheele’s unique understanding of the role amino acids, proteins, hormones and neurotransmitters play in feedback mechanisms which regulate digestive health, metabolism, and body weight throughout the animal kingdom. The science behind Dr. Scheele’s Factor4 formulation is so unique that it received patent protection (US Patent 7,982,066) in 2011.

Through the dedicated efforts of Dr. Scheele over the past 40 years, we now have a unique product in a new class of dietary supplements with imprimis credentials to tame appetite, satisfy food cravings, increase energy and optimize fat-burning potential.

This new class of dietary supplements combines a certain group of free amino acids (power amino acids®) with protein-bound amino acids (health plus protein™) to utilize the body’s hormonal and neural feedback mechanisms to optimize metabolic health and weight control. The combination of the two ingredients provides the synergy to achieve extraordinary results.

Factor4 Weight Control® is so effective in stimulating weight loss health that 24 out of 25 subjects lost significant weight over a three month period and continued to lose weight when the study was extended to 6 and 12 months. The table below summarizes the weight loss results as average values.

WEIGHT LOSS STUDY

As the FDA requires a 5% reduction in body weight over 12 months to justify weight loss claims, Factor4 exceeds this threshold level by more than 3-times.

MULTIPLE BENEFITS OF FACTOR4 HEALTH

Based on Dr. Scheele’s discoveries which led to the unique formulation of Factor4 Weight Control® we may now summarize the multiple benefits of Factor4 Health. The rapid uptake of essential, positive-charged and satiety amino acids (Power Amino Acids®) which begins in 5 to 10 minutes and continues for 60 to 90 minutes (free amino acids) and 4 to 6 hours (protein-bound amino acids) provides unique results that may not be obtained with individual ingredients alone.

Thus Factor4 Weight Control® with free Power Amino Acids:

1. Rapidly closes the food chain gap to correct deficiencies in positive-charged amino acids, proteins, and enzyme-driven metabolic pathways. By rebalancing metabolic pathways, Power Amino Acids stimulate fat metabolism.
2. Tames (reduces) appetite to avoid addictive taste disorders and prevent food cravings, thus allowing reduction in caloric intake without hunger. Factor4 shakes provide feelings of comfort, satisfaction and well-being within minutes of ingestion and continue to control appetite for hours.
3. Increases lean body mass (muscle tissue) which improves energy and helps burn fat.
   Increases body energy without the yo-yo metabolism of sugar, high-fructose-corn-syrup, caffeine or guarana. Increased energy stimulates the desire for exercise.
4. Retains anabolic health at reduced caloric intake which prevents catabolic reactions including starvation and hibernation mechanisms.
5. Improves the digestive process by stimulating Cholecystokinin (CCK) release which stimulates secretion of pancreatic digestive enzymes into the digestive track.
6. Helps prevent formation of gallstones and associated gallbladder and liver disease by stimulating CCK-dependent gallbladder contraction.
7. Helps promote a natural cleanse of the GI tract through gallbladder contraction which enhances ileal and colonic evacuation. Enhances regularity in bowel movements and prevents constipation through the same natural cleansing mechanisms.
8. Improves health in all the organs and tissues of the body, including the brain.
9. Improves dietary health in the 8 major health systems in the body which includes (i) Body Weight and Energy, (ii) Beauty Health, (iii) Mental Balance/Health, (iv) Digestive Health, (v) Metabolic Health, (vi) Immune Health, (vii) Sexual and reproductive health, and (viii) Aging Health.

Benefits 1 through 10 work synergistically to provide the following ultimate benefits:

1. Helps to normalize body weight, improve body definition, and increase pep, energy, activity, stamina, endurance and performance.
2. Promotes healthy lifestyles, including increased satiety, improved diet, exercise, sleep, attitude, and less dependency on sugar, caffeine and alcohol.
3. Helps combat metabolic risk factors, including high blood pressure and increased levels of cholesterol, triglycerides and sugar in the bloodstream.
4. Helps combat chronic degenerative diseases associated with the metabolic syndrome, including obesity, hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, type-2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and gallbladder, liver and kidney disease.
5. Helps combat inflammatory diseases, including autoimmune diseases and cardiovascular disease.
6. Helps promote anti-aging health with increased longevity and quality of life evidenced by reduced chronic degenerative disease and enhanced feelings of comfort, satisfaction, and well-being.
7. Combats loss of productivity and accelerated aging.
8. Helps combat alcohol dependency disorders and alcoholism.
9. Helps combat stress-related disorders including depression, anxiety, anger, rage, aggression and post-traumatic Stress Disorders.
10. Helps promote body repair and tissue healing.

