You CAN Lose Weight—Even if You've Had Difficulty Losing Weight Before

My guest today is Pamela Seefeld, R.Ph, a registered pharmacist who prefers to dispense medicinal plants and other natural substances instead of prescription drugs. Today we’ll be talking about what you can do to help your body lose weight. Pamela has been helping me with weight loss and I’ll talk about my story and success. Pamela is a 1990 graduate of the University of Florida College of Pharmacy, where she studied Pharmacognosy (the study of medicines derived from plants and other natural sources). She has worked as an integrative pharmacist teaching physicians, pharmacists and the general public about the proper use of botanicals. She is also a grant reviewer for NIH in Washington D.C. and the owner of Botanical Resource and Botanical Resource Med Spa in Clearwater, Florida. www.botanicalresource.com

LISTEN TO OTHER SHOWS WITH PAMELA SEEFELD

TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
“You CAN Lose Weight—Even if You’ve Had Difficulty Losing Weight Before”

Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
GUEST: Pamela Seefeld, R.Ph

DATE OF BROADCAST: October 22, 2014

DEBRA: Hi, I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio where we talk about how to thrive in a toxic world and live toxic-free. Today is Wednesday, October 22nd 2014. The weather is beautiful here in Clearwater, Florida where I’m looking out my window.

Actually, as I’m sitting here doing the radio show every weekday at 12 Eastern, I’m sitting here looking out 17 ft. of windows into my backyard where there’s all these oak trees and birds. Sometimes I see cardinals and red-headed woodpeckers and all kinds of things. It’s just really lovely. It’s lovely to sit here and chat with you every day and to be with my guests in this beautiful, natural atmosphere. Anyway, that’s what I’m looking at when I’m talking to you.

Today, my guest is Pamela Seefeld. She’s a registered pharmacist who prefers to dispense medicinal plants and other natural substances instead of prescription drugs. Pamela knows so much. She’s just incredible in terms of what she knows and her ability to help people to get well. She’s been working with me personally (we’re going to talk about that a little bit today) and also other people that I know here in Clearwater, Florida. She’s based here in Clearwater.

She’s a registered pharmacist and she educates physicians, pharmacists and the general public about the proper use of botanicals. She also studied a field called ‘pharmacognosy’. That’s the study of medicinal plants (in addition to studying drugs).

And so what she likes to do really is take people off prescription drugs instead of give them to them. She likes to help people with medicinal plants and other natural substances to handle whatever is going on with their bodies instead of going on drugs in the first place because the difference between drugs and medicinal plants is that drugs may control your symptoms, but medicinal plants and natural substances will actually heal your body.

She knows so much about this that I have her on every other Wednesday because we’re just going through all kinds of different physical problems and talking about what are the alternatives so that you don’t have to take drugs. I’m just thrilled to be bringing you this information.

Hi, Pamela!

Pamela Seefeld: Hey! It’s great to be here.

DEBRA: Thank you. So today, we’re going to talk about how you can lose weight even if you’ve been having difficulties losing weight like me. And especially, I know that a lot of people who have had chemicals damage their body (which is virtually everyone in the world today) that if you have endocrine problems or other kinds of problems like with your liver and you can’t detox or whatever, that a lot of times, you’re overweight not because you’re eating too much or that you’re a bad person, but that your body just isn’t functioning the way it’s supposed to function.

I know that you’ve been working with me for a couple of months on just all the things, all my unhandled physical conditions, which are all improving, but specifically…

Pamela Seefeld: That’s great!

DEBRA: Yes, they are. But specifically, since I’ve been working with you, I’ve lost 14 lbs. really kind of effortlessly.

Pamela Seefeld: That’s excellent!

DEBRA: Yes, yes. And part of it has been because something that you’ve done has changed the way my body interacts with food. And so I don’t have cravings for anything, I don’t have to use any willpower to eat the right foods because I have no desire to eat sugar or any of those things that I use to have to struggle with, that I knew what was the wrong thing to do, but my body was saying, “Give me that sugar!”
And so now, it’s just like I just eat my three meals a day. I even forget to eat my snack in the afternoon. I eat my three meals. I eat something before I go to bed and I’m never hungry in between. I have no cravings and my body is just getting smaller and smaller and smaller and my clothes are hanging on me. I’m just very happy.

