HRT and water retention: my personal experience

You can read about my personal experience of HRT causing massive water retention and, consequently, morbid obesity, in my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection. Many other prescription drugs cause similar problems. - See amitriptyline and other antidepressants and prescribed steroids and other drugs. If you have these problems, you may like to consider cutting down on salt and salty food.

If you REALLY want to lose weight you need to cut out the salty stuff.

Lose weight!

Guide to salty foods

It's European Obesity Day today.

Drawing special attention today to the growing incidence of obesity is unlikely to reduce the problem, because the usual suspects (eating too many calories/too much fat and not taking enough exercise) will be re-accused and again found guilty, and the well-known but incorrect advice will yet again be trotted out mindlessly to the unfortunate victims of the advice, namely: "Why don't you just eat less and exercise more?" - See the mostly sneering Comments that follow this Guardian article.

While the rôle of salt remains unacknowledged by the 'experts' on obesity, there isn't a snowball's chance in Hell that obesity will start to decline.

Lose weight by eating less salt! - Go on! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!
See my website
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Dr Iain Brownlee and Prof Jeff Pearson of Newcastle University believe that seaweed may prove significant in reducing obesity. I don't.

The suggestion made by these researchers is widely reported today. See this BBC News report and this Press Release Could seaweed reduce obesity by reducing fat absorption? for example.

Their claim is that the addition of dietary fibre from alginate, one of the world’s largest commercially-used seaweeds, could reduce the amount of fat absorbed by the body by around 75%. Call me cynical, but my sceptical antennae are roused by the information that this seaweed is a highly commercial product. No doubt a number of food and drink companies are hoping to profit from this research.

Well, maybe alginate could significantly reduce the amount of fat absorbed by the body. I don't know. But whether it could or not is, I submit, largely irrelevant. Reducing fat intake does not reduce obesity, and low fat intake is not conducive to health.

Excess weight is caused by sensitivity to salt and NOT by overeating. - Sensitivity to salt leads to fluid retention and this sometimes leads on to fat retention. - Fluid retention (i.e. excess weight) is easily reduced by cutting down on intake of salt and salty food. Eating plenty of fruit and unsalted vegetables makes the fluid loss even speedier. These measures also reduce fat retention. In addition, fat retention can be reduced by increasing intake of calcium, magnesium and potassium.

And WHEN is someone in Government going to inform people that the most extreme cases of obesity - morbid obesity - are the result of taking prescription drugs incautiously prescribed, often in high dose, by doctors inadequately informed about their side-effects? - If we could have a Government initiative to curb the massive over-prescribing by doctors, that would reduce obesity very effectively indeed!

Here is the correct information:

Lose weight safely, reduce your risk of most cancers, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, stroke, heart disease, heart attack, vascular dementia, osteopenia, osteoporosis, hypercholesterolaemia, depression, liver and kidney problems, and improve your health in many other ways without drugs, hunger or expense by eating less salt! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

And see Sodium in foods and

http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/story.html - my 'political' page

http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/socio.html - social and economic considerations

amitriptyline

prescribed steroids and HRT

See advice for pregnant mothers

Children and Obesity

Associated health conditions

and FAT RETENTION

I can be contacted via my website if you need my further help. My help is free.

Amitriptyline, Constipation and All-Bran

Just an extra warning about the tricyclic anti-depressant, AMITRIPTYLINE:

As well as frequently causing weight gain/sodium retention/water retention/obesity as a side-effect, amitriptyline also causes constipation. Doctors sometimes suggest counteracting the constipation by eating All-Bran because of its high fibre content. - But you would be wise to avoid All-Bran, because it is high in sodium/salt. This high salt content will increase the weight gain from the amitriptyline and will increase all the other problems associated with the weight gain - higher blood pressure, swollen blood vessels, breast tenderness, etc. If you take amitriptyline it is advisable to lower your salt intake as much as you can in order to keep the weight gain to a minimum.

Lose weight, reduce your risk of most cancers, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, heart attack, vascular dementia, stroke, osteopenia, osteoporosis, osteomalacia, hypercholesterolaemia, depression, liver and kidney problems, boost your lung function and improve your health in many other ways without drugs, hunger or expense by eating less salt! - Try it!

See my website www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk
The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.

Sodium in foods

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

Do you wonder why it is that some people can eat whatever they like, and as much as they like, and not become fat?

Do you wonder why it is that some people can eat whatever they like, and as much as they like, and not become fat, while other people become fat despite not eating a lot and not being lazy? - The explanation is that the people who become fat are vulnerable to salt. For them, eating salt causes them to retain extra bodily fluid and this causes rhem to become fatter and to gain weight.

The groups of people vulnerable to salt are babies and children, people who take or who have taken certain prescribed steroids, including prednisone and prednisolone, or certain other prescribed drugs, women who take or have taken HRT or other oestrogen-containing drugs such as some contraceptive medications, people who take or have taken amitriptyline or other tricyclic antidepressants or some other psychotropic/psychoactive drugs, pregnant mothers, PMT sufferers and people who ate salt as children. These groups need to minimise their salt intake.

Salt Can Cause Obesity

If you fall into one of the vulnerable groups I have listed or if you ate a high salt diet as a child you will be sensitive to salt. People without this problem can eat salty foods without doing a lot of harm to themselves, because their kidneys will excrete the sodium which is excess to their requirements. But for people sensitive to salt, some of the excess sodium, along with the water it attracts, will enter their blood stream and not be excreted. So they carry extra weight - as water - around with them all the time. They also lose more heat from their bodies because the surface area of their body has increased with the added water, and the rate at which a body loses heat is proportional to its surface area. - They therefore need extra calories to do the extra work and to provide the extra heat. - So their appetite increases in order to obtain these extra calories. - So they may very well eat more to satisfy their genuine need for calories. - If what they eat is salty, then the cycle will repeat itself and they are likely to become obese.

To break the cycle and put the process into reverse, all that is necessary for them to do is to eat less salt. And eating extra potassium by way of fresh fruit and vegetables will accelerate the excretion of the sodium and water and speed up the weight loss.

In my opinion, people who remain slim are slim not because they have strong will-power to resist extra calories, but because they have strong-walled healthy veins which can resist the incursion of extra salt water.

See also my Fat Retention page.

If you want to lose weight, eat less salt!

Forget about calories! - Cut down on salt! - You'll lose weight fast - as if by magic!