CONCLUSIONS:

In the comparison between commercial protein powders and Factor4 Weight Control® we may conclude the following. Out of the 20 benefits observed with Factor4 Weight Control®, commercial protein powders are estimated to compete with only 3 of these claims (3, 4, and 9). In each of these three endpoints, the response to protein will be small compared to that of Factor4 Health. Among the synergistic endpoints (claims 10 to 20) commercial protein powders may be considered to show little if any detectable results.

Based on the comparison between Factor4 and protein powders, it is clear that NovaLife has introduced a new class of dietary supplement designed to optimize weight loss health. The Factor4 Health technology utilizes a unique combination of free and bound amino acid blends to achieve health benefits that far exceed the benefits observed with individual ingredients. Factor4 Weight Control® is unique in its ability to normalize body weight as well as improve metabolic parameters and risk factors associated with the Metabolic Syndrome. As such Factor4 Weight Control® has the imprimis credentials to provide first-in-class benefits for health and wellness programs around the world.

Australian researchers have shown that rats on a diet high in fat and sugar had impaired memories after almost a week, suggesting an additional neurobiological dimension to unhealthy human diets. New Zealand Herald, 12/17.

Many Factor4 customers report improved focus and clarity with regular use!

Researchers in the UK call attention to 5 ways to reduce the signs of aging:

• Following a nutritious diet,
• Exercising regularly,
• Maintaining a low body weight,
• Avoiding smoking, and
• Limiting alcohol consumption

Researchers at Cardiff University in the U.K. studied 2,235 men and found that those who adopted all five, or even four, of these healthy behaviors experienced a 60 percent reduction in dementia and overall cognitive decline (with exercise being the strongest mitigating factor). Seventy percent fewer cases of heart disease, diabetes, and stroke were found in those men, compared to people who didn’t practice any of the behaviors.

According to Dr. Scheele, the good news is that Factor4 Weight Control® promotes all five of these lifestyle changes and ensures success in maintaining metabolic and cognitive health as you age.

The Department of Health and Human Services states that “800,000 strokes occur each year in the United States – and if the number seems high to you, consider how many of us have risk factors that could lead to strokes. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, says: High blood pressure, high cholesterol and smoking are key risk factors for stroke. About half of Americans have at least one of these three risk factors.”

Other risk factors include being overweight, being physically inactive, and drinking too much alcohol.

But people can reduce their risk by quitting smoking, eating a healthy diet and maintaining a healthy weight, and being physically active. Further, cholesterol and blood pressure – as well as diabetes and heart disease — also raise stroke risk.

The good news is that Factor4 Weight Control® combats each of the risk factors described above as it normalizes body weight and promotes healthy lifestyles with increased satiety, improved diet, exercise, sleep, attitude, and less dependency on sugar, caffeine, nicotine and alcohol. According to Dr. Scheele the numerous benefits derived from Factor4 Weight Control® can be expected to lower adverse cardiovascular events like heart attacks and stroke.

HHS Healthbeat (11-12-13)

Researchers say poverty can interfere with a child’s brain growth. Brain scans on 145 8 to 12-year-olds showed that poor children tended to have smaller hippocampuses, important in learning and memory – possibly from stresses of poverty on the developing brain. The same study showed that nurturing parents could partially compensate for this deficiency.

According to Dr. Scheele, this study shows that poor dietary and environmental conditions have adverse effects on brain development, particularly in the Hippocampus, which promotes learning and memory. This finding suggests that Factor4 Health might benefit brain development in poor communities and further suggests that adding Factor4 Dietary Health to the Food Stamp Program would greatly help to offset health disparities in economic-challenged communities across America.