Pamela Seefeld: I’m so happy for you.

DEBRA: Thank you, thank you. I’m so happy for me too! I got to a point the other day where I realized with a bang! kind of actually that I could put my attention on other things in my life instead of having to deal with my body problems. That was kind of funny because…
Pamela Seefeld: Good for you! You know what? I’m really, really touched. I’m really so happy and honored that I can help you and that you’re doing so well. I mean, I knew that this was just really what you needed.

DEBRA: Yes, you did. You gave me exactly the right thing. I was telling somebody about this yesterday and he said, “Well, what is she giving you?” and I said, “Well, it’s not about having just like a box of things that she gives to every person who has a weight problem. It’s very individual.” By you giving me the right things for my body, my body is saying, “Okay, I can release this weight.”

Pamela Seefeld: Correct.

DEBRA: Yeah, yeah. So it’s about the individuality. But we’re going to talk today about different things, different ways that you can help people lose weight if they’re having trouble losing weight. I’m hoping that we’re going to talk a little bit about some of the drugs that people take to lose weight and why people shouldn’t take them and what they can do instead?

Pamela Seefeld: Correct.

DEBRA: So why don’t you start wherever you’d like to start?

Pamela Seefeld: Okay! So the end game, we’re blaming people that they’re not eating the right food or that it’s somehow a moral dilemma that they’re not just able to control their hunger. That’s not really what it’s all about. It’s not necessarily calories in and calories out because we know the person that sticks thin and they eat all day long. So it’s not necessarily even though circumstances.

Okay, so there’s different things in the body that affect metabolism. The good way to look to see if you’re having insulin resistance and storing a lot of the calories as sugar is to look at your fasting glucose like if you go to the doctor and they do a blood panel on you. It’s called a CMP and it’s called ‘complete metabolic profile’. You can see all your electrolytes and your sugar.

And when people meet with me, there’s a free consultation. If you bring me your blood work or fax or email it to me, I’ll go over the numbers with you because it’s not about the range. The problem is looking at blood work and deciding whether somebody has metabolic syndrome or has some problems or some propensities to store excess sugar as fat.

It’s not about the range because that’s for the general population. One person, a fasting blood sugar at 95, they might be stick thin and another person, they’re already gaining a lot of weight. So it’s not necessarily about the range. But I tell people that if your fasting blood sugar should really reside between 75 and 85. That’s where most normal people are going to be.

So when you start getting up to the 90s (95 or 96 or close to 100), what I typically see when somebody comes in here – maybe they’re middle age, so they’re blaming it on menopause. That’s not necessarily always what’s happening. They’re starting to gain weight. They’re not eating very much. I look and their fasting blood sugar is in the 90s and they’re triglycerides are sky high, their cholesterol is sky high and they’re like, “Well, I don’t eat these kinds of foods.”

And so what’s happening is that they’re being blamed for this, but really, it’s insulin resistance. Sugar is turning it to fat.
So a good way to start is to say, “Okay, am I putting on weight and what’s my fasting blood sugar?” That’s something that the doctor can easily determine.

There’s some new studies too. And I know with fructose, when we think about high fructose corn syrup (and of course, we’re trying to avoid all that in general), if you look at what the study show, the amount of sugar that’s added to food if you’re in the United States between 1970 and 2000, the amount of added sugar in the food supply rose 25%.

DEBRA: Wow! That’s amazing. A friend of mine just went to see a film (I haven’t seen it yet), it’s called Fed Up. He said that it was about sugar in our foods and that on the back of the label, a food label, it has the nutrition facts and it has all these different things and it gives the percentage of the daily requirement or the daily allowance. Sugar is listed, the amount of sugar is listed, but it doesn’t give the percentage.
And he told me on the film, they said that the daily allowance for sugar is something like 6-9 teaspoons, 6-9 teaspoons a day.

Pamela Seefeld: Yeah, it’s insane!

DEBRA: It is! And he said even at that being the allowance that if they were to put the percentage of the daily allowance that is the sugar in the product, it would be like 400% or something and that’s why they don’t put it on there because there’s just so much sugar in tehse processed foods and people just don’t understand.

Pamela Seefeld: That’s what’s happening. And not only that, even in healthy foods, you look at a lot of these soy milks and so forth, they’ll put rice bran syrup. It’s sugar.

