September 2009 PDF

Who says you can’t cure multiple sclerosis?
Learn about the breakthrough therapy that can reverse symptoms of deadly neurodegenerative diseases.

Many people I meet who suffer from multiple sclerosis use the same word to describe how they feel about their condition—despair. They’ve been told that they suffer from an incurable disease—a disease that one day may rob them of their vision, mobility, and their independence.

It’s no wonder so many of these folks remember the exact day when they were diagnosed. There’s something life-changing about being told you can’t be healed.

Well, if you or a loved one is suffering from this cruel disease, I hope you’ll remember this day, too. Because I’m about to share with you…

The medical breakthrough that is reversing the symptoms of M.S.

This isn’t something that’s 20 years off, and it’s not something that has only been tried on rats. I’m talking about a safe, proven process that I have used repeatedly to help patients start to re­verse years of nerve damage from M.S.

Before I can share this breakthrough therapy, you’re going to have to do something for me first—you’re going to need to forget much of what you’ve been told about the cause of M.S. Because I guarantee you that the real cause of this cruel disease is something you’ve never heard before—and it may even shock you.

But once you understand what’s really causing your condition, there are some simple steps you and your doctor can take to finally turn the tide on this debilitating neurodegenerative disease.

When it comes to healing, a picture is worth a thousand words

Six years ago I was sitting in a lecture by Mayo Clinic-trained neurologist Catherine Willner, when she presented some MRIs that had a profound effect on my medical career.

Dr. Willner showed MRIs of the lesions on her M.S. patients’ brains be­fore they started avoiding wheat; after they had avoided it for three months; and after they were re-exposed to wheat. The evidence was crystal clear…

The lesions on their brains were being caused by a food allergy

I would say that a light bulb went off in my head, but it was really much more than that—it was like a flashing neon sign that was directing me to new, simple truths I could use to help patients.

You see, as doctors we are trained that M.S. is an autoimmune disease, where our bodies release large amounts of antibodies in response to a threat—and those antibodies can actually harm body tissue. In fact, when we’re looking for evidence of M.S., we check for elevated levels of IgG antibodies in your cerebral spinal fluid.

But most doctors don’t understand that these IgG antibodies can be released in response to a food allergy—instead, their allergy testing tends to focus on IgE antibodies. The end result is that your allergy goes undiagnosed, and your body keeps on attacking itself.

And here’s the worst part—doctors know these IgG antibodies are doing you harm. That’s why, when treating neurodegenerative diseases like M.S., they prescribe medicines that suppress the manufacture of IgG antibodies. They know enough to try to stop these antibodies—they just don’t know what’s causing them.

Interesting enough, I have found that the part of your brain that gets attacked by the IgG antibodies determines which disease you develop.

For example, if the IgG antibodies attack your myelin sheath, a type of insulation on your neurons, they cause M.S. If these antibodies react with your motor end plates, which are located at the ends of your motor neurons, you may develop myasthenia gravis, which causes severe muscle weakness. If your hearing and balance centers are affected, it’s Ménière’s disease.

The symptoms of these neurodegenerative diseases may be different, but their cause is not—a food allergy that is producing a destructive autoimmune response. And because the cause of these diseases is the same, I can employ the same two-step process to help my patients finally start to heal from these debilitating diseases.

Step 1: Finding your destructive food allergy

If you suffer from M.S. or another neurodegenerative disease your first step is to stop harming yourself. If you continue to eat the food you are allergic to, you will only cause additional damage to your neurons.

When treating my patients for one of these diseases, my first step is to conduct thorough allergy testing, looking for increases in IgG antibodies. Here’s where that can get tricky—as I told you, some patients with neurodegenerative diseases are already on medications to suppress their IgG antibodies. If you’re taking an immune suppressant, tell your doctor before he begins any testing.