The study was conducted by child psychiatrist Joan Luby of Washington University School of Medicine and published in the journal JAMA Pediatrics was supported by the National Institutes of Health.

HHS Healthbeat (9-25-13)

Sleep Less, Weigh More

You can’t eat while you’re asleep, but that’s not the only benefit from getting enough sleep if you’re trying to control your weight. 225 people ages 22 to 50 spent 18 days in a sleep lab without exercise where researchers could measure what they ate and how long they slept. When people stayed up into the early morning, they went for more calories: When they were up from 10 p.m. to 4 a.m., they consumed more than 550 calories on average. In addition, the calories consumed during these late hours were higher in fat. The average gain for the sleep-restricted people was a couple of pounds.

The study was conducted by Andrea Spaeth of the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine and published in the journal Sleep was supported by the National Institutes of Health.

Studies have shown that taking a Factor4 shake before bed time will not only help you sleep better but help curb those late night cravings and temptations – That’s a WIN – WIN in my book so what are you waiting for?

HHS Healthbeat (9-18-13)

Little Kids & Sweet Drinks

·         Commercial drinks for little kids are packed with sugar, which may lead to weight problems later on.

·         In a national survey on 9,600 children who were followed at ages 9 months and 2, 4 and 5 years children who consumed sugary drinks regularly were more likely to be overweight and obese at age 5.

·         Body weight increased over time with the amount of sugar, and was quite noticeable at age 4 and 5.

·         The study recommends that kids be given water and milk rather than sugar-sweetened drinks.

We recommend water as it also helps with brain function and many schools now ask children to bring a water bottle to school. Factor4 helps immensely with hydration in all ages and should be considered as part of your diet to curb cravings and balance your metabolic pathways.

DR SCHEELE’S TAKE HOME POINTS FROM RECENT ARTICLE BELOW

Dr. Esselstein has finally gotten to Dr. Lundell!

• Toxins include processed foods:
• Packed with sugar
• Soaked in omega 6s in polyunsaturated vegetable oils (soybean, corn, and sunflower oils manufactured by Cargill)
  • Omega-6s prolong shelf life but they produce cytokines that cause chronic arterial inflammation
  • Omega3 to Omega 6 fatty acids should be in an optimal ratio of 3:1 to control the inflammatory process.
  • In the Modern American Diet the ratio of omega-6s to omega-3s is 15:1 to 30:1
  • One tablespoon of corn oil contains 7,280 mg of omega-6; soybean contains 6,940 mg. Instead, use olive oil or butter from grass-fed beef.
  • Animal fats contain less than 20% omega-6 and are much less likely to cause inflammation than the supposedly healthy oils labeled polyunsaturated
  • Snacks containing excess refined sugar and omega-6 unsaturated fatty acids cause inflammatory conditions in arterial walls. Arterial inflammation has led to an epidemic of hypertension, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and obesity.
  • The Factor4 Diet is consistent with the claims that Dr. Lundell makes.
  • In addition, Factor4 has many other beneficial effects that Dr. Lundell does not know about.

Dr. Lundell

We physicians with all our training, knowledge and authority often acquire a rather large ego that tends to make it difficult to admit we are wrong. So, here it is. I freely admit to being wrong. As a heart surgeon with 25 years experience, having performed over 5,000 open-heart surgeries, today is my day to right the wrong with medical and scientific fact.

I trained for many years with other prominent physicians labelled “opinion makers.” Bombarded with scientific literature, continually attending education seminars, we opinion makers insisted heart disease resulted from the simple fact of elevated blood cholesterol.

The only accepted therapy was (i) prescribing medications to lower cholesterol and a (ii) diet that severely restricted fat intake. The latter of course we insisted would lower cholesterol and heart disease. Deviations from these recommendations were considered heresy and could quite possibly result in malpractice.

It Is Not Working!

These recommendations are no longer scientifically or morally defensible. The discovery a few years ago that inflammation in the artery wall is the real cause of heart disease is slowly leading to a paradigm shift in how heart disease and other chronic ailments will be treated.

