Long time readers of The Health Hound certainly have come to know the many health benefits to be gained by losing weight. My readers also know that The Hound is an advocate of “healthy” weight loss, so it stands to reason that there is also “unhealthy” weight loss. For sure there is a right way and a wrong way to lose weight. But, is it possible that the very act of losing weight, no matter how it is accomplished, could be harmful to your health? A group of Korean researchers are making that suggestion.
Despite overwhelming evidence that losing weight reduces your risk of diabetes, cancers, heart problems, and other metabolic conditions, Duk-Hee Lee and her research team from Kyungpook National University in Daegu, South Korea, found evidence to support her theory that extensive and long-term weight loss can release “stored toxins” into the bloodstream.
There is validity to Lee’s claims. You have heard me going on for years now about the “toxic soup” we are all swimming around in. All of those pollutants in the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the foods we eat, do get stored in fatty tissue. According to Lee and her research team, when you break down fat during dieting, all that bad stuff gets released. Lee says “…we think that these increased toxin levels due to weight loss can affect human health in a variety of ways.”
Lee and her colleagues studied almost 1100 people who had achieved long-term weight loss, and measured their blood for toxic chemicals known as Persistent Organic Pollutants, or POPs. The list of POPs includes pesticides such as DDT, and industrial chemicals like polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), and dioxin.
The researchers found that those in the study who lost the most weight over a period of 10 years had the highest concentrations of detectable POPs in their blood. These POPs, have been linked to type 2 diabetes, hypertension, coronary heart disease and rheumatoid arthritis.
The researchers analyzed data obtained from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. They selected seven toxic chemicals that had the highest detection rate in blood samples, and focused on people ages 40 or older who had measurable levels of these pollutants in their blood and who had also lost or gained weight.
Lee was quick to point out that many of the POPs she tested for in the study have been banned for many years in most developed countries. However, they are still commonly found in the environment and “stored in people” because they take a long time to break down.
So what should you take away from this research? Don’t bother to lose weight? Hardly, what I think this research suggests is the value of not only dieting, but detoxification dieting, such as a Juice Cleanse, which helps to rid the body of toxins before, during, and after losing weight.