Dear friends of health,

Many of you have read my two first letters on the topic of “Excess Weight and Obesity”, and you were right.
You now understand what surplus weight is made of, how heavy fat tissue is, and what it represents.
You have read and now understand the many conditions awaiting the overweight and the obese. Some of you suffer from these conditions already, or want to avoid them. We identified
the foods responsible for the build-up of surplus weight and obesity.

This third letter is neither a weight-loss program nor a guru’s recipe list. We are talking to your intelligence about the good decisions you should make, by explaining why you are going to make them and how you are going to proceed.

Put your minds at rest: I am NOT proposing you a diet, NOR giving you a list of banned foods, that you would be tempted to run back to while looking for a miracle pill that would do the job for you instead.

We all remember the French Mediator scandal, a sad memory. It was a prescription-based medication meant for overweight diabetic patients. Physicians expanded this prescription drug to people that wanted to lose weight effortlessly. People died.

Beware of new weight-loss pills, TV and radio weight-loss programs, of pills that could attack your body. Some of these pills could make your stools oily, your gas smelly and– this is absurd – hinder your body’s optimal absorption of liposoluble vitamins A, D, E and K, which are so important to your immune defenses and your brain.

You could be in two types of situations: Either you are slightly overweight, just a few pounds over normal that you could get rid of, or you are closer to being obese (I don’t like this word: hurtful and not considerate).

You are hungry, it’s time for one of your three meals of the day. Your stomach is concerned with your health, hence releases a hormone called ghrelin which is the hormone of hunger, . It stimulates your appetite.  Levels of ghrelin in the blood increase before meals and progressively diminish when the stomach fills up.

This means you should eat slowly, and chew each bite at least 20 times. A two-year-old chews a bite of apple or carrot up to 29 times before swallowing without being told to do so. And she does not yet have all her teeth. We adults forget that teeth are our best blender, mixer, the first step of our nutrition.

Only swallow when your foods have acquired a doughy, mashed or fluid consistence. Your brain tells you so. At the beginning, you will count how many times you are chewing. It is not easy to chew longer, when we are used to eat so fast, with the phone in our hand…

Ask your spouse, your friends, your kids or grand-kids to help you use your cheek muscles, and think about what you will put into your Palate of Flavors.

Salivating could have started already once you have smelled a good meal, once you have read the menu, or upon seeing your plate. Chewing is what massages your salivary gmands, stimulates them.

Salivary glands can manufacture up to 1.5 liter / 1.58 qt saliva per day, which is packed with digestive and taste enzymes. Taste enzymes were recently discovered. They allow us to better identify a broad variety of tastes when we chew our foods. Taste, savor, enjoy your meal! Think about wat you are eating, while you are sharing a meal with family or friends.

The sensation of gastric elongation is not perceptible unless you pay attention to it. You want to lose excess fat tissue and have decided to eat better and tastier foods, in smaller quantities, and you want to avoid the heaviness on the upper left side of your belly. You want to feel light and reject the post-meals sensations of heaviness and fatigue that makes you want to fall asleep.

Plan on eating raw vegetables, fresh fruits chewed extensively, eaten in between or during meals, salads, grated or cut vegetables (tomatoes, radishes, carrots, cucumbers, melons, fennel, pepper, celery…). When possible, choose vegetables from the current season (and preferably organic), to fill your stomach whether you eat one or many, and to give you a sensation of fullness.

If you are a little hungry in between meals, do not wait to starve. Your hunger will be quenched if you drink a glass of water, some herbal tea and a well-chewed fruit.

When they tell you that levels of the hunger hormone rise when we are on a diet, they are right, and this is why so many classic diets fail.

To avoid this anomaly, replace the foods that hurt your body by the ones that will benefit it: vegetable sources first, and as little cooked as possible: al dente (i.e. crunchy). They also have to retain their natural flavor and color.

Not that you should become a vegan, but you now understand how important it is to eat more vegetables, which will stretch your belly. It is an agreeable fast, unconstrained, vegetable-oriented, that consists in eating what nature gives us that is best. The whole family can participate!

In this way, you will take distance from the food industry, from pesticides, preservatives, taste enhancers, and all these strange names you read on ingredient labels.  Let us step away from all industrial manipulations that are meant to get us addicted, especially to real or hidden sugars.

Being mostly vegan is therefore essential, and will help you step aside from lactoholism, alcoholism, and fructosoholism: we will explain how.

It won’t keep you from having a glass of a good organic, sulfite-free, wine, or from a good steak once a week, nor from some good fish.  You should learn how to cook fish in a soft-cook steam cooker, so it sweats out any pesticides and heavy metals.

Once the stomach has received enough quality food and water, it will inform the brain. The stomach manufactures the hormone of satiety, called leptin, within 15 to 20 minutes of the foods reaching the stomach. That is why chewing and eating slowly is so critical: it decreases needs for eating.

