A Breakthrough in Weight Loss :: Healthy Lifestyles and Natural Weight Loss Information

A Breakthrough in Weight Loss
by author Michael R. Lyon, MD

Why are so many people struggling with their weight today? With the thousands of weight loss programs and products being offered, why do most people still find it hard to lose excessive weight and keep it off?

Fortunately, Canadian researchers are making breakthroughs. They have discovered a natural way to control appetite and reverse the biochemical reasons why people find it so difficult to lose fat and not regain it.

For many years, researchers at the University of Toronto (U of T) have been at the forefront in understanding the health effects of dietary fibre. The University researchers were among the first to describe the cholesterol-lowering and appetite-suppressing effects of dietary fibre such as psyllium, guar gum, and oat bran. Unfortunately, to achieve the full benefits of these and other fibres, huge doses are required; dosages so high that side effects become intolerable. One of the most important discoveries made at the University was that most of the benefits of fibre were in proportion to volume and viscosity (thickness) of the fibre when added to water, rather than the actual dose of the fibre.

The quest for a dietary fibre with very high viscosity and volume resulted in the examination of hundreds of naturally occurring fibres and fibre combinations. The search for the perfect fibre was meticulous, tedious work with thousands of careful measurements and thousands of failed trials. Eventually, the University research team discovered a unique blend of highly purified fibres with dramatically high volume and viscosity properties.

Human clinical trials demonstrated that one to three grams of this fibre blend lowered cholesterol and reduced appetite. It also had the benefits of 20 or more grams of other fibre–with far less risk of gas, bloating, or other side effects that would be inevitable with 20-gram doses of fibre. Results of these clinical trials have been published in major medical journals and presented at major conferences around the world.

Two years ago, my research team at the Canadian Center for Functional Medicine and I partnered with the University of Toronto researchers to continue this research. Our research team was able to further refine their blend of soluble fibres, making them more stable in the digestive tract, more palatable for food applications, and higher in viscosity and volume than the original U of T discovery. This blend, referred to as PGX (polyglycoplex), is a true breakthrough in appetite control and weight reduction.

In addition to controlling appetite, PGX has been shown to reduce after-meal elevations in blood sugar and insulin. People who are overweight develop a condition known as insulin resistance, where insulin doesn’t work as well as it should and the body compensates for this by releasing excessive amounts of insulin. Elevated insulin levels, in turn, result in excessive fat storage, hypoglycemic food cravings and other serious problems. In essence, insulin resistance is a trap that holds on to the overweight person, making it very hard to lose the weight and keep it off.

PGX, if consumed daily, dramatically restores insulin sensitivity, reduces insulin levels, and normalizes appetite and blood sugar by taking away hypoglycemic food cravings that drive people to eat too much and make wrong food choices. Several major studies on PGX for weight control are now underway.

Michael R. Lyon, MD, is the Medical and Research Director for the Canadian Center for Functional Medicine. A fully referenced scientific monograph outlining the research behind PGX can be found at functionalmedicine.ca.

Source: alive #265, November 2004

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