If you are one of the millions of Americans struggling with overweight and over eating to no avail, you will be glad to know there is a way out of your struggle. Trying to stop overeating is often torturous, very difficult and unsuccessful. Instead of trying to use sheer will, you can address the underlying cause of overeating. Overeating is often just a symptom of other underlying problems, which if left untreated, will not only continue to result in overeating, but could also lead to illness and even disease. In this brief article, we outline just a few of the potential underlying causes of overeating.

The drive to overeat could be caused by:
Poor Nutrition
Digestive Disorders
Allergies and Various Infections
Consuming Excito-Toxins
Heavy Metal and Vaccination Toxicity
Unaddressed Emotional Issues
Lack of Taste (the Six Tastes, that is)

Poor Nutrition
Poor nutrition can cause overeating. When we eat highly processed foods, like pre-packaged foods, the nutrition has been destroyed through the processing and preparation. These foods are designed not for nutrition but for flavor and shelf life. Regardless of the cost to your health, these foods are cheap to produce and distribute. They often contain trans-fats and hydrogenated oils, which are hardened oils that are too dense and difficult for the body to break down. These are the oils that hang-on as the weight that is very hard to lose. Highly processed foods usually feature synthetic flavors that have no nutritive substance to them. Foods that have high fructose corn syrup, white sugars and white flours fall into this category. They upset the brain chemistry by stripping the body of minerals and essential nutrients. Highly heated foods like fried foods lose their nutrients, enzymes and form dangerous cancer causing chemicals (acrylamides). When we eat these toxic foods which have little or no nutrition, the body's tissues, organs and channels are left starving for the vital nutrients they need to function, so though our tummies may be full, our cells are still starving.

Where there is poor nutrition, there is also a lack of immunity. This sets the stage for infection to breed. These infections often lead to compulsive eating as an attempt to quell the irritating infection.

Digestive Disorders
If we have poor digestion, we don't get sufficient energy from our food. This is because it doesn't fully break down, so we eat more, trying to get the energy from food. Then we have even less energy because we just overate or ate food we couldn't digest. Signs of poor digestion can be bloating, heaviness, pain, heartburn, or gas. If we are tired after a meal, that is a sign of poor digestion. When food is properly digested it initially gives us relaxation, but shortly thereafter should give abundant energy. We have a class on this subject being offered in Los Gatos this month.

Allergies and Various Infections
Allergies irritate the intestinal lining so our bodies crave food to soothe the inflammation of the gut and to lubricate and hydrate the dehydrated organs and channels. This is like trying to quell an internal sunburn. Unfortunately, while this is temporarily soothing, it makes the situation worse - since food eaten during allergic reactions is not properly digested and rots in the system, exacerbating the allergy symptoms and laying the ground for developing further allergies. Herbal nutrition is excellent for resolving allergies.

Irritated digestive lining from use of antibiotics ruins the gut ecology and can cause yeast overgrowth. This is much like a skin rash but internally. The yeast get hungry and eat our food, making us want to eat again because the yeast took all the nutrition.

Parasite infection can cause poor digestion and over-eating, frustration and anxiety, anger and depression. Parasite infection is an unrecognized epidemic in the U.S. We have found that about 70% of Derrick's clients have parasite infections, which luckily, can be resolved through natural methods effectively. Unfortunately, parasites and yeast excrete acidic waste products that irritate the intestinal lining and make us feel excessively hungry and irritable. When left unresolved, the parasite and yeast excrement invades the brain and results in a host of unwanted emotional ups and downs in addition to brain fog or compulsive behavior such as overeating.

Consuming Excito-toxins
Splenda, Equal, Sweet-n-Low and MSG all have excito-toxins. Many claim to be naturally derived, but chemically altering a natural substance often yields toxicity. Excito-toxins are known carcinogens and stimulate the brain, causing unhealthy cravings. These foods have no nutritional value and not only leave cells starving for nutrition but they also over-stimulate the brain. Like any stimulating drug, they create the dreadful low after their chemical high, which drives us to eat again. Most of these products have been linked to cancer. MSG can be disguised in your foods under the aliases, "spices," "natural flavors," "yeast extract or autolyzed yeast extract," "hydrolyzed vegetable protein," and even "lemon, orange, etc... flavor."

Heavy Metal and Vaccination Toxicity
Heavy metal poisoning from vaccinations, cooking in aluminum pots and pans, and having mercury amalgam fillings in the teeth can make the liver, pancreas, spleen and gall bladder exceptionally inflamed and irritated. Other dental materials that can be highly toxic include root canal fillers, metal caps, implants and bridges. This metal toxicity can damage nerves and greatly impair our digestive capacity by ruining liver and organ functions. Low digestive ability makes us want to eat more because we are never getting fully nourished.

Heavy metals from the teeth often go straight to the gall bladder. When the gall bladder and digestive tract are inflamed from the intense burn of the mercury and metals, it causes poor digestion and an intense urge to eat sweet, heavy, rich, fatty foods to soothe the gut, nerves and intensity of the mind. When the gall bladder is inflamed, people often want to eat at night and have trouble settling down for sleep. This irritation makes it easy to eat late which further impairs digestion (and is a major cause of weight gain).

Vaccination toxicity which contains viruses, bacteria, chemical preservatives such as formaldehyde and mercury, just to name a few, creates hormonal imbalances by toxifying our hormone glands such as the thyroid gland, located just inches away from the injection site of the shoulder. When these glands are working twenty-four hours a day, every day to detoxify these chemical agents, they become exhausted and depleted, unable to perform their vital functions of enabling metabolism, creating balanced brain chemistry and healthy physical function. In the past decade we've seen an ever increasing abundance of information available on the link between vaccination poisoning and numerous diseases involving nerve dysfunction such as obsessive compulsive behaviors, manic/depression and severe hormonal imbalances leading to obesity. As we watch our clients go through Vaccine detoxification, they notice changes in appetite, digestion, energy level and relief from all kinds of chronic symptoms.

Emotional Needs
When we don't resolve our emotions directly, or when we have chronic and deep-seated unresolved emotions, this often drives us to overeat. Victims of emotional trauma may not even realize when they are carrying unresolved emotions, which is why our clients committed to complete health are always tested for this in our clinic. Sweets can be sedating and calming. The body turns them into fats when they aren't completely burned. Fat helps to sedate and soothe the nerves. It literally calms the body down and the heavy padding of the fat feels like the physical protective layer that we are craving emotionally.

Lack of Taste (the Six Tastes that is)
All six tastes need to be present in food for it to be completely satisfying to the body and mind. These are sweet, sour, salty, bitter, pungent and astringent.

The potential causes for overeating are so numerous it is difficult to choose just a few to cover. It is crucial to work with your health practitioner directly to expose the underlying cause of overeating in your own particular case. Addressing the cause of the overeating allows the overeating to subside on it's own and for the long-term.