At any rate, once I can discover the allergen that is causing your autoimmune response, I can work with you to completely eliminate it from your life. In fact, I have found that…

The most common allergens for my M.S. patients are gluten protein, dairy and eggs

Of course, it doesn’t matter what you’re allergic to—as long as we find it. Then, once you stop ingesting the allergen, the rate of injury to your neurons can finally decrease—or even stop completely.

It may take months of avoiding a food before you notice the difference—so stick with it. Some of my patients have found that even the tiniest slip-up can bring back symptoms.

You have to be committed to swearing off the foods you are allergic to for life. Some of my patients can’t do it—but most of them find it’s a small price to pay for finally restoring their good health.

Step 2: Healing the damage caused by your disease

Healing from M.S. and other neurodegenerative diseases is not as simple as diagnosing your allergy. That will stop the damage, but we still need to repair years of harm to your neurons.

And that starts with normalizing your levels of key hormones that are in charge of repairing your cells.

Years ago, while researching my first book, I came across entries in old medical textbooks that talked about how progesterone helped keep your myelin sheath healthy. And remember—your myelin sheath sustains damage when you suffer from M.S.

I was confused at first, because, as I studied the 24-hour urine test results for my M.S. patients, I saw that some of them had normal or high progesterone levels. But this was only a temporary setback—because I quickly realized that M.S. patients with high progesterone levels were faring best with the disease. Their progesterone was fixing much of the neuron damage caused by their food allergens.

I looked into this more and came across some groundbreaking research by Dr. Donald Stein that found that certain female rats—but never a male rat—could recover from a neurological injury he was inflicting. The female rats who were pregnant had very high levels of progesterone.

This was when I started to realize that progesterone probably offers a healing benefit for people with M.S., and I understand that there are some large, clinical trials currently underway that are researching this further.

Because hormones such as progesterone are so important to repairing damage to your body, I came to appreciate that other repair hormones such as thyroid hormones and DHEA also may play a role in reversing neuron damage. And here’s why most physicians haven’t discovered this yet—thyroid results for M.S. patients often come back deceptively normal. In other words…

Your thyroid is playing tricks on you—and your doctor

The fact is, thyroid levels that may be barely low or even in the “low normal” range contribute to neurodegenerative diseases. European doctors, who are trained to think beyond lab results, are catching on to this much faster than doctors in the U.S.

There’s a huge difference in quality of life between patients in the “low normal” range and patients who have completely normal levels of thyroid hormones. Our goal should be to get you into a higher normal range, without bringing your thyroid levels excessively high or suppressing your thyroid gland’s function. Once you enjoy higher levels of thyroid hormones, your nerve cells function more efficiently and you almost always enjoy increased production of growth hormones.

Of course, progesterone and thyroid hormones aren’t the only two hormones that can facilitate the repair of damage caused by years of disease. You also need to boost your levels of anabolic steroids.

Anabolic steroids build up protein levels in your body, allowing you to repair and build stronger, healthier nerve cells. (With the help of growth hormone they promote positive nitrogen balance.) The two most well-known anabolic steroids are testosterone and dihydro-testosterone (DHT)—and I understand why these hormones make female patients nervous. No woman wants excess levels of these hormones because they cause masculine side effects, such as facial and chest hair.

But here’s the good news. Women have a special process for making anabolic steroids that usually don’t produce these side effects. You ladies secrete weaker androgens—such as DHEA and androstenedione—that only convert to anabolic steroids once they reach your target bone, muscle, organ, and nerve cells. Once there, these hormones do their repair work and then become inactive before secreting back into your bloodstream and exiting in your urine. It’s an amazing—and safe—process.

Now let me ask you this—doesn’t it make more sense to provide women with adequate doses of DHEA, which they can convert to anabolic steroids, instead of bombarding them with sex hormones like testosterone and estrogen? I predict in the coming years this will become the new standard—but most doctors haven’t accepted it yet.

