Timing Is Everything

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

(Page 2 of 2)

The time it takes to go through the transition is different for everyone. The transition to a healthy metabolism can occur very quickly, or it can take months or years to complete.

If you have a healthy metabolism, you will be able to complete your transition quickly once you change your nutrition and lifestyle habits. If you begin with a badly damaged metabolism, however, it may take you years to completely heal. But you can heal. It is never too late. You are closer than you think.

Why You Do Not Lose Weight Right Away

During the transition from a damaged metabolism to a healed one, you will become healthier-but you will not have the body composition you want right away. Why? Because you first need to heal your metabolism before you can achieve your ideal body composition. You need to be healthy to lose weight, not lose weight to be healthy. It is only when you have completely healed your metabolism that you are primed for losing all your excess storage fat.

Do not confuse losing weight according to the bathroom scale with losing excess fat weight. If you quickly lose weight while your metabolism is still damaged you are not just losing storage fat-you are also losing your functional and structural proteins and fats and causing further damage to your metabolism. And since protein weighs more than fat, you may think that the lower number on the scale is a good thing when it is not.

The key to becoming and staying healthy is to burn off your storage fats while retaining your functional and structural proteins and fats.

It Takes Time to Heal

The time it takes to heal your metabolism is normal and unavoidable. You may as well start to heal now; there is no alternative. The sooner you start your transition, the sooner you will get through it and obtain optimum health.

For those of you who are starting off with a damaged metabolism, you cannot escape the time it takes to heal, but you will have the advantage of knowing what you need to do to shorten your transition time. My transition took a long time because I began with a badly damaged metabolism, and I did not know what I needed to do to heal myself.

Dr. Schwarzbein's Transition

My transition was not a typical one. I spent seven years healing my metabolism because I did not have a specific plan to follow. This was during the late '70s and early '80s when the recommended food plan was a higher carbohydrate diet. Because I switched from eating refined sugars to eating complex carbohydrates and unbalanced meals, I became insulin-resistant while I was still in the process of healing my adrenal glands.

As I healed, I went from insulin-sensitive with burned-out adrenal glands to insulin-resistant with burned-out adrenal glands, then to insulin-resistant with healthy adrenal glands and finally to insulin-sensitive with healthy adrenal glands. Because I did not know what I needed to do to heal, I took many unnecessary detours and ended up with all the different current metabolism types. Along the way I tried different eating programs until I finally hit upon the balanced food program that enabled me to heal completely.

I am going to explain my complicated transition by describing the changes in my major hormones and how they affected me throughout the different stages of my healing. Sometimes adrenaline and cortisol are not linked to each other, but in my case they still were; so if adrenaline went up, cortisol did, too. When adrenaline went down, so did cortisol.

Therefore, to simplify, I will discuss what happened to me in terms of adrenaline versus insulin only. But remember, all my hormones were involved.

My own nutrition and lifestyle habits-eating lots of refined sugary foods and overdoing cardiovascular exercise-initially stimulated the release of large amounts of adrenaline. This is why I was so thin; adrenaline causes your body to use up its biochemicals. However, these same habits also made me very unhealthy. From years of using up more than rebuilding my biochemicals, my body was used up, too.

I thought that I had the best metabolism in the world. I could and did eat thousands of calories of refined sugar a day, and I did not gain an ounce. But in reality I had already badly damaged my metabolism. I was not eating enough of the right foods for my body to rebuild. Accessing and using up your biochemicals is only half of what it takes to have a healthy metabolism; the other half is eating well and rebuilding. Because I was using up my biochemicals at a rapid rate and barely rebuilding, I did not have a healthy metabolism even though I stayed thin.

My body was also secreting high amounts of insulin in response to my high-adrenaline levels to prevent me from completely wasting away. This was a good thing. When adrenaline/cortisol levels rise, insulin levels also rise to modify the amount of using up of your biochemicals that is occurring in your body. If your body were to continue to use up its biochemicals because of high adrenaline/cortisol levels, and you did not have this insulin stopgap, you would die. So your body secretes more insulin in an attempt to keep you alive longer. An example of this built-in survival mechanism is when you go on a diet and eat fewer calories. You initially lose weight rapidly, but the longer you restrict your food intake, the slower your rate of weight loss. In fact, you may even stop losing weight. In this case, your body senses it is using itself up too quickly, so it secretes more insulin to counteract rapid weight loss. This is a very powerful survival instinct and is what kept me alive despite my poor eating habits.

