Do you have difficulty losing weight? Do you find that you quickly gain the weight back after the initial weight loss from any diet? Are you stuck in the cycle of yo-yo dieting? Do you experience cravings and have hunger pangs even after meals? The reason for all this is that you may have leptin resistance.
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Leptin is this hormone that warns your brain if you need more food for energy but also if you have enough fat stored. The BIG problem is that if you are with leptin resistance, your brain is unable to recognize leptin messages, which drives cravings, unhealthy eating behavior, and ultimately weight gain.
In this article, we will clarify what leptin is. You will see how leptin resistance works, the leading causes to develop, and the symptoms you may experience with leptin resistance. You will find out the top natural support strategies for improving leptin sensitivity to enhance your health and weight status.
What Is Leptin?
Leptin is a hormone created by your fat cells located in your fatty tissues. Research has revealed that the more fat you have, the more leptin your body produces as a result. Leptin moves through the bloodstream to your brain to send signals to your hypothalamus. An essential part of its functions is to help your brain decide how much you need to eat and control your food consumption.
Your fat cells produce leptin using it to signal your brain how much fat they carry. If you have enough fat cells or more than enough, raised leptin levels will signal that. If you have low-fat levels, decreased leptin levels will signal that you may need to eat more. If you have more fat and increased leptin levels, your body will get signals that you need to eat less and burn more to stay in a healthy range.
The system works base on a negative feedback loop similar to your blood pressure and breathing, allowing your body to stay in a stable, healthy state. A 2003 study conducted during 72-hour fasting of people, was shown leptin’s role, particularly in regulating neuroendocrine and metabolic function. According to the study, understanding leptin function can significantly help understand and treat overweight and obesity and other eating disorders (1, 2, 3).
Leptin Resistance Occurring/Development
If you are obese or even overweight, your body carries many fat cells, meaning you also have high leptin levels. Typically, high leptin levels should push your body to naturally limit your food consumption by messaging your brain that you have plenty of stored fat and energy to survive.
Though, if you have leptin resistance, these leptin signals do not work properly. If you are with leptin resistance, you may have plenty of fat and plenty of leptin, and the bad news is that your brain is unable to see and recognize it.
According to a 2013 research on the leptin resistance’ molecular mechanisms, leptin resistance is a crucial biological contributor to overweight and obesity(which should not be neglected). Although having high leptin levels, your brain cannot recognize this and doesn’t get the required leptin signals. The result is, it acts in the same way as if you don’t have enough stored energy, making you to starving more and more. (4, 5, 6 )
Analysis of leptin’s role in energy balance and obesity showed that this poor communication would tend your brain to choose behavior patterns to regain body fat that it considers as missing. As a result, your brain will urge you to eat more to prevent starvation, decrease energy expenditure, and ultimately store more energy.( 7, 8, 9).
Leptin resistance may also be one of the BIG reasons why many diets disappoint and fail and why some individuals struggle to drop pounds. While you lose weight, your body melts fat mass as part of the process, but it may still not reverse leptin resistance, which will hinder slimming.
Your brain can tighten your belt and inflate your hunger and appetite and lessen energy expenditure to make up for the lost fat; it’s such a common leading contributor cause the yo-yo effect in many diets. (10, 11, 12)
Besides, leptin resistance often develops side by side with insulin resistance as well. Hence, its treatment would have a positive role in preventing and handling conditions as prediabetes and diabetes. (13)
Leptin Resistance Symptoms
Leptin resistance has a variety of symptoms that include:
- Cravings, particularly more sugar and carb cravings
- Hunger even after eating
- Difficulty when losing weight or fast gain back lost weight
- Weight gain
- Belly fat
- Poor energy levels
- Blood sugar irregularities
- High blood pressure
- High triglycerides
- Extra stress–experiencing unwarranted and spontaneous stress
If you are dubious that you have leptin resistance, you can do a simple lab test. Keep in mind that the optimal fasting leptin levels are between 4 and 6 ng/L. While this is a simple lab test, however, conventional medical doctors don’t test for it.
