Bioprint profiles are a new way to help you target the causes of
See, the most common cause of all the problems above is a hormonal imbalance.
Why Hormonal Imbalance Today is the Norm—Not an Exception
The very complex signaling system called our endocrine system (which controls all hormonal function) is a delicately wired and very fragile network that can be disrupted by all kinds of things.
Common culprits that disrupt hormone balance and function are
The Vicious Circle
The problem is that stubborn weight loss is not only caused by hormonal imbalances—it can also cause them.
Take belly fat, for example.
Accumulated adipose tissue can also cause hormone imbalances because belly fat has a lot of cortisol receptors. So, it will begin to act as an endocrine gland (a gland that produces hormones), further causing hormone imbalances. Scientists have discovered that belly fat is actually an active endocrine organ that responds to stress responses by actually welcoming more fat to be deposited. This is an ongoing cycle until you fix the hormonal imbalance.
Often, clients will tell me,
“Well, I dropped 30 pounds reducing calories, watching carbohydrate intake, cutting out refined starches and industrial seed oils and all of a sudden, and now that I’m down to 165 lbs, the scale is stuck. It’s been stuck for MONTHS . . . no matter WHAT I do! What gives?”
What’s happening is that you’ve dumped excess water weight and used up more water in the body as you’ve depleted glycogen in the tissues.
Glycogen is sugar energy stored in the muscles and tissues. For every gram of glycogen you store 3 grams of water. Deplete glycogen and you’re flushing water out of the system with it. However, soon, our glycogen/water stores are depleted, and we’re looking at fat tissue to lose – fat tissue only stores 1 gram of water and IS VERY DIFFICULT to lose with a HORMONAL IMBALANCE.
In fact, chances are if insulin and cortisol are out of balance, for example, you’re NOT BURNING FAT AT ALL.
See, when you reach these absolutely UN-BUDGE-ABLE plateaus it HAS to be because of hormones.
There is no other answer than hormones.
In fact, out of balance hormones are doing two things that is making weight loss impossible for you:
Your body is sending you a message—in essence—“I cannot let go of any of this weight until you FIX This HORMONE PROBLEM.”
You cannot lose fat at all, in fact, until you cure the problem causing the fat!
But I Don’t Have a Hormone Imbalance!!! Do I??
Well, most of us do, men included. That’s because we live in the toxic 21st century, a moment in history never more toxic or rich in hormone-disrupting chemicals and pollutants saturating every corner of our lives.
In fact, hormone imbalances are most often caused by that one primary culprit that everyone in the world is suffering from today in one of its various forms:
STRESS. And stress includes toxic stress upon the system.
See, our bodies interpret stress as danger, whether it is
from toxins, pollution, personal care products, BPA in cans and plastics, EMF radiation from all our devices, pesticides, toxins and mycotoxins in our food, and chlorine in our drinking water, and on, and on, and on.
Toxic stress also comes from a leaky gut, because the gut leaks toxins and also takes them in, turning on your fight or flight system, which thinks you are in danger of being poisoned, and directs all your energy toward that instead of giving it to you.
By nutritional stress, I mean too many refined processed foods, carbs, packaged foods, frozen foods, and sugars. All of these bad for you foods and toxic foods equal toxic stress for the body because these kinds of foods disrupt insulin and pollute our body with GMO grains, fillers, and hormone disrupting food colorings—all of which our body sees as toxins because it doesn’t know WHAT these things are.
Our body is basically saying
“Hey. This isn’t food. What is this? Hello up there! What shall I do with whatever “this” is? Where shall I store it? I cannot digest or metabolize this –thing?—can you give me something real here? Can a digestive system get an organic whole food source up in here?”
Work, relationships, pressures, traumas, conflicts, arguments, parents, bosses, the whole she-bang.
So, any kind of stress is stress, see?
And this stress causes spikes in cortisol.
Cortisol is a major fat storage hormone. I’ll tell you all about this fat attracting-fat storing, fat promoting hormone momentarily.
Xenoestrogens: Environmental Hormone Disruptors
Another factor throwing off our endocrine systems are xenoestrogens in our environment.
Xenoestrogens are chemicals that mimic estrogen. They’re found in plastics and pesticides on food and in the air and all kinds of places. They are also in certain foods that have been heavily sprayed with pesticides that you cannot wash off like rice and coffee (think about it).
As researchers note in this article published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health,
Exposure to pesticides can occur via numerous pathways, including household use of pesticide products, dietary exposure to pesticide residues, and exposure to agricultural drift. Biological monitoring studies indicate that pesticide exposures are widespread in the human population. Dietary exposure comes from residues in fruits, vegetables, and from contaminated meat, fish, rice and dairy products. (link).
And this is how much xenoestrogens impact estrogen: pesticides turn male frogs female.
It’s called chemical castration.