The amount of refined sugar that I ate raised both my adrenaline and insulin levels, but my adrenaline levels rose higher than my insulin levels. However, because refined sugar cannot be turned into functional or structural biochemicals, the higher amounts of insulin I secreted could only keep me from using up all my biochemicals completely-it could not help me rebuild. I was using up faster than I could rebuild.

My Initial Starting Point

When I was sixteen, I was all skin and bones. I was five-foot-eleven, weighed 125 pounds and was very underweight and unhealthy. I had very little muscle and no fat on my body at all. I had asthma, chronic bronchitis, irritable bowel syndrome and cystic acne. I was hormonally out of balance with both high adrenaline and high insulin levels.

Because I did not think that I would live a long time if I continued to be this unhealthy, I began to look for some solutions to my health problems. This was the initial starting point of my transition.

I was insulin-sensitive with burned-out adrenal glands, but my hormones did not reflect this until I entered the healing phase, which exposed my underlying physiology.

Entering My Transition

I began to improve my eating habits in an attempt to improve my health. When I began adding other foods to my diet besides refined sugar, my body perceived that the “starvation” crisis was over and it was time to rebuild.

I had entered my healing phase and my body began rebuilding more than using up. But because I was eating a high complex-carbohydrate diet, I mostly rebuilt storage fats and not functional or structural proteins and fats.

In terms of my hormones, my adrenaline levels came crashing down and dipped even lower than normal, and my insulin levels rose even higher because I was eating so many complex carbohydrates. I was addicted to refined white sugars, and this meant that my adrenal glands were already burned out. If they hadn't been burned out, my adrenaline levels would not have dipped so low.

The fact that my insulin levels stayed high was initially a reflection of my high-carbohydrate intake. If I had been eating a balanced diet, my insulin levels would have normalized. As it was, my insulin levels were very high and my adrenaline levels were very low.

I developed insulin-resistance over the next few years because I was eating too many complex carbohydrates and not enough proteins. I started off insulin-sensitive with burned-out adrenal glands, and then I became insulin-resistant with burned-out adrenal glands, but I did not have this type of current metabolism for very long. My adrenal glands were already in the process of healing because I had stopped eating refined sugars, which was the main reason my adrenal glands had burned out to begin with.

Because I had badly damaged my metabolism for many years before I improved my habits, and because I ate large amounts of complex carbohydrates, I gained a lot of fat weight throughout my midsection. I also experienced significant water retention with bloating and ankle swelling.

I had learned that you can only hold onto water if you have salt in your body, so I went on a two-gram salt diet to lessen my swelling. This did help, but it did not treat the real reason I was retaining fluids-high insulin levels.

I was very unhappy about gaining fat weight, but what really made my healing phase difficult was that I was always fatigued. I did not know that running on high adrenaline for all those years was one of the reasons I was so tired now.

Because my adrenal glands were burned out, nonvital functions such as a sense of well-being and fertility shut down. My body kept me alive, but feeling good was not its priority and neither was making a baby.

The other thing that made me so fatigued was all the complex carbohydrates I was eating. The combination of higher insulin levels, from eating too many carbohydrates, and very low adrenaline levels, from burned-out adrenal glands, made me extremely tired.

Despite my fatigue and weight gain, I recognized that I felt slightly better. I was much calmer, and my nervous edge was gone; I knew deep down that I was doing the right thing by trying to eat better foods.

This does not mean that I did not think of going back to my old ways. I had many thoughts about going back to eating cotton candy, Pixi-Stix and my own milky, sugary oatmeal so that I could have energy-even nervous energy-and be thin again. But something kept me from doing this. I believe that I did not go back to my old ways because I realized that I had been killing myself by eating so poorly.

It may sound as if I easily intellectualized my healing phase, but it was an ongoing internal battle. I did give in many times to the “noise” in my head that demanded sugar for energy. Each time I did, however, I felt so much worse afterwards that after a while all that negative reinforcement made it easier to resist my cravings.

By experimenting with different meal plans, I noticed that I felt better and was less bloated when I ate balanced meals. I started to eat this way consistently about four years into my transition. A year later I had completely healed my adrenal glands, but I was still insulin-resistant.

Self-Medicating Phase

I struggled during my healing phase because I had no idea what was happening to me. I was eating better, but I was gaining weight and feeling tired all the time. This was the opposite of what I expected to happen.

I began to notice that the only time I felt well was when I was exercising. Even though I had been exercising before, I now got to the point where I was spending three to four hours a day doing cardiovascular exercises just so I could feel normal.