DEBRA: It’s sugar, it’s sugar.

Pamela Seefeld: They re-label it as something else. ‘Organic cane juice’, it’s still sugar. So you have to look at that and what we see now is there’s a new study that was published in molecular metabolism and they were talking about how…

DEBRA: Before you tell us about that, wait, wait. Before you tell us, we have to go to break.

Pamela Seefeld: Yeah.

DEBRA: I don’t want to interrupt you in the middle of you telling us about the study.

Pamela Seefeld: That’s okay. Sounds good.

DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Pamela Seefeld. She’s a registered pharmacist who prefers to dispense medicinal plants and other natural substances instead of prescription drugs. We’re talking about losing weight and well be right back.

= COMMERCIAL BREAK =

DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is a Pamela Seefeld. She’s a registered pharmacist. You can go to her website at BotanicalResource.com.

Okay, Pamela, tell us about the study.

Pamela Seefeld: Okay! So what they’re finding is there’s a vulnerability and a variability to fructose. This is a brand new study that was published on the Journal of Molecular Metabolism. The New York Times’ was citing this on October 14th of this month. It was looking at what is exactly happening with fructose.

What we’re finding is that fructose, when you take it, say you have a piece of fruit and you don’t have any protein or fat with it like yoghurt or a piece of cheese or something, if you just have fructose by itself, what it does is instead of doing into the bloodstream, it goes immediately to the liver and it stimulates the production of triglycerides. So it increases cholesterol.

So this is a good example. When I see some of these women that come in, they’re very athletic and they work out a lot and they’re thin and they’re in great shape and they eat a lot of fruit, all of a sudden, they come back and they’re having cholesterol at sky high. This is what can happen.

Fructose, the sugar fructose is handled differently than glucose (which is like in regular table sugar). So if they’re going to have fruit and what they’re seeing is berries, they’re finding that there’s a growth factor. It’s called fibroblast growth factor 21. That’s not really important. But what they’re finding is that obese subjects have higher levels of this and it makes you store fat.

So it’s not that the person that’s heavy is eating improperly. It’s that there’s this other things going on with the hormones. And apparently, this hormone is much more effective with fructose than any sugar.

So what does this mean to you and I? I always tell this to my patient. You don’t want to be eating fruit that’s high in sugar by itself because you’re going to store it as fat. For example, watermelon and all these lemons because it’s kind of liquidy…

DEBRA: That was the first thing that came to mind, watermelon.

Pamela Seefeld: Yup! I mean, it’s not that these things are bad. It’s not like you can’t eat them, but you have to combine them with fat or protein to delay the gastric emptying. But if you’re eating lots of fruit that are basically water and sugar, you’re going to end up with these problems. You might be thin in the beginning, but eventually, you’re going to end up gaining a lot of weight.

DEBRA: Well, you know, I watch people eat or drink smoothies with a lot of fruit in them, just straight fruit and protein powder or something (although protein is probably good, that protein or fat). But that’s just a lot of fruit and a lot of sugar that’s going on.

I know that Whole Foods are good, but vegetables, most vegetables don’t have the same degree of sugar.

Pamela Seefeld: Exactly.

DEBRA: And I also know from my own research that different fruits have different amounts of sugar. I eat mostly berries and cherries because they’re on the low end of how much sugar they have in them. I eat them by themselves (I mean, separate from a meal) and I put cream on them, grass-fed cream.

Pamela Seefeld: That’s smart. That’s exactly right.

DEBRA: Yeah. Every night, I have my lovely bowl of mixed berries or cherries with grass-fed cream and I’m very happy.

Pamela Seefeld: Look at you! So you understand the physiology of it, that the sugar is really going and it’s creating all these lipid.

You have to know too that fructose is pro-inflammatory. It can cause inflammation. So somebody who has any kind of rheumatism or arthritis, they have no business eating tons of high sugar fruits. The same thing, it also alters body weight by altering the leptin sensitivity. Leptin is al about whether you’re storing fat and also, whether you’re feeling hungry or not.

So I’m not saying fruit is bad. But when they say “eat your fruits and vegetables,” I really would rather say, “Eat your vegetables.”

DEBRA: I totally agree with you.

Pamela Seefeld: That’s where I’m coming from.

