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Weight Loss and the Autonomic Nervous System

| Health & Science

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Anatomy : The Autonomic Nervous System and Weight Loss.

Why No One Diet Doesn’t Work For Everyone.

The following information has been gathered and compiled over a period of years, through personal experience, while traveling, teaching classes that include T’ai Chi, Qi Gong, herbal information, martial arts and other health related subjects.  The article also contains feedback from students and anecdotal information from readers of my columns.  The following are my opinions and deductions from those sources.

The autonomic nervous system (ANS) acts as a control, helping to maintain homeostasis in the body.  Most of the ANS activities are performed without conscious control. The ANS controls the heart rate, digestion, perspiration, respiratory rate, salivation, dilation of the pupils, urination, and sex drive.  The two ANS components are the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) and sympathetic nervous system (SNS).  These two are connected with the metabolic rate, which is what we’re interested in and will focus on.

The sensory arm is made of primary visceral sensory neurons.  These sensory neurons monitor the levels of sugar in the blood, the chemical composition of the stomach and the contents of the gut, as well as other things. They also convey the sense of taste, which is a conscious perception.

The sympathetic nervous system is comprised of two sympathetic ganglia chains close to the spinal cord. The parasympathetic ganglia are located in close proximity to the target organ.

Sympathetic and parasympathetic divisions typically function in opposition to each other in an effort to keep the body in a state of homeostasis. The sympathetic nervous system is the accelerator and the parasympathetic division is the brake. The SNS functions in situations requiring quick responses. The PNS functions in situations not requiring immediate reaction. SNS is fight or flight and parasympathetic is rest and digest. 

There are many instances when the two work together but we’re interested in weight reduction and metabolic rates and won’t delve into them here other than to say: if your a SNS type and eat a strict vegetarian diet you’ll be low on energy and if you’re a PNS type and eat a heavy diet of meat and protein, you’ll put on weight.  Another interesting aspect of the two systems as far as metabolic rates are concerned is:  the SNS stimulates digestion, and the PNS stimulates salivary gland secretion, which in turn contributes to making us feel hungry.

Even with the above sketchy information, we can see there are reasons why no one diet works for everyone.  If you’re a slow metabolizer and eat foods better suited to someone with a fast metabolic rate. it won’t work for you.  Someone who is SNS dominant and eats a primarily vegetarian diet will find they lack energy and endurance.  There are more than two types and someone versed in metabolic typing can fill in the voids.  My primary objective is to give the basic information and let the reader take it from there, if they care to.

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About Larry Miller

I was born in Los Angeles in 1940. My father was a fighter pilot instructor during WWll and we moved from coast to coast, maybe that’s where I got the nomad in my blood. After graduating from high school in 1958 I joined the Marines. That lifestyle wasn’t for me and upon my discharge I went on with my life, and have never looked back. I worked briefly for a Caterpillar dealer in Riverside, CA before moving back to N. California where I was a welder and truck driver for a chemical company. Truck driving wasn’t my calling anymore than being in the Marines, and I went back to work for another Caterpillar dealer steam cleaning dirty tractor parts and welding. They sent me to schools, lots and lots of schools. I spent as much time going to trade schools as I did at work. I went from cleaning parts to apprentice field mechanic, to mechanic to the parts department to satellite store manager in less than two years. They wanted me to move to Sacramento and be a salesman: I moved to Oregon to learn to commune with nature. I went to work for another heavy equipment dealer and was later contacted by the World’s largest Lorraine Crane dealer and offered the position of purchasing agent and general parts manager. In 1967 I was offered a line of automotive parts and supplies and went into business for myself. My business revolved around eleven race cars that we maintained for others, driving race cars professionally and maintaining high end sports cars. I was a championship and regional champion driver. My business was the largest import parts and service, non dealer, in the state until I sold it in 1979. We went sailing in 79, first to Mexico and then Hawaii. I was an award winning Trans-Pacific sailor and sailor of the year, Hawaii, Island of Kauai. An opportunity presented itself in Hawaii during 1981 and I was back in business, importing Japanese auto body and hard parts. I also felt the pull to write and began freelancing for magazines and newspapers in 1982. My main focus in my articles is, and always has been, health, wellness and fitness. Most of us have heard the saying, “Time is all we have.” I disagree. Our health is all we have, because without our health, we have no time. I was a US Olympic team hopeful in racewalking and held all the records for the state of Hawaii. As a sponsored athlete in my forties, I finished first in nine marathons in a row in my division, qualified for the Ironman® and was the state USCF cycling champion five times in Hawaii and Oregon. Celinda and I were married in 1988 after a three year engagement. We sold our businesses and organic farm and sailed back to Oregon. After our sailboat boat was sold, we moved to Joseph, Oregon, two miles from the trailhead into the Eagle Cap Wilderness. We were caregivers for my mother the last ten years she was alive. We moved to New Mexico in 1995 because it was too cold for my mom in Oregon during the winters. Celinda designed, and I engineered and built our strawbale house. I began writing the weekly health column for a local newspaper in 1996, and still do. In 2000, I took the summer off to do a four month, 4000 mile, hike, bike and kayak odyssey. I’d been writing health, fitness and sports articles since 1982 and the journey produced a full-length, nonfiction, first person adventure book, Yol Bolsun, May There Be A Road, which can be bought from Amazon.com and others over the Internet. The summer of 2001 was spent hiking. kayaking, fishing and exploring the southwest. In 2002 Celinda and I spent the summer in Canada learning the hospitality business at a resort in preparation for doing promotion for the resort in the US. Most of 2003 was spent reestablishing the trees and landscape that had died during the stay in Canada. We had a house sitter and the house sitter had an ex-husband, and that’s a long story. In July of 2004 I did a solo kayak trip on the Snake River, taking pictures, writing articles and pencil sketching the journey. I hope to do another kayak adventure on the Snake River during the summer of 2008, on the section I missed in 2000 and 2004. In 2005, I returned to Canada to the resort where we’d spent 2002. I was supposed to be there for the month of June. I’d contacted people I’d met in 2002 and they came back to Canada to fish, hike and spend time at the resort, Echo Valley Ranch and Spa, while I was there. My one month became five and then it was off to Spain to do the El Camino de Santiago as a travel companion with one of the guests who’d returned to Canada in June. During the summer of 2006 a friend from Ireland, who I’d met in Spain the year before, came to visit in NM and we fished, hiked and explored the White Mountains of AZ. He’d never slept out in the wild in a tent before, and it was quite an experience, for both of us. My newspaper articles were put on the Internet beginning in 2002. I was asked to give public speaking engagements, photo and video presentations, on various subjects for the library in Deming, NM and continue to do so. In 2006 I videoed and produced a DVD for the Smithsonian Institute’s travel exhibit “Between Fences.” NMFILMS had a conference by invitation only, which I attended. While attending the conference, I realized that film making wasn’t what I wanted to do but I still wanted to use my sixteen years of experience and enjoyment of videoing and photography. During the winter of 2005, I discovered that no one on record had ever run from the Arizona border to the Texas border, a distance of 165 miles. During the spring and summer of 2006 I trained for the run and the run was completed in October, 2006. In late 2005, I began building and maintaining websites incorporating all the things I enjoyed about video, photography, travel and the out of doors. 2007 has been a summer of upgrading the home and property which resulted in a downgrading of my enthusiasm for being located in one place. If we don’t like what’s happening in our life, we need to change what we’re doing. Celinda and I are ready to pull up roots and move on. I guess I’ve come full circle. I’m ready to revert back to my childhood, and a nomadic lifestyle.

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