Look it up. I kid you not. See article.
Estrogen disruption can also cause estrogen dominance, which leads to low testosterone.
You need your testosterone in balance to even have a healthy metabolism. But if estrogen is dominant, testosterone is low, see? Hence, man boobs and a sluggish metabolism.
And ladies, you too need testosterone to burn calories. It’s your chief metabolism controlling hormone.
So, f you’re estrogen dominant, that means you have estrogen in excess and other hormones in distress, which can impact metabolism and fat storage.
Let’s take a closer look at the three big fat storage hormones: insulin, cortisol, and estrogen.
How Hormone Imbalances Stop Weight Loss and Encourage Fat Storage
Most stubborn body fat has little to do with your diet or how much you exercise. Instead, it’s hormonal imbalance.
The three chief hormones that cause stubborn fat are
Insulin is a monster of a hormone that causes weight gain, diabetes, autoimmune diseases, inflammation, and chronic diseases of all kinds, including metabolic syndrome, cardiovascular disease, cancer, and more.
Insulin causes major fat storage and, furthermore, makes it impossible to burn fat, even when you’re dieting—especially if you’re eating all kinds of insulin-boosting foods you might not be in the know about, like hidden sugars in “fat free foods” like yogurt or cottage cheese, MSG-loaded Chinese foods (even the lo-cal soups!), or even a starch-rich diet, lots of beans, corn, and potatoes.
That’s because all of these foods and spices spike insulin, which means you’re running on glucose—not FAT. This is the whole goal of the ketogenic diet, btw, to suppress insulin to allow you to tap into your fat stores for fuel instead.
What does insulin do with all this glucose coming in?
It stores it as fat.
Eventually, the blood is so flooded with glucose it has to find somewhere to put it as it cannot flush it all out of the body—because the liver is overburdened.
So the body shuttles glucose to the fat cells to be stored—forever. Until you get the insulin low enough in the blood that your body is FORCED to reach down into that fat tissue for that stored energy.
See, insulin keeps you in glucose-burning mode, not fat- burning mode.
Over time, if you keep spiking insulin constantly without ever giving your pancreas time to recover, your cells will become deaf to insulin.
The result?
Insulin resistance and a deadly series of dominos that await you in the form of diabetes, metabolic disorder, cardiovascular disease, and all that fall down after.
ESTROGEN
Men fear estrogen like the plague because they do not want the dreaded man boobs and they want a nice, deep voice, big muscles, a big chest to pound, and all those manly GRRR things.
Estrogen is a fat storage hormone. Believe it. That’s why it gives men fat storage in the belly, thighs, and buttocks.
The problem is, folks, that we’re all becoming more estrogen dominant for several reasons.
Yes, there’s the problem with xenoestrogens in plastics, soup can lids, and pesticides, . . .
but there are other ways we’re being exposed to a flood of xenoestrogens and BPA that you might not know about yet.
We’ve recently learned that there is a lot of plastic (hence, BPA) in tap water and bottled water.
Even if you drink filtered water, the companies that manufacture all the other beverages and foods you eat containing water are probably not using filtered water.
And this is just now getting to be a thing. They’re referring to it as the “microns of plastic in water” problem.
Yes, 93% of all drinking water has plastic in it. Even bottled water, folks, and, as this writer for the New York Daily News (Sept. 6, 2017) notes:
‘Plastics have been found to contain chemicals like BPA (bisphenol A), which is used to make plastics but can leak into the foods and beverages contained by the plastic and has been linked to health effects like thyroid and neurological problems and higher risk of cancer.” See link
All this BPA is spiking estrogen and when estrogen is in excess, weight loss is just plain impossible for women because the body thinks you’re pregnant and wants to store fat to feed the baby.
One solution I can advise for everyone is to start taking in as much fiber as humanly possible. It will help you flush out many toxins and get rid of excess estrogen in the system.
I would tell you to drink more water, but, unless you’re drinking water at home from your own filtered system—and I advised a reverse osmosis system, I will advise you to stay away from bottled water and tap water until we know more on this.
We also get exposed to estrogen-spiking pesticides if we eat a lot of pesticide sprayed foods that aren’t washed off, like rice.
And imagine an even more cash-producing crop like coffee then?
Or chocolate . . . How much and how many different pesticides do you think such high-dollar crops like these might be sprayed with?! Again, xenoestrogens are everywhere, ladies and gents.
Low estrogen, on the flip side, can cause a voracious appetite that makes it overly difficult to resist eating, to stick to a diet, and to be vigilant about weight loss. So low estrogen can promote fat gain too.
Cortisol
Cortisol is the big stress hormone. To make this crystal clear, stress is such an enemy that whenever you have a stressful event, your body assumes you’re under major threat.
