Exactly why this is referred to as a “breakthrough discovery” is unclear to me, as we’ve been reporting on the links between leptin resistance and obesity for about five years.

Dr. Ron Rosdale is an expert on this topic and has written guest commentaries on this site several times. Some of them are included in the Related Articles section below.

I hope this research will become common knowledge soon. Nothing bothers me more than folks who refuse to believe they have the power to be healthy because of “bad genes.” It’s a cop-out. Good health eventually always comes back to the basics of good nutrition!

What’s Leptin Got to Do With It?

Many have trouble swallowing the concept that eating fat does not make you fat. Rather, it’s really your inability to burn and store fat properly that will make you pack on the pounds, and eventually lead to chronic diseases, including:

• Obesity
• Diabetes
• Heart disease
• Autoimmune diseases like arthritis
• Osteoporosis

Hormones, especially leptin, regulate your body’s ability to burn fat. Leptin is released when sugar is metabolized in fat cells, and if you eat a diet that causes excessive surges in leptin, you will create disease. The standard American diet (SAD) is a perfect example of the type of diet that will cause you to become leptin-resistant, meaning your brain can no longer “hear” the signals telling it to stop eating and storing fat.

Leptin Resistance Creates a Vicious Cycle

Leptin is a hormone that communicates with your brain, letting it know how much energy your body has stored, and whether or not it’s full. Once full, one of leptin’s functions is to reduce your appetite and induce fat burning. Low leptin levels (leptin resistance) in the brain, however, will signal your body to keep eating and storing more fat.

As your appetite control centers in your hypothalamus become more and more resistant to hearing the messages from leptin, it believes you don’t have enough fat stores to live. Also lost is your ability to figure out where to store fat. Most of it ends up being stored in your abdomen, including your internal organs, such as your liver. This further disrupts your liver’s ability to hear other signals, such as those from insulin.

Your liver, therefore, begins to manufacture too much sugar from protein, contributing to the onset of diabetes, and a vicious cycle is set in full motion.

What’s the Solution?

If your mother ate lots of sugar and starches while pregnant, you may have been pre-disposed to leptin resistance -- essentially, your body is set up to cope with a life of scarcity. An elevated leptin level in a fasting blood sample is an indication of leptin resistance. Fortunately, this is a completely reversible situation.

Eating a balanced diet, custom made for your specific metabolism, can reverse leptin resistance or ensure you never get to that stage in the first place. My new book, Take Control of Your Health, will give you the tools you need to create and maintain a high level of health, regardless of what your genes may be telling you.