Lose Weight By Improving Your Leptin Sensitivity, with Dr. Bindiya Gandhi

Welcome to the Five Journeys podcast. Live like you matter. Our guest today is Dr. Bindi Agondi. She's double boarded by the American Board of Family Medicine as well as the American Board of Integrative and Holistic Physicians. By the way, she's wicked snot. Her goal is to help her patients achieve optimal health by incorporating her primary care experience with functional and integrative medicine. In 2017, she opened Revive Atlanta to provide her patients with the utmost quality of service and care. Welcome, Dr. Bindia. Thanks for being with us.

Thank you so much for having me today.

Yeah, it's a pleasure. And the topic is one that's not only needed, it's really interesting.

So psyched. I was like, I have a hard time explaining leptin. I'm so happy you're gonna.

I'm so glad to be here to do so.

Well, let's start from the beginning. You do a lot of work with patients with weight loss. They often hit a plateau. What is that and why do women get stuck there?

So, you know, I will say that in all my years of practice, I have noticed that women tend to struggle a lot more with weight than men do. Sometimes they will go on a diet with their significant other and their significant other loses weight way quicker, faster, and women always struggle. And the number one reason this is is because we have hormones that are not accounted for when we're talking about the weight loss equation. So you guys know this. In school we've often been taught that, you know, it's a calorie in, calorie out mathematical equation when it comes to weight loss. And unfortunately that's not what it is. There's a lot more that goes into it. And for females, unfortunately, it's a lot of hormones and that can actually make weight loss challenging. Or if they do lose weight, they can hit a plateau or sometimes even more than that, they gain the weight back after they decide that, you know, that diet, that short lived diet was too hard to sustain and too, too hard. And so that's where things get problematic.

Right. And we know that yo yo diets are the worst thing you can do for your health.

I'm so anti diet. I always say to people, you're not going on a diet, you're going on a program. Because a diet implies something temporary and we're looking for a sustainable long term behavior that's going to work for you.

Lifestyle changes.

Exactly, exactly. I'm all about lifestyle changes. And unfortunately our society has kind of taught us that about quick fixes. You know, we've Been told that you need. You need to do the slim fast or whatever, quick shake or whatever the fad diet is at the time. And so many women and men, you know, but mainly women do these yo yo dieting, and that actually messes up their metabolism in the long run. And a lot of my patients, and I'm sure you guys can relate to this too. A lot of times people start dieting in their teens. I mean, it starts very early, unfortunately, and that can start messing up your hormones very early, very early, early on. So by the time they get to the 30s and 40s, their metabolism needs to be reset.

Effy.

So can you talk about how hormones can affect. Are we only talking about women today? I just want to.

Apparently, I'm feeling excluded here.

Girl power. Girl power. No, no, no. Just so you know, by the way, this includes men as well. But traditionally, unfortunately, most of the females tend to deal with a lot more weight loss resistance versus men. Do men, Your hormones are different, guys. Like, you're not dealing with the estrogen, the progest, but you know what? You are dealing with some of the other hormones like testosterone and thyroid and leptin. So you are included. Don't forget, you are included. But, you know, most of the struggle tends to be with women.

Okay, so how do hormones affect weight loss, men and women?

Yeah, so first of all, we have tons of hormones, okay? We have cortisol hormones, we have dhea, we have testosterone, we have progesterone, we have sex hormones, we have insulin hormones, we have leptin, we have so many different hormones. And, you know, the conventional doctor is not looking at all these hormones when you go and complain about, you know, hey, doc, I'm having trouble losing weight. So these hormones are so important because they all play a different role in your body. But you know what? More importantly, they all work together. And so when one hormone is up, it starts impacting other hormones. So if you're stressed, we'll just use this as an example. When you're stressed, guys, and your cortisol and adrenal function is off, then guess what? That starts impacting your thyroid app. Over time, it starts impacting your estrogen metabolism, your testosterone for men, so it really starts impacting other hormones. And so that's why it's really important to address all these hormones, especially when we're talking about weight loss.

Yeah, yeah. So what you're talking about is something called cortisol steel, right?