After we reviewed what leptin resistance is, it’s essential to know which are base natural support strategies to enhance the work of this crucial fat-storage hormone as well as improve your overall health at all.
Leading Causes of Leptin Resistance
The leading causes of leptin resistance are various lifestyle, environmental, dietary, and health factors. Let’s look at them one by one.
Stress and Poor Sleep
Stress and poor sleep are also a part of a vicious cycle. Chronic stress contributes to poor quality sleep, while poor sleep in turn increase stress. When you are under stress, your body creates more cortisol–the primary stress hormone. Leptin resistance leads to higher stress response and, with that, to more cortisol production.
The big problem is that cortisol causes more fat production/ accumulation, which feeds the cycle of leptin resistance, obesity, and metabolic syndrome. As a 2013 and a 2016 survey shown, chronic stress may result in leptin resistance, insulin resistance, and more impulsive eating of comfort foods keeping you in this cycle of leptin resistance and weight issues. (13, 14).
Chronic Inflammation
Chronic inflammation is among the leading underlying causes of most of our modern-day health issues. Chronic inflammation may develop due to poor dietary choice eating, rich in sugar pro-inflammatory diet, artificial ingredients, refined oil and processed food, lack of exercise, chronic stress, poor sleep, infections, environmental toxicity, and more. It found that that inflammatory signals in your hypothalamus are among the leading underlying causes of that leptin resistance to grow.
According to a 2010 science examination, leptin is an essential connection between immune homeostasis and inflammation, and leptin can cause a pro-inflammatory response meaning more body inflammation. This can raise your risk of other health issues as well. A 2008 study has found that leptin and inflammatory markers in leptin-resistance induced by obesity may help identify cardiovascular health problems’ risk factors. (15, 16).
Insulin Resistance
Leptin resistance and insulin resistance go side by side, so if you are experiencing one, it is good to check for the other and treat both issues. Insulin resistance raises insulin in the blood, which creates difficulties for your brain to estimate your leptin levels. Increased leptin resistance can carry out more food cravings, hunger after meals, weight gain, and low energy. These are all symptoms that people with insulin resistance, prediabetes, and diabetes are also familiar with.
In turn, these symptoms can lead to elevated blood sugar levels, further feeding insulin resistance cycle, along with other associated health concerns. A 2013 review suggests that tackling leptin resistance may also help improve insulin sensitivity and symptoms of prediabetes and diabetes. (17).
Environmental Toxins
Environmental toxicity is a huge health risk, yet it’s nearly impossible to run away from it entirely. Toxins are everywhere. Our polluted air, indoor air, tap water, conventional cleaning products, cigarette smoke, herbicides, pesticides, and plastics are just some cases of environmental toxins that you have to pay attention to.
Environmental toxins grow your risk of chronic inflammation and chronic health problems. Also, environmental factors are one of the hidden causes behind our obesity epidemic. 2010 explore discussed that exposure to environmental chemicals can increase the risk of obesity, metabolic disease, insulin resistance, and obesity-related cardiovascular problems. As you’ve understood already, these problems go side by side with leptin resistance (18).
Natural Strategies to Prevent/Combat Leptin Resistance Symptoms
The great news is that if you have leptin resistance symptoms, you can better your health by making some simple changes in your life. Below I list the top natural strategies to support leptin resistance as well as your overall health.
Anti-Inflammatory Nutrition Plan
One of the best paths to reduce chronic inflammation and support your body is by adopting an anti-inflammatory nutrition plan. Remove all pro-inflammatory foods, including refined oils, refined sugar, artificial ingredients, junk, and deep-fried foods, sugary drinks, sodas, and processed foods (15, 16).
