Month: March 2019

Garcinia cambogia is a fruit grown across India and Southeast Asia and it is used there as a food and its rinds are used in some traditional recipes of south India.

It used to be an obscure hard-to-find ingredient, but recently the Internet has exploded with websites selling weight loss products based on an extract of the fruit and it even got some decidedly hucksterish treatment from Dr. Oz, a TV personality made famous by Oprah Winfrey.

The fruit is known in India as gambooge. It is apparently also an ingredient in some weight loss products as hydroxycitric acid. Dr. Oz promoted it and continues to assert that garcinia cambogia is an effective aid to weight loss. The claims for weight loss are nothing short of outlandish and there is real science that suggests the whole thing is a hoax.

Studies that claim to have found weight loss were carried out on animals. Studies involving humans are for the most part badly designed.

A few quality studies have been carried out over the years, starting in 1998 with a double-blind, placebo-controlled trial of 135 adults over 12 weeks published in The Journal of the American Medical Association. They found no evidence that hydroxycitric acid, the active ingredient in weight loss products made from garcinia cambogia, produced significant weight loss.

The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in 2004 published a systematic review of meta-analyses and clinical trials on dietary supplements for weight loss by complementary medicine researchers at the Universities of Exeter and Plymouth. None of the over-the-counter weight loss aids worked, including garcinia cambogia.

Late in 2010 the peer-reviewed Journal of Obesity published a meta-analysis of studies testing the garcinia as a weight loss aid. Of the 23 trials they identified, 12 were methodologically sound enough to include in their analysis.

The analysis revealed that some statistically significant weight loss occurred, but “the magnitude of the effect is small and the clinical relevance is uncertain.” They also found that gastrointestinal adverse events were twice as likely in the hydroxycitric acid group as in the placebo group.

When you are considering the potential benefits of products look for meta-analysis studies that take in all the sound research available. One-off studies that get a significant result are not evidence of anything. Only when an effect is repeated in many studies by many scientists should you believe.

RANDY SHORE‘s new cookbook Grow What You Eat, Eat What You Grow is now available at Chapters, Book Warehouse, Barbara-Jo’s Books to Cooks and Whole Foods.

 

 

LISTEN TO THE GREEN MAN PODCAST

The Green Man Podcast is not just a broadcast version of the Green Man Blog: It’s much, much more. For the past seven weeks I have been creating a weekly broadcast with interesting, opinionated and sometimes controversial guests.

To view the entire catalogue including notes on the shows and the guests – and multimedia audio player – click here. You’ll find podcasts on the modern revival of hunting for sustainable meat, the real value of organic foods, the benefits and risks of raw milk, urban farming, craft beer and the ethics of eating meat.

Here is a sample and audio players so you can enjoy the broadcasts right now on your computer. Search “Randy Shore” on iTunes to download to your smartphone or tablet.

The Paleo Diet

Host Randy Shore welcomes paleo nutritionist Travis Steward and St. Paul’s Hospital dietitian Sinead Feeney for a paleo diet cage match. Should you eat like a caveman? Should you eat like Alton Brown? How about eating like the Green Man, Randy Shore?

Ethical Killing and Sustainable Hunting

Host Randy Shore, Harrison Mooney and hunting instructor Dylan Eyers of EatWild.ca talk about the modern revival of hunting in B.C. Urbanites, hipsters, hippies and women are taking up hunting as a way to harvest ethical, sustainable meat and reject the industrial food industry.

Animal Welfare and the Ethics of Meat

Host Randy Shore, Vancouver Sun reporter Zoe McKnight and Leanne McConnachie of the Vancouver Humane Society talk about the ethics of meat, the reality of industrial farming and animal welfare. Omnivore Shore – a recovered vegetarian – takes on two practicing vegetarians over who should eat what and why.

The Benefits and Risks of Raw Milk

Host Randy Shore welcomes raw milk activist Jackie Ingram and farmer Alice Jongerden of Home on the Range Dairy. Do the health benefits of raw milk outweigh the potential risks? Are the benefits proven? What about the risks?

Follow me on Twitter @thegreenmanblog

(CBS) – Losing weight can be frustrating. Plenty of people are looking for the magic bullet to help them achieve their goal.

You may have seen the ads on the web lately for what claims to be the newest, fastest fat-burner. But what is it and does it work?

CBS 2’s Mary Kay Kleist checks out garcinia cambogia.

TV’s “Dr. Oz” talked about it on his show. With research from Georgetown University, people rushed to buy pills that supposedly will help you lose weight without diet or exercise.

“Everybody’s looking for the magic pill,” says Mike Carlucci, who tried the product.

The pumpkin-shaped fruit that grows in Southeast Asia and India supposedly suppresses appetite and blocks fat from being made in the body. Dr. Harry Preuss from Georgetown University studied the extract and says it has “great metabolic effects” that prevents conversion of carbohydrates into fat.

Dana Vento lost 8 inches off her waistline by taking garcinia and exercising a little more.

“It was very rewarding to see the difference, and I think in moms that’s a big deal when you can lose some of that belly fat,” she says.