DEBRA: And that’s my experience in my own body. The other thing that I can say is that I used to – now, I’ll say something that’s very embarrassing, but it’s true, it’s true. I think there are other people in this boat and so I want to say this so that people can see how far you can come.

I used to do things like eat a whole bag of cookies for dinner or I once ate a whole coconut cream pie.

Pamela Seefeld: Yeah, I’m sure a lot of people have done that of course.

DEBRA: I used to eat a half a gallon of ice cream.

Pamela Seefeld: I’ve done that!

DEBRA: It’s interesting because I love to travel, but when I travel, it’s interesting just for me to see what different places consider to be food. When I went to San Francisco (I lived in San Francisco a few years ago for three months), I couldn’t find a sweet potato to save my life in a restaurant. I had to eat three meals a day in restaurants and to try to find something…

Pamela Seefeld: That’s funny.

DEBRA: And you know, you go to a restaurant for breakfast and everything is sugar and wheat. They even put flour in scrambled eggs in some places. You have to ask, “Is this 100% eggs?” It’s just kind of amazing to go out to eat and see what you’re being fed and how much sugar is anything.

I’ve said this before, but I’m going to say it again. Just go to the Food Channel and watch Diners, Drive-ins and Dives and you’ll see how much sugar is in restaurant food. It’s in everything!

Pamela Seefeld: Yeah, because you see them cooking the food, right?

DEBRA: You see them cooking the food!

Pamela Seefeld: Exactly!

DEBRA: It’s in everything. They just toss it in. It doesn’t matter if it’s a dessert or not.

People don’t understand what sugar actually does to weight. I can tell you for a fact, I don’t eat white sugar. I mean, I eat white sugar maybe once a year if I’m out some place and I just have to eat that Godive chocolate cheesecake, you know? Gluten-free Godiva Chocolate Bars, I think not. I was like, “I don’t need them.”

Pamela Seefeld: Yeah, I don’t even have it in my house. It is a problem. If I have people over for coffee, like the family, I don’t have any of that there. I mean, look, we have coffee here, but I don’t have sugar in the house. I’m really sorry if that’s what you want.

DEBRA: Yeah, I have things like honey and coconut sugar, which are not so refined and stuff. But I’ll tell you that if I eat even coconut sugar, I stop losing weight. That’s the thing. And if I cut out the coconut sugar, I’ll lose weight again. It’s as simple as that.

But if I’m eating whole foods, if I’m eating my fruit with cream, if I’m not eating any kind of sweetener at all, refined or unrefined, just nothing, then I will lose weight.

Pamela Seefeld: Well, yeah. It’s because it’s altering the leptin sensitivity.

DEBRA: Yeah, yeah.

Pamela Seefeld: Let me talk a little bit about green tea too. Let’s talk about some of the different supplements.

DEBRA: Okay, so you have 40 seconds.

Pamela Seefeld: Forty seconds? Okay. Green tea is great because it contains epigallocatechin and it can protect against cancer as well. It revs up your metabolism and it’s not going to make you jittery. I use this every day before I work out. I think it’s great.

DEBRA: I take it every day too. I take green tea extract and I also drink green tea that I grew. I love green tea.

Pamela Seefeld: Yeah, I’m a big fan of the capsules themselves because if you do the tea itself, you’re doing water-soluble extract. You’re not going to get all the epigallocatechin. The best combination would be some of both.

DEBRA: Oh, good! Well, that’s good to know. So we need to go to break and then we’ll come back and talk more about how to lose weight even if you’ve had difficulty losing weight before. There are things that you can do and I’m living proof of that because after years of not being able to lose weight, I’ve lost actually 25 lbs. since January. I’m very proud of that.

This is Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dad and we’ll be right back.

= COMMERCIAL BREAK=

Pamela, you mentioned that you do free consultations on the phone. Why don’t you give people your phone number so after the show, they can call you?

Pamela Seefeld: Yes, that’s great. So you can reach me here at my pharmacy. It’s 727-442-4955. That’s 72-442-4955.

DEBRA: Okay, great! So I think you were going to tell us some things that people can take that will help their bodies.

Pamela Seefeld: Right! So the different supplements you can take, the green tea was the first one that I was just kind of talking about that works really good. There’s one also (and I’m not sure if your listeners have heard of this before), it’s called Nopal cactus.

