How a Man in his Sixties Lost Weight and put Frequent Urination to rest

Struggling with Excess Weight and Frequent Urination

Max has been trying to lose weight since his late thirties. A hearty man with an appreciation for good food and an aversion to physical exertion, he watched his weight edge up to 205lb by the time he reached his sixty year old milestone birthday. He had tried acupuncture for weight loss with temporary success. He experimented with intermittent fasting and was able to sustain it for a month before it got too much. He’s not one to sign up for voluntary starvation. He has read many diet books, and is confident that “I know what to do, I just need to do it.” He decided to have another go at losing weight when he noticed an occasional tremor in his hands and slight dizziness on waking.

Integrating Gemmotherapy and a Plant Based Diet with Homeopathy

Max has been taking a homeopathic remedy regularly for over a decade. He feels great after taking it. It always gives him a boost of confidence and vitality, whatever else was going on in his life. It is a great fit – a gift from his former homeopath that I would not want him to be without.

He just wanted something to help him lose weight so that he can keep his blood pressure down and avoid medication. His physician gave him the OK to try natural methods to get his symptoms under control before he had to put him on meds.

I knew this was someone who needed gradual change. Following the whole-person approach to cleansing the body that I had learnt from Lauren Hubele, we started with a small tweak to his diet, which was already based mostly on whole foods, mostly gluten free.

Step 1. Breaking the Fast with Fruit

He would switch to an all-fruit breakfast, eating any amount of fruit he wished to keep him going in the morning. The goal is not to lose weight initially, but to help the body to clean itself and to jump start his metabolism.

Within two weeks, Max reported that he was feeling more energetic, and no longer needed coffee or tea to tide him over the midmorning dip. Kicking caffeine alone helped to stabilize his blood pressure.  It gave him confidence to keep going.

Step 2. Eliminating Inflammatory Foods

This was more radical. Max agreed to eliminate dairy and gluten from his diet. While he was able to follow this eating plan half the time, he noticed something remarkable within a month. He was losing weight effortlessly. The weather was cold, and he was definitely not moving more. His pants no longer tugged around the waist and the hips. He was sneezing less. The itchiness on the back of his legs and the back of his head started to improve. The changes were incremental and measurable. He was motivated to take the next step.

Step 3. Improving Elimination with gemmotherapy

The next move involved a delicate negotiation. It probably looked like I was trying to sell coal to the owner of a coal mine. “I have a good bowel movement everyday when I take psyllium husk. That stuff really works!”  We agreed that he would take half his usual psyllium supplement, while he starts with a tincture prepared from the buds of the walnut tree to open his bowels and restore his intestinal flora.  He noticed that his bowel movements changed almost immediately, from one to two. The appearance of the stool also changed, indicating less compaction in the gut.

Step 4. Reducing Frequent Night-time Urination with Gemmotherapy

Max agrees to retire the psyllium husk. He also agrees to shift to a mostly plant-based diet. We graduate to another gemmotherapy tincture to address his frequent night waking. No one can feel truly refreshed if their nightly sleep is interrupted by several bathroom trips, even if, as Max assures me, “I am used to it. I don’t even turn on the light. I just go right back to sleep.” “Maybe I should drink less water in the evening?” he suggests. Our bodies need to rest in order to restore balance to both mind and body. I put him on blueberry gemmotherapy.

Optimizing Elimination results in Dramatic Health Improvement 

This step is the game changer. He has three well-formed bowel movements daily for the first time in his life. His night-time urination starts to drop from thrice to twice nightly, and then to once and after two months, he is starting to not wake up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom. By this time, he has lost 15 pounds, without ever feeling hungry or ramping up his physical activity. He is no longer dizzy. The blood pressure has started to fall. His elbow joints no longer ache.

He describes the effect of the blueberry gemmo brilliantly: “It preps the body to eliminate.” When the bowels are eliminating well, the kidneys do not have to work overtime. He has noticed that his daytime urination is becoming less urgent. For the first time in over a decade, his frequent urination is shifting. He has not had a major winter cold this year. He has even stopped biting his nails! There is still some way to go before Max reaches his goal of losing another 20lb and lowering his blood pressure even more. He wants to start walking more now that spring is just around the corner. When the body is less burdened, the most sedentary person can begin to exercise without undue stress.

Empowering the Individual to make Informed Choices and to Reclaim Health

The beauty of this gentle food-to-poop approach to cleansing the body is that it is gradual, sustainable and can be integrated into any lifestyle at a realistic pace. It encourages the individual to engage in his own body’s processes, to observe the signs of inflammation and to resolve them at each step. He is not following a short term detox for weight loss program, but feeling his way into life-long changes.  Each iteration empowers him to make informed choices and to own them. He is reclaiming his health from the inside out.