What are the benefits of taking chromium picolinate everyday?!
What are the benefits of taking chromium picolinate everyday?
Answers:
when I was in college I took it and I actually lost quite a bit of weight. With exercise of course.
If you follow the pop sports-nutrition scene, you know that chromium represents one of the most au courant nutritional supplements utilised by athletes. Advocates of the trace mineral proclaim that it controls cholesterol, magnifies muscle mass, subtracts fat, and even lengthens lifespan. The popular press has often doted on the mineral, with articles in the Los Angeles Times contending that chromium offers athletes an excellent 'alternative to anabolic steroids'. Overall, claims for chromium have made the mineral appear to be the grandest thing since ginseng, and sales of chromium supplements have soared..
The chromium commotion basically began back in 1989, when a researcher named Gary Evans at Bemidji State University in the United States published a paper which indicated that football players who ingested 200 micrograms (mcg) of chromium per day were able to build more muscle and lose more fat, compared to chromium-free athletes. In fact, the paper stated that the chromium-rich athletes reduced body fat by a whopping 22 per cent and added an astonishing six pounds of lean muscle in a brief, six-week time span ('Effect of Chromium Picolinate on Insulin Controlled Parameters in Humans,' International Journal of Biosocial and Medical Research, vol. 11, pp. 163-180, 1989)..
Evans' findings were reported widely in newspapers and health magazines, but his results weren't always supported by follow-up studies..
Specifically, when researchers at the University of Massachusetts divided 38 football players into two groups, those who received 200 mcg of chromium picolinate daily during nine weeks of spring training and those who took in only a placebo, they found that the chromium supplementation had no effect at all on lean mass or percent body fat. The only significant finding in the Massachusetts study was that chromium supplementers lost lots of chromium in their urine ('Effects of Chromium Picolinate Supplementation on Body Composition, Strength, and Urinary Chromium Loss in Football Players,' International Journal of Sport Nutrition, vol. 4(2), pp. 142-153, 1994)..
What chromium picolinate actually does
Is chromium really a miracle mineral, as Evans' work suggests, or a powerless supplement, as the Massachusetts research indicates? Can the little mineral really trim fat, expand muscle mass and boost athletic performances? To answer those questions, we need to think for a moment about chromium's actual role in human metabolism..
Chromium is present in significant quantities in a fairly limited number of foods, including raw oysters, corn flakes, butter, seedless raisins, roasted peanuts, white mushrooms, brewer's yeast, cocoa, meat, and wine, and its main function is to boost the activity of insulin, the body's key 'anabolic' hormone. Insulin promotes glycogen storage in muscles, enhances protein synthesis, and stimulates fat formation in fatty tissues, but without chromium, insulin simply can't work..
Although insulin promotes fat storage, chromium supporters have sometimes contended that chromium supplementation would actually help reduce body fat. To understand this, remember that insulin drives fats which are floating around in the blood into fat cells. Whenever there is too much insulin in the blood, abnormally high amounts of fat are pushed into your paunch. However, since chromium enhances the potency of insulin, it should decrease total insulin production within the body. The consequently lower insulin levels should tack less fat on to existing blubber..
Very strong support for chromium supplementation has emerged from studies carried out with animals, especially pigs. Basically, this research has shown that young pigs given chromium supplements are indeed less fatty and also develop greater muscle mass, compared to non-supplemented porkers ('Effect of Chromium Picolinate on Growth and Serum and Carcass Traits of Growing-Finishing Pigs, Journal of Animal Science, vol. 71, pp. 656-662, 1993) In addition, sows fed extra chromium tend to have larger litters. However, an important point to bear in mind when considering the value of this research for humans is that the pigs were given very high doses of chromium - quantities well above the amounts which have been considered safe for human consumption..
Because insulin reduces blood-sugar and blood-fat levels (by pushing sugar and fat into muscle and adipose cells), chromium has been administered to human patients with diabetes and hyperlipidemia. Until recently, this research has met with only moderate success, with some studies detecting positive effects for chromium and others unearthing no benefits at all..
It helped Chinese diabetics
However, this view of chromium as a somewhat 'tarnished metal' was overturned recently in a study carried out by Dr. Richard Anderson, a chromium-research veteran based at a U.S. Department of Agriculture laboratory in Beltsville, Maryland. In research actually carried out in China, Anderson and his colleague, Dr. Nanzheng Chang, divided 180 Chinese citizens with type II diabetes into three groups of 60 people. Over a four-month period, one group ingested two 100-mcg doses of chromium picolinate per day (200 mcg total), a second group took in two 500-mcg quantities of chromium picolinate daily (1000 mcg total), and a third group consumed only placebo..
