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Chapter 7 - A (Very Brief) Introduction to Endocrinology

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I’m starting to feel like I’m guilty of science overload, so I’m going to keep this as brief as possible and then we can move on to some more action-oriented stuff.


The Endocrine System

Okay, I’m feeling lazy after that last chapter so I just went to Wikipedia for this definition. Sue me.


“The endocrine system is an integrated system of small organs that involve the release of extracellular signaling molecules known as hormones. The endocrine system is instrumental in regulating metabolism, growth, development and puberty, tissue function, and also plays a part in determining mood.”1 


Good enough.


Hormones and their Affect on Body Composition

They do affect it. Exactly how much and how they interact with one another is still being investigated. There are many hormones that affect fat storage and loss, the building of muscle tissue, the rate at which we burn energy etc. However, endocrinology is one of those fields like genetics where there is more that researchers don’t know than do.

 

The hormones covered in this chapter are some of the usual suspects that we do know about.


The Thyroid Gland
Wikipedia, again. Yeah, whatever. “The thyroid controls how quickly the body burns energy, makes proteins, and how sensitive the body should be to other hormones. The thyroid participates in these processes by producing thyroid hormones, principally thyroxine (T4) and triiodothyronine (T3). These hormones regulate the rate of metabolism and affect the growth and rate of function of many other systems in the body.”2 The reason I mention it is that there is a possibility for this gland to malfunction, either as hyper or hypothyroidism.  

Hypothyroidism
This is the one that makes people fat, at least a little. It can result in weight gain of about 5 to 20 pounds and make it difficult to lose weight. It makes the body’s processes slow down and has a host of other unpleasant symptoms, such as dry skin, persistent feelings of cold, constipation, depression, arthritis and fatigue. Only about 2-3% of the population has it and most of them are women,3 so chances are you can’t blame this disease for your jelly belly. I told you about it so that if anyone other than a doctor says it might be your thyroid gland making you fat then you know better. 

Hyperthyroidism
This is the one that causes weight loss. You probably don’t have it either. 

Insulin
This hormone gets lots of attention, both from legitimate researchers and scamming, self-styled diet gurus. I’m just going to stick to the basics: insulin is made by the pancreas and allows the body’s cells to use glucose for energy. The biggest concern regarding insulin is resistance to it, which leads to type 2 diabetes. Type 2 diabetes is a preventable disease. If you don’t have it, follow the instructions in this book and you most likely never will get it. If you do have it, then talk to your doctor, although I can practically guarantee that he or she will prescribe a healthy diet and exercise.  

An Innocent Bystander
Despite all the hype over its possible role in weight management, insulin is an innocent bystander. If you have such a shitty lifestyle that you become overweight and develop insulin resistance and later type 2 diabetes this is not the hormone’s fault. Although there are conflicting results, there are suggestions that insulin resistance actually helps protect against further weight gain4; it could be a defense mechanism that is your body telling you that you have plenty of fat stores to survive the next lean period, so enough already. 

Some low-carb diet advocates would have you believe that it is the fact that carbohydrates are made of sugars which results in insulin overreacting to a high-carb intake and thereby causing obesity because it creates a situation where Calories are more easily converted to fat, and prevents fat being mobilized as an energy source. Further, they state that the insulin spike from high glycemic index (GI) carbs is followed by a “low blood sugar attack” that makes us crave more high GI carbs within a short period of time.  

The first allegation is easily refuted through referencing the First Law of Thermodynamics that I explained in Chapter 5 and elaborated on in Myth #8 in the previous chapter. It doesn’t matter what kind of Calories you ingest, but the total number you ingest. However, as I will explain in Chapter 13, the type of Calories you consume does have a considerable impact in appetite regulation and overall health. 

Regarding the second claim, there is no evidence that the release of insulin from eating high GI carbohydrates increases appetite.
  • Birgette Sloth et al., in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition reported that, “This study does not support the contention that low-fat LGI [low GI] diets are more beneficial than HGI [high GI, which were also low fat] diets with regard to appetite or body-weight regulation as evaluated over 10 wk.” The study also reported that “No significant differences were observed between groups in fasting serum insulin…” However, they did find that the LGI group had decreases in LDL (bad) cholesterol.5
  • R. M. van Dam et al., revealed, “Our findings do not support the hypothesis that a high-glycemic-index diet unfavorably affects metabolic risk factors [which include a negative impact on insulin] or increases risk for CHD [coronary heart disease] in elderly men without a history of diabetes or CHD.”6
  • Lau et al., in Diabetes Care, stated: “Habitual intake of diets with a high glycemic index and high glycemic load or diets with a high content of total carbohydrate including simple sugars was not associated with the probability of having insulin resistance.”7
  • Angela Liese et al., reported: “Carbohydrates as reflected in glycemic index and glycemic load may not be related to measures of insulin sensitivity, insulin secretion, and adiposity. Fiber intake may not only have beneficial effects on insulin sensitivity and adiposity, but also on pancreatic functionality.”8
There are even more studies I could quote (not to mention what was already pointed out in Myth #10), but I think you get the point that unless you are diabetic, insulin is something you don’t need to worry about, no matter what low-carb, high-protein/high-fat advocates purport. Again, if you do have type 2 diabetes, follow your doctor’s advice. 

