The skinny on the HCG diet
Dr. Bruce Frye D.C. N.D.
How does HCG work for weight loss? In my studies I have found that there is relatively little scientific study which has been done and a whole lot of speculation. HCG does not on itself cause you to loose weight. HCG must be used with a near starvation diet to work for weight loss. HCG itself does not cause you to loose weight rather it is the diet that actually does this.
The claim is that HCG releases nutritional stores including fat deposits and makes them available to the blood stream. This increased nutritional capacity enables some people to go on such an extreme diet and not be as hungry. In addition, the diet requires a few days of greatly increased food or calorie ingestion to pre load the bodies energy stores.
This explanation of HCG does hold up to sound physiology. Some women are aided by HCG shots and are able to withstand such a limited diet however for many others it just doesn’t work. This may be due to a wide number of nutrient deficient conditions such as hypoglycemia, B vitamin anemia, Iron anemia etc. With the majority of the population nutrient deficient, there is a large number of women which the HCG doesn’t work well for as an appetite suppressant and therefore aren’t successful.
So how does HCG work as an appetite suppressant? The best explanation is understood when we use our knowledge of how HCG works with the pregnant female. When a woman gets pregnant her body’s main goal is to be able to feed the fetus or baby. All available nutrients will be utilized including fat deposits as well nutritional stores throughout the body. This increased nutrient level in the blood stream would help relieve hunger until these nutritional stores are exhausted. HCG would aid a person in appetite control while on a near starvation diet if they had adequate nutritional reserves. It is important to remember that the HCG diet will bankrupt these nutritional reserves and leave you deficient. This may not be recognizable unless a high nutrient need situation such as increased stress increased physical or mental demands, allergies or to the need to fight against disease occurs.
Your body’s stores of energy are the limiting factor to how well the HCG diet works. Once these stores become limited, symptoms of hypoglycemia, fatigue, depression, shaky, irritable, vision disturbances and weakness will come and your diet results are finished. The HCG will no longer benefit you on the diet. Persons with hypoglycemic symptoms may have less success with HCG.
I was told that HCG would keep the weight off so I wouldn’t gain it back. Does HCG really reset your body at a new metabolic level? Does HCG really reset your body at a lower weight level? Ok, this is where we really need to use some common sense along with medical knowledge. I have done exhaustive research to find any medical/scientific research that would back up claims that HCG resets the metabolism or weight. There is absolutely nothing that proves the HCG resets anything. I think it’s a shame that so many medical professionals are telling people that the HCG resets the metabolism or re-sets the body at a lower weight. The problem is likely not your health care professional. They are just stating what they have been told or read and simply not researched it out for him or herself.
So Lets Get The Real Skinny On The HCG Diet
Let’s use some common sense here. Since there are no medical studies and no physiology that would support the theory that HCG resets the body at a lower weight level. we must again look to reason for the truth. It’s easy to hear of people loosing a lot of weight and run to join like a bunch of inebriated college girls, but this is the time for sober reason. If the diet will inevitably result in you starving yourself and in the end gaining back more weight than you started with potential side effects to the hormone system, is this diet really for you? I have but one thing to say on this. If HCG caused the body to reset the metabolic level or reset at a lower weight then women would weigh less after each pregnancy. We would see women wanting to get pregnant because they needed to reset their metabolism to weigh less. We would see very thin women and suppose that they must have had several children because they were so thin.
All this is of course ridiculous, just as ridiculous as believing that taking HCG would reset anything in your body. Finally a voice of reason, the HCG myth is debunked.
Why is this myth so important? Because the starvation diet that really causes the weight loss has been proven to end in weight gain and not weight loss! Remember, as a doctor I am able to give the HCG shots and join in on the HCG band wagon to make some quick bucks but I am not willing to put my reputation on the line knowing that the majority will gain more back that they started with. This is proven in study done by David Garner, PhD. “Effects of Semi Starvation”on military men with the near starvation diet of 500 calories a day. This military study showed that they did indeed see good initial weight loss. The study goes on to say that they didn’t immediately gain it back when they got off the program. However, over a four to six month period each study participant had gained back the weight and actually gained an additional 15%. This is why starvation diets don’t work. The body goes into starvation mode and becomes a miser for storing food for what it believes to be a time when once again it may be starved. The evidence then is that a near starvation diet like the HCG diet actually resets the body to a heavier weight not a lower weight.
But Dr. Frye I did the HCG diet last month and didn’t gain back the weight. Yes, but look at the study. They didn’t gain it back immediately it takes a while (6 months in the study) to replenish your nutrient stores before weight gain will take place. And here is the real gimmick concerning the diet. They have you come back in thirty days and do it again. This doesn’t allow you enough time to gain back any weight and you’re doing it again. You see the body stores in a thirty day starvation have been completely exhausted and the next thirty days will be spent replenishing the valuable nutrient levels in the liver, muscle etc. No excess weight gain will be seen or fat deposited until these stores are replenished, by then the HCG diet has you doing it all over again. Believe me, I have had women calling the office telling me that they did the diet and six months later they are gaining it all back again. Its physiology not magic and because HCG doesn’t really reset the metabolism it’s inevitable that the weight is coming back unless personal changes are made and no, HCG doesn’t reset your appetite for better food choices.
I didn’t set out to be an HCG basher. Prescribing nutritional supplements and herbs to patients I realize that there are many supplements that don’t have much research behind them yet, the physiology is sound and the active ingredient in the herb has sound physiology in its uses. With HCG I found neither to be true. Therefore, I wanted to first research it to see what was really going on. After this research I was so turned off at the bad information and bold statements being made such as HCG resetting your body weight that I just couldn’t in good faith, join the band wagon of HCG diet doctors. If you are willing to stay on a 5oo calorie a day diet and take shots for ever then it will work, if not then it is only a short term fix. I would say that there are possibly some cases of obesity that would be a health benefit however, for the majority of people, this type of dieting is dangerous in the long term and nutritionally unsound as any kind of a permanent weight loss. The effects of the female body in thinking its pregnant every other month and the potential hormone imbalances that could occur as well as the unstudied effects it could have on men could eventually be found to be detrimental and if past history has any bearing I feel sure we will start to see adverse effects on men. As is the case with so much of the HCG information, there is no physiological or medical evidence that HCG will do anything to aid in weight loss in the male body. Why would the male body start to make available stores of fat for feeding a baby? We must use some common sense in medicine. I won’t give patients a shot of something that I would not give myself or my wife.
So, Dr. Frye what are the answers for weight loss?
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