The Transition

The Schwarzbein Principle II, The Transition: A Regeneration Program to Prevent and Reverse Accelerated Aging
by Diana Schwarzbein, M.D.

Book Description

Since the release of her bestselling book, The Schwarzbein Principle, readers from all walks of life have discovered a revolutionary new way to lose weight, feel great and look younger. Now, it this groundbreaking follow-up book, Dr. Schwarzbein offers an eye-opening look at how your current state of health is being compromised by the choices you make every day-some of which you may think are “healthy.” Here she provides a five-step Transition program that will improve your metabolism and help you obtain your ideal body composition. Before long, you'll enjoy renewed energy and achieve optimum health by preventing or reversing common ailments such as asthma, headaches, arthritis and heartburn as well as the chronic diseases of aging, including Type II diabetes, osteoporosis, high blood pressure and heart diseases.

You'll learn:

Why low-fat and low-calorie diets diets are harmful to your health

Why sleep deprivation and other stresses can cause weight gain

What medications-including birth control pills-are slowly destroying your metabolism and making you ill

How to successfully taper off refined sugars, alcohol, nicotine and caffeine

Why your cardiovascular exercise program might actually be ruining your health

The facts versus the scare tactics about hormone replacement therapy

Sure to follow in the success of her first book, The Schwarzbein Principle II will help you take charge of your health to ensure you age successfully.

Chapter 8

The Transition

Everyone goes through what I call the transition to restore their metabolism, achieve an ideal body composition and obtain optimum health. The transition is a journey of healing. You can only be in your transition if you are improving your nutrition and lifestyle habits.

During your transition your hormones will change in response to the nutrition and lifestyle changes you make, and this allows you to heal. However, you will not have balanced hormones immediately-balanced hormones do not occur overnight. There are sequential steps of healing that everyone must take.

When you initiate your transition process by improving your habits, your body will begin to rebalance its hormones. Your body will also rebuild all its functional and structural biochemicals that were not made efficiently during your previous poor habits. The more damaged your current metabolism, the longer it will take for this process to be completed.

By taking the time to follow the necessary steps in the SPII program to balance your hormones, you will heal your metabolism. When you have healed your metabolism, you are primed to lose fat weight, if needed. Once you have lost all your stored fat, you are through your transition.

The Four Transition Stages

For most people, the transition to a healthy metabolism and optimal health consists of four main stages:

• Initial starting point

• Healing phase

• Fat-burning phase

• Healed state

Here is what to expect as you journey through your transition to health. You begin at your initial starting point and then enter a healing phase that may consist of a self-medicating phase. Then you enter a fat-burning phase-if you need to burn fat before you finally reach a healed state.

Depending on your current metabolism, your body may skip the healing and/or fat-burning phases.

Let's look at each stage in more detail.

1. The Initial Starting Point

The initial starting point is your current metabolism type and age when you start improving your habits and begin entering your transition. Listed below are the four metabolism types an individual can have:

1. Insulin-sensitive with healthy adrenal glands
2. Insulin-resistant with healthy adrenal glands
3. Insulin-sensitive with burned-out adrenal glands
4. Insulin-resistant with burned-out adrenal glands

These metabolism types are not genetic but acquired. Everyone begins life insulin-sensitive with healthy adrenal glands.* It is only after years of poor nutrition and lifestyle habits that you may become insulin-resistant or have burned-out adrenal glands-or have both conditions.

Your age and how long you have had your current metabolism affect the duration of your transition. The older you are and the longer your metabolism has been damaged, the longer it will take for you to complete your transition.

Your Goal

Your goal is to stay or become insulin-sensitive and to have healthy adrenal glands or to heal them. Therefore, the goal is to have a metabolism where you are insulin-sensitive with healthy adrenal glands.

If you are starting out with this metabolism, your transition to healing requires improving your daily habits to keep from damaging your metabolism.

If you start out insulin-resistant with healthy adrenal glands, your goal is to become insulin-sensitive and keep your adrenal glands healthy.

If your current metabolism is insulin-sensitive with burned-out adrenal glands, your goal is to stay insulin-sensitive and heal your adrenal glands.

If you are insulin-resistant with burned-out adrenal glands, you must heal both sides of your metabolism to reach your goal of insulin-sensitive with healthy adrenal glands.

Insulin-Sensitive

You are insulin-sensitive if your body responds to all the actions of insulin, including the ability to make and store fats. Refer to chapter 5 for an expanded explanation of what insulin does. Note, however, that just as with insulin resistance, you can gain fat weight around your midsection when you are insulin-sensitive. Therefore, do not confuse having excess fat weight around your midsection with being insulin-resistant (see below).

