Lifestyle Choices

The enormous fuss that is made about cellulite always surprises me. “Does it or doesn’t it exist?” “What are its causes?” “What, if anything, can be done about it?” Such is the way women tend to treat cellulite, as if it were some kind of externally imposed curse to which they fall innocent victim.

Cellulite is the manifestation of the wrong kind of lifestyle for health and beauty: eating wrongly (or too much), living under prolonged stress, being exposed to too many pollutants, and all the other things that we tend to think we can get away with, but never really do. And no number of expensive or painful treatments is going to help the problem for long unless you change the things that brought it on in the first place.

Cellulite exists, whether or not one wishes to call it cellulite or something else and whether or not a few adamant medical voices loudly deny its existence. It is real enough for the woman who, in spite of being slim and well, reaches down and pinches her thigh only to find it puckers, ripples, and looks like the skin of an orange. Cellulite differs from normal fat in three ways:

1. It doesn’t disappear when you slim down and exercise regularly as ordinary fat does.
2. Cellulite areas contain more water than ordinary fat tissue.
3. 3. Radioisotopic examinations have shown that, while the components of ordinary fatty tissue change every eight days, gel-like cellulite remains almost stagnant.

Quite simply, cellulite is a pollution problem. It is the result of a buildup of wastes in specific areas of the body. When you examine a layer of cellulite under a microscope you find that the fat imbued with water and wastes is held there by a fine network of hard fibrous adhesions. These adhesions, a kind of sclerosis of the connective tissues, get worse with the passage of time.

There are two situations that attract cellulite. First, it occurs in parts of the body where the circulation is poor through inactivity and the muscles are flaccid, for instance, in the hips and upper thighs of women who spend each day sitting at a desk in front of a typewriter and get no exercise. Second, it appears in areas where tension has led to chronic spasm of the muscles. This not only interferes with proper circulation of blood and lymph to the cells, so that they are never properly nourished and wastes from them are not properly eliminated, it also irritates adjacent nerves and soft tissue structures, which in turn results in yet more spasm. Slowly, a congested area forms, since cell nutrients and wastes are only sluggishly exchanged and vascular dilation and constriction in the area is erratic. Gradually, wastes accumulate and a kind of tissue sludge is formed. There it tends to remain, for each condition in the area tends only to reinforce every other one in a vicious circle.

 

Deadened Areas of the Body

Areas of cellulite—which occur most commonly on the hips, thighs, upper arms, shoulders, and back—are deadened areas. They have long been the concern of bioenergetic psychotherapists and Rolfers, who know that they need to be broken down and dispersed in order for the person to feel fully alive and to function really well mentally and physically. Although these professionals are in no way concerned with the beauty problems of cellulite, they know a lot about how it feels and behaves. For instance, they will tell you that often it begins as soft cellulite where the tissue is exceptionally tender to the touch and then slowly turns into the hardened variety where there is little or no feeling if you pinch it, knead it, or press it. They will also tell you that by working on it with the right kind of massage and breaking down the hardened and distorted tissue, they can break up the stasis and restore normal circulation. Then the hardness, the puckers, the orange peel quality, and the distorted sensitivity to touch disappears. And interestingly enough, where in its formation cellulite often goes from the flabby stage to the hard gristly one, in its treatment the process is often reversed, with the soft, flabby look returning again before normality is finally restored to the area.

What Causes Cellulite in the first place?

The wrong kind of lifestyle, of course. But what specific things in it? Three things. First, anything that puts into your system more pollutants from the air, food, and water than it can efficiently deal with and eliminate quickly. Second, poor elimination, as a result of constipation (often unrecognized constipation, for many women who have a bowel movement every day assume that they aren’t constipated but they still may be only partially removing the wastes from their intestines), or poor liver, kidney, or lung function. This leads to wastes and the by-products of normal metabolism building up in the system with no possibility of efficient release. And third, the excessive production of wastes in the body that come from shallow breathing, wrong eating, too much of the wrong kind of exercise, prolonged stress, and faulty digestion or assimilation of foods, much of which shows itself as food allergies.

There are other factors that often contribute to cellulite: hormones, the long-term use of diuretics, and vertebral lesions in the pelvis or chronic constipation, both of which tend to restrict the flow of blood to the lower limbs and impede proper lymphatic drainage to the legs.

A predisposition to cellulite occurs in women with hormonal imbalances—those that produce large quantities of estrogen or whose level of estrogen is not properly kept under control by the liver or by the amount of its antagonist hormone progesterone. It is interesting, and not very well known, that 75 percent of cases of cellulite in women have started during a period of drastic hormonal change in their lives. Dr. Pierre Dukan, author of La Cellulite en Question, La Table Ronde edition, has compiled statistics of cellulite sufferers. He has found that:

• 12 percent of cellulite begins at puberty
• 19 percent when a woman first takes the Pill
• 17 percent during pregnancy
• 27 percent at the first indications of menopause

Women on the Pill, those who suffer from irregular periods, and those who suffer any severe or long-term stress are perfect targets for tissue sludge. The pituitary, often called the master gland, is affected both by shock and stress. Because it is largely responsible for triggering the secretion of female hormones, when its function is disturbed or upset, hormonal secretions are modified and often increased and cellulite develops.

If, after following the whole body treatment for cellulite for a month, you feel no signs of real progress, it is a good idea to have your sacrum looked at by a responsible chiropractor or osteopath. For if there is any long-term displacement in the vertebrae present, so that muscles in the lower back are in a chronic state of spasm, this will have to be corrected by manipulation and massage before you can expect lasting results from an anticellulite regimen.

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