The payoff: Start healing from M.S. in a matter of months

I understand that the science behind healing M.S. is a little complex. Don’t feel bad—it took me years to figure it out myself. Just keep this simple analogy in mind—if your house was on fire, your first step would be to put out the fire, and your second step would be to repair the damage.

When helping my patients heal from M.S., I first diagnose their food allergy so we can stop causing additional damage. We put out the fire.

Then we start to repair the damage. I’ll conduct a 24-hour urine test—the most thorough test of hormone activity available—to look at levels of progesterone, thyroid hormones, anabolic steroids, their metabolites and their precursors, to see where you’re low.

These hormones are designed to “talk” to your cells and tell them to repair themselves. They do this effectively when we’re younger, but we produce less of these key hormones as we age.

I can use bioidentical hormone therapy, which exactly mimics the hormones produced by your body, to restore your levels of these key repair hormones and start repairing your nerve cells.

You see, our nerve cells are no different from our other body cells. They can’t repair themselves until a hormone directs them to do it.

In the case of M.S., you have suffered damage to the myelin sheath of your neurons, and that damage can’t be fixed without adequate hormones to direct the job.

By working with my patients to address their food allergies and build up their hormone levels, we have achieved results that these patients had been told were impossible. I have one patient who could barely climb the couple steps to my office at his first visit who is now playing tennis again. In general, brain M.S. heals in about four months while spinal cord M.S. takes longer.

For example, I have been treating another one of my patients for two years for her spinal cord M.S. At her one-year MRI, we could already see the lesions on her spinal cord beginning to heal. At her recent, two-year MRI, that healing had continued—and there were no signs of new lesions.

I have M.S. patients who are now traveling from across the country to be treated by me. (If there were more Dr. Willners out there, that would be ideal.) And they’ve all been told the same thing you’ve probably been told—their disease is incurable.

Don’t believe it, and don’t give up. We’re making progress against this disease, and I have witnessed it repeatedly with my own eyes.

It doesn’t happen overnight, but it does happen. I’m convinced M.S. does not have to be a life sentence—work with your doctor to implement the process I’ve outlined here, and you could feel a difference in months. If you suffer from M.S., you’ve probably given too many good years of your life to this disease—it’s time to start turning the tide.

The 4 lies that are making you fat…And the simple truths that can conquer obesity

Obesity is the single-greatest health crisis facing America today, and there’s been plenty of speculation on what exactly is causing it. I’m sure you’ve heard all the so-called experts blame our addiction to fast food, our super-sized portions, and our apathy toward exercise—and each of these factors have, indeed, played a role.

But there’s a hidden truth about the obesity epidemic that is seldom discussed, and you’re not likely to hear about it at your local doctor’s office or from some Big Pharma television commercial.

The medical community has played a huge role in making Americans fat

Most doctors would rather remove their tongues than admit such a thing—after all, we’re supposed to be the people who solve health problems. But the truth is, mainstream medicine is just as guilty of spreading the obesity epidemic as Ronald McDonald and Pizza Hut.

To this day, the mainstream medical community continues to spread four lies that are making us sicker and fatter than ever. In fact, we’re facing risks of obesity, heart disease, and diabetes like never before in our nation’s history.

Well, as Ernest Hemingway once said, the best ammunition against lies is the truth. This month, I’m going to expose four more of mainstream medicine’s deadliest lies, and show you how to overcome them so you can finally lose weight and enjoy the healthy life you deserve.

Lie #1: Eating fat makes you fat

At one point in my career, I fell for this lie hook, line, and sinker. As pioneering doctors like Diana Schwarzbein, Robert Atkins, and Richard Bernstein started uncovering the health benefits of a higher-fat diet—and were called crackpots by the mainstream medical community—I didn’t exactly rush to their defense.

In fact, I was certain I could prove them wrong. Overweight patients would come to me begging to try a high-fat, low-carb diet, and the thought that they’d somehow lose weight by eating less bread and more steak, cheese, and bacon horrified me. Reluctantly, I told them they could try it at their own risk—but they had to have their cholesterol checked before beginning the diet and then 30 days later.

