The body with obesity is a body in metabolic crisis with chronic inflammation and is in many cases a symptom of fundamental nutritional imbalance.

The comprehensive and balanced nutritional composition of Seagreens® with its known effects on metabolic disorder and broad representation of all the micronutrients not readily available in other foods or supplements, presents the practitioner with an ideal natural resource.

As whole nations put on weight, the links between diet, digestion, circulation and obesity are clearer to the consumer than ever. Many factors including loss of nutrients in food and soil, a concomitant increase of fats, sugars, modified starches and other artificial inputs to food and livestock, sedentary consumerist lifestyle and several generations for whom responsibility for health has shifted from individual to ‘welfare’ state, are coming home to roost in a pandemic in which more than half of British school-aged children are expected to be obese by 2020 (101).

A comparative study based on government tables published in 1940 and 2002 revealed that the iron recorded in the average rump steak fell by 55% over that period. Calcium is down 4% and magnesium 7%. Milk has lost 21% of its calcium and 62% of its iron, while cheddar cheese has lost 38% of its magnesium, 9% of its calcium and 47% of its iron.

Changes in measuring the composition of food could account for some of these decreases, as could changes in the way food is processed, stored and transported, but the Food Commission, an independent consumer watchdog, thinks the impact of intensive farming may be causative (96).

A 2006 article in Positive Health magazine (111) reported that “there are now more overweight than under-nourished people in the world”. An average adult in the heavily industrialised world accumulates 300 - 500 different chemicals in their body.

This article reviewed extensive scientific research and quoted Dr Baillie-Hamilton's dietary protocol to chelate and detoxify, but Dr Baillie- Hamilton pointed out that “the ingredients required (for such a protocol) are not generally found in any quantity or quality in typical Western diet”. That is, high doses of anti-oxidants, B vitamins, trace minerals, essential fatty acids, soluble fibre, amino acids.

Dr Baillie-Hamilton also emphasised that for the necessary detoxification to be effective, the correct alkaline pH balance is essential. Seagreens® is the most alkalizing of all natural foods, and contains a natural balance of all of these ingredients. Used at a high daily intake for periods of up to 6 months some significant results might be achieved without side effects. Seagreens® began its own research programme 2007 with a London University hopefully leading to clinical trials. In the meantime there is no substitute for everyday clinical experience and practitioners' own findings on these urgent matters is welcomed.

Canadian research at the University of Laval in Quebec looked at the increased risks of food and environmental toxicity in obesity, noting that industrial chemicals and particularly those that act like hormone disrupters - all of which have been found to accumulate in body fat cells - profoundly alter several aspects of human metabolism and appetite control.

The conclusion is that several pernicious cycles are set up through food and environmental toxicity, weight loss as well as weight gain, and poorly informed detoxification. Weight loss without proper detoxification leads to toxic substances stored in fat cells being released into the bloodstream, and as levels of these toxins rise, so levels of essential thyroid hormones necessary to maintain efficient metabolism, fall dramatically.

A concomitant reduction in muscle oxidative enzymes - which determine how efficiently the muscles use energy - results in energy again being stored as fat, completing the cycle: weight loss - rising contaminants - loss of oxidative enzymes - increased fat. Other cycles may be set up through impaired hormonal function and imbalance including over-eating and obsessive dietary imbalance (115).

Seagreens® can help neutralise fat and pollutants; restore hormonal balance, the thyroid in particular; and help regulate weight and improve circulation. Obesity increases the requirement for iodine and up to 100,000µg (100mg) of elemental iodine per day may be required to achieve and maintain sufficiency (120).

Another factor involved in the increased demand for iodine is the presence of excessive amounts of goitrogens from the diet and lifestyle (substances harmful to the thyroid), for example smoking...which interferes with the sodium/iodide symporter function...and fluoride...which interferes with the uptake of iodide by the thyroid gland symporter system (and it is suggested that) flouride causes oxidative damage to the halide-binding site of the symporter...and bromide...and potassium perchlorate (which it is suggested may be) in dairy and breast milk (122).

See also Cancer

See also Detoxification

See also Diabetes

See also Digestion

See also Metabolism

See also Thyroid and Iodine Deficiency

See also Weight Regulation