Yes.

Where when you. There's sex hormones or sterogenic hormones, where estrogen progesterone testosterone, and cortisol. So if you're using a lot of cortisol, we talk. At least I talk to my men, about, do you want to be stressed or do you want to have sex?

Exactly.

Sex or stress. Right.

I like that. I'm going to have to start using that line.

There you go. And it's the same thing for women also, because obviously, the more stressed you are, the less hormones you have. It's a much more complicated cycle.

We know.

Yes, but the result is the same, let's put it that way.

Sex or stress, baby?

Yes. Yes, for sure.

All right, so how does leptin. Because leptin is a whole different world that not many people have talked about or know about. So talk to us. What is leptin?

So let's talk about leptin, because many people don't know what leptin is. So, first of all, leptin is your satiety hormone. Your own fat cells actually produce this hormone. And what it does, it actually communicates with your hypothalamus, which is a part of your brain that regulates this metabolism. So leptin's job is to tell your brain whether or not you have enough fat stored to fuel your body and burn calories at a normal rate. In other words, it lets you know if you're properly satiated or full, or can you stop eating until you're hungry again? Now, what ends up happening is people with leptin resistance are often dealing with a miscommunication, which means their brain is not able to communicate with their fat cells appropriately. So they're not getting the right messaging. And this prevents them from getting the memo that they're full so they can stop eating. And when this happen, leptin levels circulate at higher levels than they should, which can actually lead to changes in appetite, food cravings, weight gain, sleep disturbances, mood, anxiety, and actually so much more, it can actually impact fertility in some women. So when this communication is off, you're more likely to have inflammation, insulin resistance, more likely to be overweight. And, you know, this is why it's so important to kind of learn about this hormone and see if this hormone is impacting your metabolism.

So this is. When it's too high, it leads to this, or when it's too low, it leads to this.

We're not even talking about when it's too low. We haven't even had that discussion yet. Because when it's too low, it causes a whole slew of other problems. When it's too low, your body Thinks you're in starvation mode. And so when your body thinks you're in starvation mode, your body's going to hold on to a lot of fat. Your metabolism, metabolism is definitely off. It starts impacting your thyroid for females. It starts impacting your fertility. So less likely to get pregnant when your leptin levels are low.

So what affects the leptin levels? What are the factors?

Yeah, so so many different things impact leptin, right? So first and foremost, it starts off with, you know, our standard American diet that we've been eating, right? So foods that we've been eating that are, you know, high processed, high fat, high sugar causing digestion issues, leaky gut, food sensitivities, dysbiosis, or an imbalance of good and bad bacteria, toxins, you know, impact this. So being exposed environmental disruptors like, you know, phthalates, sulfates, all those good things, those are hormonal disruptors, infections that you could have been exposed to that you may not be aware of, chronic stress, guys like, that is such a big one because it impacts so many different things. Inflammation, hormones, your thyroid, your adrenals, sometimes even genetics. So there's so many different factors that are starting to impact your leptin hormone.

So basically everything that we do at functional medicine is a piece of this puzzle.

Yes. Yes, for sure.

I have 18,000 questions.

So that's good for her.

Actually, it's a million. So it sounds like it's a core hormone, a core substance. And how would someone, I mean, it sounds like someone who's having difficulty losing weight or having disruptions in their satiety levels or even fertility issues could pretty easily say, okay, or fat loss resistant could say, okay, I might have a leptin issue. So someone who thinks they might have an issue, then what? How do they evaluate it? How do they address it? What happens next?