Later down the line, it is fat tissue that manufactures the hormone of satiety, and releases leptin (also called the “thinness hormone”, since it comes from the greek “leptos”, which means “thin”).

Day/night, sleep/wake rhythms also influence our desires for foods.

In the morning, levels are low, they rise around lunch time (12-1). Levels are highest at midnight, since the body now is waiting for sleep to find true rest.

From my previous letters, you know that excess insulin is what makes sugar enter adipocytes – fat tissue cells where sugar will be transformed into fat. The same thing happens in your liver, which is loaded with sugar reserves that take the form of glycogen. When your liver becomes overloaded with sugar reserves, you feel heavy, constantly tired, out of breath after small efforts. You may not realize that this means that your immune defenses are crashing down.

Conscious or unconscious stresses disrupt all bodily regulatory functions. Anguish reflexes and cumulative stresses from the smallest to the biggest kinds, are difficult to manage if we don’t identify them. They reverberate in one of three areas of our daily lives:

• Diet: Bulimia affects people that stroke by overeating comfort foods to alleviate their stress. Their go-to foods are usually sweet, and may or not involve chocolate. They will consume products such as soda, Nutella, and all type of sweets. They will also consume a lot of dairy. Many people say I love cheese and yogurt.  Do they understand that they damage their health, and are the main cause of excess weight? It is also the case for white baguette, which is so tasty you’d eat it all in one seating,  and all types of viennoiseries’ and and snack on the sweet bakery section that some people eat dipped in milk… Let’s replace these by fresh fruit, oil-producing nuts, preferably organic soft-boiled eggs. For meals, think of eating sprouted legumes, and other starches that you have lightly soft steamed, so they remain crunchy.
• Two other reflexes also tend to affect our behaviors under stress, when it does not affect our diet. One consists in going on a shopping spree, buying everything and anything, sometimes to the point of going in debt. Because somewhere unconsciously your mind tells you “you are worth it”. The third reflex, involved when we manage food and money well, involves our love life, and consists in getting into a compulsive sort of sexuality, which is very trendy nowadays.

The most underrated ones are not disrupters from our environment, they are exogen hormones, i.e. hormones foreign to our body. To keep your mind at ease, manufacturers call them biomimetics. These include hormonal treatments for menopause and also contraceptive pills, with their different bi-hormonal dosages. Both are to blame for many strokes or cerebral vascular accidents.

Don’t forget many types of medical treatments such as anxiolytics, antidepressants, and sleeping pills, which often provoke bulimia and incite addictions to videogames or sweets.

Your liver will be the first to release its surplus energy. Its cells, called hepatocytes, which are swollen with fat, will release triglycerides (three bound fatty acids) into your blood flow. These triglycerides will need to be consumed/burned. There is no way around it: you must have some sort of physical activity.

Intellectual activity also is useful but burns less energy than your muscles. For sure, you may be more attracted to intellectual activity, or full awareness meditation, Yoga, or peaceful meditation, because not only your body but your whole Being is changing.

Your body fat progressively will diminish, but first fat loss will be limited to an invisible location. The first sites to lose their fat stores are those that surround your intestine & kidneys. It’s in the fat apron that we all carry, and that lays over the digestive tract. This make the melting of our fat tissue invisible. You should be aware of this, because you might not want to persevere if you don’t see results.

Along with abdominal fat, you will lose fat on the lower part of the body: ankles edema, and also of the whole body’s subcutaneous tissue, including the one of the fingers and the face.

Bowel function will also evolve slowly. It is not visible, but your sensations will change. Your gas will be different and less smelly because there will be less fermentation in your gut, and intestinal microbiota will balance.

Any constipation will also subside. Vegetal fibers will be preserved if you cook your foods for shorter amounts of time, and drink good tannin-rich wine (with resveratrol and rutin) at the end of your meals, which will contract intestinal muscles. So will extra virgin olive oil high in polyphenols.

Bowel movements will adapt to your new nutritional habits. Less bloating, less burping after meals, and less sleepiness after meals, which sometimes can slow you down at work in the afternoons.

Inutile de vous peser tous les jours, cela ne sert qu’à vous décourager. Vous l’avez compris, la perte de poids pour qu’elle soit significative demande un peu de temps. Une semaine est nécessaire. La première semaine, visez la stabilité ou une légère baisse qui vous encourage. Ce sont les semaines suivantes qui sont importantes et votre persévérance.

Vous allez vous rendre compte qu’en 4 semaines, vous pouvez perdre au moins 2 kilos. C’est la joie.

Yes, self-confidence is very important. It will be one of the results you will get from these nutritional changes. But you must understand that nutritional changes and self-confidence are not enough. You also have to burn all the fat tissue that hinders your body, your spirit, your affectivity, your whole being. All these extra calories, you will make them disappear by moving.

