Frequently Asked Leptin Questions

Don't be among the last to find out about leptin and it's immense importance to your health! Questions are answered by Byron J. Richards, author of Mastering Leptin.

Q. What is leptin?
A. Leptin is a hormone produced by fat cells. Leptin is essential for survival, guiding the proper response to starvation. Problems with leptin are the cause of the obesity epidemic.

Q. How do leptin problems cause obesity?
 A. The brain must properly sense the correct level of leptin in order to determine how much fat should be in storage. The brain determines how fast metabolism can go based on the proper perception of leptin. Obesity occurs when the brain fails to sense the leptin hormone correctly, in turn causing fat to accumulate and metabolism to run slow.

Q. What causes leptin problems?
A. Overeating, eating at night, snacking between meals, lack of exercise, and stress.

Q. Is there a leptin diet?
A. Byron Richards has laid out The Leptin Diet™ which includes follow the rules of eating in the book Mastering Leptin. They teach a person how to eat so as to maximize proper function of the leptin hormone. These rules facilitate healthy weight loss and maintaining an optimum weight.

Q. How is leptin involved with yo-yo dieting?
A. Leptin is the cause of yo-yo dieting. Leptin is designed to replenish the body’s store of fat after a period of deprivation. In evolutionary times, this was a survival necessity. In modern days, this is the genetic response to a low-calorie diet. The only way to avoid having this problem is to eat in such a way as to not upset leptin balance.

Q. Do overweight people have too much or too little leptin?
A. They have too much leptin in their blood and not enough leptin entering their brain. This problem is called leptin resistance. It means that fat cells are overproducing leptin but the brain does not know it.

Q. Does leptin cause other problems?
A. Malfunctioning leptin causes major health problems. These include insulin resistance, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, metabolic syndrome X, diabetes, heart disease, reproductive problems, sex hormone problems, thyroid problems, fibromyalgia, increased risk for cancer, and increased risk for cognitive decline. Leptin plays a primary role in these problems and is frequently the main cause of them.

Q. How can leptin cause so many problems?
A. There are three main ways leptin causes problems:
  1. Leptin problems enforce starvation metabolism and slow metabolic rate, resulting in adverse consequences in using energy everywhere in the body, which affects everything in an adverse way.
  2. Low leptin in the brain exposes brain cells to excess damage, resulting specifically in damage to NMDA receptors thus increasing the risk for Parkinson’s disease. It also provokes an inflammatory chain of events in the brain leading to the accumulation of plaques that cause Alzheimer’s disease.
  3. Extra pounds of fat give off excess inflammatory signals that cause all diseases of aging.

Q. Why hasn’t my doctor told me about leptin?
A. Until now the critical information about how leptin works has been hidden away in complex scientific journals. This information has been used primarily in an effort to develop leptin drugs, which do not work for a variety of reasons. Mastering Leptin is the first book to clearly explain the subject to the public.

Q. Can leptin problems be solved, including obesity issues and the risks for disease?
A. Yes. This is fully explained in the book Mastering Leptin.