So what I will usually tell people and encourage people if you think that you may have a leptin issue. And sometimes the symptoms can be. Sometimes you kind of have an idea of what the symptoms could be, right? So if you're eating all the time, you're constantly hungry, like you just ate a meal and like two hours later you're wanting another meal, that can be part of it. If you know, you've done yo yo dieting for so long, so constant cravings, always fatigue, exhausted, worsening of your hypothyroid symptoms, gaining weight no matter what, like you've tried everything and you're like, I'm eating while I'm exercising. I'm not losing A pound. What I will recommend is people start off and take my leptin quiz. You can go to www.doctorbindiamd.com quiz and take my free quiz. It's literally like a minute and it goes through a series of questions to see like could possibly be leptin resistant. And if you're not, could you be leptin sensitive or are you leptin clear? So that's the first thing I'll have people do. Now if you work with, first of all, I want you to work closely with a functional medicine provider that you're comfortable with, that you trust that's familiar with leptin. Because I want you to make sure that you're also getting your levels checked. Because having this level checked is very important. Because once we know your baseline, we can kind of work with you and say, okay, your leptin is 50. Wow, we've got to get you down to seven. Let's, let's, let's do this and let's do this in a functional medicine approach that gives you the long term results and data so we can reset your metabolism. So I highly recommend that you closely work with a functional medicine provider to start getting your lab tests. If you go to a conventional doctor and ask for to have your leptin test, chances are guys, they're probably not going to know what leptin is or even wanting to do the testing. I've had patients go to endocrinologists all over the country and have asked to get this test done. And endocrinologists look at them and say, what is leptin? Definitely want to work with a functional medicine practitioner.

So what's, let me, let me ask this. So usually we talk about when you go to a regular lab, you have standard reference ranges. Do you remember by any chance what those are for leptin?

Yes, the standard leptin ranges offhand, you know, they actually do it based on your body mass index. So it's not actually accurate because.

You.

Can actually be in a normal.

Well, that's where, where we're going is optimal.

Yeah. So ideally, you know, my, my goal for my patients is 7 to 10. Right. And I do look at their body mass index because I think that's very important as well to consider when in my protocols and my treatment plans, however, you know, everybody's body mass is different. It's not taking into consideration if you have muscle fat or your composition, fluid intake. Right. When it's looking at that body mass composition. Body mass composition unfortunately is just based on height and Weight. So when we're adding the. The lept, the equation, unfortunately, the lab values get it wrong. So I may have overweight or obese patients, and their leptin levels may be normal according to their body mass. And so I really don't like the traditional conventional lab value and interpretation when it comes to leptin.

Not so much that you don't like it is that your standard is for optimal health, and that might be just looking at whether you're dying or not. And you have a better standard.

Yes. I mean, look, you know, I always tell people this when they started off, off coming up with reference ranges for labs, they took unhealthy people and they took healthy people and they put them all in one pot, and then they took the average and said, what's the average? And that's what we're going to report as normal. And for what we're trying to do is to keep people healthy, to keep people optimally. Well, we want the reference range to be tighter and closer niche and to be even better. Yeah, exactly.

Now, you've mentioned the thyroid and leptin a few times. Can you talk about the relationship between them and how leptin might impact the thyroid? Because, you know, you know, how women, how many women. I only see women. Sorry, Ed. How many women come to me and say, I have a thyroid issue and I check that thyroid. I'm like, you don't have a thyroid issue. Your thyroid's perfect. So how can. Does it mimic it? Talk more about that, please.

So, yeah, you know, first of all, when you're talking about thyroid, there's so many different markers that we need to pay attention to. And you know this, right? Like, we're checking their TSH, their T3, their T4, their total T3, reverse T3. We're looking at, you know, autoimmune markers, so we're looking at the whole picture, even nutrients that impact the thyroid. So when we're talking about the thyroid, thyroid and hormone, and leptin hormone specifically, it's very important to know that one of the things that I have noticed over the years of practice is one thing that is not being paid attention to as much is the T3 and how the T3 is how. I should say how the T4 is converting to T3. And this conversion most of the time is not happening. And this slows down the metabolism. And this is the direct correlation to why leptin and thyroid go hand in hand and why they work well together. When you fix one, the other one kind of fixes and so it's really important to look at the whole picture. Most, most of the time what I've seen in practice is because of the yo yo dieting, because of the chronic stress, because of the low calorie, the low carb, the body thinks you're starving. And when the body thinks you're starving, what ends up happening is that T4 to T3 conversion is not happening. And when that conversion is not happening, that's when leptin starts getting impacted and affected.

Leptin goes up when that happens, or.