I was shocked when patient after patient returned a month later with drastic reductions in their levels of harmful cholesterol and triglycerides. In fact, these folks were faring far better than the patients who I had placed on restrictive, low-fat diets.

I became convinced that I had been misinformed about the body’s fat-making mechanisms, and I spent years re-educating myself, poring over the latest science and studies that had been ignored for years. That’s when I came across a simple truth that has forever changed how I treat obesity…

It’s not dietary fat that makes you obese—it’s fat produced by your liver

When your blood sugar spikes from ingesting too many carbs, your liver stores most of that excess sugar as fat (I’ll explain why in a moment). Fifty years ago, doctors were taught that the fat manufactured by your liver was hard (like the consistency of butter), in contrast to the softer dietary fats that move easily through your bloodstream. This hard fat accumulates around our waistlines and in our blood vessels as fatty streaks, which eventually oxidize into plaque. That’s why, half a century ago, medical textbooks warned doctors of the danger of eating too many carbs. And remember—50 years ago, Americans weren’t nearly as overweight as we are today.

Through bad science and political correctness, the truth about dietary fat and carbs has been banned from today’s medical textbooks—and we’re all less healthy as a result.

Well, once I uncovered the real truth about what makes us obese, I wondered how else I had been misinformed by my medical education. And it wasn’t long before I uncovered the second mainstream medical lie that is making us obese.

Lie #2: High insulin levels are sometimes necessary to prevent diabetes

Many obese patients have excessively high insulin levels, and their doctors don’t take this seriously enough. After all, doctors have been taught that insulin is the preferred “nozzle” for delivering nutrition to your cells. They even use it to treat diabetes.

But if there’s one thing I hope I teach you about insulin, it’s this…

Insulin makes you fat

You see, most of the insulin you produce gets trapped in your liver, which has 200,000 pure insulin receptors on every one of its cells. Once there, insulin mostly directs your liver to store excess blood sugar as fat, instead of delivering that sugar to your body’s cells where it can be used later for fuel. When you produce too much insulin, your liver becomes a fat-making machine.

But, wait—it gets worse. At the same time insulin is directing your liver to create fat, it’s also unleashing at least four other health disasters.

Disaster #1: Much of the fat your liver produces is being stored as LDL cholesterol, the deadly kind, which spill into your blood vessels. The reason is a little complicated, but it has to do with balancing the pH of your body.

Disaster #2: If you require excessive insulin to maintain your blood sugar all your other cells are starving and may start wasting, because insulin is routing blood sugar through your liver, instead of delivering it to the rest of your body’s cells.

Disaster #3: Because insulin is insufficient at removing blood sugar, you’re constantly suffering from blood-sugar spikes that damage your blood vessels.

Disaster #4: High insulin levels even make it harder for you to burn off body fat. No wonder so many diets we try don’t work!

As I came to understand that high insulin was a major contributor to obesity, I began to have serious doubts about whether it really was the preferred nozzle for delivering nutrition to your body’s cells. That would be like admitting we are supposed to be obese and suffering from blood vessel damage. So I dug around a bit more, and that’s when I uncovered…

Lie #3: IGF-1 is not important to preventing obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and metabolic syndrome

Most doctors are so in the dark about the important role that the hormone IGF-1 plays in good health that they don’t even test for it. What an enormous disservice.

The truth is, IGF-1 is the preferred hormone for removing carbs from your bloodstream (outside of your liver and fat cells). In fact, if you are healthy, it is the nozzle for delivering sugar to 93 percent of your cellular fuel tanks (muscles, organs, and bones)—instead of to your liver, where it will be stored as fat. In fact…

The more IGF-1 you have, the less insulin you need

You see, when your body isn’t producing enough IGF-1, it needs to make more insulin to pick up the slack of fuel nozzle deficits for processing a sugar load. As I discussed, much of that excess insulin gets stuck in your liver, and the fat-making cycle begins. In contrast, when you have enough IGF-1 (and I’ll tell you how to make more in a moment), your cells are better nourished and you make less fat.

