No More Yo-Yo Dieting: Taking a Sensible Path to Weight Loss

If you’re overweight, dropping some pounds can be a good thing. But if you gain again and lose again and gain again and lose in an ongoing cycle of “yo-yo dieting” – well, that may not be so good, especially if results from a new study hold up.

Specifically, its authors took a look at the effects of weight fluctuation in people with coronary artery disease (CHD), analyzing data from nearly 10,000 individuals. The results were striking, to say the least. For patients whose weight fluctuated the most,

the risk of a coronary event was 64% higher, the risk of a cardiovascular event 85% higher, death 124% higher, myocardial infarction 117% higher, and stroke 136% higher than it was among those…with the lowest variation in body weight in adjusted models.

In other words, the more variation, the greater the risk.

But there are a few important points to keep in mind here. For one, this was an observational study. It didn’t – because it can’t – show cause and effect. It can only show that things happened together.

Also, the “yo-iest” of the yo-yo dieters tended to share some other important risk factors. As WebMD reported,

Yo-yo dieters in the study were more likely to be heavier, smoke and have high blood pressure and diabetes, said Van Horn, a spokeswoman for the American Heart Association. Twice as many yo-yo dieters actually developed diabetes during the study.

“When you go down that list, some huge issues jump right out at you,” Van Horn said. “Across all of the likely candidates for what contributed to illness or death, the yo-yo dieting in and of itself was not the culprit. Those who were yo-yo dieters, as much as they tried to lose weight to lower their risk factors, still succumbed to the very risk factors we know all too well.”

This points toward something that can’t be stressed nearly enough: Being truly healthy means addressing all impediments to health, not just a risk factor or two. Of course, one or two is better than none at all, but creating and sustaining Radiant Health means taking a comprehensive approach to wellness.

Sure, eating healthfully is great. Eating healthfully and getting enough physical activity each day is even better. Eating healthfully and being active and getting enough quality sleep is still better than that…

You get the picture.

Losing weight in a sensible way can be a great start toward Radiant Health. After all, it usually involves addressing several components at once. For weight gain, as we’ve noted before, is seldom a simple matter of calories in, calories out. Overweight is often a multifactorial condition; a multifaceted approach makes good sense.

And being sensible about weight loss is perhaps the biggest takeaway from the new study. As Dr. Ira Ockene of the University Mass Medical School told Reuters,

“Studies show people set unattainable goals. Heavy people say, ‘I need to lose 40 pounds’ and they set a goal that is largely unattainable. And when they lose 10 pounds they’re disappointed. And they say, ‘What the hell’ and they just gain it back,” he said.

“But if you lose 10 pounds and keep it off, your diabetes will be better, your blood pressure will be better, your lipids will be better, a lot of things will be better. You don’t need to lose 30 or 40 pounds,” he said. “That’s an important issue for people to understand.”

And there’s no one way to go about it, only the best way for you, based on your own specific health situation, needs, priorities, and values. Here in our holistic West Los Angeles clinic, we have a number of ways we can help you reach your goals, from the HCG diet to customized nutritional plans and integrative protocols.

The ideal? Make your weight-loss a long-term thing that supports your overall health and well-being.

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Yet More Evidence for IV Vitamin C

There’s yet another study we can add to those we blogged about earlier this year, research showing how IV vitamin C can deliver big benefits in a variety of health situations.

A new study in Chest provides good evidence that an IV cocktail of vitamin C, thiamine (vitamin B1), and hydrocortisone may be extraordinarily effective for treating sepsis – a deadly condition that occurs when the body’s response to an infection damages its own organs.

The study compared the clinical outcomes of 47 septic patients treated with this cocktail during a 7-month period with those of 47 septic ICU patients treated conventionally before the study began. Did the patients live? That was the main outcome the authors were concerned with. After all, sepsis kills up to 50% of the time. As the NIH notes, deaths from sepsis outnumber deaths from prostate cancer, breast cancer, and AIDS combined.

In the current study, just over 40% of patients in the control group died – vs. 8.5% in the vitamin C group, none of them from the sepsis itself but their underlying diseases.

As NPR reported, of the approximately 150 septic patients treated thus far by the lead author – Dr. Paul Marik of Eastern Virginia School of Medicine – only one has died of sepsis.

That’s a phenomenal claim, considering that of the million Americans a year who get sepsis, about 300,000 die.

“So that’s the equivalent of three jumbo jets crashing every single day,” Marik said.

Dr. Marik is now conducting and NIH-funded study of the treatment, controlled, double-blinded, and occurring at several universities. Suffice it to say, we look forward to seeing the results.

Of course, those of us for whom IV C is no novelty aren’t quite as surprised by these results as the mainstream media has seemed to be. We’ve known, for instance, that delivered intravenously – which lets the body absorb far more of the nutrient than it could if the vitamin were taken orally – vitamin C can have a profound effect on the immune system and inflammatory markers.

In fact, some of the earliest documented uses of IV C were for the treatment of infection. As the Riordan Clinic points out, from the 1930s to the 1970s, physicians successfully treated a wide variety of viral infections with high dose vitamin C: polio, diphtheria, herpes zoster, herpes simplex, chicken pox, influenza, measles, mumps, and viral pneumonia, among others.

Dr. Klenner published all studies of a variety of diseases successfully treated through massive injections of vitamin C and suggested that that due to effectiveness of injectable vitamin C, this vitamin can be considered as a super antibiotic.

Today, high dose IV C to treat infections of all sorts is the most common use by integrative physicians. According to a 2010 study in PLoS ONE, nearly half of uses for high dose IV C were precisely for that: treating infection. Importantly, the authors note in their conclusions that “high dose intravenous vitamin C appears to be remarkably safe.” Out of more than 9300 patients they had data for, only about 1% (101 patients) experienced any kind of side effects at all, and most were minor.

The safety and efficacy of high dose IV vitamin C is precisely why holistic, integrative medical clinics like ours continue to provide this valuable therapy among other drip therapies available to our patients, both those who are seeking healing, as well as those who want to take their already good health to the next level, to transform it into Radiant Health.

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