Leptin goes, goes down, it actually goes up for some people. Yeah, it can actually go either way for some people. I've seen it go up for some people and I've seen it go down for some people. So it depends on it. It depends on other factors as well. Right. So where they, where the female is in, in her lifespan, her journey, her other, and what her other hormones are doing as well.

All right, what are you gonna say?

Well, what I'm to. I'm bouncing ahead and I'm sure we're gonna go back again. But what are the specific treatments for leptin that's we talked about a huge cause. Is there a specific treatment that's leptin associated versus kind of a general health associated? Because we all know we need to eat well, we need to get rid of the toxins, etc. Is there something that's specific for leptin?

Yeah. So one of the things that, you know, unfortunately the other thing that's happening is leptin starts impacting our detoxification, it starts impacting our liver. Liver is also, again, where T4 to T3 is being converted. Now one of the things that I will say is the other thing that gets congested in our liver is toxins like we mentioned, specifically high fructose corn syrup or fructose. Now, so fruit is something that I usually will have people avoid short term because, um, the body can't tell the difference between processed fructose and natural fructose from fruit sugars. Right. And so when you eliminate this, this naturally starts decreasing your leptin resistance and improving your leptin numbers significantly. And most people are not aware of that, but that's because of the congestion that's happening in the liver.

So would you put them on a low fodmap diet for the fructooligosaccharides? Does it go that far?

It's just straight up fructose? No, it's not. It's not, it's not that, that it's not a low fodmap diet. It's literally just decreasing or cutting out fructose or fruit for a little bit to kind of reset their metabolism.

So fruit avoidance, the natural decongestant of your liver?

Yes, yes. Yeah. I mean, so, you know, a lot of times people, you know, when they. They look at me like I'm absurd when I say, you know, stop eating fruit. There's so many good things about fruit. We have a lot of antioxidants, a lot of great properties. But what ends up happening is a couple things when we eat fruit. Right, Right. So for some people who are insulin resistance or not even aware that they could be insulin resistance, that's already being impacted when you're eating fruit. And most of the time, they're not just eating one fruit, they're eating many fruits. They're using fruit as a snack. They're using fruit as an alternative to sugar, which, by the way, is much better than eating like an apple pie every day. Don't get me wrong. However, the body, unfortunately, when it's that off or the metabolism has been kind of impacted, it can't tell the difference between, you know, where that blood sugar spike is coming from, whether it's fruit, or whether it's from a chocolate bar. And it really start, and especially fructose really impacts that liver. So we have to kind of cut it out for a short amount of time. And that really, honestly promise, guys, that really resets the liver and it really resets the leptin.

Is there any data for, like, intermittent fasting with leptin or.

Yeah. So one of the things that I've seen over practice is intermittent fasting has been a great tool for so many people. But what ends up happening with so many people with intermittent fasting, especially women, they tend to do intermittent fasting and they get results. Probably as soon as they do it, they're like, oh, this is wonderful, and they'll lose a couple pounds. And then what happens is their metabolism slows down and it no longer works for them. Right. And that's because they're not accounting for their other hormones. They're not accounting what's happening to their thyroid during this time. They're not accounting for what their progesterone, estrogen, other stuff is going on, their stress hormones. Um, intermittent fasting is not great for women who are stressed. If you're already stressed at baseline and now you're doing intermittent fasting, your body's already sensing that stress and it's going to hold on to Every calorie, every weight. So it's not necessarily the best idea. And I tend to see a leptin go up during this time. And instead of helping leptin resistance, you're actually hurting it. So one of the things I actually have people do, and again, people think I'm absurd when I say this is I actually force women to. And men to eat. Eat three meals a day. Three meals a day, but keep them about four to six hours apart because you want to reset the metabolism, you want to reset the communication that's happening between the fat cells and your hypothalamus. And when you're eating three meals a day, spread out four to six hours, your body's getting the message, hey, I'm getting enough fuel. And it starts kicking it up into gear.

So do people notice that their weight starts to shift when they.

It definitely does.

It's so counterintuitive.

Right.

I'm going to eat more and lose weight. Yeah.