In fact, if you have enough IGF-1, you need almost no insulin when you’re fasting, exercising, or between meals. Once you understand the important role of IGF-1, I’m sure you’ll have no trouble understanding the fallacy of…

Lie #4: There is no hormonal solution to obesity

Most doctors downplay—or outright dismiss—the critical role that adequate hormone levels play in helping you conquer obesity. But now that you understand the tug of war that occurs between insulin and IGF-1, you can appreciate that hormones play a critical role in expanding your waistline.

And insulin and IGF-1 aren’t the only two hormones playing this game. As we discussed last month (see the archives at www.healthrevelations.com and log in using the password on page 8), your imbalance between anabolic and catabolic steroids can encourage obesity.

For example, anabolic steroids like testosterone preserve your body’s protein, stimulate your liver to produce IGF-1, and encourage the development of lean muscle mass. In contrast, catabolic steroids like cortisol break down your body’s proteins into sugar that can be used as fuel. This was useful in prehistoric times for giving our ancestors the energy they needed to fight off a predator—but we don’t wrestle tigers too much these days.

Instead, excessive cortisol is just causing our blood sugar to spike, and we end up producing excess levels of insulin to get rid of the sugar. Next thing you know, that sugar ends up as body fat.

That’s why its critical to have your anabolic and catabolic steroid metabolite levels checked by a doctor who is skilled in hormone therapy. Insist on a 24-hour urine test, which gives a much more complete picture of your hormonal metabolite levels. Your doctor may put you on a hormone regimen (insist on bioidentical hormones), or even start you on an exercise routine that will stimulate growth hormone.

Growth hormone levels are critical because it determines the stimulus to release IGF-1 from your liver. However, if you suffer from metabolic syndrome because your blood sugars are always spiking, you can sabotage your ability to release growth hormone. Growth hormone release requires a falling blood sugar. It does little good to make IGF-1 if you lack the stimulus to release it.

The thing to remember here is that, in the tug of war between growth hormone and cortisol, you need to make sure growth hormone prevails. That’s the key to being leaner, stronger and less dependent on insulin—and I bet you’ll find some inches melting off your waist, too.

I’ve met too many overweight patients who had just about given up trying to lose weight. Many of these folks feel like they’ve tried everything, and they’ve been disheartened as diet after diet failed.

The bad news is that you’ve probably been getting bad—or just plain wrong—advice on weight loss from the health “experts” you trust the most. The good news is that you now know the truth, and you can use the information in this article to lose weight, restore your health and feel better than you have in years.

Do me—and yourself—a favor. Give it one more try.

Slash your insulin need in 5 steps

By now you understand the sinister role insulin plays in contributing to obesity. If your insulin levels are high, there are five simple things you can do to bring them under control.

Step 1: Build up your levels of IGF-1. Fasting between meals (which lowers your blood sugar) and getting enough sleep will both stimulate IGF-1 production.

Step 2: Get enough potassium. You should be ingesting more potassium than sodium, but most processed foods are loaded with sodium, which acts as a preservative. Stay away from this junk and load up on potassium-rich foods such as unprocessed low-carb foods.

Step 3: Stop loading up on carbs. Base your diet on healthy fats (such as chicken, beef and fish) and fresh fruits and vegetables. If carbs are the cornerstone of your diet, you’re on the expressway to elevated insulin and obesity.

Step 4: Decrease your mental stress. I’ve had patients who have found success with drug-free methods such as yoga and breathing exercises. Find something that works for you and stick with it.

