38 ■^ EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE ROSEDALE DIET
moth or today allows a grandmother, in the throes of a terrible accident,
to lift a car off her grandchild. Without it, we would not be here today.
The stress response is regulated by the sympathetic nervous system and
it kicks in automatically without your even thinking about it.
When you are exposed to a stressful situation, the adrenal glands,located on top of the kidneys, begin to pump out stress hormones to
help our bodies cope with immediate danger, and prepare for extreme
exertion. Our blood pressure rises, our hearts beat faster, our blood is
made to clot more easily in the event we are injured, and the flow of
blood is routed from the digestive system to the muscles where it is
needed to fuel our escape or help us hunt. As all of this is happening,
stress hormones called epinephrine (adrenaline) and corticosteroids
send blood sugar levels soaring to provide turbo charging fuel that can
be burned anaerobically, that is, without oxygen. This is fortunate since
under stress and heavy exertion we may not be able to breathe fast
enough to supply sufficient oxygen to burn fat. You burn sugar very
quickly as you run for your life to get away from a chasing tiger. When
the immediate danger and stress are over, you cells should revert back
to fat burning, and your body should get back to normal.
What happens when your body continually uses sugar as its pri-mary fuel? The resulting leptin resistance will lock you in sugar burning
mode, simulating the “stressed out,” fight-or-flight mode. Even though
you may not know it, your diet becomes one of the biggest “stressors” in
your life, constantly triggering your sympathetic nervous system,
whether or not there is an actual danger or stress. You are constantly in
the “fight-or-flight,” turbo-charged mode and will undergo more and
more wear and tear. You will, as would your car engine if continually
revved, quickly wear out, age, become diseased, and die.
The vicious cycle born from leptin resistance can have a cata-strophic effect on every organ system in the body, seriously compromis-
ing health. Fat begins to accumulate in places where this should not
happen, such as around the waist or midline. This common condition,
known as midline adiposity or commonly as “the apple shape,” is a ma-
jor cause of insulin resistance. The fat that you can see on your body is
only the tip of the iceberg. The fat that you don’t see can be even more
dangerous. Fat deposits accumulate around and within internal organs