And this is why again, you know, we've been taught wrong for so many years. We've been taught to over exercise, we've been taught to starve ourselves. Now we've been taught to intermittent fast and like, you know, don't eat for 24 hours or whatever it is, and, and you'll lose weight. But people are not losing weight. They're, they're, they're stuck at a plateau. And so we have to have, we basically have to recommunicate with our brain so it understands how to nourish our soul and our body in appropriate way. So it kind of resets our metabolism.

So we've covered some of it. But can you go over, how do people get more sensitive to the leptin so that they don't have to put out as much?

So how can people get more sensitive to leptin? Meaning?

Like, how can, how do you become more leptin sensitive?

Oh, I see. Okay. So, yeah, I mean, one of the things that we wanna do, like I mentioned, is cut out the fruit sugars. Very, very important. Or fruit. The other thing I usually recommend is like force people to eat. Seriously, force people to eat three meals a day, four to six hours apart. The other little trick that I think is so important that many people forget is, you know, starting your day with high protein breakfast, because protein is really important, keeps you full, which is really important. So you're not going to get hungry within two hours after eating it. And it really kind of gets your metabolism kind of kicking in gear. So starting off eating, but making sure it's protein in the morning and not like a donut or a bagel or whatever, you know, cereal that you could be used to eating, but a nice protein breakfast really starts fueling that metabolism. Those are just some of the quick tricks that I'll tell people to do, but they're so effective because those things really start resetting your metabolism. The other thing that I really, really, really, really will stress is making sure you're managing your stress. You know, all of us are stressed. And I don't know about you guys, but, you know, it's at all times of the year. It's not just during the holidays. It's not just when kids go back to school. It's, you know, we just. We're kind of coming out of a pandemic. So we're kind of Western society to.

Live in a world stressed out in. Western society.

Yeah, we're all stressed out. So managing your stress is so important. And making sure you're getting good. So when you're managing your stress, we're going to improve that cortisol steel, we're going to improve the other hormones, we're going to improve our insulin resistance, we're going to improve our blood sugar balance and making sure we're getting good quality sleep. So the combination of. Yeah, so the combination of making sure that we're managing our stress. And there's so many ways that we can do that. You have to find something that works for you. Whether it's journaling, whether it's meditation, whether it's movement yoga, whether it's breathing techniques, whether it's, you know, having a gratitude practice, seeing a therapist, you know, whatever aligns with you. You've got to do something that really calms that cortisol down. And that's so key because you need that cortisol to be at a nice, healthy low level so your other hormones can do what they're supposed to be doing. And again, sleep is so important because when your cortisol's spiking before it should, you're waking up in the middle of the night. Or when your cortisol's spiking before it should, you're not sleeping at night. So we want to make sure that we're kind of addressing.

So sleep is one thing, right? Because sleep, we need a lot of. Then the question is exercise. Because exercise, it's stressful. Too much exercise is really stressful. Not enough exercise, you're not getting rid of the stress hormones. Where's the middle ground? What's right for the leptin Story.

Oh, well, you know what? I'm going to tell you something that you probably have heard already. It's moderate exercise, right. So when you're exercising too much and you're training for that marathon, that's putting, putting a lot of stress on your body and that is counterintuitive of what we want. Right. And that communication with our brain. So we want moderate exercise. And so what that means is moving your heart rate and getting some heart very heart rate variability, but you're not going to extreme. So maybe you're working out three to four times 30 to 40 minutes a week, you're not doing anything too excessive. Moderate exercise is important because it lowers leptin levels in patients and it also decreases insulin resistance. So you want to, to get some movement, which is important. So we don't want to do the high interval training. We don't want to be training for a marathon. We don't want to be going to spin classes, you know, two times a day and doing excessive hot yoga classes because over time that is negative and counterintuitive to what we should be doing. But doing moderate movement, walking, just moving, doing, getting some heart rate variability. That's very effective.

Nice.

I was just thinking as you were talking, I've never trained for a marathon, I've never done a hiit training class, I've never done a spin class and I've never done hot yoga.

So there's opportunities.