DEBRA: I’ve never heard of that before.

Pamela Seefeld: Nopal cactus, I was looking up the studies – yes, it’s really interesting. It’s a cactus extract and what it does is it lowers postprandial glucose, which is the glucose after an hour (so after you eat, you take a blood measurement) by 25%. So this can be for people that are pre-diabetic or worried about diabetes or even if they’re eating sugar or sweets or fruits. It lowers the amount of sugar that reaches the blood stream. As a result, it stops the spiking of the sugar.

It’s pretty interesting. They use this a lot for people that are diabetics to keep blood sugar low. But it also has polyphenols, which have really strong antioxidant activity as well.

So this is a new supplement that’s up and coming. People might be interested in trying some of that. It’s not that expensive and it works really well.

DEBRA: Wow!

Pamela Seefeld: Yeah, it’s pretty cool, Nopal cactus. So green tea and Nopal cactus are really good. There’s another supplement that I really like a lot. It’s made by Nature’s Plus and it’s called Synaptalean. Let me explain what Synaptalean is. This is why I like this.

DEBRA: Can you spell it first? Can you spell it first?

Pamela Seefeld: Yeah, it’s S-Y-N-A-P-T-A-L-E-A-N.

DEBRA: Okay.

Pamela Seefeld: So this product is called Synaptalean. It’s at the health food store. I use it quite a lot. What Synaptalean does is it has what’s called a neuro-synapse complex in it.

So this particular product originally, they were doing the testing to see if it had activity and they were going to use it as a happy pill. It has antidepressant activity because it works on dopamine in the brain. Dopamine is the neurotransmitters that’s released when we’re eating something fattening, intoxication and that kind of thing. So dopamine is really important.

So sometimes when I have people that have some depression and I’m using maybe 5-HTP or omega-3 and I’m not sure if I’m getting the full result, I’m like, “Look, let’s try a neurotransmitter. Let’s try and work on dopamine.”

So I use this a lot for mental health, but what’s interesting is that they decided to market it as a weight loss product because they found that when people were taking it, this happy effect actually makes you not want to eat.

DEBRA: That’s interesting because I think that…

Pamela Seefeld: Isn’t that cool?

DEBRA: It is cool. I think that a lot of wanting to overeat gets triggered by wanting food for emotional comfort. And when you’re not eating emotionally – I would probably say the single, biggest change for me since I’ve been working with you or you’ve been working with me (we’ve been working together) is that this big shift from feeling like I need to eat or that I have to eat. It’s just my body is just calm all the time and I just go, “Okay, it’s breakfast time. It’s time to feed my body.” It’s not like, “I have to eat or I’m going to die” or “I’m upset, so I have to have a pizza.” All of that is just gone and I just feed myself healthy foods.

Pamela Seefeld: Well, that’s wonderful. That’s what it’s all about. It’s hard to detach yourself from that because a lot of times, we associate food with comfort.

DEBRA: Right!

Pamela Seefeld: So this is interesting because you can use this for depression especially if someone has refractory depression where the medicines really weren’t working for them and I’m using some supplements for them and I’m getting half results and I want to just kind of boost it up a little bit. But then the nice part about it is that weight loss tends to result from it as well.

So that’s a really good supplement. It has a lot of data on it that works really well. And just like I said, it’s available at the health food store. I use it a lot for mental health too, so that’s very good.

I don’t want to forget to talk about coconut oil because coconut oil is very important. We know that coconut oil lowers viruses in the body. It’s like a 75% reduction, so it has a lot of effects as far as for someone who has chronic fatigue, they worry about the cold and flu season.

But coconut oil, what the studies found is that when you’re using coconut oil and replacing that from other oils in your diet, oil makes you feel filled up. You’re not as hungry. This does not promote fat storage because coconut oil is made of medium chain triglycerides and MCT oils are burned up immediately in the blood stream. So when you take coconut oil, it’s actually used as energy right then. It cannot be stored as fat.

DEBRA: Wow. Wow! I didn’t know that. Hello?

Pamela Seefeld: Yeah, you didn’t know that, yes! It can’t be stored.

DEBRA: I love coconut oil.

Pamela Seefeld: Yes, it’s MCT oil. MCT oil is what we use in people with liver failure because people with liver failure can’t process fat. So they get special nutrition in cans that are MCT oils.