Others had no luck with it.

“As far as I’m concerned, the research isn’t very accurate, in my case, because it didn’t work at all,” Carlucci says.

Melinda Ring, medical director for Northwestern Integrative Medicine, says it may not work for everyone, depending on factors.

“Just because one particular extract of the HCA worked doesn’t mean that every other garcinia brand is going to have the same effect,” she says.

Because supplements are not all created equal, here’s what to look for: the words garcinia cambogia; at least 50 percent HCA (hydroxycitric acid); potassium (for absorption); and zero fillers, binders or artificial ingredients.

Garcinia is definitely not for everyone. People with certain medical conditions should avoid taking it. That includes women who are pregnant or breastfeeding. Also, garcinia is not recommended for people with diabetes, Alzheimer’s or those taking statin medication for high cholesterol.

So, could this tiny pill be a miracle weight loss supplement? Maybe.

“I think it can be a beneficial adjunct to a well-rounded approach to weight loss,” Ring says.

Patients were only studied for 12 weeks on the supplement; so, until larger, longer studies are conducted, it’s recommended to limit use to three months and make sure you eat healthy and exercise daily.

By Alan Mozes

HealthDay Reporter

FRIDAY, Oct. 12, 2018 (HealthDay News) — U.S. health officials have issued more than 700 warnings during the last decade about the sale of dietary supplements that contain unapproved and potentially dangerous drug ingredients, new research reveals.

In nearly all cases (98 percent), the presence of such ingredients was not noted anywhere on supplement labeling, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration found.

From 2007 to 2016, the lion’s share of FDA warnings — 46 percent — concerned supplements that touted enhanced sexual pleasure, while weight-loss products were cited in 41 percent of the warnings. Most of the remaining warnings (12 percent) concerned supplements marketed as muscle-builders, the findings showed.

The tainted-supplement problem appears to have grown in scope in recent years, with 57 percent of all warnings having been issued since 2012, the researchers said.

“Over the past decade, ever since I first began tracking the problem, I have only seen the number of supplements adulterated with drugs increase rapidly,” said Dr. Pieter Cohen. He is a general internist with the Cambridge Health Alliance, and an associate professor at Harvard Medical School in Boston.

“Back in 2009, it appeared that there might be less than 150 brands of supplements that contain drugs,” he added. “Now it’s clear that there are well over 1,000 brands of supplements that contain active drugs.”

Cohen is the author an editorial that accompanies the new analysis, which was published online Oct. 12 in JAMA Network Open. The study was led by Madhur Kumar, of the California Department of Public Health’s Food and Drug Branch.

Kumar’s team noted that more than half of all American adults routinely take some form of dietary supplement, with estimated annual sales of $35 billion.

The FDA explicitly warns that supplements aren’t a replacement for either over-the-counter or prescription medications, and should not be viewed as a way to treat or prevent disease.

The agency classifies dietary supplements — including vitamins, minerals, botanicals, amino acids and enzymes — under the category of food, rather than drugs.

That distinction is important.

Continued

“Supplements are handled completely different than either prescription medications or over-the-counter drugs,” Cohen explained. “Those two categories are carefully vetted by the FDA. Supplements are not vetted by the FDA, and do not require that any evidence of safety or efficacy is presented to the agency before they are sold to consumers.”

The FDA’s Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 essentially places the burden for evaluating supplement safety, content and labeling primarily on the shoulders of the manufacturers, he said.

Experts point out that this arrangement means that, while the FDA has the authority to remove from the market any supplement reported as causing harm, as a practical matter it does so only after the fact. This raises the risk for a wide range of “serious adverse events” involving tainted supplements — including stroke, kidney failure, liver injuries, blood clots and even death — critics of the arrangement contend.

The study team said prior estimates suggest that such events result in roughly 23,000 emergency department visits and 2,000 hospitalizations in the United States every year.

The new analysis reviewed a decade’s worth of information contained in an FDA database titled “Tainted Products Marketed as Dietary Supplements.”

Almost 800 tainted warnings were issued during the review period for supplements manufactured by 147 different companies, though some involved multiple warnings about the same supplement, the study authors said.

About 20 percent of the warnings identified products containing more than one unapproved ingredient, the investigators found. Sildenafil (commonly known as Viagra) was the ingredient in nearly half of the warnings concerning sexual enhancement supplements.

Sibutramine — an appetite suppressant taken off the market in 2010 due to cardiovascular risks — was cited in nearly 85 percent of weight-loss supplements, according to the report.

And among muscle-building supplements, synthetic steroids or steroid-like ingredients were the cause for concern nearly 90 percent of the time, the researchers said.

Cohen said any meaningful solution will require a change in the laws that govern the way the FDA monitors supplements. Barring that, you should “ask your doctor if you need to take supplements,” he advised.

“If your doctor doesn’t advise supplements for your health, then they will likely not help you,” Cohen stressed. “However, for my patients who still want to use supplements, I advise them to purchase supplements that list only one ingredient on the label and to avoid any supplement that has a health claim on the label, such as improving immunity or strengthening muscles.”

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