Okay. Whatever exercise you do.

No, I was like, okay, I don't have to cut anything out. We're good here.

Yeah. So I'll encourage people try things if they aren't already. Like things like bar Pilates, walking, maybe get low impact strength training workouts. So you want move your body but you want to try different things.

So let's go back kind of big picture wise. So I do find that I agree with you. I see men and women and women definitely have bigger challenge most of the time for weight loss. And I also intermittent fasting for women is definitely much more challenging than for men. In terms of the results. They don't either they get it and they don't keep it or they just long term doesn't seem to be as good for women. So person comes to you, you talk to them about stress management, give us kind of your flow, how do you work it? What's the big picture?

I guess, I mean so I'm someone that's making multiple changes with some of these patients. Right. Like always addressing nutrition first. How can we optimize your nutrition? What can we tweak and fix and improve upon, you know, so if that means you're intermittent fasting, we're stopping that. Intermittent fasting. If you're someone that's snacking all the time, maybe I'm stopping the snacking. Right. So whatever it is, we're changing and making some dietary changes. And we didn't. We haven't even really talked about this yet. But, you know, if they have like gut issues or food sensitivities, I'm addressing all of those things as well. So, you know. But yeah, nutrition, nutritional changes is the first thing that I'm going to be making recommendations. Exercise and movement. So if they're over exercising, I'm gonna have them scale back a little bit. If they're not exercising enough, I'm gonna have them kind of pick it up a notch. So kind of meeting them where. Where they need to be. But stress management is a big piece, right? So maybe I'm teaching them different forms of meditation. Maybe I'm teaching them different breathing techniques because it's very important for them to kind of manage their stress. You know, I'm probably going to be making recommendations for supplements that can help with stress and kind of things that can optim adrenals in an appropriate way, especially if I feel like their adrenals are burnt out or whatever. And then supplements are huge, right? I definitely include supplements because if I find out that you're insulin resistance or you have a lot of inflammation, that I'm going to be incorporating nutraceuticals to kind of, you know, improve some of those things. If you have an autoimmune condition, if you have a thyroid condition, kind of work with the patients to kind of come up with a very personalized protocol based on that.

Yeah, that makes sense.

What role do you find toxins play in leptin?

Oh, my goodness. So, I mean, unfortunately, our world is full of so many toxins. You know, there's no way around it. You know, we've been exposed for females, our personal care products, our shampoos, our conditioners. Like, we're constantly exposed that when we wash our hands, when we're in a hospital setting, setting, you know, there's tricosolan. There's so many different things that we're aware, unaware of. You know, in the last year, guys, I think we've probably overdone bleach and like all these cleaners. So those are chemicals and they can be toxic and they impact our liver. And from a leptin perspective, you know, that impacts our detoxification, that Impacts the way our liver is communicating with our other hormones. It also impacts, you know, how that's impacting our estrogen and it starts impacting how that's impacting our, you know, testosterone for males. So it's really important to kind of address the environmental factors that could be impacting our overall body.

Do you have a story of a patient who really stands out for you, who had insulin resistance? I'm sorry, leptin resistance, difficulty losing weight and then transformed it. Can you tell us about someone who really stands out for you?

Yeah. So the first patient that comes to my mind because it was really transformative is actually a male patient.

You're loved.

I wanted to bring this up for you, Ed, but yeah, I was actually a male patient and he was dealing with a lot of. Actually came to me, presented very differently, you know, came dealing with a lot of anxiety, a lot of like mood issues and was having difficulty losing weight. And part of it was also like the motivation to change and just kind of difficulty to wanting to make some of these changes or apathy associated with it. So, you know, we started off and his leptin levels were 54, which is pretty.

How old was he? Do you remember? Did they match?

Let me think. I think he's probably like 34 if I'm not mistaken. So 34 year old male, leptin levels were 54. And within probably three months of working with me, we got his leptin levels down to 20. And then the last time I just checked, which was probably maybe a month ago, his leptin levels were down to 14. So significantly better. Significantly better. He's lost a total of. I think last time we checked, he had lost a total of 42 pounds.

