Many diets fail because people eventually become tired of feeling hungry and deprived. Once they start to feel tired, they then lose motivation and go back to their old eating habits, and their old weight. PGX® addresses one of the driving factors behind weight gain: unhealthy blood sugar levels.
Dr. Michael Lyon and Dr. Michael Murray, authors of Hunger Free Forever, provide a great deal of information on how PGX compares to, and complements, other natural solutions for weight control and blood sugar management.
Dr. Murray explains, "PolyGlycopleX® is a complex of natural, non-starch soluble fibres that act synergistically to develop a higher level of viscosity than other dietary viscous fibres known. This complex forms a unique gel that moves slowly through the gastrointestinal tract. Unlike many fibre-containing natural health products, PGX® does not lose its gel-like viscosity in the acidic environment of the stomach or the alkaline intestinal environment”.
Volume
Food “volume” is an easy concept to understand. The greater the volume of food in your stomach, the fuller you feel. But many popular fast foods provide a lot more calories than they do volume. For example, a double burger with cheese and a large order of fries represent about 1,300 calories, yet equal only about two cups of volume, so you consume a lot of calories before you feel full. Conversely, two cups of chopped apple provide just as much volume but only 120 calories! So you feel just as full with far less calories. High fibre foods, because they absorb water and expand, create fullness with fewer calories. High-fibre PGX, which has virtually no calories, substantially increases the volume of your meals without increasing the calories.
The volume that PGX adds to your meals means that you will be able to decrease your portion size and still feel full and satisfied after meals.
Viscosity
“Viscosity” refers to the thickness of food (honey is highly viscous, water is not). Many foods in the Western diet are very low in viscosity or thickness. These foods become a thin watery liquid once they are chewed, swallowed, and mixed with fluids and acid in the stomach. Low viscosity foods move through the digestive tract quickly and are rapidly absorbed, leaving your body looking for more food shortly after you have eaten.
Viscous foods move slowly through the digestive system leaving you feeling full for a longer period of time. Viscous foods also slow the absorption of carbohydrates which helps to avoid the unhealthy blood sugar roller coaster that can result after eating.
PGX is incredibly viscous and when taken with meals, increases the viscosity of the foods you are eating. Taking PGX with your meals will leave you feeling full for longer and will slow the absorption of carbohydrates.
Insulin 101
"Everybody knows" that you have to have fewer calories going into your body as food, and more calories being burned, as energy, to lose weight. So eating less and exercising more is still a great idea if you want to lose pounds. But if you have tried everything and still can't lose weight, you may be up against "insulin resistance". If you are insulin resistant your body isn't responding as it should to the "stop eating" messages related to insulin secretion and blood sugar levels.
When you eat, the hormone insulin is secreted. It encourages uptake of blood sugar to the cells, so blood sugar levels drop. This can make you feel hungry, which then causes you to consume more food, which then causes more insulin secretion, etc. If these ups and downs in blood sugar levels are too steep they are very hard on the body and can make it difficult to lose weight. Blood sugar spiking is one of the causes of dangerous complications in people with diabetes, including nerve damage and blindness.
Insulin resistance can cause excess insulin to be released after eating and can increase the intensity of blood sugar highs and lows. Elevated insulin levels can contribute to hypoglycemic food cravings, excessive fat storage especially around the belly, as well as increased risk for high blood pressure, high cholesterol and triglycerides, diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
More on the Blood Sugar Roller Coaster
To understand appetite, cravings and especially excess weight gain, you have to understand how the "blood sugar roller coaster" takes you on a very unhealthy ride.
A key to losing weight and keeping it off is keeping blood glucose (blood sugar) levels within a very narrow range. Landmark research has demonstrated that frequent and rapid swings in blood sugar the magnify appetite and cause food cravings in individuals who are struggling with their weight. This blood sugar roller coaster is technically called glycemic volatility and it can be observed in most overweight people.