The long-established dietary recommendations have created epidemics of obesity and diabetes, the consequences of which dwarf any historical plague in terms of mortality, human suffering and dire economic consequences.

Despite the fact that 25% of the population takes expensive statin medications and despite the fact we have reduced the fat content of our diets, more Americans will die this year of heart disease than ever before.

Statistics from the American Heart Association show that:

• 75 million Americans currently suffer from heart disease,
• 20 million have diabetes and
• 57 million have pre-diabetes.

These disorders are affecting younger and younger people in greater numbers every year.

Simply stated, without inflammation being present in the body, there is no way that cholesterol would accumulate in the wall of the blood vessel and cause heart disease and strokes. Without inflammation, cholesterol would move freely throughout the body as nature intended. It is inflammation that causes cholesterol to become trapped.

Inflammation is not complicated — it is quite simply your body’s natural defense to a foreign invader such as a bacteria, toxin or virus. The cycle of inflammation is perfect in how it protects your body from these bacterial and viral invaders. However, if we chronically expose the body to injury by toxins or foods the human body was never designed to process, a condition occurs called chronic inflammation. Chronic inflammation is just as harmful as acute inflammation is beneficial.

What thoughtful person would willfully expose himself repeatedly to foods or other substances that are known to cause injury to the body? Well, smokers perhaps, but at least they made that choice willfully.

The rest of us have simply followed the recommended mainstream diet that is low in fat and high in polyunsaturated fats and carbohydrates, not knowing we were causing repeated injury to our blood vessels. This repeated injury creates chronic inflammation leading to heart disease, stroke, diabetes and obesity.

Let me repeat that: The injury and inflammation in our blood vessels is caused by the low fat diet recommended for years by mainstream medicine.

What are the biggest culprits of chronic inflammation? Quite simply, they are the overload of (i) simple, highly processed carbohydrates (sugar, flour and all the products made from them) and (ii) the excess consumption of omega-6 vegetable oils like soybean, corn and sunflower that are found in many processed foods.

Take a moment to visualize rubbing a stiff brush repeatedly over soft skin until it becomes quite red and nearly bleeding. you kept this up several times a day, every day for five years. If you could tolerate this painful brushing, you would have a bleeding, swollen infected area that became worse with each repeated injury. This is a good way to visualize the inflammatory process that could be going on in your body right now.

Regardless of where the inflammatory process occurs, externally or internally, it is the same. I have peered inside thousands upon thousands of arteries. A diseased artery looks as if someone took a brush and scrubbed repeatedly against its wall. Several times a day, every day, the foods we eat create small injuries compounding into more injuries, causing the body to respond continuously and appropriately with inflammation.

While we savor the tantalizing taste of a sweet roll, our bodies respond alarmingly as if a foreign invader arrived declaring war. Foods loaded with sugars and simple carbohydrates, or processed with omega-6 oils for long shelf life have been the mainstay of the American diet for six decades. These foods have been slowly poisoning everyone.

How does eating a simple sweet roll create a cascade of inflammation to make you sick?

Imagine spilling syrup on your keyboard and you have a visual of what occurs inside the cell. When we consume simple carbohydrates such as sugar, blood sugar rises rapidly. In response, your pancreas secretes insulin whose primary purpose is to drive sugar into each cell where it is stored for energy. If the cell is full and does not need glucose, it is rejected to avoid extra sugar gumming up the works.

When your full cells reject the extra glucose, blood sugar rises producing more insulin and the glucose converts to stored fat.

What does all this have to do with inflammation? Blood sugar is controlled in a very narrow range. Extra sugar molecules attach to a variety of proteins that in turn injure the blood vessel wall. This repeated injury to the blood vessel wall sets off inflammation. When you spike your blood sugar level several times a day, every day, it is exactly like taking sandpaper to the inside of your delicate blood vessels.

While you may not be able to see it, rest assured it is there. I saw it in over 5,000 surgical patients spanning 25 years who all shared one common denominator — inflammation in their arteries.