The body cannot distinguish between levels of stress – or danger, see? Let’s say, for example, that you get in a fight with your boss and you just know you’re getting ready to get that dreaded call to come to the HR office. The body assumes you’re under threat of a large pterodactyl swooping in on you.
So, the body powers down all your systems that might steal energy you might need for escape.
So, it shuts down the digestive system, the reproductive system, and the immune system.
Why? It’s because the body assumes you’ll be needing this energy for running, jumping, fleeing, swimming, climbing . . .
Unfortunately, the body also begins storing protective layers of fat and slowing the metabolism, in case you’ll be using a lot of calories up running from the enemy or hiding out from it, starving.
The reason the body stores fat in the belly when under stress (and suffering with consequent hormone imbalances) is this is your most unprotected area of the body (no bones, no rib cage and all those vital organs are there, too).
Plus, cortisol causes your body to actually break down your muscle tissue for energy, which is absolutely the worst thing for weight loss.
The less muscle you have, the lower your metabolism will be and the more fat you’ll gain.
The trouble is, belly fat is a big problem for more reasons than the obvious.
The belly, see, has fat cells that have four times more cortisol receptors than fat located elsewhere. Cortisol also enlarges fat cells and then begins manufacturing more fat because of all these cortisol receptors you’re accumulating in the accumulating fat tissue.
This – among other reasons is why you want to pinpoint your hormonal imbalances before they get so out of control . . . before you have a body full of hard-to-lose, rapidly accumulating fat cells acting as FAT MANUFACTURING FACTORIES.
You cannot lose fat cells. Shrink them, yes. Lose them NO.
You want to stop hormonal imbalances quickly then, before you acquire millions more fat cells than you want. Fat cells are annoying little cells that cannot wait to be filled with more fat and grow, grow, grow.
It’s something I urge you to get a handle on.
Other Out of What Hormones Bioprint Can Target
Imbalances in or Insufficient Adiponectin
Adiponectin is literally your fat-torching hormone. It is the hormone that tells your body “hey, dip into the fat stores for fuel, now.” Individuals with low levels of adiponectin are typically overweight, and the more adiponectin you manufacture, the leaner you’ll be.
As one researcher notes, “A lack of adequate adiponectin is emerging as a significant factor in people’s inability to melt flab and stay slim.” link.
There are strategies we can use, though, even if you are overweight—and supplements that will help you turn adiponectin up significantly, so you can start melting fat off the body.
Ghrelin overload
Ghrelin is a funny little hormone.
You know those days after you haven’t slept when you just cannot, no matter how militant you want to be, resist carbs and sugar?
That’s because when you haven’t slept, your body will accumulate too much ghrelin in the body and this will make you crave quick-fuel foods like carbs and sugar.
Of course, the body thinks you’re in danger from lack of sleep, and it wants to help you out. Unfortunately, the body cannot say to you, “How about some sweet potato this time?”
And excess ghrelin actually impacts the brain’s reward center, which of course, does not want sweet potato. It wants those dopamine-releasing foods like Pop Tarts and bacon cheeseburgers with fries.
How Can Bioprint Help Me Lose Weight and Get Fit Again?
Well, what BioSignature does is to allow us to pinpoint your specific hormonal imbalance so we can strategize a specific, multi-faceted, hormone-balancing protocol.
A Bioprint Hormone Profile is a virtual map of your hormone balances in relationship to one another, your testosterone to cortisol ratio, for example. I then use this hormone profile to create a bespoke protocol of diet, vitamins, minerals, and supplements, and a specifically tailored exercise regime designed for you and you alone—and it’s one that will help us to balance your hormones, turn off fat storage, and turn on the metabolism again.
We can also tell you if you have fat-burning barrier hormones out of balance like ghrelin and adiponectin, which I’ll explain in a moment.
What I do is look at 12 major body fat sites that can be quickly and accurately tested by a pair of quality skin calipers. These are points on your body such as the pectoral region, the triceps, the cheek, the chin, the quadriceps, and other areas.
Unlike methods such as underwater weighing or electrical impedance tests, caliper testing is best because it can help me to pinpoint which sites you’re storing fat in, which will tell me which hormones are out of balance!
Then, I can strategize a protocol for you that targets each one of these hormone imbalances.
It all depends on one site of fat storage and how it rates in relativity with other fat storage areas.
This will let me know, “oh, Lisa is having an issue with too much ghrelin, not enough testosterone, and a problem with excess cortisol.”
This tells me we need to use diet, exercise, and supplements to boost testosterone, take supplements that will encourage more sleep, like magnesium, so we can lower your ghrelin levels, and strategize a whole protocol to lower cortisol.
I’d also advise lifestyle strategies, in this case, like more resistance training, breathing techniques, and perhaps advise some acupressure techniques to help encourage better, deeper sleep.
Overall, the Bioprint Profile allows me to create a Bespoke Fat Loss Program for YOU.
See you soon, Jackson.