The Ten Hormones That Control Health and Weight
When your hormones are perfectly balanced, your body is ready to play the
music of life. Like an orchestra with half the musicians taking the day off, your
body can’t make beautiful music without all its hormones present and playing
together. When your hormones are there, playing in tune, you feel amazing. But
let’s see what happens when the pianist takes the day off, the violinist starts to
play on his or her own, and the clarinetist can hardly play. How would that
sound? Horrible, right? That’s exactly what happens inside your body when your
hormones aren’t working together. Every bite you take influences your
hormones.
It’s no surprise that the dramatic dietary changes that we adopted because of
our fear of fat and due to our increased intake of sugar have wreaked havoc on
our hormones. In turn, we’ve become a sick society.
A hormone, by definition, is a substance that regulates bodily functions. The
human body contains more than 100 types of hormones. Hormones regulate
everything—your heartbeat, breathing, blood pressure, energy, weight, and so
on. Hormones put you to sleep at night and wake you up in the morning. It’s no
exaggeration to say that hormones are crucial to every single function of
survival.
The Perfect 10 Diet does its magic by improving your hormones. In this book,
you will read about many hormones, but I only go into detail about the ten most
important hormones. Some of these hormones are major hormones you can’t live
a single day without, such as insulin. Some are minor, such as sex hormones,
which aren’t critical to survival, but they affect how you age, look, and feel.
Our modern diet screwed up all the hormones that play a role in weight and
health. Our ancestors did not consume soda, sweets, cereals, fatfree food, skim
milk, refined vegetable oils, margarine, artificial sweeteners, or alcohol. Much of
this food was never meant for human consumption, and we moved from a
hormone-friendly diet to a hormone-unfriendly diet. Now let’s learn more about
these ten important hormones.
INSULINSOURCE: Pancreas