Let’s get back to:

• The sweet roll. That innocent looking goody not only contains sugars, it is baked in one of many omega-6 oils such as soybean.
• Chips and fries are soaked in soybean oil;
• Processed foods are manufactured with omega-6 oils for longer shelf life.

While omega-6’s are essential -they are part of every cell membrane controlling what goes in and out of the cell — they must be in the correct balance with omega-3’s.

If the balance shifts by consuming excessive omega-6, the cell membrane produces chemicals called cytokines that directly cause inflammation.

Today’s mainstream American diet has produced an extreme imbalance of these two fats. The ratio of imbalance ranges from 15:1 to as high as 30:1 in favor of omega-6. That’s a tremendous amount of cytokines causing inflammation. In today’s food environment, a 3:1 ratio would be optimal and healthy.

To make matters worse, the excess weight you are carrying from eating these foods creates overloaded fat cells that pour out large quantities of pro-inflammatory chemicals that add to the injury caused by having high blood sugar.

The process that began with a sweet roll turns into a vicious cycle over time that creates heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes and finally, Alzheimer’s disease, as the inflammatory process continues unabated.

There is no escaping the fact that the more we consume prepared and processed foods, the more we trip the inflammation switch little by little each day. The human body cannot process, nor was it designed to consume, foods packed with sugars and soaked in omega-6 oils.

There is but one answer to quieting inflammation, and that is returning to foods closer to their natural state.

• To build muscle, eat more protein.
• Choose carbohydrates that are very complex such as colorful fruits and vegetables.
• Cut down on or eliminate inflammation- causing omega-6 fats like corn and soybean oil and the processed foods that are made from them.

One tablespoon of corn oil contains 7,280 mg of omega-6; soybean contains 6,940 mg. Instead, use olive oil or butter from grass-fed beef.

Animal fats contain less than 20% omega-6 and are much less likely to cause inflammation than the supposedly healthy oils labelled polyunsaturated. Forget the “science” that has been drummed into your head for decades. The science that saturated fat alone causes heart disease is non-existent. The science that saturated fat raises blood cholesterol is also very weak.

Since we now know that cholesterol is not the cause of heart disease, the concern about saturated fat is even more absurd today.

The cholesterol theory led to the no-fat, low-fat recommendations that in turn created the very foods now causing an epidemic of inflammation. Mainstream medicine made a terrible mistake when it advised people to avoid saturated fat in favor of foods high in omega-6 fats.

We now have an epidemic of arterial inflammation leading to heart disease and other silent killers.

What you can do is choose whole foods your grandmother served and not those your mom turned to as grocery store aisles filled with manufactured foods. By eliminating inflammatory foods and adding essential nutrients from fresh unprocessed food, you will reverse years of damage in your arteries and throughout your body from consuming the typical American diet.

Taking Factor4 Weight Control on a regular basis will do wonders for your body to fight this epidemic – Order Some Today – Click Here

This Article published recently in the NY times reviews the latest Diet Pills but leaves out all the information on Side Effects! Factor4 has no side effects, is not a Pharmaceutical and works naturally to restore your metabolic system resulting in healthy weight loss and over 50 healthy benefits! Which would you choose?

Few Signs of a Taste for Diet Pills

By ANDREW POLLACK

Published: July 1, 2013

But the first new prescription weight-loss drug to reach the market in 13 years is having a hard time winning even a tiny slice of that huge market, despite an apparent need.

Sales of the drug, Qsymia (pronounced Kyoo-sim-EE-ah), have been minuscule since it went on sale last September. Sales totaled only $4.1 million in the first quarter of this year, even as Vivus, the manufacturer, spent $45 million on marketing, sales and administrative expenses.

Vivus’s stock price has plunged to $12.41 from $29 on the day after Qsymia was approved last July. And the company’s largest shareholder, saying the drug’s introduction was horribly botched, is battling to oust the entire board and top management at Vivus’s annual shareholder meeting on July 15.

More than a corporate drama, however, the slow start of Qsymia raises questions about what role prescription drugs really can play in combating the nation’s epidemic of obesity.