Switch to an anti-inflammatory and nutrient-dense diet rich in greens and vegetables, herbs and spices, low glycemic index fruits, clean animal protein, and healthy fats. You may follow this anti-inflammatory nutrition diet and further support your health by utilizing ketogenic diet principles and practicing intermittent fasting. To learn more about the anti-inflammatory benefits of the ketogenic diet, I recommend reading this article.
Get Into Ketosis by Adapting to a Keto Diet Plan
Our modern-day diet that most people have is high or moderate in carbs. The result is, most people’s bodies use dietary glucose from these foods(mostly carbs) as an energy source. However, if you’re following a high-fat/low-carb diet, your body doesn’t take enough glucose and needs to turn to dietary and stored fat as an energy source.
These fats are then transformed into ketones and then into energy. Ketosis can help you improve insulin sensitivity, lose body fat, reduce inflammation, improve mitochondrial functionality, increase autophagy, and strengthen your overall health (19, 20).
Among the best ways to get into ketosis is by practicing a low-carb ketogenic diet. Focus on healthy fats, such as avocados, organic butter, coconut oil, ghee, and clean animal protein, such as grass-fed poultry and eggs, pasture-raised beef, wild-caught fish, as well as plenty of greens, vegetables, fermented foods, herbs, spices, and some nuts, seeds, and low glycemic index fruits.
Make sure to hold your carbohydrate consumption low at around 5 to 10 percent. Additionally, practicing intermittent fasting can help to achieve ketosis naturally and faster. I recommend this article if you want to learn more about ketones, ketosis, and a keto diet at all and ultimately decide whether it is right for you.
Apply Intermittent Fasting
Intermittent fasting is an eating model that alternates between eating (feasting) and not eating (fasting) for a certain period, usually one day. Intermittent fasting goes side by side with the ketogenic diet. They share almost the same benefits, including better insulin sensitivity, reduced inflammation, higher autophagy, better immune response, and overall low risk of chronic disease (21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28,).
Our recommendation is for beginners to start with 12 hours of fasting a day, including overnight sleep, then gradually increasing the fasting window. Most people feel their best with the 16:8 method, where they have16 hours of fasting and 8 hours for your meals. You must stay in close communication with your body, observe your symptoms, and figure out what works best for your body.
Improve Sleep Quality
Improving your sleep is crucial for your overall health. Studies from 2004 and 2015 have demonstrated that low sleep quality is associated with poor leptin levels. However, enhanced sleep may help enhance leptin sensitivity, benefit weight loss, lower inflammation, and strengthen your overall health (29, 30).
We recommend that you need to take 7 to 9 hours of quality sleep at night. Avoid sugary foods, caffeine, stress, and electronics close to bedtime, and try to use some relaxing bedtime routine that helps you wind down. Practices like taking a healing bath, reading, journaling, practicing gratitude, meditation, and prayer, are all great ideas that relax your body and calm your mind. Make sure to assist your inside sleep rhythms by having a regular bedtime and waking up around the same time each day.
Reduce Stress Levels
As you’ve known earlier, chronic stress is a significant contributing factor to leptin resistance, inflammation, obesity, and other health difficulties. Dealing/reducing your stress levels is critical for improved leptin sensitivity and better health (13, 14).
Avoid people and situations that stress you out as much as possible. Because eradicating these interactions is impossible, you must learn to respond to stress better and practice stress-reducing strategies. Surround yourself with uplifting and loving people, and make sure always to give yourself some ‘me-time. Practice more gratitude, meditation, prayer, yoga, grounding or QiGong and Tai Chi, plus other stress-reducing strategies. Move your body more and spend more time in nature.
Improve Detoxification Pathways
Throughout our lives, we are open to an immense amount of toxins. Even if you have already improved your diet, eliminated toxic conventional products, and get turned your home into a non-toxic environment. Since you have many years under your belt exposed to toxins(air toxicity, herbicides, pesticides, mold, infections, allergens, chemicals, and plastics), improving your detoxification pathways is key to better leptin sensitivity and improved health(31). To support your detoxification, you need to drink plenty of clean water or herbal tea to encourage toxins elimination by sweating and urination.