So what we’re finding is we’ll give this primarily as MCT oil and as a result of that, you get lots of energy. So people that are doing athletics, they want to just up their game as far as their energy levels during the day. They don’t want to be necessarily consuming lots of high caloric foods, coconut oil is a good, little trick.

DEBRA: Wow! We talked about coconut oil on the show that we did about colds and flu and helping your immune system because it boosts that as well.

Pamela Seefeld: Correct.

DEBRA: But I just want to say again that coconut oil is great for any kind of cooking. It hardens at a cold temperature, so you can’t make salad dressing and then store the salad dressing in the refrigerator, but you could use it for salad dressing if you make it up fresh and you’re oil is at the right temperature.

But also, there’s something called coconut manna or coconut butter (differentiate brands have different names). It’s coconut oil mixed with coconut meat. So it’s more of the whole coconut. I can just eat that stuff right out of the jar with a spoon. It is so delicious.

Pamela Seefeld: That’s very good for you.

DEBRA: Oh, delicious! So delicious, yes. So if coconut oil doesn’t seem appetizing to you, look for coconut manna. My favorite one is I think it’s Artisana, Artisan something is the brand. It’s just so good, coconut manna. That’s a really great way to get those.

Pamela Seefeld: So the MCT oils are important. That’s another way to lose weight. Studies show too that taking fish oil also helps to keep weight down. We’re talking more about natural supplements. I’ll talk a little bit about the drugs at the end. But taking Omega 3’s every day also helps a lot.

I’m a big fan of doing the detox. I know you’re on the Body Anew and I’ve been on it for 15 years. That pulls out the pesticides and the chemicals that are stored in the fat soluble tissues. So that’s the best way too because it actually starts dumping the fat. That can work with or without exercise.

DEBRA: I really feel that happening. It’s just like you go along days, days, days. And then all of a sudden, there’s a day that I wake up and I was like, “What happened to my body?” It just went whoosh and got smaller.

We have to go to break. So, we’ll talk more about this when we come back. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Pamela Seefeld. She’s a registered pharmacist that dispenses medicinal plants and other natural substances instead of prescription drugs. She’s at BotanicalResource.com. We’ll talk more about losing weight when we come back.

= COMMERCIAL BREAK =

DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. My guest today is Pamela Seefeld. She’s a registered pharmacist who prefers to dispense medicinal plants and other natural substances instead of prescription drugs. Her website is BotanicalResource.com. Pamela, give us your phone number again.

Pamela Seefeld: Yes, it’s 727-442-4955.

DEBRA: Good! And you can call her after the show. She’ll be happy to talk to you. She gives free consultation. I can vouch for the fact that she knows what she’s doing, not only with me, but I know other people who see her in Clearwater. My doctor, my medical doctor recommends her. She’s unlike anybody you’ve ever talked to, I’m sure.

Okay, so go on. This is the last segment. So you want to tell us about some of the drugs that people shouldn’t take.

Pamela Seefeld: Correct. So going back really quickly, the detox is really important because it starts taking all these stuff out of the body and that helps with the weight loss in itself. What they’re normally going to give you if you go to the doctor and you’re asking for weight loss, the most popular product that they’re using Phendimetrazine. It’s basically an amphetamine derivative and there’s a million of doctors around here in Clearwater (I’m sure all around the country) that you go there, you get a B12 shot every week, they give you these appetite suppressant and they put you on 600 calories a day.

Well, if you go 600 calories a day, you’re going to lose weight anyways. This is just so you don’t feel like you’re hungry. The problem with this medicine is that they can raise your blood pressure, they can cause heart problems. Remember when people were doing the Fen-Phen and they were ending up with all these heart problems? Those are pretty serious risks.

I can also tell you for a fact, some of my clients have done this kind of stuff where they want to drop a lot of weight before a reunion or something, they’ll come in and the one client was telling me that her blood work got completely messed up as a result of taking these medicines. And then when she brought it up to the doctor, he says, “That’s not my problem.” That’s for your regular doctor. I’m just your weight loss doctor.

I’m not saying you’re all going to be that way, but I was just shocked. I’m like, “No, he put you on these medicines and the blood work looks really bad now as a result. He’s responsible.” But they think to themselves, “Okay, you’re going to pay me cash, we’re just going to go ahead and give you the weight loss pills and we’ll move on from there.” That’s not how things work.

