by Lawrence Wilson, MD

HCG DIET AND ITS DANGERS

The HCG diet system for losing weight is one of the most dangerous methods that I have ever seen. It involves a 500-calorie diet for a few weeks, and then perhaps a 1000 calorie diet for months, and the use of human chorionic gonadotropin, or HCG, as an appetite suppressant. The HCG may be given in injections or in a homeopathic form.

The system was proposed by a medical doctor who works in a large hospital in Italy. He presents it in a calm, reasonable manner that makes it sound scientific and reasonable, when I believe it is not either.

Before critiquing the diet, I will mention a benefit of it. The person is not allowed to eat junk food, refined sugars or much wheat. This, of course, is excellent and will help anyone lose weight. Also, it appears that a person loses weight in all the right places, which make the diet appealing to women, in particular. These are the positive aspects of this diet system.

PROBLEMS WITH THE HCG DIET AND WEIGHT LOSS SYSTEM

I have received numerous reports of problems with this weight loss system from clients. They include muscle wasting, exhaustion when discontinuing the HCG, insomnia and possible liver damage. Also I have received reports of mental problems such as irritability and impaired judgment. In addition, as one might expect, the weight will tend to come back as soon as one goes off the diet and the HCG, unless a person is willing to make significant permanent dietary changes. This fact is not emphasized enough.

Here are the reasons why the HCG diet is very dangerous and should be strictly avoided:

1. A 500-calorie diet. This is simply not enough food calories to maintain one’s nutrition. It is starvation and that is never healthy and not needed. Losing weight by starving oneself is quite insane. A normal body can handle many more calories without gaining excessive weight. If you are gaining weight on a proper diet, as explained below, then you need attention to your thyroid gland, your adrenal glands, and other aspects of metabolism.

2. Improper food and poor nutrition. The diet is terribly deficient nutritionally. Besides being low in calories, its problems are:

a. Coffee and tea are permitted in unlimited amounts. This is horrible. Caffeine is a stimulant, so it artificially tends to inhibit the appetite. Stimulants also deplete the adrenals and stress the body, in general. Caffeine also irritates the stomach and intestines, leading to even more impaired nutrition in some cases. It also appears to dehydrate the body for some reason. While one cup of tea or even coffee may be fine, the diet allows as much as you like at breakfast, with no other food to buffer it.

b. Not enough drinking water is recommended. Two liters of water are recommended on the diet. However, in my experience, this is not enough for most adults, who need about three liters or three quarts.

c. Nothing is said about the type of drinking water. Many popular drinking waters such as reverse osmosis water or multi-stage filtered tap water do not seem to hydrate the body well enough. The best water for most people seems to be spring water, with carbon-only filtered tap water as the second best type of drinking water in most cases. Read Water For Drinking on this site for more on water.

d. Fruit is allowed and encouraged. In my experience, fruit is not working well as a food today. Today’s hybridized fruit is much too yin in Chinese medical terminology. Eaten raw, it is even more yin. Its sugar content upsets the body severely, and the fruit acids are also apparently quite irritating to the body. Fruit also appears to contain the wrong balance of minerals for most people. Read Fruit-Eating on this website for more on fruit.

e. Vegetables are virtually ignored, with only one allowed with lunch and one for dinner. This is quite insane. Vegetables contain hundreds, if not thousands of phytonutrients our bodies require today. I find that a diet of 70-80% cooked vegetables is essential to build health.

Also, the diet allows a little raw salad as your vegetable. I find that the body cannot absorb enough minerals from raw salads, so the food is basically wasted, in a nutritional sense, and just fills the stomach when the gastric capacity is needed for cooked vegetables and other foods that provide more nutrition.

f. None or very little eggs and raw dairy. Properly prepared eggs and raw dairy foods such as raw cow and goat milk, cream, cheese and yogurt are among the finest products, supplying many nutrients. Removing them from the diet is a sure way to become deficient in selenium, fatty acids and much more.

g. Shellfish are allowed on the diet. Almost all of these contain too many toxic metals, in our experience, and should be strictly avoided.

h. Too low in fats and oils. The diet severely limits fats and oils in order to restrict caloric intake. However, these are actually very valuable foods to obtain omega-3 fatty acids, vitamins A, D, E, and K, and many other valuable nutrients. Once again, the HCG diet just induces a starvation situation that is anything but healthful, no matter how one may feel on it.

i. Few, if any, vitamin or mineral supplements are used. This is quite insane, as the diet is deficient to begin with, and most people are low in nutrients already.

