Medical Journals - Weight Loss Through Chromium

(By Dr. Al Sears, MD - Taken from the article entitled "Pigs Don't Lie" published in The Doctor's House Call dated 10 February 2011)

If you want to fight fat and keep a lean, muscular body, you can try going to the gym and spending hours and hours lifting, running, spinning…

…or you can use chromium.

Did you know that one study took commercial pigs and fed them chromium, and measured significant fat reduction? They changed nothing else about the pigs … all they did was give them chromium and they got lean. Not only that, but they had an increase in muscle, as well.

Another study at the University of Kentucky found much the same thing. They added chromium to the diet of pigs and got an “increased percentage of muscle and decreased percentage of fat.”

But it’s not just pigs telling the tale of chromium. An Austrian study gave one group of people a calorie-restricted diet and another group chromium for 26 weeks. The people in the chromium group lost just as much weight as the people eating almost nothing. And, like the other studies, they had increased lean muscle mass.

And it gets better. They then gave chromium to the people who had dropped weight through calorie restriction, and those people were able to increase their lean muscle mass without gaining weight back.

Unfortunately, most of us don't get enough chromium through what we eat.

Some of the reasons are:

1. Modern nutrition advice – It tells you to eat mostly grains and lean meat, which gives you little chromium. One study showed that 90 percent of Americans aren't getting enough chromium through our food.
2. Junk food – Most of the snacks available are full of sugar which can form phytic acid. This binds to chromium and prevents it from being absorbed.
3. Fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides – These are used on our crops and deplete them of important trace minerals like chromium.
4. Stomach medications – Antacids block chromium absorption.
5. Age – As you get older, it gets tougher to retain chromium.

Meanwhile you need chromium because it handles one of the problems of why people become obese. That’s because it’s a co-factor for insulin. Chromium makes your insulin more efficient because it helps insulin take sugar and turn it into energy. That helps you decrease your insulin production, so your body doesn’t take sugar from your bloodstream and store it as fat.

But a lack of chromium is just one reason why people are overweight.

For instance, you might just have a problem with leptin. Leptin is a hormone that does two things: It sends out the “I’m full” signal to your brain, and it tells the fat inside your cells to break down, so it can be burned as energy.

But foods containing high fructose corn syrup, for example, make you pump out so much leptin that your body eventually ignores the constant “full” signal. Your body thinks it needs to keep eating and storing more fat because it thinks it’s out of energy!

One of the best ways to stop that cycle and keep leptin working normally is with irvingia gabonensis seed extract. Irvingia comes from the forests of West Africa and helps leptin work normally. In fact, in one study, people taking an irvingia extract dropped an average of 28 pounds and 6 inches in just 10 weeks.

Also, sometimes people just eat too much, and that’s the reason they’re overweight. But there are ways to address that, too. One of my favorites is garcinia cambogia, a natural appetite suppressant.

This edible fruit from Asia is full of hydroxycitric acid, which promotes the synthesis of glycogen. When your body produces more glycogen and has enough of it, this helps leptin give the “I’m full” signal.

A study of 60 people taking garcinia at Georgetown University showed a significant decrease of total body weight and total food intake. The people also had a significant increase of serotonin (the “feel good” brain chemical), fat oxidation (fat burning) and cardiovascular benefits.

And if you’ve already got excess fat, an easy way to burn it off is with fucoxanthin.
This extract comes from an edible marine plant and helps you fight fat deposits. In a Japanese study, mice given fucoxanthin had significantly reduced weight in their white adipose tissue – the kind of fat that makes up an oversized waist.

Because those things are so important to getting lean, I’ve created a special formula with just the right amount of chromium, irvingia, garcinia and fucoxanthin to handle all four reasons why people have a hard time getting and staying lean.

Thousands of people are already using this formula to maintain healthy insulin function, help leptin work properly, control appetite and fight fat. They look better and most importantly, feel better!

I want nothing more than for you to experience that for yourself.