Diabetes and Leptin Connection
By Ron
Rosedale, MD
Summary
Leptin is a a protein produced by fat cells and is involved in regulating
food intake and fat storage in the body.
This article explains leptin's function in relation to insulin
resistance.
Normally, leptin's function is to reduce appetite and induce fat
burning (among many other functions). That is what high leptin signaling
in a brain would do. Low leptin (in the brain) is an indication to eat
more and store more fat (to successfully reproduce and to live long enough
to do so).
However, elevated leptin in a fasting blood sample indicates leptin
resistance and likely low leptin signaling to some parts of the brain
while other parts of the brain get the full high signal. In other words,
some of the brain only hears a whisper while other parts (of the brain
and periphery) get screamed at.
Neither is Good Communication
Low leptin signaling getting through to the appetite center of the brain
induces the brain to want to make the rest of your body hungry and will
alter physiologic functions so as to make you store more fat. Ultimately,
and finally, increasing fat stores should manufacture more leptin to overcome
the resistance but, in the meantime, one continues to get fat and often
ultimately obese.
This is similar to insulin resistance, when high fasting insulin indicates
low activity in some parts of your body and a disruption in insulin signaling
that is being compensated for by your pancreas making more insulin. What
is lost, however, is your orchestration of insulin levels among various
tissues. If your liver is insulin-resistant, it continues to make sugar
out of protein, and if your muscles are insulin-resistant, they cannot
burn that sugar either.
However, until your fat tissue becomes insulin-resistant, it continues
to "hear" the high levels of insulin that are caused by the
elevated sugar, and insulin's signals to fat tissue is to take that
sugar, make fat out of it, and then store it. The positive side of this
is that you're still able to take sugar out of the blood to make fat
out of it. This keeps you from becoming diabetic, at least in the short-term.
In this regard, one could say that obesity is the price one pays to
keep from becoming diabetic. One continues to gain weight until the adipose
tissue ultimately becomes resistant. At this time, your "wastebasket"
to store the excess sugar becomes full, sugar accumulates in your blood,
and conventional medicine will diagnose you as a diabetic, though the
root problem of insulin resistance and perhaps more importantly, leptin
resistance, began decades prior (perhaps even before you were born if
your mother was feeding you lots of sugar/starches when you were a fetus).
Leptin Resistance Distorts Hormone Levels Too
Likewise, when one becomes leptin-resistant, as indicated by high fasting
leptin, once again you lose the fine orchestration of hormone levels.
As the appetite control centers in your hypothalamus become leptin-resistant
and cannot hear the message from leptin to curb hunger and stop storing
fat, it believes that you do not have enough fat stores to live through
a potential famine and you must eat more and make more fat.
Also lost is the knowledge of where to put that fat, and there is a
preponderance stored in your abdomen, including your abdominal organs
such as your liver, disrupting your liver's ability to listen to other
signals such as those from insulin. This causes your liver to manufacture
too much sugar from protein contributing to diabetes, and contributes
importantly to the breakdown of your muscle and bone causing weakness
and osteoporosis. The communication and knowledge of where to put calcium
is also disrupted. Calcium is deposited in your blood vessels instead
of your bone, which contributes to osteoporosis while calcifying and hardening
your arteries.
However, it appears that the master control center of your sympathetic
nervous system in your brain does not become leptin resistant, does not
put in earplugs from the years of excess noise and it continues to hear
the loud messages of elevated leptin causing overstimulation of your sympathetic
nervous system. This can create serious problems to your health, including
the following:
- Diabetes
- Elevated blood pressure
- Increases in blood coagulation
- Elevated T-3 and temperature
- Heart disease
- Increased inflammation
Hormonal resistance is bad because of the loss of the intricate orchestration
of those signals, and less so because of diminished signals that could
be compensated for just by "yelling louder." (I believe that
that is a very important concept that needs to be taught to the public
and doctors alike.)
To summarize, normally leptin, secreted acutely in response to a meal
or chronically in response to increasing fat stores, in a leptin-sensitive
individual, will reduce hunger, increase fat burning and reduce fat storage.
However, when one is leptin-resistant -- as indicated by an elevation
in fasting serum leptin -- the part of leptin's message that would
normally reduce hunger and fat stores and increase fat burning does not
get through to the brain (here mimicking low leptin), so one stays hungry
and stores more fat, rather than burning it. However, the message to increase
sympathetic nervous system activity gets through all too loudly and clearly,
so one stays hungry, continues to get fat, and gets elevated sugar, insulin
resistance, high blood pressure, heart disease and accelerated aging.
When one becomes more leptin-sensitive after following the program outlined
in the book "The
Rosedale Diet", as indicated by a lower fasting leptin, all of
a sudden your brain is able to hear leptin's messages much more clearly,
and the now louder and more accurate message to your appetite control
center and other parts of your hypothalamus to reduce hunger and get rid
of some (lots of) stored fat gets heard. Now, your brain finally realizes
that you have stored far too much fat, it is a danger to your well-being
and the brain had better do something about it.
The lower leptin reduces the volume that your sympathetic nervous system
hears. The hormone is making less "noise," but instead is allowing
the orchestra to play the fine music that was originally written.
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