DEBRA: Wow!

Pamela Seefeld: Yeah, I can’t make this up. I told him, I said, “No, you go back to him and tell him, ‘You’re the one that messed it up. You fix it.’” But they don’t want to manage anything with chronic management. You have to really take that into consideration when you decide to go and have to say, “Okay, I want to lose all these weight really fast and I’m going to go for these pills.”

And I can also tell you that I see this quite frequently of the clients that do decide to go do this against my wishes. I’m like, “Alright, you go do whatever you want.” They gain the weight back and more after they stop the program because it’s an artificial situation for your body. No one is going to stay on that low a calorie. And also too, you lose a lot of hair as a result of this.

So what happens is you’re eating such a low calorie diet. And if you completely cut fat out of your diet, what the study show is you’re eating these big salads, but if you’re just putting vinegar on it and you don’t have olive oil, you’re not absorbing any of the nutrients. So actually, the hair loss that these people are experiencing during these extreme diets is not necessarily because they’re not eating enough protein or enough calories. It’s because literally, the food they’re eating (especially the antioxidants), they’re not absorbing any of it.

DEBRA: That’s so important. There’s all these people who have been on low fat diets for so long and their bodies just don’t have that ability to absorb the nutrients because they’re not eating fat. It’s just been going on for so long.

Pamela Seefeld: That’s exactly right.

DEBRA: Please eat fat. Eat fat, eat fat, eat fat.

Pamela Seefeld: Yes! Because if you’re thinking yourself healthy, you’re eating all these vegetables and you make this huge, colorful salad (which I do every single night), if you don’t have some fat – I’m not saying douse the whole thing in tons of oil, but if you don’t have a few tablespoons of olive oil on the salad, you’re not absorbing any of the nutrients.

The whole idea behind eating healthy foods is that your body needs to have these things being bioavailable. And to make them bioavailable, there’s ways that you can stir it into the blood stream. Otherwise, it’s just providing fiber.

That’s where a lot of these people miss the point. It’s not about extreme calorie reduction. It’s about eating every three hours, using detox. Maybe you want to throw in some green tea or some Nopal cactus.

A lot of it is looking at your blood work and saying, “Is there something here that the doctor is not seeing that’s telling me why I’m putting on weight and I should be losing weight.” That’s a lot of it. Your numbers tell a lot about what’s going on inside your body. And I think that they’re commonly not looked at.

DEBRA: Well, I think if we look at – correct me if I’m wrong, but I think if we look at fat as a symptom, as an indicator that there’s something going on in your body instead of something that “you’re eating too much” – I mean certainly people in the world as a whole are eating incorrectly in ways that put on more weight. Like for me, I’ve been eating organic, natural, unprocessed food for years and I am still not losing weight. I couldn’t figure this out. It turned out that there was something wrong with my body, not something wrong with me.

Pamela Seefeld: Correct.

DEBRA: And I think that that’s where people need to look at this and say, “It’s not about the latest fad diet. If I’m gaining weight, if I can’t lose weight, that’s my body saying, ‘there’s something wrong here.’” Normal, healthy bodies are not overweight. And so it’s a symptom like having a headache or blowing your nose, runny nose and what-not.

Pamela Seefeld: Well, it is. It is a symptom and like in your case and in the case of a lot of other of my clients, if you have pre-diabetes or diabetes or if your fasting blood sugar is in the 90s, I tell people that we want to use some homeopathy, some medical homeopathy like Pericardium Triple Warmer to start bringing the sugar down.

Most of the time, these hints are coming in your blood work and they’re telling you that you’re going to be at risk for a certain thing especially diabetes and metabolic syndrome and I think that they’re often ignored. Most of the time, people do not hear any kind of word of caution out of their physician until they’re up in the 100.

DEBRA: Yes, yes.

Pamela Seefeld: …by the time you already need medicine. So it’s really wrong. We don’t want people to be on a bunch of medicine. We want people to be healthy and happy and prevent these ongoing problems.

I always tell people it’s kind of like you’re in front of a misty bridge. These things are all showing that something is coming. I would just tell you to approach it head-on and stop it at the pass. Going to the other side means medicine, getting sick and not being 100%. That’s what people really deserve.