While there are some problems unique to Qsymia, it is also facing barriers that are likely to confront other weight-loss drugs as well, including Belviq, a drug from Arena Pharmaceuticals and Eisai, that went on sale last month. Another drug, Contrave from Orexigen Therapeutics, is in advanced clinical trials.

These obstacles include lack of insurance reimbursement, modest weight loss, safety concerns, the troubled history of diet drugs, and a feeling on the part of many doctors and obese people themselves that excess weight is a lifestyle issue best addressed by more willpower, rather than a disease that requires medical treatment.

“You’ve got this turning of the battleship to change how the medical community views obesity,” said Dr. Barbara Troupin, vice president for scientific communications and risk management at Vivus.

The attitude is turning at least a little. Last month, the American Medical Association, the nation’s largest group of doctors, declared obesity a disease. In April, the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists included weight-loss drugs in its diabetes treatment guidelines.

Given that one-third of American adults are obese and another third merely overweight, an effective and safe diet pill would seem like the path to instant riches. Jack Lief, the chief executive of Arena Pharmaceuticals, said in 2009 that sales of obesity drugs could eclipse those of statins, the cholesterol-lowering pills like Pfizer’s Lipitor, which had peak annual sales of about $13 billion before falling to generic competition.

Yet no prescription drug for obesity has ever reached annual sales of even $1 billion, the lower boundary of what the pharmaceutical industry considers a blockbuster.

While it is estimated that more than two million people take weight-loss drugs, the vast majority using the old generic appetite-suppressor phentermine, that is still only a tiny fraction of the 70 million or more obese adults.

And patients typically give up on the drugs quickly. An analysis of prescription data by the Food and Drug Administration found that only one quarter of people kept using a drug for at least three months, and only 10 percent for at least 180 days.

One reason is that many people don’t lose much weight. The clinical trials showed that those taking the recommended dose of Qysmia lost an average of 7.8 percent of their weight after a year. At that rate, a 250-pound person would end up at about 230 pounds.

Some people can do better than average, however. Marty McNamara, who started taking Qsymia in November, said he had dropped from 424 to 332 pounds as his appetite has virtually disappeared. Mr. McNamara, a 6-foot 5-inch highway maintenance worker from Ridgecrest, Calif., said he now eats only fruit for lunch.

“It’s amazing, because I like food,” he said, but quickly corrected himself. “I used to like food.”

Diet pills have been plagued by safety issues that have marred the image of the class. Two drugs used as part of the popular fen-phen combination were taken off the market in 1997 for damaging heart valves. In 2010, Abbott’s Meridia was withdrawn after a study suggested it might raise the risk of heart attacks and strokes.

Neither Qsymia nor Belviq has won approval in Europe, in part because of safety concerns. And Consumer Reports advises people to skip what it calls “quick-fix weight-loss drugs” because “their benefits are usually minimal and their adverse effects can be troublesome.” It urges people to lose weight the tried-and-true way, by dieting and exercising.

The main safety concern with Qsymia is that it might cause birth defects. For that reason, the F.D.A. required that the drug be distributed through only a handful of mail-order pharmacies, a cumbersome process for doctors and patients. Recently, however, the agency agreed that qualified retail pharmacies could also dispense the drug. Vivus said on Monday that Qsymia was now available through 8,000 retail drugstores, removing a major barrier to sales.

“I feel we have been held in check driving around the pit lane, without being able to go out and put this formula racecar to the test,” said Peter Y. Tam, the president of Vivus, which is based in Mountain View, Calif.

But there are still other roadblocks. Medicare Part D does not cover weight-loss drugs, although a bill was just introduced to change that. Only about one-third of Americans with private insurance have coverage for the drug, but often with co-payments of $50 a month or more. People without coverage will pay at least $150 a month.

“Most people don’t find that amount of money is worth it for that amount of weight loss,” said Dr. Ethan Lazarus, a weight-loss specialist in Denver. Dr. Lazarus said that only about five of his 600 active patients were on Qsymia.