Step 5: Get more exercise. You don’t need to complete a triathlon, but a regular program of walking, light jogging, or other moderate exercise is key. Exercise stimulates the production of growth hormone and consequently the release of IGF-1. You’re far more likely to stick with exercise if it’s something you enjoy or if you can find friends to exercise with you.

For more tips on lowering your insulin levels and producing more IGF-1, you also can consult my book The Body Heals, 2nd Edition, which is available at www.thebodyheals.com.

The “diabetes test” that could unlock the cure to your chronic fatigue

When I mention blood sugar testing to my patients, they all think of the same thing— diabetes. If you’re not subjecting yourself to regular blood sugar testing—sometimes in the form of several finger pricks a day—I bet you at least know someone who is.

But you may be surprised to learn that blood sugar testing can be useful for far more than treating diabetes. In fact…

This simple test could help you cure your chronic fatigue

I spend a great deal of time talking about and treating chronic fatigue, because it’s one of the most misunderstood illnesses we face as we age. As I’ve told you in previous issues, chronic fatigue can be caused by potassium deficiencies or low levels of key hormones your body needs to keep your hungry cells well nourished. But there’s another type of chronic fatigue that most doctors know very little about—and it all starts with your adrenal glands.

If you suffer from this type of fatigue, you may experience some or all of the following symptoms:

* anxiety

* hypoglycemia, requiring frequent feeding

* low blood pressure

* frequent infections

* a thin waistline if you have normal thyroid function

* constant feelings of discontent

And, believe it or not, many of the people afflicted with this type of fatigue have blue or green eyes and red or blonde hair. Talk about a unique genetic twist!

If you’re suffering from this adrenal-caused fatigue, I have some great news. I’m about to share with you why a simple blood sugar test may help you finally understand what’s causing your debilitating condition. You may be just weeks from curing your chronic fatigue for good—but first you need to know about…

The medical breakthrough that was ignored for 50 years

It was literally half a century ago when medical pioneer Dr. John Tintera discovered that a key indicator of adrenal-caused fatigue is whether you can maintain your blood sugar between meals—and that’s something that can be determined through simple blood sugar testing. Patients who can not maintain their blood sugar may suffer from what Dr. Tintera called “diminished adrenal reserve.”

I’ll explain all of this in a moment—but first let me get on my soapbox. This science has been around for so long that today’s doctors ought to know it by heart. It should be taught at every medical school in America.

But it’s not. In fact, doctors today are taught not to bother considering your adrenals as a cause of your fatigue until the condition becomes so severe that you develop Addison’s disease—a severe adrenal malfunction that can be fatal if left untreated.

It’s outrageous, because Tintera’s science on the role of adrenals in fatigue isn’t what I’d call controversial—in fact, it’s common sense. Let me explain what I mean.

Your adrenal glands make a hormone called cortisol that helps regulate your blood sugar between meals. The process can be a bit scientific, but I’ll explain it as simply as I can.

When you eat a meal, you’re probably ingesting far more sugar fuel than your body needs at the moment. Your liver basically stores some of this sugar as glycogen, and slowly releases the sugar between meals to keep your blood sugar from crashing to dangerously low levels. This constant supply of sugar keeps your cells nourished and is especially critical to your brain function.

Your brain’s cells can only burn sugar as fuel, and they need a constant supply. If your liver can’t keep your brain supplied with sugar between meals, you’re in big trouble. Aside from that, as your blood sugar drops, you’re likely to experience the weak, tired feeling that comes with chronic fatigue.

So, in other words, you need your blood sugar to hold steady. And this is where cortisol comes into the picture. Your cortisol levels determine how much of an enzyme called glycogen synthase is made by your body. That enzyme allows your liver to store sugar—without it, you can’t maintain your blood sugar between meals.

If you’re suffering from this condition, there’s a good chance that you crave carbohydrates, particularly between meals. Your body is trying to tell you to correct your low blood sugar levels.