I am not proposing that you should sign up for a marathon, but to start moving slowly, and to find what physical activity fits you best. And it is NOT golf, if you go from a hole to the next in an electric car!

Take up, for example, a Nordic Trek, biking, or any other physical activity, so long as you practice it consistently. Beware: don’t overexert your body.  Don’t get out of breath; don’t push it so far you might collapse. You can start by adding a minute a day to your exercise routine if you start with only 5 minutes. Perhaps make it a goal to exercise three times a week.  Don’t decide to start next week end or after your vacation…

There as several advantages to such activity that you might already suspect:

• You will lose water present in your lymph, which stagnates in particular in the cellulite of the thighs;
• You will sweat, and hopefully abundantly. Keep drinking plenty of water! You want your urine is clear and not too smelly;
• Over the weeks, your hepatic enzymes levels, in particular Gamma GF, will begin to drop. You are on the right track;
• You will stimulate your muscular cells, called Myocytes, which will harness the energy they need from your liver’s glycogen. Your liver will be decongested from its fats, and come back to its primary task of metabolizing carbohydrates which muscles love when they are active.

Did you notice that fasting is now trendy? Set aside diets that are a hindrance and don’t work. Fasting is trendy, and that’s great news. But beware: don’t go there blindly.  When they say “fast with A or B” it might just mean fasting while eating organic grapes for the two week of grape harvest.

Conversely, fasting from dairy products means not having any, while fasting with fresh extracted fruit juices means you don’t have anything else beside these juices.

So, choose what fits you best, depending on your taste and goals. Enjoy fasting. You can do it one day a week, one week per trimester, per year. It can’t hurt. Your body, your heart, your spirit and perhaps your soul will repay you in happiness.

You are significantly overweight. You are on a bad path. You accumulated weight, 10, 20 40 kilos or 20, 45, perhaps 70 lbs too many. You’ve tried it all, your wallet suffered, and for what!

You went to see specialists, the one on the corner and the fancy famous ones. They gave you menus, recipes, do’s and don’t lists… Everything got trashed, and you are discouraged.

It’s never too late. Read these three letters again, with a pen. Print them and get an appointment with a micro nutritionist or a naturopath.

Before you start anything, the person that will coach you, whether he is a medical doctor or not, will absolutely need to proceed with a biological plus a clinical check-up. He will listen with empathy and sensitiveness to your motivations, your concerns, your personal history, your suffering.

This check-up will assess:

• Liver health, by checking enzymes levels (aspartate-alanine aminotransferase, alkaline phosphatase, gamma glutamyl transferase);
• Kidneys’ health, by checking serum creatinine levels and filtration levels
• Pancreatic health, by assessing your blood sugar levels (glycemia) and levels of glycated hemoglobin A1c which reveal your nutritional habits of the last 2-3 months, and perhaps your insulin levels;
• Your immunological status, through a full blood count, checking in particular your lymphocytes and if necessary the ratio of CD4 (helper T) to CD8 (suppressor T).

Plan on a monthly check up to verify if their advice is not too difficult to follow. Try to prioritize the consumption of products as natural as possible. All the better if you grow produce in your own garden.

My very best to you,

Professor Henri Joyeux

(1) Mangez Mieux et Meilleur de 0 à 100 ans – Pr Henri Joyeux and Jean Joyeux-  Le Rocher publishing.
(2) Like the paunch of a cow. The paunch is the first of 4 compartments of ruminant’s digestive systems. It is by far the most voluminous of the four, and plays a critical role in the degradation of nutrients through bacterial fermentation.
(3) Tout à la Vapeur douce : 125 recettes – Christine Bouguet-Joyeux and Bernadette Jastrebski –Le Rocher publishing, 2019.
(4) Lutter contre le Stress, un remède contre le cancer – Professor Henri Joyeux- André Joyeux and Luc Joyeux, Mds,- Le Rocher publishing.
(5) You understand why I prescribe yogurt on the eve of a patient’s travels to Heaven, because these product are not meant to be chewed, and they bring in too much lactose. You also understand why you should avoid them with children, and replace them with a piece of cheese that they can chew, along with fresh fruits of the current season.
(6) Plastics containing Bisphenol A (BPA), pesticides, DDT which is the most famous artificial estrogen.
(7) Olivie plus, by Atlas Olive Oil.

The Letter of Professeur Joyeux is an independent and free information service. It specializes in providing the wider public and families with disease prevention information.

These health information is provided free of charge by this organization and cannot be considered as personal medical advice. No treatment should be initiated solely on the basis of this content. It is strongly advised to consult a properly licensed health professional to seek responses with regard to one’s health and well-being. No information or product mentioned on this website is meant to diagnose, treat, atone or cure a disease.

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