Lose Stubborn Fat by Avoiding Estrogenic Foods

 

Sunday, April 22, 2012 5:56 PM

By Sylvia Booth Hubbard

Are you still overweight regardless of constant dieting and daily trips to the gym? And if your doctor repeats the same advice about diet and exercise while shaking his head, subtly suggesting you secretly keep a stash of Twinkies in your gym bag, perhaps you should take a look at a diet that's not really a diet at all — the anti-estrogenic diet. Your problem could be that you have a condition called "estrogen dominance." It is caused by your diet, but by a diet high in estrogen, not one high in calories.

Diets high in estrogen create a condition called "estrogen dominance," according to Ori Hofmekler, author of The Anti-Estrogenic Diet. "Estrogen dominance is believed to be responsible for age-related weight gain and metabolic disorders in both men and women," he says. In addition, estrogen dominance has put the human race in deadly danger, Hofmekler warns.

If Hofmekler is correct, we should be more worried about saving the human species than the spotted leopard, because humans are also on the fast track to extinction. In the past 50 years, sperm counts in men have dropped 50 percent, while the average man's testosterone level has plummeted 20 percent in just the last 20 years. Such sharp drops are a wakeup call.

The outlook for women is no better, Hofmekler says, citing figures showing that one-third of women who are now between ages 35 and 60 will develop breast cancer.

"If the human species were an animal, zoologists would look at us and say, ‘This species is about to become extinct. Something is seriously wrong. Let's see what can be done.'"

Study after study indicates that humans face major health problems in terms of cardiovascular disease, arthritis, diabetes, and obesity. The main reason, says Hofmekler, is too much estrogen.

If you think you can't possibly be eating foods loaded with estrogens, you're wrong — dead wrong. Most foods crowding supermarket shelves are estrogenic, according to Hofmekler. Meat and dairy products contain hormones, and vegetables and fruits are covered in pesticides. Once inside the body, they all mimic estrogen, the female hormone that causes estrogen disorders, including breast cancer in women.

And estrogen virtually castrates men.

Synthetic forms of estrogen, called xenoestrogens, are industrial derivatives, and they are found in the air we breathe, cleaning products, lotions and shampoos, water, and foods. Natural estrogens, called phytoestrogens, occur naturally in common foods, herbs, and extracts. When the two are combined in the human body, as they are in today's modern society, they overwhelm the system.

Dr. Russell Blaylock, noted neurosurgeon and author of "The Blaylock Report," agrees. "Hofmekler is absolutely correct when he says that all of us are being exposed to large amounts of estrogenic compounds which are wreaking havoc with our hormone levels," he tells Newsmax Health. "Studies show that xenoestrogens from plastics appear to cause premature menses in young girls. Soy isoflavones appear to increase aggressiveness and heighten antisocial behavior in monkeys, and appear to feminize male animals.

"As Hofmekler points out, obesity also raises estrogen levels. I think the dramatic increase in benign breast disease (fibrocystic disease) as well as some breast cancers, is the result of too much estrogen. Studies have shown that genistein from soy increases the growth and invasion of breast cancer."

Although the foods we eat have changed — from seeds, nuts, beans, fish, and fruits to heavily processed foods filled with additives — our bodies haven't. We're modern men in suits and ties still living in a caveman's body.

According to Hofmekler, we have never adapted to such a surplus of estrogen in our food, so we're slowly eating ourselves into extinction. "That's the bad news," he says. "The good news is that man has amazing survival mechanisms that have helped him survive incredibly hard conditions such as famine, plague, and moving from one area of the world to another. But our survival mechanisms are not being triggered today because we live in a world that is totally different from the rugged world our bodies are adapted to. Instead, they remain dormant."

The key to triggering your body's survival mechanisms is to adopt an anti-estrogenic diet. This is not an ordinary diet, Hofmekler emphasizes. Most diets are restrictive and don't offer real solutions because they don't take the effects of estrogenic foods into account. In addition, many diet products contain soy protein and other estrogen-promoting ingredients that leave our bodies bloated and sick.

An anti-estrogenic diet is simple and delicious. It has three main points:

• Eat lower down on the food chain. Eat foods that are more in tune with our genetic makeup such as fruits, vegetables, beans, roots, nuts, seeds, eggs, dairy, and wild-caught fish.

• Minimize foods treated with chemicals. Eat as much organic food as possible, and avoid synthetic vitamins.

• Supplement your diet with nutrients that support your hormones. The flavones chrysin, apigenine, quercetin, and narigenin all inhibit estrogen, as well as the indoles: indole 3 carbinol, diindolymethane (DIM), and indole 3 acetate.

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Hofmekler's anti-estrogenic diet consists of a three-week jump-start program. The first week is a liver detoxification program that will cleanse your liver and enhance its functioning to create an environment that will allow your body to efficiently metabolize fats and carbohydrates for energy.

Phase I relies on fresh fruits and vegetables (heavy on crucifers such as broccoli), low-fat yogurt, fertile eggs, beans, whole grains, wild-caught fish and aged cheese, and prepares the body to switch from fuel based on carbohydrates to fuel based on fat. "Most people can tell a difference by the end of only one week," says Hofmekler.

Phase II emphasizes eating foods that promote anti-estrogenic hormones (progesterone in women and testosterone in men). Raw nuts, seeds, and olives are added to the diet as the body shifts from carbohydrate-based to fat-based fuel.

Phase III introduces meats, breads and pastas to the diet, but only in the evening meal and only on alternate days. Rotate phase III days with days of Phase I or II.

After reintroducing meats to your diet, remember when making food choices that food from the bottom of the food chain will probably be better for your body than a food from the top.

Far from being a calorie-curbing, austere diet, the anti-estrogenic diet offers possibilities for a variety of delicious foods that probably include your favorite dishes — with a few substitutions. For example, substituting soy oil with olive oil changes an ingredient from estrogenic to anti-estrogenic. And regardless of your ethnic background, anti-estrogenic foods fit right in. "Generally, any ethnic recipe based on fresh vegetables or cooked crucifiers is anti-estrogenic," says Hofmekler, whose website, www.defensenutrition.com, provides more information on the diet.

Be patient, says Hofmekler, and even the most stubborn fat, including estrogen-sensitive belly fat, will eventually melt away.

Two footnotes:

• While you're losing fat, you may be gaining hair! A study at North Carolina State University found that shaven mice given an estrogen blocker grew a full coat of hair in four weeks, while those given estrogen remained bald and only 20 percent of mice given neither drug had re-grown all of their hair.

• Scientists are developing anti-estrogen drugs to treat cancer. "Anti-estrogens have been shown to prevent breast cancer in some women," Jill Siegfried, a professor in the department of pharmacology and chemical biology at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, said in an American Association for Cancer Research news release.

 

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