Chili Pepper Compound Speeded Up Fat Burning In Dieters
Chili peppers may do more than taste hot and bring us out in a sweat: they may also help people following a low calorie diet burn or oxidize fat more quickly, according to a new study by US researchers who tested the weight-reducing potential of a compound found in peppers belonging to the genus Capsicum.
Dr David Heber, Professor of Medicine and Public Health at UCLA Center for Human Nutrition in Los Angeles, and colleagues, presented their findings at the Experimental Biology 2010 meeting that took place from 24 to 28 April in Anaheim, California. An abstract of their study was also published in the The FASEB Journal.
For the study, Heber and colleagues tested the weight-reducing potential of dihydrocapsiate or DCT, a non-burning but structurally similar version of capsaicin, a spicy compound found in hot peppers.
DCT occurs naturally in a non-pungent pepper called CH-19 Sweet and is often used in studies instead of its spicy cousin capsaicin because it has none of the side effects.
Heber and colleagues recruited 51 male and female volunteers and asked them to follow a very low calorie diet based on a liquid meal replacement product for 28 days (800 Cal and 120 g per day). Read more
It Can Be Predicted The Reaction Obese Patients Will Have To A Diet
The presence of increased body fat, and therefore higher levels of inflammatory substances in the blood, hinders the loss and maintenance of body weight; as shown by a research project of the University of Navarra conducted by EstÃbaliz Goyenechea Soto, a scientist at the School of Pharmacy.
The project, entitled “A nutrigenetic and nutrigenomic study in relation to the control of body weight and inflammation,” examines how the individual genetics of obese patients can help or hinder weight loss when dieting and even influence the subsequent long term maintenance of their weight loss.
Some overweight or obese people have mutated or altered genes that initially make it difficult to lose weight and later make it easier to regain lost body weight in a period of six months or a year. This problem occurs similarly in patients who have higher levels of inflammatory substances in their blood. Read more