Dear Health Conscious Reader,
I just got back from climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro in Africa. Traveling around the world always reminds me of the important healing traditions found in other cultures.
For example, I’ve come across natural nutrients that speed up fat-burning and decrease your appetite… even when you don’t change your routine.
These are important discoveries. Because no matter how much I talk to patients about diet and exercise, they still want a “magic pill.”
I get where they’re coming from.
I mean, imagine if you could take a supplement to make fat melt away. You lose your appetite and cravings disappear.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying it’s “magic.” But there really is something to some of these native herbs I’ve found in different cultures.
Today, I want to tell you about two of the best…
Irvingia comes from a West African tree known as the wild mango. Natives there think it’s a health food. In some of the jungle regions where it’s used a lot, natives don’t get fat. Their diet consists of breads, soups, and stews made with crushed irvingia seeds.
Researchers in Cameroon, West Africa, recruited over 100 volunteers to see if Irvingia had any effect on weight. For 10 weeks, volunteers took a capsule containing Irvingia or a placebo. They didn’t make a single change to their eating or exercise habits.
Volunteers who took Irvingia dropped an average of 28 lbs., and their health dramatically improved. The placebo group dropped only one pound.1
How does it work?
By turning off your leptin switch.2 Leptin is your appetite hormone. This means you stop eating too much, and your cravings go away. When you have less leptin, your body uses up more fat, even if you don’t change your exercise and eating habits.
Fucoxanthin comes from Japanese seaweed. Like the kind you get in miso soup. Fucoxanthin kicks your metabolism into high gear. And then it changes your DNA, so your metabolism stays that way.3
Marine biologists first noticed that fucoxanthin caused thermogenesis in animals. Thermogenesis is the kind of body heat that makes your body fat melt away.
So researchers decided to study fucoxanthin’s effect on women. It increased fat-burning, even while the women were eating 1,800 calories a day. They dropped pounds and shed inches off their waistline.
Then in a second study, women who took fucoxanthin dropped an average of more than 15 pounds while the placebo group dropped three.4
Women lost subcutaneous fat. This is the fat you see. But fucoxanthin also reduced their visceral fat. Visceral fat is what wraps around your organs and causes heart disease, diabetes, and cancer.5
The best discovery of all? Fucoxanthin prevents new fat cells from forming.6 Fucoxanthin stops your fat cells from reaching maturity. So you don’t gain more body fat in the future.
If you’d like to lower your weight, I suggest adding Irvingia and Fucoxanthin to your supplement regimen. Both are natural antioxidants that work like magic to keep you lean.
- Take 150 mg Irvingia gabonensis twice daily before meals.
- Take 300 mg Fucoxanthin twice daily before meals.
To Your Good Health,
Al Sears, MD
- Ngondi, J. et al. “IGOB131, a novel seed extract of the West African plant Irvingia gabonensis, significantly reduces body weight and improves metabolic parameters in overweight humans in a randomized double-blind placebo controlled investigation,” Lipids Health Dis. 2009; 8:7.
- Oben J, Ngondi JL, Blum K. “Inhibition of Irvingigia gabonensisseed extract (OB131) on adipogenesis as mediated via down regulation of the PPARy and Leptin genes and up-regulationof the adiponectic gene.” Lipids in Health and Disease 2008, 7:44.
- Maeda H, Hosokawa M, Sashima T, Funayama K, Miyashita K. (2005 July) “Fucoxanthin from edible seaweed, Undaria pinnatifida, shows antiobesity effect through UCP1 expression in white adipose tissues.” Biochem Biophys Res Commun. 1;332(2):392-7.
- Abidov M, Siefulla R, Ramazanov Z. “The effect of Xanthigen™, a phytomedicine containing fucoxanthin and pomegranate seed oil, on body weight and liver fat, serum triglycerides, C-reactive protein, and plasma aminotransferases in obese non-diabetic female volunteers: a double-blind, randomized and placebo-controlled trial.” Submitted for publication. Int J Obesity. 2008.
- Fontana L., et al. “Visceral fat adipokine secretion is associated with systemic inflammation in obese humans.” Diabetes. 2007 Apr;56(4):1010-3.
- Abidov M, et al. Ibid.