[lidya-sggf]

I found something very interesting in a link that was posted here, and felt it deserved more attention/discussion. Here's a portion of it:

Has anyone followed the leptin results? Leptin is an amino acid that is produced in the body’s fat cells. Leptin is often called the obese gene because as leptin increases your body fat increases as well. However, studies have shown that decreasing leptin will decrease fat, but leptin, as a weight loss drug has not been found as effective in humans as it has in mice. Barring the weight loss drug ‘potential’ aspects of leptin, the actions of leptin may be important to hCG weight loss because leptin plays a part in regulating hunger, food intake and energy expenditure. Leptin acts on the brain stem, which acts on serotonin, a hormone that controls appetite and mood.
An interesting point concerning leptin deals with how it can affect hCG weight loss; as the hCG diet protocol decreases fat, leptin levels fall, thus causing an increase in cravings. Note that Dr. Simeons’ protocol, as written in Pounds and Inches, call for a break in the hCG diet protocol because the hCG hormone is thought to build immunity. Could in fact it be the effects of leptin vs. the hCG hormone? Leptin and Grehlin are being studied in relation to weight loss and developing the ultimate diet pill. Complicated stuff, but basically grehlin is associated with hunger and leptin is associated with feeling full. If your leptin levels are low you feel like you can't get enough to eat- you never feel satiated.

Note that leptin is produced in the fat cells and that as the Hcg diet decreases fat, leptin levels fall. From reading the boards I've noticed there is a wide range of hunger when people start P3- some are not hungry at all, some have normal hunger, and some feel like they can't get enough to eat even though they are eating large quantities of food (I fall into that category). This information would explain that- if your leptin levels are very low (and for some of us they might have been low even to start with), you brain never gives you the signal that you're full and you just keep eating.

Current medical knowledge seems to indicate that immunity to Hcg is less and less of an issue, and that 6 wks off is plenty of time to become sensitive to it again. Part of that might be due to improvements in manufacturing, so that we are getting better quality Hcg. So if that is true, do we really need to stop after 40 injections, or take longer breaks after each round?

Perhaps, as is suggested here, immunity was not the only factor in the equation- even though the science behind it wasn't quite there yet. For those who were not developing immunity, why would Dr. S. make them stop their round? Perhaps when they did not, he saw problems further down the road? And saw the same problems when the length of breaks did not increase between rounds? He must have had some reason behind increasing the break time, so I'm assuming he saw problems when patients didn't do this. But maybe he attributed those problems to immunity, when they were really associated with grehlin and leptin levels?

We've had a lot of people who do fine the first round, have more hunger the 2nd, and hunger seems to get more and more unmanageable as time goes on. One doctor even told his patient that the protocol no longer works after 3 rounds. Perhaps the hunger issue is because we have not allowed enough time for leptin levels to normalize? Or do they resist normalizing in this day and age because of all the chemicals, etc., that we've ingested?

So if this is an issue, what do we do about it? Unfortunately, I'm not sure science has quite made that leap yet. There are some OTC leptin supplements, and I'm tempted to try one to see if that helps my hunger in P3 and P4. For those who have low levels of serotonin and/or certain amino acids, I'm guessing this only magnifies the problem. One idea is to see if you might benefit from some supplements like St. John's Wort, or 5-HTP. The book, "The Mood Cure", has questionnaires to help you determine if you have amino acid deficiencies.

For some people it might just take a little longer for those levels to normalize- in which case something like green tea might be enough of an appetite suppressant to hold you over until your body can correct the problem.