HCG Diet

The World Health Organization (WHO) now describes the prevalence of obesity as an epidemic. (Obesity is defined by percentage of body fat. Women with more than 32 per cent of their weight from fat and men with more than 25 per cent are deemed obese.) People all over the world are getting fatter than ever. Once considered a problem only in high-income countries, obesity is dramatically on the rise in low- and middle-income countries. In recent years, there has been a growing recognition of an emerging epidemic of obesity in the developing societies. In fact, the rate of increase in obesity prevalence in developing countries can often exceed that in the industrialised world. Indeed, the yearly rate of increase in overweight and obesity in regions of Asia, Africa and South America is two- to five-fold that seen in the United States.

For thousands of years obesity was rarely seen. It was not until the 20th century that it became common, so much so that in 1997 the World Health Organization (WHO) formally recognized obesity as a global epidemic. As of 2005 the WHO estimates that at least 400 million adults (9.8%) are obese, with higher rates among women than men. As of 2008, The World Health Organization claimed that 1.5 billion adults, 20 and older, were overweight and of these over 200 million men and nearly 300 million women were obese. The rate of obesity also increases with age at least up to 50 or 60 years old. Once considered a problem only of high-income countries, obesity rates are rising worldwide. These increases have been felt most dramatically in urban settings.

Obesity has reached epidemic proportions in India in the 21st century, with morbid obesity affecting 5% of the country's population. India is following a trend of other developing countries that are steadily becoming more obese. Unhealthy, processed food has become much more accessible following India's continued integration in global food markets. Urbanization and modernization has been associated with obesity. In Northern India obesity was most prevalent in urban populations (male = 5.5%, female = 12.6%), followed by the urban slums (male = 1.9%, female = 7.2%). Obesity rates were the lowest in rural populations (male = 1.6%, female = 3.8%). Socioeconomic class also had an effect on the rate of obesity. Women of high socioeconomic class had rates of 10.4% as opposed to 0.9% in women of low socioeconomic class. With people moving into urban centers and wealth increasing, concerns about an obesity epidemic in India are growing.

Indians are genetically susceptible to weight accumulation especially around the waist. While studying 22 different SNPs near to MC4R gene, scientists have identified a SNP (single nucleotide polymorphism) named rs12970134 to be mostly associated with waist circumference.

This hypothesis was laid by Dr.Simeon few decades back and he performed clinical studies for the same observed very good and significant results.

Dr Simeons was a graduate of the University of Heidelberg Medical School in the 1920s. He chose endocrinology as his speciality, which in turn led to a fascination with tropical diseases such as malaria, dengue fever and leprosy. Simeons spent several years in Hamburg, focusing on the diagnosis and treatment of such diseases. In 1928, he travelled to central Africa to study these diseases personally. In 1931, Dr Simeons accepted a post in India, where he spent the next two decades. While there, he developed the use of the drug Atabrine, which became and remained for years a mainstay of conventional antimalarial treatment. He also investigated a new method of blood staining to better observe the malaria parasite. For his work against malaria, Dr Simeons was awarded the Order of Merit by the Red Cross. During World War II, he held several important Indian government posts, conducted extensive research on bubonic plague and also developed model centres for the treatment of leprosy.

After India became independent, Dr Simeons set up in private practice in Bombay (now Mumbai). In 1949, with his wife and three sons, Dr Simeons moved to Rome, where he worked on psychosomatic disorders at the Salvator Mundi International Hospital. He was regarded as one of the top research doctors in Europe. Although much of his early work was concerned with the infectious diseases malaria, leprosy and bubonic plague, psychosomatic disorders were another of Dr Simeons' interests.

As he travelled the world, Dr Simeons became fascinated with the condition of obesity, which was a relatively rare condition at that time. His research would lead him to investigate the links between endocrinology, obesity and psychosomatic disorders.

He studied every potential solution for obesity offered anywhere in the world. As part of his thorough investigation , he researched the thyroid, pituitary and adrenal glands, the pancreas, the gallbladder and over 100 other physiological functions. He could find no direct correlation between obesity and these various glands and organs. Dr Simeons finally concluded that the key to the obesity problem lies within the part of the brain called the diencephalon, a complex of structures that includes the thalamus and hypothalamus. It is particularly the compromised function of the hypothalamus, he discovered, that is at the core of the problem. According to Dr Simeons: "If obesity is always due to one very specific diencephalic deficiency, it follows that the only way to cure it is to correct this deficiency. At first this seemed an utterly hopeless undertaking. The greatest obstacle was that one could hardly hope to correct an inherited trait localised deep inside the brain, and while we did possess a number of drugs whose point of action was believed to be in the diencephalon, none of them had the slightest effect on the fat centre. There was not even a pointer showing a direction in which pharmacological research could move to find a drug that had such a specific action."

While it was commonly believed that overeating causes obesity, Simeons found that overeating is the result of a metabolic disorder—not its cause.

Now that he had discovered the long-sought-after cause, Dr Simeons was in pursuit of a solution. His "Eureka moment" came when he noticed that very thin pregnant Indian women, although having a low-caloric intake while at the same time doing demanding physical activity, delivered healthy full-weight babies. These pregnant women could easily lose weight by drastically reducing their dietary intake but without feeling hungry or in any way harming the child in the womb. After much research, he attributed this phenomenon to the presence of a substance called human chorionic gonadotrophin (hCG), which is made in high amounts in a woman's body during pregnancy.

He also reflected on the rare medical condition of young obese Indian boys, known as "fat boys", who were cured of their obesity with daily injections of small amounts of hCG: they miraculously lost their ravenous appetites and reshaped their bodies to normal.

Dr Simeons wondered if hCG could assist in opening the abnormal, secure reserves of fat in non-pregnant women and possibly even in men. Under normal conditions, these abnormal fat reserves are almost impossible to access and are only released as the body's last survival strategy during times of extreme starvation. However, Dr Simeons found one very interesting exception: hCG signals the body to mobilise these fat reserves. At his hospital, he experimented with this approach, using daily hCG injections combined with a very specific 500-calories-per-day diet. After many years of working with thousands of test patients, he perfected his "weight loss cure protocol". The results were astonishing. Almost 100 per cent of his patients were losing approximately one pound (0.5 kilogram) per day while on the protocol. And they were only losing the most difficult and resistant form of body fat, i.e., abnormal stored fat.