Thyroid And Weight - What You Need To Know

Weight is an important feature of the human body. However, only a few understand how these weight measurements influence their general well-being. Some of the reasons why you might gain weight rapidly include an unhealthy thyroid, excess calorie intake, abnormal insulin levels, and ageing. When considering all of the tried and tested methods for weight management; sorting your thyroid, remains the best weight management option available today. The TriFixx™ line of nutraceuticals, provides consumers with a premium, cost-efficient and readily available solution for supporting the thyroid. Should an individual struggling with weight management, present with the symptoms of hypothyroidism; TriFixx™ nutraceuticals will be able to assist in ensuring long-lasting, sustained, weight management results, with great efficacy.

INTRODUCTION

Clinical Relevance of Body Weight

How well do you understand the concept of body weight measurement? Do you know if you are currently 'Underweight,' 'Normoweight,' or 'Overweight’? At a point in time, you might have been asked few questions about your weight variations over the years. Bodyweight is an important parameter in medical science. During clerking and other processes involved with patient data collection, bodyweight values are recorded for many patients. However, only a few understand how these weight measurements influence their general well-being. Online doctor services and in-person hospital clinicians place cogent importance on recording comparisons in weight measurement.

So, how does your weight influence how healthy you are? The question receives more attention when your physician seeks to measure your Body Mass Index (BMI). Your BMI is a ratio of your weight and height. This value directly gauges if the body’s weight is in direct proportion to the body’s height. By determining your BMI, a clinician can categorize you into one of many groups that defined the clinical healthiness of your weight. The common interpretation of this value is that it represents an index of fatness for an individual. The Body Mass Index often provides a factual measurement of risk factors for the prevalence of several health issues. BMI has long been considered a verifiable measure of healthy body weight.

The reproducibility of this measure is based on two variables – height and weight. These variables are established nutrition assessment variables. The decision to adopt BMI over other indexes of relative weight was made in the late 1970s. The arguments in favour of this new measurement include; adult weight increases proportionally to height squared; BMI is a stature-independent measure of weight; BMI has a good correlation with fat mass. The last argument makes BMI the right value to determine the healthy body weight and fat mass based on an individual’s weight and height. This value is also applicable to children, adolescents, and adults.

A big advantage of BMI in clinical practice is its ease of calculation and comparison. To calculate your BMI, your physician can simply divide your weight in kilograms by your height in meters squared. BMI values that are 18.4 or lower are classified as underweight. Values that are 18.5 to 24.9 are considered healthy. An individual with a BMI of 25 to 29.9 is categorized as overweight, while anyone with a BMI of 30 and above is categorized as obese. In 1993, the WHO developed a redefined, uniform category for BMI. This means calculating your BMI can tell you about your position on the weight scale.

Gaining Weight

Bodyweight has been an important medical, psychosocial issue for humans for many centuries. In many cultures across the globe, a person’s weight is considered an important feature of their identity. However, the idea of weight is subjective, with many people having their perception of how fat they should be. Also, weight can be difficult to quantify. Weight is also considered a big societal issue in many regions of the world. Young women are often overly concerned about their body image. Peer pressure and societal norms also contribute to how people see weight and body fatness. Ideal body weight is poorly quantified in society; however, there is a degree of fatness beyond which a person is considered to be unacceptably fat. It is common to see people modifying their diet to avoid accumulating excess fat.

On average, an individual gains about 0.5 to 1 kg every year; this translates roughly to about 10 to 20 pounds per decade. This number might seem small; however, consistent accumulation of weight can lead to obesity faster. Adults tend to gain weight through middle age, and in children, weight increases proportional with age. The factors responsible for large, consistent weight gain have been considered to depend on the balance between calorie intake and calorie expenditure. To a large extent, these factors are habit and diet-dependent.

The most widely documented factors responsible for weight gain in individuals include:

Eating Calorie-packed ‘Healthy’ Foods

This is probably the most recognized reason why people gain weight. You could be eating the cleanest and most organic of all meals and still get fat. Many food portions considered healthy by many people are packed with calories that directly increase the total body caloric level. Lots of packaged foods in the market labelled ‘low-fat’ also fall under this category. In some cases, these foods contain high levels of sugar that deliver a large deposit of calories to the body. These calories directly contribute to increased body weight. The simple trick here is checking for the overall energy and calorie content and not just the ‘low fat’ label.

Eating Large Portion of Your Favourite

The simple truth about gaining weight is that most of the food you eat contributes to the total calorie composition of your body. This contribution might, however, be different. While a high-fat diet increases your calorie level rapidly, a low-fat diet and an organic portion only contribute small calories over time. However, eating large portions of any of these foods and cause your calorie level to increase rapidly. The little caloric additions accumulate over time to increase caloric content and body weight. The ideal food portion for individuals has generated debates over the years. Differentiating between how much food you eat and how much food you should eat. There are also the problems of normalizing the perception of what constitutes a normal food portion to eat.