DEBRA: They do! And you know, I really hear you talking about health and happiness and you’re not talking about how can the industry make more money. We’re talking about how can we be healthy?

Pamela! Right!

DEBRA: I mean, if you really look at – I mean, I know that doctors help people in various ways and I don’t want to be against the whole, entire medical profession, but really, if you take a look at it, their job is to sell drugs.

Pamela Seefeld: Right! And that’s what pharmacies does. I understand it because I still work as a pharmacist. I like pharmacy. I embrace both. But I see this in a lot of patients and I see this even as a clinical pharmacist that people, if they were given an opportunity a few years before to do a few, simple, inexpensive things, they wouldn’t need any of the medicine and they wouldn’t end up in the hospital where I have to dose their medicine.

And that’s what it’s all about. It’s preventing some of these things. And look at the healthcare costs! They’re out of control in the country. Some of these could really be prevented. But also, quality of life.

DEBRA: Right, right.

Pamela Seefeld: These people deserve to not be on all these diabetic medications. A lot of these weight gain is just a symbol that the sugar is not balanced. Using some homeopathy in your water every day pretty much reverse it and it’s inexpensive and it’s safe.

So I really encourage people if they think that there’s some kind of an imbalance with glucose metabolism especially in the way they handle fructose and fruit to give me a call and I can tell you some simple things that you can do.

DEBRA: Yes, please do that because it has made a huge difference in my life. And tell us some of the conditions that you end up with, other conditions besides overweight? If you’re overweight, what else happens in your body?

Pamela Seefeld: Well, you have excessive inflammation because it stimulates circulating cytokines. So people end up having pain and arthritis and maybe even leading to chronic fatigue. But also, it impairs memory. And this is what they know, that people that have excessive amounts of circulating sugar, it impairs hippocampal memory formation.

So that’s why you’re talking about people that you kind of get foggy when you’re eating too much sugar. Well, this is what happens. The sugar can overwhelm the body. And as a result of that, you’re not only gaining weight and your lipids are really high and you don’t feel good, but it can create an element where your cognitive function is impaired to some degree.

And this is really important because let’s face it, we all want to be on top of our game with our memory. This is something that excessive amounts of sugar can cause problems – don’t even mention the fact that kidney problems, eye problems and all those especially with diabetics.

DEBRA: Yes, yes. So this is really…

Pamela Seefeld: So those are all very, very important.

DEBRA: This is something that people can do. I mean, isn’t overweight one of the major health problems in America today?

Pamela Seefeld: Most definitely. Let’s face it, a lot of people’s problems are because they’re storing the sugar and they’re storing the calories that they consume in an excessive manner. And then a lot of times, they’ll chalk it up to, “Okay, it’s hormones… she’s big-boned.” I mean, I understand a lot of stuff, but really, it’s about why is your body storing it and is it really storing it because there’s this imbalance with the way that the insulin is taking sugar into the cell.

DEBRA: Yeah, yeah. And there’s something we can do about it.

Pamela Seefeld: Well, definitely.

DEBRA: Well, this has been so interesting. We only have a minute left. So anything you want to say for a minute that we haven’t said?

Pamela Seefeld: Also, I would tell you, sleep is very important. I mean, this sounds like really ordinary talk, but people getting eight hours of sleep or seven and a half hours of sleep, they know that sleep affects weight and it also affects your hunger levels. So people that do not sleep the appropriate amount of time, they’re definitely going to be more at risk for storing all their calories as fat.

Debra; I have found that too. And one other things that you gave me (we talked about this on the sleep show) is passion flower. That really helps me sleep. I wake up in the morning and my body has had the opportunity to do its fat-burning thing overnight and I feel better!
Anyway, we’ve got only about ten seconds. So thank you so much. Give your phone number again.

Pamela Seefeld: Okay, yes. Please call me. I would be very gratefully happy to help you at any circumstance. It’s 727-442-4955.

DEBRA: Thank you so much.

Pamela Seefeld: Thank you.

DEBRA: Pamela is on every other Wednesday. So two weeks from today, she’ll be on again with more great information about how you can live healthy without drugs. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio. Be well.

You CAN Lose Weight—Even if You’ve Had Difficulty Losing Weight Before

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