Top Leptin Resistance Medication & Treatment
In addition to the above lifestyle and dietary strategies, we recommend various supplements to promote better leptin sensitivity and enhance your health.
Adaptogens
Adaptogens are well known for their support of your hormonal health and your stress levels. A 2012 double-blind, placebo-controlled research showed that Ashwagandha could decrease stress and anxiety, which are both key factors that can contribute to leptin resistance. (32)
We recommend taking Stress & Cortisol Relief(Of Dr. Sam Robbins) to support your health. It contains Ashwagandha as well as Rhodiola, Holy Basil, Magnolia (bark), Phellodendron (bark) extracts, and nerve supporting Vitamins–B6, B5, Magnesium, Zinc. Take one capsule twice a day for optimal results.
Curcumin
Curcumin is the active substance of spice turmeric. It provides excellent anti-inflammatory and anti-microbial benefits. A 2016 study discovered that an 8-week supplementation with Curcumin helped reduce leptin levels in patients with metabolic syndrome. A 2019 study has uncovered the same advantages in people with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. (33, 34)
Resveratrol
Resveratrol is part of a group of polyphenols with powerful antioxidant benefits on your body. According to a 2014 animal research, Resveratrol helps prevent insulin resistance, leptin resistance, abdominal obesity, and hyperglycemia in rats. A 2019 study found that Resveratrol can improve cellular response to leptin signals. (35, 36, 37)
We recommend Inflame & Pain Relief(HFL products of Dr. Sam Robins), which is a fantastic supplement. It consists of a high-available form of Curcumin and Resveratrol, White Willow Bark, Pine Bark, Ginger, Cat’s claw, Green Tea, and Boswellia extracts. To help decrease your inflammation levels, lower oxidative stress, support your blood circulation and lymphatic stress, strengthen immunity, and support your overall health. Take one capsule twice a day or two capsules twice a day for maximum results(38, 39).
Introducing Leptoconnect
There’s an entirely natural way to stimulate your body’s natural healing ability and improve your leptin sensitivity. It’s by using a natural blend of herbs, spices, medical mushrooms, and specific vitamins and minerals, all of which are scientifically researched/proven to promote your leptin receptors’ good functioning.
LeptoConnect is The entirely 100% natural blend designed to help you lose fat by supporting more effective work of your leptin receptors. It contains:
- 3 sacred medicinal mushrooms for centuries used as “food for the brain and body”
- Graviola Leaves or “the Brazilian Pow-Pow” that support improved intercellular communication and help support the leptin “satiety” signals
- 3 more amplifiers that, when combined with the fat-blasting mushrooms, increase their effectiveness: Red raspberries, Cat’s Claw, Saw palmetto
- 5 star-vitamins to fully support the body through the entire weight loss process and prevent any nutrient deficiency: Vitamin B6, Zinc, Vitamin E, Copper, Green tea
This unique formula is extremely powerful!
LeptoConnect does not only help you melt pounds of ugly fat, leaving your stomach flat and toned, but it is also meant to support your health from head to toe.
The capsules are so composed as to contain the purest, highest quality 18 plant extracts and vitamins in the required and exact quantities in order to address and resolve precisely the problem of leptin resistance. You can learn more about this great, entirely natural product by visiting their website and watch this free presentation.
Final Thoughts
Leptin is a hormone that helps your brain regulate your appetite and eating behavior. If you have leptin resistance symptoms, it means your brain cannot recognize leptin signals, which leads to hunger after meals, cravings, more weight gain, development of insulin resistance, yo-yo dieting, and obesity.
Suppose you suspect that you have leptin resistance. In that case, I recommend following the natural strategies listed above for effective leptin resistance medication & treatment, which would help you quickly achieve better leptin sensitivity and improve your overall health and wellness.
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