In 2018, the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition published a research study examining whether reducing food portion size ‘renormalizes’ personal perceptions of what constitutes an ideal food portion. Research results suggest that reducing food portion sizes may recalibrate perceptions of what constitutes a normal amount of food to eat. This might also directly influence the caloric intake of people. If you are serious about monitoring your weight, you might want to start with reducing your caloric intake by decreasing your food portion sizes.

Abnormal Insulin Levels

Weight management physicians may be quick to stress how important your insulin levels are in your battle against obesity. Insulin, a hormone secreted in the pancreas, is essential for regulating blood sugar and energy absorption. This hormone primarily instructs the body to remove glucose from the bloodstream and store it in the muscles and liver. High insulin levels keep the body in storage mode by accumulating sugars and calories in muscles and fat tissues. In human medicine, the elevated basal insulin level is termed 'hyperinsulinemia’. This condition is characterized by weight gains, inhibition of fat metabolism, and increased fat storage. Over the years, there has been practical documentation of how increased insulin levels in humans can increase body weight and cause obesity.

The earliest evidence linking high insulin levels with obesity was documented in Pima Indians – a tribe in the American Southwest. This population displays abnormally high rates of obesity and diabetes. Further population-based studies revealed that this tribe also has significantly high fasting insulin levels, explaining the high prevalence of obesity. Recently in 2015, PLoS One published the Da Qing Children Cohort Study. This study also demonstrated how high fasting plasma insulin levels predicted subsequent weight increase in early childhood. African American Children also display a high rate of hyperinsulinemia compared with Caucasian children. This justifies the particularly high rate of obesity among this population.

Thyroid Dysfunction

Dysfunctions of the thyroid gland contribute greatly to rapid weight gain in humans. However, only a few know about this. Only a few clinicians will screen for thyroid problems if a patient presents with consistently increasing body weight. Obesity and hypothyroidism have long been linked closely together. The thyroid hormone regulates basal metabolism, thermogenesis, fat oxidation, and food intake. Abnormalities in the composition and quantity of these hormones are associated with changes in body weight, body composition, temperature, and resting energy expenditure. As it stands, an abnormal thyroid can contribute more to increased body weight than other factors responsible for the same.

Hypothyroidism – a decrease in the volume of secreted thyroid hormones - causes a decreased metabolic rate. A decreased metabolic rate has been shown to correlate with a higher body mass index and a high risk of obesity. Research evidence has also suggested that mild thyroid dysfunctions, presenting as subclinical hypothyroidism, can cause significant changes in body weight. In many cases, these changes can be rapid and unexplained. Many clinical reviews are still on course to finding the complexities of the link between abnormal thyroid function and weight gain. In a publication of the Saudi Medical Journal, researchers found that overall thyroid dysfunction is common in obese individuals with varying degrees of significance. The study documented that among an obese population of participants, 33 percent had overt, and 11% had subclinical hypothyroidism.

Ageing

As already noted, adults experience a change in weight through middle age, while weight changes in children, present as age increases. One of the basic physiological changes associated with an increase in age is the reduction in the basal resting metabolism. This concept describes how your body at rest burns energy consumed as calories. Also, with ageing comes a decrease in the rate of physical activity and a moderate increase in the rate of stress and exhaustion. The decrease rate of physical activity reduces how the body consumes its overall caloric content. In cases where the calorie intake does not decrease with age, this results in a misbalance of the body's calorie levels. More calorie is accumulated, and the risk of obesity and being overweight is increased.

Why It Is Difficult to Shed Weight

Losing weight is a long procedure that requires consistency, the right supervision, and the right attitude. Across the globe, people engage in daily routines that they believe can help them better monitor their weight. Many are simply subscribing for masterclass sessions on ‘how to lose weight fast’. The truth is, these options rarely work. To an extent, these general attempts at losing weight might yield some positive outcomes; however, these outcomes are difficult to sustain. A better understanding of the major internal contributors to body weight will better explain why many people find it hard to shed weight even after a moderate weight gain.

If you are serious about losing weight, you should consider these points:

Dieting Rarely Sustains Weight Loss

Dieting is considered by many as the primary choice in losing weight and maintaining a better body frame. In a 1996 survey of more than 100,00 American adults, 40 percent of women and 35 percent of men were trying supervised dieting as a primary method of losing weight. However, only a few cases of strictly supervised dieting have been documented to cause sustained weight loss. Dieting can lead to weight loss, but in the long run, this loss is rarely sustained. The evidence of this observation is shown with many people’s failed attempts at losing weight through dieting.

The assumption toward initiating dieting in weight loss programs is simple: since increased caloric intake causes increased weight gain, a reduction in the total caloric intake should cause a sustained weight loss. However, this assumption is faulty on many fronts. By assuming that dieting can cause sustained weight loss, people undermine the simple fact that there are not internal physiological mechanisms to weight gain. Consequently, a decrease in total caloric intake does not translate to a general reduction in body weight. The scientific shreds of evidence against this assumption have been ignored for a very long time.