Qsymia is a combination of two generic drugs, phentermine and topiramate. Dr. Lazarus said he sometimes prescribed the two generic drugs, which can cost as little as $40 a month.

The drug companies and other backers of the drug make the case that since obesity contributes to numerous other ailments like diabetes and heart disease, use of the pills to lower weight might actually produce a net savings for insurers, patients and Medicare.

Because of the cost and cumbersome distribution system, when Qsymia first went on sale, as many as 30 percent of the prescriptions were abandoned before being filled.

To counter that, Vivus is now offering the first two weeks of Qsymia free and is limiting out of pocket costs to $75 for the next month. It hopes that by the end of the first six weeks, people will have started to lose enough weight to stay on the drug.

Terri Baker of Houston is approaching that point now. Ms. Baker said she had not lost any weight yet, but said the drug made soda taste flat to her, allowing her to break her soft-drink habit. She plans to give the drug some more time, even though it will now cost her $150 a month.

“I really want to try this,” said Ms. Baker, who is 52 and weighs 200 pounds. “Nothing else has worked.”

Another problem for Qsymia is lack of resources. Vivus has only 150 sales representatives, far too few to reach primary-care physicians. Its disgruntled biggest shareholder, the First Manhattan Company, says one of Vivus’s biggest mistakes was not to enlist a big pharmaceutical company to help it sell the drug.

Vivus executives say they planned to target mainly endocrinologists first, but are now talking with larger pharmaceutical companies. They also say the company plans to start direct-to-consumer advertising in the fall.

Meantime, the company saysthat its strategy is falling into place, with retail pharmacies coming on line and organizations like the Veterans Health Administration and pharmacy benefits manager Express Scripts agreeing to pay for the drug.

Qsymia had been prescribed by 15,000 doctors to 40,000 patients as of the end of March, the company says, but prescriptions have risen since then.

Replacing the board with First Manhattan’s slate, it argues, would only “throw Vivus into turmoil at a critical juncture.”

First Manhattan, which owns 9.9 percent of Vivus, disagrees, saying in one letter to shareholders: “The light at the end of the current ‘stay the course’ tunnel is an oncoming train.”

The solution to the disease: Factor4 Weight Control® with Power Amino Acids®!

A.M.A. Recognizes Obesity as a Disease

Mamta Popat/Arizona Daily Star, via Associated Press

Sugary diets and weight problems remain a central health issue.

By ANDREW POLLACK

Published: June 18, 2013

In making the decision, delegates at the association’s annual meeting in Chicago overrode a recommendation against doing so by a committee that had studied the matter.

“Recognizing obesity as a disease will help change the way the medical community tackles this complex issue that affects approximately one in three Americans,” Dr. Patrice Harris, a member of the association’s board, said in a statement. She suggested the new definition would help in the fight against Type 2 diabetes and heart disease, which are linked to obesity.

To some extent, the question of whether obesity is a disease or not is a semantic one, since there is not even a universally agreed upon definition of what constitutes a disease. And the A.M.A.’s decision has no legal authority.

Still, some doctors and obesity advocates said that having the nation’s largest physician group make the declaration would focus more attention on obesity. And it could help improve reimbursement for obesity drugs, surgery and counseling.

“I think you will probably see from this physicians taking obesity more seriously, counseling their patients about it,” said Morgan Downey, an advocate for obese people and publisher of the online Downey Obesity Report. “Companies marketing the products will be able to take this to physicians and point to it and say, ‘Look, the mother ship has now recognized obesity as a disease.’ ”

Two new obesity drugs — Qsymia from Vivus, and Belviq from Arena Pharmaceuticals and Eisai — have entered the market in the last year.

Qsymia has not sold well for a variety of reasons, including poor reimbursement and distribution restrictions imposed because of concerns that the drug can cause birth defects. Those restrictions are now being relaxed. Belviq went on sale only about a week ago, so it is too early to tell how it is doing.

Whether obesity should be called a disease has long been debated. The Obesity Society officially issued its support for classifying obesity as a disease in 2008, with Mr. Downey as one of the authors of the paper.

