What Is Metabolic Typing?
Metabolic Typing (MT) is a diet and ecological lifestyle programme. But don’t let that long title put you off! The MT process allows metabolic typing advisors to develop effective, bespoke nutritional, supplementary and therapeutic approaches for a broad range of chronic conditions and degenerative illnesses such as:
- Weight gain/loss and obesity
- Blood sugar and blood pressure problems
- Metabolic syndrome, Diabetes type 1 and 2, coronary heart disease
- Arthritis
- Allergies
- Osteoporosis
- Digestive disorders
- Chronic fatigue
- Depression
And the list goes on…
Research consistently shows that people have highly individualised requirements for food due to infinitely variable hereditary influences. Metabolic typing has the capacity to address your unique biochemical imbalances with a high degree of specificity and precision. It is these biochemical imbalances that cause weight gain, unwanted symptoms and chronic health conditions.
How does metabolic typing do this?
Firstly, we as metabolic typing advisors, recognise that everyone is an individual. We don’t work with your symptoms, we work with you! We understand that there is something causing your symptom. An underlying metabolic or biochemical imbalance.
Targeting a treatment just for the relief of symptoms is known as an allopathic approach. This is how our medical system approaches problems and many nutritionally qualified people do the same, by treating the symptom rather than the underlying imbalance.
Let’s look at an easy example – Taking a tablet for a headache.
There is a reason for the headache. A biochemical imbalance causing a symptom. If you are a regular sufferer, it is important to identify the underlying cause and make changes to your lifestyle rather than continuing to keep taking the tablets.
Allopathic approaches are great for symptom relief, but the underlying cause of the problem IS still there and WILL persist.
Another example would be going on a low calorie diet to lose weight. This will work for a while, but on returning to normal eating you will see the weight rapidly pile back on. Studies show that within 3 years you’ll have an extra stone on top of what you had to start with!
Your excess weight is simply a symptom of imbalanced biochemistry, not just too many calories! You do not need to starve yourself to lose weight, you need to know what aspects of your life are throwing your biochemistry out of balance, and what foods you need to eat to restore balance.
An imbalance in your biochemistry is an imbalance in 1 or more Fundamental Homeostatic Controls (FHC’s). These systems balance and control the different systems of your body. Metabolic typing recognizes 11 FHC’s. An imbalance in an FHC decreases the functionality of the system that it controls within your body. This imbalance leads to your body trying to communicate with you that something is not right. The body communicates this decrease in functionality through symptoms, from the simple headache to skin conditions, digestive disorders to cancer…. Sound complicated?
Maybe a little, but let’s look at each of the FHC’s and what they do, and I promise it will all become a little clearer!
1. Autonomic Nervous system – This part of the nervous system is controlled unconsciously and is responsible for turning on and off the digestive system and the organs of your body. It is the master regulator of your body’s organs and glands.
2. Carbo-Oxidative system – This is the conversion of carbohydrates to energy through Glycolysis, Krebs (citric acid) cycle and beta-oxidation.Carbo-Oxidative system – This is the conversion of carbohydrates to energy through Glycolysis, Krebs (citric acid) cycle and beta-oxidation.
3. Lipo-oxidative system – This system controls fatty acid/sterol balance, cell membrane permeability, aerobic (with oxygen)/anaerobic (without oxygen) metabolic processes.
4. Acid and alkaline balance (pH) – The body tries to maintain a pH or acid alkaline balance of 7.46, which is slightly alkaline. There are 7 causal factors which can result in pH imbalance. These imbalances are due to imbalances the FHC’s and can be caused by dietary, structural, mental emotional or environmental factors.
5. Electrolyte balance – This is the balance of fluids and electrically charged ions (sodium, potassium, chloride, magnesium, calcium, phosphate, sulfate and bicarbonate) throughout your body. We are looking for electrolyte excess vs. electrolyte deficiency.
6. Steroidal hormone balance – This is the balance between or the ratios of steroidal hormones, such as cortisol, estrogen, testosterone and progesterone.
7. Endocrine system – In this instance we are looking at the Pituitary vs. Adrenal vs. Thyroid vs. Gonadal glands and their influence on body shape and distribution of fat/excess weight as well as the highs and lows that certain foods give you.
8. Prostaglandin balance – Prostaglandins control the body’s responses to inflammation, neurotransmission, hormones, immune efficiency, circulation, cholesterol production, fluid-balance and blood platelet aggregation.
9. Neurotransmitter balance – Excitatory vs. inhibitory factors released from the brain that effect autonomic nervous system function and therefore effect body function.
10. ABO Blood type – This is the restriction of food types that contain certain ‘lectins’ that have been shown to have adverse reactions in people with specific blood types, ie. type O vs. Type A vs. Type B vs. Type AB
11. Constitutional elements – Vata, Pitta, Kapha, from Ayurvedic, this is the constitutional qualities of food and how they interact with the constitutional qualities of the body
An imbalance in any one of the FHC’s can lead to any symptom or chronic degenerative disease. Imbalances in FHC’s can be caused by many different factors. The list of factors is exhaustive and therefore too long to list here, however they can be categorised as follows:
- Dietary
- Structural
- Spiritual, psychological (Mind Body)
- Environmental
Following a Metabolic Typing Ecological Lifestyle programme, is like unpeeling an onion! It’s a step by step process that uncovers and corrects imbalance in your FHC and therefore correcting the underlying cause of your symptoms.
Join one of our programmes today and reap the benefits of eating right for your type and unravelling the underlying cause of your symptoms or weight gain.
I look forward to speaking to you soon!
Keith Tucker