In 2003, an early research study documenting the futility of dieting as a weight-loss strategy was published by the Journal of Obesity. The objective of the schematic study was to examine the effectiveness of low-fat diets and other weight-loss diets in achieving sustained weight loss in overweight and obese people. The researchers compared the evidence from six different trials with a participant pool of 594 people. After a research duration of about 18 months and a follow-up period of the same, the researchers concluded that there were no significant differences between low-fat diets and other weight-reducing diets in terms of sustained weight loss. This research also confirmed the National Institutes of Health Review that although lower-fat diets contribute to lower energy intake, there is little evidence that these diets with no reduction in energy intake result in sustained weight loss.

Exercise Improves Health but Does Not Reverse Obesity

You may have thought otherwise. Weight-loss programs are fast becoming a business enterprise in many parts of the world, with most of these programs directly selling health myths about monitoring weight. This might also be hard for you to believe; however, there is more than enough scientific evidence to prove this simple fact: although exercise improves health, it does not reverse obesity.

The argument against exercise as an effective weight-loss strategy has been reviewed multiple times in the last couple of decades. Currently, there are no convincing pieces of evidence from randomized controlled trials (RCTs) supporting exercise as an effective weight loss management strategy. RCTs are considered the gold standard in defining the efficacy of any strategies in human therapeutics. Although these RCTs justified the benefits of routine exercise in general well-being, they fail to meet the gold standard for recommendations as an effective weight-loss management strategy. Research results have also suggested that performing exercises greater than the general exercise recommendation for health may be required to clinically achieve meaningful weight-loss.

Also, there are reasons to believe that the biological benefits of exercise may be masked by compensatory behaviours of human physiology. In a 2007 publication of Obesity, researchers examined the metabolic and behavioural compensatory responses to exercise interventions in weight-loss programs. These compensatory behaviours constitute a major barrier to weight loss and the reversion of obesity. This study further highlighted the different automatic compensatory behaviours that negate the exercise-induced negative energy balance. The degree of compensation may vary between individuals; however, the biological functions of this behaviour are similar. Individuals susceptible to this behavioural compensation may not improve weight loss maintenance, and weight reduction efforts may be futile.

Another evidence against routine exercise as an effective weight loss strategy is its inter-individual variability in results. How an individual responds to the beneficial effects of exercise on general health may be different from the predicted response. Many times, the response across a population may be significantly varied. RCTs studying the link between exercise and body weight report a broad range of responses, including energy expenditure rate, energy balance, and measurement of appetite. These responses are complex and depend directly on an individual’s age, sex, adiposity, insulin sensitivity, and intrinsic aerobic capacity. These variations make it hard to prescribe a general exercise level and regimen for individuals willing to explore routine physical activity as an option for weight loss therapy.

Sorting Your Thyroid is Your Best Chance at Losing Excess Body Weight

Sorting the thyroid and making sure it is in its optimal functioning state is an option many do not explore. Only a few understand the important roles the thyroid gland plays in body metabolism and its effects on body weight. Unlike other strategies currently popular globally for weight management programs, caring adequately for the thyroid can serve as both a corrective and preventive option for weight loss. The thyroid hormones play essential functions in body weight regulation by directly influencing the rate of energy expenditure. This explains why people with different thyroid gland dysfunctions, including hypothyroidism and hyperthyroidism, report different fluctuations in body weight and resting metabolic rate.

A reference study highlighting the efficacy of the thyroid glands in weight management was published in 2017 by the International Journal of Obesity. The POUNDS LOST trial was conducted to establish the link between normal thyroid functioning and changes in body weight and resting metabolic rate. This 2-year randomized clinical trial used a participant pool of 569 overweight and obese individuals. The findings of these trials reveal a novel role of thyroid hormones in body weight regulation. It also provided strong evidence that a healthy thyroid is the best weight management approach as it also improves the effectiveness of weight-loss diets as a weight management option. In addition to regulating your resting metabolic rate, a healthy thyroid also regulates your food cravings and helps you better monitor calorie intake. If you have a healthy thyroid, you need not worry about your cravings for unhealthy foods.

Taking Care of Your Thyroid With TriFixx™ Nutraceuticals

Optimizing thyroid health also contributes significantly to the overall well-being of the body, in addition to regulating body weight. The thyroid hormones are the primary bioactive components of the thyroid glands that produce the desirable effects noticed in humans. Caring for thyroid health starts with optimizing the production of thyroid hormones. Iodine is an essential nutrient needed for the production of these hormones. A shortfall in the normal iodine concentration of the body adversely affects the production of thyroid hormones. The thyroid glands absorb iodine from the body and uses it to make its hormones.

TriFixx™ provides a premium grade, cost-efficient and readily available source of iodine, through its Iodine Fixx™ nutraceutical. In conjunction with this, TriFixx™ also provides consumers with access to its Thyroid Fixx™ and D3/K2 Fixx™, which, when all three are combined, provides those experiencing the symptoms of hypothyroidism, all of the support their thyroid will need, in order to thrive. Through taking the Tri-Thyroid Fixx™ trio, you will not only meet your recommended intake of iodine, but you will also be in a position to better manage your weight and optimize your resting metabolic rate.