Prior to leptin’s discovery, fat was viewed as strictly an ugly energy storage depot that most everyone was trying to get rid of. After it was discovered that fat produced the hormone leptin (and it was subsequently revealed that fat produced other very significant hormones), the fat started to be viewed as an endocrine organ like your ovaries, pancreas, and pituitary, influencing the rest of your body and, in particular, your brain.
Leptin, as far as science currently knows, is the most powerful regulator that tells your brain what to do about your life’s two main biological goals: eating and reproduction. Your fat, by way of leptin, tells your brain whether you should be hungry, eat and make more fat; whether you should reproduce and make babies; or (partly by controlling insulin) whether to “hunker down” and work overtime to maintain and repair yourself.
In short, leptin is the way that your fat stores speak to your brain to let it know how much energy is available and, very importantly, what to do with it. Therefore, leptin may be “on top of the food chain” in metabolic importance and relevance to disease.
How Leptin Resistance Starts In Your Body
Simply put, here’s how you become leptin resistant:
You eat a diet that includes too many sugars and grains, which turn to sugar once you consume them.
The sugar is then metabolized to (turns into) fat and is stored in your fat cells
This activity, in turn, causes a surge in leptin
Your body then develops progressive resistance to leptin just as it did when it became insulin resistant, which typically accompanies leptin resistance.
When you’re leptin resistant, your body no longer hears its own signals to stop eating (Much like when you eat anything with high fructose corn syrup, the corn syrup disrupts the signals in your brain and you continue eating far after you have become full…..food manufacturers knew what they were doing when they put it in everything they could…..and when they got caught they just renamed it and they continue on) burn fat or pass up sugary foods. The result” You stay hungry, you crave sweets and your body stores even more fat.
As your body routinely stores this much excess visceral fat, you increase your risk for high blood pressure, high cholesterol, vascular disease, atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries) and an increased thickness in the walls of your heart.
If you have high cholesterol, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes or are overweight, it is highly likely that, like most people, you are simply eating too many grains – yes even unrefined, organic, stone-ground, sprouted whole grains are the most common culprit for causing your insulin and leptin levels to become abnormal.
To find out your insulin and leptin levels, you need to get tested by your doctor. Ask for a fasting blood insulin and leptin test. The tests are done by just about every commercial laboratory, and the insulin test is relatively inexpensive.
If you are constantly fatigued, you have brain fogginess, low blood sugar or hypoglycemia, have constant intestinal bloating, sleepy, increased triglycerides, high blood pressure, depression and highly addicted it would be time to check it out.