As you can see, when you don’t make enough cortisol, it starts a chain reaction that leads to low blood sugar, fatigue, and hungry, malnourished cells throughout your body. And it doesn’t stop there.

If your blood sugar continues to crash, you will die. So your adrenals respond by releasing excessive amounts of adrenaline. All of this adrenaline can cause you to experience the following five symptoms:

* anxiety

* rapid heart rate

* profuse sweating

* tremors

* paranoia

So why are your glands going haywire?

So you’ve had your blood sugar tested and found you can’t maintain your levels between meals. You might not be making enough cortisol, but you’ll never know for sure until you to have a 24-hour urine test.

The 24-hour urine test gives your doctor a much more accurate picture of your hormone and their metabolite levels, and allows him to prescribe the correct levels of bioidentical hormones to correct your deficiencies (yes, insist on bioidentical hormones—they are the safest and most effective hormones available).

But why is all of this showing up now? What exactly has caused your adrenals to go haywire and stop producing enough cortisol? In many cases, your adrenal glands may be malfunctioning because you suffer from an undiagnosed autoimmune disease, where your body is essentially attacking itself. When you were younger, your body produced enough “repair hormones” to fix the damage to your glands before you noticed the ill effects. But as we age, we produce less of these key repair hormones, and chronic conditions develop.

There is a growing body of medical literature that shows a food allergy—particularly an allergy to wheat—may be causing an autoimmune response that can damage your adrenals, thyroid, pancreas and ovaries. In fact, several of my patients have seen their fatigue diminish simply by avoiding wheat.

Now, I can’t guarantee wheat is the allergen that is causing your fatigue—it could be anything. That’s why you need to have your doctor conduct allergy testing that screens for IgG antibodies.

Your body often produces these antibodies in response to a food allergy, but many doctors only screen for IgE antibodies. That’s why so many allergies go undiagnosed.

Once you’ve had your 24-hour urine test and IgG antibody screening, you are on your way to healing. You can work with your doctor to correct hormonal deficiencies and to eliminate the food allergen that may be damaging your glands.

You’ll finally have two things that many people with fatigue lack—a proper diagnosis and a plan for true, permanent healing. In a matter of weeks you can experience a dramatic boost in energy, and a new zest for life.

These were supposed to be our golden years—let’s start enjoying them again.

Cortisol: The good, the bad and the ugly

People tend to have a negative association with cortisol—and for good reason. As I’ve told you in previous newsletters, excess cortisol can cause obesity and the wasting of your body’s cells. That’s because your body releases large amounts of cortisol (metabolic syndrome) in response to stress, and the cortisol breaks down your body’s proteins (including the protein in your muscles) into sugar that gives you energy to fight off the threat.

Because most of our stress is mental and doesn’t require this energy boost, that extra sugar created when you endure a robust adrenal secretion eventually gets stored as fat. As a result, your protein-rich muscles are broken down and you develop a spare tire instead. This is exactly what occurs with people who suffer from metabolic syndrome.

But, as I’ve explained in this article, on the other extreme when you are deficient in cortisol, your body has great difficulty maintaining your blood sugar, and you can develop crippling fatigue as a result. You might keep your thin waistline, but you’ll be suffering from a host of other health problems.

The lesson here is that cortisol is like any other hormone—you need the right amount of it, but not too much. Your goal should be to work with your doctor to develop normal levels of cortisol and other key hormones.

A small gift for your doctor could become a big gift for you

No matter how many M.S. patients I and my alternative health colleagues treat, it’s still a challenge to get mainstream doctors to take this safe, proven healing regimen seriously. While they keep adopting a wait-and-see approach, their patients suffer.

If your doctor is resistant to my method, do him a favor—buy him a copy of my book, The Body Heals, 2nd Edition, at www.thebodyheals.com. See if he can argue with my science—I’m betting he can’t. I’ve seen many mainstream doctors have their eyes opened by the truths in this book—here’s hoping your doctor is next.