Leptin

And that's why Dr. William Osler, all the way back in the early 1900s, said you must eat more fat because if you eat more fat, your body will become full.

Leptin was a very interesting topic which is discussed sometimes.

Leptin was discovered in 1994 and they thought it was so important they called the gene the OB gene for the obese gene.

And what leptin is, is it's actually produced by the fat cells.

So as you get more fat cells, your leptin level goes up and it feeds back into the brain and the brain says, okay, I'm over my weight, you know, don't eat so much anymore.

Mm-hmm

... how leptin ties into this energy story.

Leptin hormone being the energy accountant.

When, when you pull it together, like then it just really becomes so clear why this low energy state is a really great metric to use in yourself-

Mm-hmm

And this is something that often just turn-- that, that, that sort of triggers the change.

I go, "When you have leptin resistance, you are hungry all the time because Leptin is the hormone of satiety.

And so you say to me, "But I could never do this diet because I'm gonna be hungry all the time." No, no, no, no.

Once you cut out sugar and reduce fructose in particular, your hunger will automatically drop.

So now let's talk about another hormone that I think is fascinating.

We've done a couple episodes on it, and that is leptin.

Leptin is produced primarily by fat cells, and one of its jobs is communicating information from long-term energy stores to your brain.

And when I say long-term energy stores, I'm talking about our fat stores.

Generally speaking, as fat mass increases, leptin levels increase.

And so then it's circulating in the blood and this is where you get insulin resistance.

All right, now let's consider leptin.

Leptin is produced primarily by our fat cells, and it is one of the ways the body communicates its long-term energy stores to the brain.

Generally speaking, the more body fat someone carries, the more leptin the fat cells produce.

Now, what's supposed to happen is that leptin travels to the brain, particularly the hypothalamus, and communicates something roughly like, hey, we have enough energy stored.