Insulin-Resistant

You are insulin-resistant if you have an elevated fasting insulin level with one or more of the following signs/disorders: excess fat weight around your midsection, high triglyceride levels and low HDL levels, high blood pressure, Type II diabetes, and/or coronary artery disease. You will probably need to ask your physician to order a fasting insulin and cholesterol profile in order to determine if you are insulin-resistant or not. Or visit my Web site at: www.SchwarzbeinPrinciple.com, to find out how you can be tested.

There are three paths that lead to insulin resistance:

• Years of high insulin levels due to poor nutrition and lifestyle habits.

• Years of high adrenaline and/or cortisol levels due to poor nutrition and lifestyle habits.

• Years of high insulin, adrenaline and cortisol levels due to poor nutrition and lifestyle habits.

If you recognize that you are on any of these paths, now is the time to change your habits!

Are you insulin-sensitive, insulin-resistant or on the way to becoming insulin-resistant? Identify yourself here (check one):

___I am insulin-sensitive. ___I am insulin-sensitive on the way to insulin-resistant. ___I am insulin-resistant. ___I am not sure, so I will ask my physician to order blood tests.

Are Your Adrenal Glands Healthy or Burned Out?

Your adrenal glands make both adrenaline and cortisol. Years of oversecreting these two hormones can burn out your adrenal glands. If you have burned out your adrenal glands, you need to restore their function before you can achieve optimum health.

You have healthy adrenal glands if you can stop all your high-adrenaline and/or cortisol habits cold turkey without experiencing withdrawal symptoms and completely falling apart emotionally and/or physically.

If you are addicted to white sugar, caffeine, nicotine, diet pills, alcohol, overexercising and/or street drugs, or if you are always tired, have a “fuzzy” brain or cannot handle stressful situations, your adrenal glands are probably burned out.

Your adrenal glands are burned out if your adrenal saliva test shows low cortisol levels throughout the day. Ask your physician to test your adrenal glands or visit my Web site, www.SchwarzbeinPrinciple.com, to find out how you can be tested.

Do you have healthy or burned-out adrenal glands? Are you on the path to burning them out? Identify yourself here (check one):

___I have healthy adrenal glands. ___I have healthy adrenal glands, but I am on the path to burning them out. ___I have burned-out adrenal glands. ___I am not sure, so I will ask my physician to test my adrenal gland function through saliva testing.

Now, put together your insulin status and your adrenal gland state to identify your current metabolism type (check one):

___I am insulin-sensitive and have healthy adrenal glands. ___I am insulin-resistant and have healthy adrenal glands. ___I am insulin-sensitive and have burned-out adrenal glands. ___I am insulin-resistant and have burned-out adrenal glands.

Note: If you are not sure what your current type is and you want to start this program before your laboratory tests are back, consider yourself insulin-sensitive with burned-out adrenal glands.

2. The Healing Phase

In the healing phase your body will repair itself from the damage caused by years of poor nutrition and lifestyle habits. You always have higher insulin than adrenaline/cortisol levels during this phase because this is a rebuilding time.

It may seem as if you are in suspended animation during this phase because though you are healing, it doesn't feel or seem that way. As you improve your habits, you are rebuilding your biochemicals at a much higher rate than you are using them up, and this causes you to feel tired and to gain fat weight.

Your Current Metabolism Is Revealed During the Healing Phase

During the healing phase you expose your current metabolism because your hormones will react to your new and improved nutrition and lifestyle habits and reflect their true state.

If you are insulin-sensitive, your insulin levels will fluctuate appropriately with your carbohydrate intake; if you are insulin-resistant, your insulin levels will stay high while you are healing.

For example, if you are insulin-sensitive, your fasting insulin levels are within normal ranges, and when you eat carbohydrates, your levels rise to match your carbohydrate intake so your body can process the food. Once you process your food, your insulin levels come back down to normal.

But if you are insulin-resistant, your fasting insulin levels are already higher than normal, and they will stay high, even if you improve your eating habits, until you have become insulin-sensitive again.

If your adrenal glands are healthy, your adrenaline/cortisol levels will respond appropriately to your habits; if your adrenal glands are burned out, your adrenaline/cortisol levels will stay low until your glands have had a chance to heal. You have worn them out and depleted their ability to respond as they would under normal circumstances.

What Happens to Your Hormone During the Healing Phase

Here is what happens to your hormones during your healing phase-depending upon your current metabolism.

If you are insulin-sensitive with healthy adrenal glands, your hormones will immediately become balanced when you improve your habits; therefore, you are instantly through your healing phase.

If you are insulin-resistant with healthy adrenal glands, your insulin levels will remain high despite your improved habits until your body has a chance to heal and you become insulin-sensitive again. However, your adrenaline/cortisol levels will normalize immediately.

If you are insulin-sensitive with burned-out adrenal glands, your insulin levels will respond appropriately to your improved habits, but your adrenaline and cortisol levels will stay low while your adrenal glands heal; they will normalize when you have completely healed.

