Check your Medications

During the 3 months prior to my no-sugar experiment, I had been carefully monitoring my exercise and eating habits. I started to work out 45 minutes a day, a MINIMUM of 5 days a week. I measured out my food to the Nth degree, per my dietician's regimen. So at the end of three months when I had ONLY lost SIX pounds for all that work. I knew something was REALLY wrong with my body.

It was around this time that I discovered the importance of examining the effects of medications from the end-consumers personal experiences, and not just the scientific studies. And now it is one of the first pieces of advice that I give anyone, regarding becoming healthier.

First and foremost, I was on a medication that was well-known to cause weight-gain. The studies said 10 pounds within the first year. I gained 40 pounds within the first year. Almost all medications now have forums where you can read personal experiences with the medication -literally hundreds and hundreds of personal experiences. That is how I learned the average weight gain for my medication was actually 40 pounds. Forty pounds is a major red flag. I went back and studied the side-effects, potential side-effects, rare side-effects, etc., only to discover what was going on here was not about side-effects at all. Rather, it was the chemical mechanism of the drug itself and, likewise, the drug family. And what this drug family caused was, "Metabolic Syndrome".

The long and the short of what Metabolic Syndrome is, is the following, from the Mayo Clinic:

"Having metabolic syndrome means you have three or more disorders related to your metabolism at the same time, including:

■Obesity, particularly around your waist (having an "apple shape")
■A systolic (top number) blood pressure measurement higher than 120 millimeters of mercury (mm Hg) or a diastolic (bottom number) blood pressure measurement higher than 80 mm Hg
■An elevated level of the blood fat called triglycerides and a low level of high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol — the "good" cholesterol
■Resistance to insulin, a hormone that helps to regulate the amount of sugar in your body

Having one component of metabolic syndrome means you're more likely to have others. And the more components you have, the greater are the risks to your health."

I had every single one of these and more. My thyroid had also gone hypo (underactive) because of this syndrome. I slept 9-10 hours every night and took 1-2 hour naps every day. I had a blood-sugar attack so bad one time, that I actually almost called 911.

Once I discerned that my medications were to blame, I changed them. It took about 3-4 years (I had been on the medications about 10), but I lost some weight, my energy returned, my blood sugar stopped wigging out, my thyroid swung back to mid-range, and so on.

My advice to anyone trying to become healthier is: "Check your medications by reading what the end-users' personal experiences are".

Experience is more important than knowledge. Not everything can be captured in even the most scientific of studies. That is important to understand -especially when it comes to your own health.