Cortisol
Cortisol is produced by the adrenal glands in response to stress. As part of the body’s “fight or flight” response cortisol increases blood pressure and blood sugar in order to make you ready to deal with a threatening situation.9 

According to Katherine Zeratsky at www.mayoclinic.com: “…the manufacturers of cortisol blockers claimed that high levels of stress increase your body's production of the hormone cortisol supposedly to the point that causes you to accumulate excess fat. But what they didn't tell you is that this occurs only when your body produces large amounts of cortisol due to a side effect of medication or due to an underlying medical condition such as Cushing's syndrome. There's no evidence that the increased cortisol produced by a healthy individual under stress is enough to cause weight gain. Also, there's no evidence that the ingredients in these products — mixtures of vitamins and herbs — even block cortisol or that blocking cortisol results in weight loss.”10  

I agree with her regarding the last part of her statement regarding alleged cortisol blockers, but her earlier statement about cortisol not causing weight gain requires a bit more explanation. It is my opinion that cortisol, like insulin, is another innocent bystander. Stress causes an increase in cortisol production. Stress also makes people more likely to eat higher fat and/or higher Calorie foods (emotional eating).11 Like I revealed in Chapter 2, sticking to a healthy diet requires willpower, and stress depletes the psychic energy you have to exert this willpower and avoid junk food, but it does not mean that cortisol is the culprit.  

However, it does mean that limiting stress is a good idea. From a personal perspective, I also find that being under stress makes me not be in the mood to exercise. Nevertheless, I know that if I do make myself exercise I will start to feel better, decrease my stress level, and make me better able to make healthy food choices.  

So just chill, okay? 

Ghrelin
This is one of possibly many hormones that trigger feelings of hunger. ‘Nuff said. 

Leptin
This is one of possibly many hormones that trigger feelings of satiety. Also ‘nuff said. 

Testosterone
Crud. Writing this section is going to make me hate myself.  

Why? Well, I feel like I am about to take a gigantic, steaming turd all over my quest for research integrity because I wanted to find out about ways to naturally boost testosterone levels. Naturally produced testosterone is good stuff. It builds muscle, strength, and allows you to tap into a certain competitive aggression, not to mention giving you a higher sex drive. Well, I searched hard via PubMed and academic publications relating to endocrinology and metabolism and couldn’t find a damn thing that wasn’t related to using pharmaceutical interventions or anabolic steroids.  

Then I resorted to Google, and what I found was decidedly less than academic. I can’t say that a single point that follows is the least bit true because of the fact that I pulled it from a number of weight-training websites. I wouldn’t even include it except for the fact that what follows is good advice from an overall health perspective. Does it work to boost testosterone? Who the hell knows? At least you won’t be any worse off from following it. Let’s just get this over with. 

Tips that allegedly boost your testosterone levels:
  • Make your weightlifting sessions focus on large compound movements like squats, pull ups and bench press. This is good advice and key to my weight training program.
  • Exercise at high intensities and go to positive failure at each set. Also, good. There is a lot more on this in Phases 4 and 5.
  • Lose weight, specifically around your gut. I seem to remember advocating this in Chapter 3.
  • Don’t try to lose weight too fast. I agreed with this in both Chapters 2 and 5.
  • Eat a healthy diet. I think I mentioned this once or twice.
  • Get enough essential fatty acids. Yup. I agree that this is good for you health. More on that in Chapters 11 and 14.
  • Limit alcohol intake. I love the stuff, but that didn’t stop me from writing an entire chapter on how bad it is for you.
  • Keep your stress under control. Déjà vu, anyone?
  • Make sure you get enough sleep every night. Well, duh.
  • Have sex. I can honestly report that wanting to boost my testosterone levels has nothing to do with my motivation for having sex. Just don’t forget what I wrote about in Chapter 4 about some cancers being sexually transmitted. I personally prefer staying monogamous to avoid such problems.
Okay, all of the above is good advice that I advocate, regardless of whether or not it boosts testosterone at all.

If you know another guy who could use a testosterone boost, tell him about this site.

Conclusion
When it comes to doing the work of getting in shape, there isn’t anything in this chapter that is critical for you to know (that isn’t covered in more descriptive details elsewhere in the book). What this information does is armor you against the crapload of misinformation you likely have or will be exposed to regarding hormones and weight loss. 

Go to the Next Section 

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 Notes
  1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endocrine_system
  2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thyroid
  3. American Thyroid Association, ATA Hypothyroidism Handbook, 2003, pp. 3,4,7. Visit www.thyroid.org.
  4. Claude Bouchard (Ed.), Physical Activity and Obesity, (Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics, 2000), p. 10.
  5. Birgitte Sloth et al., “No Difference in Body Weight Decrease Between a Low-glycemic-index and a High-glycemic-index Diet but Reduced LDL Cholesterol after 10-wk Ad Libitum Intake of the Low-glycemic-index Diet,” The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 80, 2004, p. 337.
  6. R. M. van Dam et al., “Dietary Glycemic Index in Relation to Metabolic Risk Factors and Incidence of Coronary Heart Disease: the Zutphen Elderly Study,” European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 54, September, 2000, p. 726.
  7. Cathrine Lau et al., “Dietary Glycemic Index, Glycemic Load, Fiber, Simple Sugars, and Insulin Resistance,” Diabetes Care, 28 (6), 2005, p. 1397.
  8. Angela Liese et al., “Dietary glycemic index and glycemic load, carbohydrate and fiber intake, and measures of insulin sensitivity, secretion, and adiposity in the insulin resistance atherosclerosis study.” Diabetes Care, 28 (12), 2005, p. 2832.
  9. C. Weber, “Cortisol’s Purpose, “Medical Hypotheses, 51, 1998, pp. 289-290.
  10. http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/cortisol-blockers/AN01275
  11. Arline Salbe and Eric Ravussin, “The Determinants of Obesity,” Physical Activity and Obesity, Claude Bouchard (Ed.), (Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics, 2000), p. 79; Susan Torres et al., “Relationship between Stress, Eating Behavior and Obesity,” Nutrition, 23, 2007, p. 888.