Because my adrenal glands were healed at this point, I was able to feel better by increasing my exercise, but I did not know that I was slowing down my own healing process because exercise raises adrenaline levels. In fact, I felt just the opposite. I thought that more exercise would help me lose the fat weight I had put on and would be healthy for me. But I was forcing my body to use up my biochemicals again-through exercise this time, not by eating excessive amounts of refined sugars. This was my self-medicating phase.

Luckily, because I was still improving my nutrition habits throughout my self-medicating phase, I did not go back to my initial starting point of higher adrenaline than insulin levels. Therefore, I was still building more than using up my biochemicals, but at a much slower rate.

When I was not exercising, I felt tired. I was not a caffeine or alcohol person and did not add to my self-medicating by also using these toxic chemicals in order to feel better. I just accepted the fatigue because I could not exercise all day long.

If I had used a lot of caffeine or alcohol early on and increased my exercise to self-medicate, my adrenaline levels would probably have risen higher than my insulin levels again-and I would have returned to my initial starting point.

The Fat-Burning Phase and the Healed State

Fortunately, I had to decrease my daily exercise routine because I was in my third year of medical school and no longer had the time to exercise three to four hours a day. Inadvertently, I stopped self-medicating.

At this point, two and one-half years had passed since I had begun eating balanced meals. Six and one-half years had passed since I had begun to improve my nutrition and lifestyle habits, and my metabolism had completely healed. I was insulin-sensitive with healthy adrenal glands. My hormone levels were normal, and I began the fat-burning phase of my transition.

During this phase, I felt completely better and had all the energy I needed-but I still carried excess fat weight around my middle. As I continued through the fat-burning phase, I kept my muscle mass and burned off all my stored fat. Seven years after starting my transition my hormones were all balanced, my metabolism was healed, and I had achieved my ideal body composition. I was through my transition.

I know now that if I had been following the SPII program, I would have been able to shorten the time it took for me to heal because I would not have become insulin-resistant. But it took me years to find the right nutrition program and to stumble upon all the necessary lifestyle changes I needed to make. It still would have taken years for me to heal-because I started off with such a badly damaged metabolism-but it would have been fewer than seven years.

I finished my transition seventeen years ago. I still have a healthy metabolism, and I have maintained my ideal body composition because I adopted my lifestyle changes for good.

Each of you will experience something similar to what I went through during my transition-though of course your transition won't be identical. Your initial starting point-your current metabolism-and the habits that got you there will be different from mine. How easy it is for you to incorporate the SPII program into your life will also determine the nature of your transition.

As you begin your healing journey, remember these points:

• You can heal.

• It is never too late.

• There are no shortcuts.

• You need to take the time to heal.

• This is the time to rearrange your priorities.

• If not now, when?

Summary

You will have to go through a transition to heal your metabolism, achieve an ideal body composition and obtain optimum health.

You must improve your habits to enter and stay in your transition.

The transition consists of an initial starting point; a healing phase (that may or may not include a self-medicating phase); a fat-burning phase (if you need to burn off excess fat); and a healed state. You may or may not experience a healing phase and/or a fat-burning phase depending on your current metabolism.

The initial starting point is your current metabolism and age when you begin improving your habits and enter your transition.

You may be insulin-sensitive or insulin-resistant.

You may have healthy or burned-out adrenal glands.

The goal metabolism is insulin-sensitive with healthy adrenal glands.

In the healing phase your body will repair itself from the damage caused by previous years of poor nutrition and lifestyle habits.

In the healing phase you always have higher insulin than adrenaline/cortisol levels because this is the only way your body has to heal.

The self-medicating phase is used to keep you feeling better so that you can complete your transition.

The fat-burning phase occurs after your hormones return to baseline and your metabolism is healed. Your body is ready to burn off stored fat if needed.

You reach the healed state when all your hormones are balanced, your metabolism has healed and you have achieved your ideal body composition.

The time it will take to go through the transition is different for everyone.

You need to be healthy to lose weight, not lose weight to be healthy.

The key to becoming and staying healthy is to burn off your excess energy biochemicals while retaining your functional and structural biochemicals.

The time it takes to heal your metabolism is normal and unavoidable.

* * *

Now you have an idea of what you can expect during your transition, but not everyone's transition will be the same as mine was. In chapter 9 we'll take a look at the transitions of Kelley, Mary, Annie and Arthur, who had different initial starting points and different journeys along their paths to optimum health. You will probably see yourself in one of their stories. You will also read about Liz's success story.

© 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.