It’s no surprise to say that we Americans are fat. Two out of three of us are overweight or obese and this sobering statistic points to the number one cause of our collective inflammatory pain, fatigue, weakness and chronic disease.
The most important reason for our corpulent culture is our poor eating habits. This is exacerbated by a sedentary lifestyle and made even worse by out of control stress and stress response hormones. Ironically, despite the fact that most of us are dealing with excessive stores of body fat, we really don’t understand the chemistry of fat, scientifically known as adipose tissue.
As it turns out, most of the fat that we carry on our bodies is the end result of excessive ingestion of calories derived from sugar and refined carbs, which make up close to 70 percent of the standard American diet. Adipose tissue is also a hormone factory and a reservoir of fat hormones, especially estrogen and other molecules associated with inflammation.
Even worse, excessive estrogen and inflammation suppress metabolism and encourage more fat deposition and more estrogen and more inflammation, leading to a vicious cycle of adiposity and disease. This is why weight loss protocols, including aerobic exercise, calorie restriction, the ketogenic diet, meditation and relaxation strategies, as well as a topical or oral use of fat burning hormones, like DHEA and progesterone, are among the most important things we can do to improve our metabolism, immunity and overall health and longevity.