Wow. And what time frame is that over?

So this is probably now because he's in one of my six month protocols. So he's probably in about five months. Five months in now.

That's a huge weight loss.

Yeah, I mean, so weight loss. But what are the other benefits? Because left and level. Nobody really cares what the left and level levels look. They care about how they feel and look. Right, how they.

How they look? Yeah, exactly how they look. Yeah. I mean, so mood for the. So the biggest things that, you know, he came was, was dealing with a lot of anxiety and his anxiety has significantly improved, which was much, much better. So we've actually reduced some of his prescription medications that he was on, which is huge. Amazing. That's huge. Mood is better. He. The other thing that I should mention, he has more energy, so that's the biggest thing. He's sleeping much better, he has more energy, he feels good, he's a lot more confident. So so many other benefits that have come not just from reducing his leptin levels, but the fact that he's lost weight and because we were also fixing so many other things going on with him at the same time.

What was the most impactful thing that you did with him that you feel like led to that alteration and that outcome?

You know, for him it was quite challenging because he had some of these OCD behavior years. So it was kind of hard to implement new changes and for him to get accustomed to it. But one of the, if I had to say, one of the biggest things that we did for him, honestly it probably was the dietary changes and forcing him to eat. So he was not eating. He was someone that was not really. He was, he had, he has OCD tendencies but he wasn't eating appropriately and he wasn't eating timely. And so just kind of regulating his eating was probably one of the best things that we did did for him.

So I have a. Just to. Does everybody with leptin resistance, is everybody obese or overweight with leptins resistance or can you be.

No, not always. You'd be surprised. Like I have patients that come into my clinic and like I'm thinking about some females that come into my clinic and they have probably normal BMI, probably a body mass index of you know, 24, 25. You know, that's within that normal range. But their leptin levels are like in their 20s, 25, 5. So not always. They don't have to always be morbidly obese or overweight to have an abnormal leptin level. Sometimes I'm seeing that and for this patient specifically that I'm thinking about, you know, her, we brought her leptin level down from 25 to actually we brought it down to 11 and that was over three month course she lost a total about 10 pounds. But the biggest thing was working with her on her thyroid. When we improved her T3 function, that's what helped her lose some of the weight because before she had tried everything and we couldn't. She couldn't, she couldn't. She was not budging. Like she had tried intermittent fasting, tried everything but balancing her thyroid hormone really helped her kind of lose those 10.

Did you do that by affecting the thyroid directly or by affecting the leptin through the liver? I'm just curious how you hit that.

It was a, it was definitely, it was a combination of Both. It was definitely a combination of, you know, supporting her thyroid, which was really important. But then also we put, we took it through a detoxification which was like, was key, but between the, the two. Yeah. Unfortunately, it's not like a one step process. It's usually a couple things we're doing. Right. To kind of optimize these patients.

Functional medicine is never one step.

No, but I call that foundation. Like the foundational behaviors really do transmit across. We've talked to a thyroid specialist and now we're talking to a leptin specialist. And every person we're speaking to, the foundation always comes up. Eat, sleep, stress reduction, move your body. Those are the four things. If you do those, and then of course there's your higher purpose and your community and all that. But really, Eat, sleep, stress reduction, move your body. If you do those four things in the right amounts the right way for your body, it's going to trickle down.

Yeah, for sure.

So this has been a huge wealth of information. Right. So people, I'm sure are listening, going, wait, I think I have a leptin issue. Where can people find you and find out more about you?

Yeah. So you know, Everything is under drbindiamd.com or drbindiamd on Instagram, Facebook, on LinkedIn, whatever. It's D R B I n D I Y A M D. We'll put.

That in the show notes too.

Dr. Bindia and you mentioned you have a quiz on your website and you have course. Yeah, everybody should check that out.

Yeah, exactly.

So if you have questions, check that out. Yep. Awesome. It's been truly an honor and a pleasure to have you on and I know I've learned a lot, so I hope everybody else has also.

Thank you so much for having me on this.

Thanks for listening to another episode of five Journeys podcast live. Like you matter.

Sam.