Thanks to technology known as Continuous Glucose Monitoring (CGM) a tiny electronic device can measure blood sugar levels and send information every few seconds to a small, pager-sized, computer module worn on the patient’s belt. The blood sugar data can then be downloaded to a doctor’s or researcher’s computer. The data can be related to food intake, appetite, food cravings, hypoglycemic symptoms, medication and exercise. Using this technology doctors have discovered that people with weight problems often have highly fluctuating blood sugar that is directly related to their insulin resistance and a loss of blood sugar control.
Dr. Murray explains it this way, “Think of insulin as a key that opens a cell’s ‘door’ and lets in glucose - basic cell ‘food’. Around the clock, the pancreas secretes a small amount of insulin so some glucose can enter cells and keep them alive and energized. After a meal, as the bloodstream becomes flooded with glucose, a surge of insulin is released from the pancreas. This causes sugar to be quickly transferred from the blood to organs, energizing them and keeping blood sugar levels from rising too high. But, when you start gaining weight, particularly belly fat, substances are also secreted from this fat tissue, and these substances promote insulin resistance, where insulin is released but it no longer works as effectively as it should. The insulin doesn’t change, but the cells throughout the body lose some of their ability to recognize insulin and respond to it as they should.”
If blood sugar levels drop too low, you die. If blood sugar levels go too high, you die. Low blood sugar is fairly easy to understand: glucose is fuel for your body and if you run out of glucose, your body will quit. Most tissues get their energy from fat but the brain depends on glucose. In fact, if your blood glucose levels drop too low you can die in a few seconds. For this reason the body has sophisticated feedback and control mechanisms to ensure the brain receives a steady supply of glucose.
What do High Blood Sugar Levels Do?
When blood glucose levels are elevated, the excess glucose may bind itself to various body proteins and other molecules, changing their structure. The accumulation of these “sugar coated molecules” is a recognized factor in accelerated aging and, eventually, death. They can inactivate enzymes, inhibit molecular binding, and cause formation of abnormal proteins.
Because elevated blood sugar is very harmful, the body works hard to keep levels normal, in spite of insulin resistance. It does this by releasing higher amounts of insulin around the clock and particularly after-meals. In fact under these conditions, if insulin levels did not rise substantially, diabetes would occur. The body fends off diabetes by secreting these high levels of insulin, but with serious implications for your health.
Here’s the vicious cycle: When blood sugar surges after a meal a massive release of insulin occurs. Even in the insulin resistant, cells eventually open up to glucose. The glucose surge is usually followed by a rapid drop in blood sugar. As blood sugar plummets, the brain, pancreas, and liver sense the drop and declare an emergency, since extremely low blood sugar is potentially deadly. The brain is alarmed by any rapid drop in blood sugar and it does everything it can to get you to reach for a quick sugar fix. To prevent severe low blood sugar (hypoglycemia), hormones such as glucagon, epinephrine (adrenalin), and cortisol are released. These promote the release of stored energy (glycogen) from the liver and muscles.
Those who develop insulin resistance have a hormonal tendency to deposit fat and lose muscle mass. Basically your muscles are starving and your fat cells are overfed. Because of this, it is very difficult for fat to be burned efficiently when you are insulin resistant.
Insulin should act as the “off button” for appetite, but with insulin resistance, the appetite never really shut down. In normal individuals, regions of the brain responsible for appetite regulation respond to after-meal elevations in insulin by significantly increasing their intake of glucose, and then increasing metabolic activity. In particular, the brain regions most responsible for appetite, such as the hypothalamus, readily respond to insulin. This reaction causes a decrease in appetite and a sense of satiety. However, if you are insulin resistant this increase in metabolic activity will not occur or will be diminished in these important brain regions, even after a significant rise in insulin levels. We now know that the brain becomes insulin resistant along with the rest of the body and this insulin resistance prevents satiety and speeds weight gain.
By using PGX and by making moderate dietary changes, glycemic volatility can be eliminated and blood sugar can be stabilized. This improves the action of insulin, a key to achieving permanent weight loss. When blood sugar levels are stable, appetite and cravings are reduced.