The Internal Revenue Service has said that obesity treatments can qualify for tax deductions. In 2004, Medicare removed language from its coverage manual saying obesity was not a disease.

Still, Medicare Part D, the prescription drug benefit, includes weight loss drugs among those it will not pay for, along with drugs for hair growth and erectile dysfunction.

The vote of the A.M.A. House of Delegates went against the conclusions of the association’s Council on Science and Public Health, which had studied the issue over the last year. The council said that obesity should not be considered a disease mainly because the measure usually used to define obesity, the body mass index, is simplistic and flawed.

Some people with a B.M.I. above the level that usually defines obesity are perfectly healthy while others below it can have dangerous levels of body fat and metabolic problems associated with obesity.

“Given the existing limitations of B.M.I. to diagnose obesity in clinical practice, it is unclear that recognizing obesity as a disease, as opposed to a ‘condition’ or ‘disorder,’ will result in improved health outcomes,” the council wrote.

The council summarized the arguments for and against calling obesity a disease.

One reason in favor, it said, was that it would reduce the stigma of obesity that stems from the widespread perception that it is simply the result of eating too much or exercising too little. Some doctors say that people do not have full control over their weight.

Supporters of the disease classification also say it fits some medical criteria of a disease, such as impairing body function.

Those arguing against it say that there are no specific symptoms associated with it and that it is more a risk factor for other conditions than a disease in its own right.

They also say that “medicalizing” obesity by declaring it a disease would define one-third of Americans as being ill and could lead to more reliance on costly drugs and surgery rather than lifestyle changes. Some people might be overtreated because their B.M.I. was above a line designating them as having a disease, even though they were healthy.

The delegates rejected the conclusion of the council and voted instead in favor of a resolution pushed by the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists, the American College of Cardiology and some other organizations.

This resolution argued that obesity was a “multimetabolic and hormonal disease state” that leads to unfavorable outcomes like Type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

“The suggestion that obesity is not a disease but rather a consequence of a chosen lifestyle exemplified by overeating and/or inactivity is equivalent to suggesting that lung cancer is not a disease because it was brought about by individual choice to smoke cigarettes,” the resolution said.

Listen to Tip

An A1C test can help to diagnose diabetes. That’s because an A1C test measures the sugar glucose attached to a specific blood protein, hemoglobin, which stays in the blood about three months. By comparison, the standard blood test for glucose is at a single point in time.

At the Clinical Center of the National Institutes of Health, Dr. David Sacks also says the usual blood tests for glucose require at least an eight hour fast. He notes the A1C does not.

“Because hemoglobin AIC is not affected by short-term glucose in the blood, you can measure it at any time of the day and whenever the patient arrives, regardless of the time of their previous meal.”

The NIH has a new fact sheet to help people understand the AIC test.

——————————————————————————————————————–

HOW IS YOUR A1C?

HHS Healthbeat explains that “An A1C test can help to diagnose diabetes. That’s because an A1C test measures the sugar glucose attached to a specific blood protein, hemoglobin, which stays in the blood about three months”, helping to diagnose diabetes. Your Hemoglobin A1c should be below 6 if you are in good health.

Learn more at www.factor4metabolichealth.com.

Dr. George Scheele, The Good Doctor

Listen to Tip

Pregnant women…watch your diet. What you eat can affect both you and your newborn. Gestational diabetes is a common pregnancy complication that can affect both you and your baby. Data from 13,000 women participating in the Nurses’ Health Study II show high fat intake can put you at risk.

Dr. Katherine Bowers is a research fellow at the National Institutes of Health.

“Women who had high intakes of animal fat, so the source of their fat came from animal products, more frequently developed gestational diabetes during their pregnancies.” (10 seconds)

Women with higher dietary cholesterol also had an increased risk. A healthy diet can help you reduce your risk.

The study was in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

——————————————————————————————————————————-

CUT THE SATURATED FAT IN YOUR DIET

HHS Healthbeat says that women with high intakes of animal fat and cholesterol more frequently develop gestational diabetes during their pregnancies.

Dr. George Scheele, The Good Doctor
Learn more at www.factor4metabolichealth.com