As a result, the diet is not only too low in calories, but also lacking in minerals, and contains many harmful foods.

3. HCG. Anything that suppresses the appetite is generally terrible for your health. Appetite is a normal method of alerting you to the need for nutrition. Suppressing this natural mechanism is not wise, ever. If the appetite is excessive, then one usually needs certain nutrients to satisfy some need within the body.

HCG is an interesting appetite suppressant that should scare any thinking person. Quite simply, HCG is a death hormone. This means that it is produced by the trophoblast, which is a parasitic stage of human life that depletes the host of nutrients and etheric energy.

The trophoblast only arises normally during the first 3 months of pregnancy. With the hormone it produces called HCG, it is able to shunt nutrients from the mother into the fetus, thus assuring the fetus of at least moderate nutrition at the beginning of life. It also helps the mother to “feel fine”, even though some of her vital nutrients are being literally stolen by the growing child inside of her. In other words, pregnancy is a type of parasitic condition and HCG is part of the parasitic system.

However, it gets more interesting. Most cancers also produce HCG. In fact, testing for HCG is the basis for an excellent cancer test. Cancer is also a parasite that has a way of siphoning off nutrients from its host, so that most cancer patients slowly die of starvation. What the HCG seems to be able to do is suppress the appetite and keep a person’s energy up at the same time, so the person is not aware that they are starving to death. In other words, HCG is part of the stealth disease of cancer that makes it so hard to detect in its early stages because the person “feels fine”.

Using HCG to make one “feel fine” and have some energy while intentionally starving the body with a 500-calorie diet is extremely stupid and unsafe, when there are far better ways to lose weight.

4. One size fits all. The HCG diet, like most others, is set up the same for everyone. No metabolic testing is recommended to assess one’s metabolic rate, stage of stress, oxidation type or other determinations. People are not all the same, however, and one size rarely fits all people, whether in clothing or diets. This means that some people will do far better than others, and for some the diet is more dangerous than for others, although I feel it is quite dangerous for everyone, as explained above.

5. Worse afterwards. By following a nutritionally deficient diet for a month or two, the body becomes even more nutrient deficient. When the diet ends, as this one must, the person is then even less able to balance body chemistry and therefore less able to keep weight off.

A MUCH BETTER, SAFER AND AS EFFECTIVE APPROACH TO WEIGHT LOSS

Losing weight is not difficult and does not require shots, drugs, or vigorous exercise when one FAITHFULLY follows a nutritional balancing program. Nutritional balancing science offers the following ways in an integrated fashion to produce easy, and most importantly, safe and permanent weight loss:

1. A diet of 70-80% cooked vegetables. This will supply hundreds of missing nutrients. The diet must also contain animal quality protein, properly prepared, each day, ideally a mall amount of raw dairy products daily, and a small amount of whole grains. This provides many of the necessary vitamins and minerals we need, in a more yang form.

2. A diet for one’s metabolic type, determined by a properly performed and correctly interpreted hair mineral analysis. This can make quite a difference. Some people need much more fats and oils, while others must have less of these foods, and more vegetables and proteins.

3. A healthful lifestyle. The main factor is plenty of rest and sleep, and going to bed early.

4. Three quarts of spring water each day. This can supply 40 or more minerals and other qualities contained in this water, but not all others. Carbon-filtered tap water is second best, but only if it is filtered with pure carbon and not other types of filters of any kind.

5. Excellent-quality supplements. Among the most needed are supplements of iodine, zinc, selenium , calcium, magnesium, omega-3 fatty acids and vitamin D. A digestive aid is needed today by everyone as well, and should be of animal origin, not the vegetable enzymes which are slightly toxic and much more yin in Chinese medical terminology. Dosing nutrients properly is best done, in my experience, by a properly performed and correctly interpreted hair mineral analysis suing the method of interpretation of Dr. Paul C. Eck.

6. Other procedures such as coffee enemas and near infrared sauna therapy. These can greatly speed up the process of healing and weight loss in some cases.

This combination works as well or better than the HCG system for weight loss for most people, without the dangers and the cost. The healthful diet, lifestyle and basic nutritional supplements should ideally be continued for years, preferably for the rest of one’s life. In this way, the thyroid and adrenal glands will slowly be rebuilt, the body will readjust its fat storage, and many other things such as chronic infections, toxic metals, toxic chemicals, and other imbalances that occur in almost everyone will also heal.

This makes for far more lasting weight loss, plus a wonderful improvement in one’s overall health and wellness. For much more detail about weight loss and weight gain, read Weight Loss And Weight Gain on this website.

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