If you are insulin-resistant with burned-out adrenal glands, your insulin levels will remain high, and your adrenaline/cortisol levels will remain low. As you heal, your insulin and adrenaline/cortisol levels will slowly normalize.

How Your Body Heals

Unfortunately, your body will not start working efficiently the moment you improve your habits. As previously stated, you did not damage your metabolism overnight, and you will not heal it overnight. During the healing phase, you are still hormonally out of balance. As your body begins to correct this imbalance, you may experience any number of disturbing symptoms.

For example, as your adrenaline/cortisol levels drop, you may feel withdrawal symptoms such as fatigue, irritability and depression. As your insulin levels rise, you may gain fat weight and/or experience salt and water retention.

The more damaged your current metabolism is, the longer you will need to stay in the healing phase and the more fat your body produces. In fact, as your ratio of insulin to adrenaline/cortisol increases, your symptoms will worsen.

As awful as this may sound, this is your body's only way to heal. So do not be put off by the healing phase-it is simply a reflection of the damage that came before it.
Since insulin is a rebuilding hormone and adrenaline and cortisol are using-up hormones, you can only heal from years of using up your biochemicals by rebuilding them-this means higher insulin-to- adrenaline/cortisol levels. Unfortunately, even though you begin to improve your habits, the damage has already been done by your previous poor habits. Therefore, you will not instantly reap the rewards of your better habits.

For example, when people stop smoking, they may gain a lot of fat weight and feel tired and listless. They usually tell me they never should have stopped smoking because now they feel lousy and are fat besides.

What they don't realize is that the only way their bodies can heal is by raising their insulin levels higher than their adrenaline levels, so they will gain fat weight as their bodies heal from years of smoking. The damage occurred while they were smoking, not after they stopped. The only way to avoid having to heal from smoking is to never smoke in the first place.

If you are a smoker, the best thing you can do for your health is to quit and begin healing from years of using up your biochemicals more than rebuilding them due to nicotine use.

There is a subpart to the healing phase: the self-medicating phase. The self-medicating phase occurs whenever you do anything that raises your adrenaline/cortisol levels closer to your insulin levels.

The Self-Medicating Phase

Since your insulin levels must be higher than your adrenaline/cortisol levels for your body to heal, it does not always feel very good to be in the healing phase of your transition. It is during this time that the self-medicating phase becomes important in keeping you on the path to restoring your metabolism.

In this phase you use one or more of the following to make yourself feel good enough to continue your healing process: small amounts of stimulants, alcohol and refined sugars. Overexercising is also a form of self-medication. Self-medicating makes you feel better in the short-term because using up your biochemicals always feels better than rebuilding them.

In the self-medicating phase you still have higher insulin than adrenaline/cortisol levels, but you narrow the gap between your rate of rebuilding and using up. Your self-medicating habits raise your adrenaline/cortisol levels closer to your insulin levels, and you prolong your transition because self-medicating keeps you closer to your current metabolism than to your goal metabolism.

It is sometimes necessary to self-medicate to get through your transition, especially if you begin with burned-out adrenal glands. The How To section outlines the best ways to self-medicate if you need to.

Do not make the mistake of thinking you are self-medicating if you have not changed any of your habits! You cannot “be good” part of the time and revert to your poor habits the rest of the time. If you over- self-medicate and your adrenaline/cortisol levels get higher than your insulin levels, you will no longer be in your transition process, and you will continue to damage your metabolism.

3. The Fat-Burning Phase

The fat-burning phase of the transition occurs after your body has done all its rebuilding in the healing phase. The main changes to your body composition during the healing phase is an increase in lean body tissue, such as muscles and bones rather than a decrease in fat weight per se. However, do not get discouraged, you will have started to burn off some of your excess fat-weight during the healing phase and are now ready to burn off the rest.

You begin your fat-burning phase only after your hormones are completely normalized and your metabolism is healed. Only then is your body ready to burn off the rest of your stored fat if it needs to. All your symptoms of fluctuating adrenaline, cortisol and/or insulin levels will be gone, and you will feel great. During this phase you will be rebuilding and using up your functional and structural biochemicals again at an equal rate.

4. The Healed State

The healed state is when all of your hormones are balanced, your metabolism has healed and you have achieved your ideal body composition. You are now through your transition and have achieved the ideal current metabolism type. You are insulin-sensitive and have healthy adrenal glands. When you are in this state, you are rebuilding as many biochemicals as you are using up and have the lowest risk for the degenerative diseases of aging. Your goal now is to keep your hormones balanced so that you do not damage your metabolism again.

© 2002 Health Communications, Inc.

About the Author

Dr. Diana Schwarzbein has achieved the reputation as the cutting-edge expert on hormone replacement therapy and reversing type II diabetes through her groundbreaking nutritional and lifestyle program. Her practice specializes in endocrinology, metabolism, diabetes, osteoporosis, menopause and thyroid. She lives in Santa Barbara, California with her husband where she conducts workshops and private sessions.