The 1000-mcg group members lowered blood sugar levels, improved glucose tolerance, reduced insulin, and moderated total cholesterol significantly after only two months of supplementation. They also improved 'glycated haemoglobin', often considered the best indicator of blood-glucose status, in just eight weeks. The 200-mcg group made fewer improvements but were able to ameliorate glycated haemoglobin after four months and dip insulin after only two months ('Beneficial Effects of Chromium for People with Type II Diabetes,' Diabetes, vol. 45, p. 124A, abstract no. 454, 1996). In effect, the chromium supplements, especially at a level of 1000 mcg per day, helped to control many of the pernicious problems associated with diabetes..
Anderson cautioned that American and British diabetics might need higher levels of chromium to obtain similar results, since Americans and Brits tend to have bigger bodies and also eat more sugar and fat, factors which raise chromium requirements. Nonetheless, the results of this research were so notable that the rather conservative American Diabetic Association issued a news release heralding Anderson's work as a significant breakthrough..
Chromium supporters have also argued that chromium should promote better recovery from strenuous workouts by hiking protein construction (and therefore repair) in muscle cells and by getting glycogen back into the muscles more quickly. Unfortunately, research hasn't been overly supportive of this glycogen-replacement hypothesis. For example, in one study exercise-trained laboratory animals were placed on either chromium-rich or chromium-poor diets. As it turned out, the chromium-deprived animals had just as much glycogen in their leg muscles as the similarly trained, chromium-supplemented beasts. In addition, even though chromium has been linked with improved body composition, no study has actually linked chromium supplementation with heightened athletic performances..
That may seem surprising, considering the way in which chromium activates insulin, but it's important to remember one key principle: To derive benefits from a supplemented vitamin or mineral, regardless of how important the vitamin or mineral is to human metabolism, you must first be somewhat lacking in that vitamin or mineral. In other words, if you already have enough chromium in your body, taking a ton of the compound won't improve your health or make you a better athlete..
Are you deficient in chromium?
That being true, it's important to consider whether chromium deficiency is common or rare in athletes. It is true that exercise increases the amount of chromium lost in the urine. In one study, researchers found that trained male runners experienced a 500-per cent increase in urinary chromium loss following a tough, six-mile run. Overall, chromium losses via urine doubled on days when runners worked out, compared to rest days ('Effects of Exercise (Running) on Serum Glucose, Insulin, Glucagon, and Chromium Excretion,' Diabetes, vol. 31, pp. 212-216, 1982)..
However, follow-up studies showed that, compared to sedentary individuals, runners tend to excrete less urinary chromium on rest days. Some sports-nutrition experts contend that this means that athletes don't need to fret too much about chromium depletion, since their kidneys are often pretty stingy with the trace mineral, at least on non-workout days. However, athletes who train every day might still need to be concerned about their cumulative chromium losses (since chromium disappearance doubles on workout days). It's also important to bear in mind that the reduced chromium output observed on rest days could actually mean that athletes tend to be chromium deficient (if blood levels of chromium were chronically low, little chromium would be available to be dumped into the bladder)..
Unfortunately, you can't just pay a visit to your friendly neighbourhood laboratory for a chromium check-up, because there's no simple test which reliably pinpoints chromium deficiency. For one thing, most labs aren't sophisticated enough to get a precise reading of blood chromium levels. A key problem is contamination: The tubes in which the blood is collected may contain traces of chromium, and if the blood is collected with a stainless steel needle, all bets are off (stainless steel needles contain a hefty chromium concentration, some of which will leach into the blood sample, possibly making a deficient individual appear to be okay; to get around this problem, a lab would have to use a nickel-plated collection needle). At this point in time, another problem is that no one seems to know what is a 'healthy' blood concentration of chromium, or if blood-chromium levels truly represent chromium status in muscle tissue..
True, if you're glucose intolerant, you could establish that you were chromium deficient by taking chromium supplements and having your glucose malady disappear - and then reappear when you stopped taking chromium. If you're not glucose intolerant, though, it's pretty hard to know if your chromium's really okay..
it was supposed to help you lose weight but it doesnt work any more than any of that sort of thing, or id be skinny, tried it all. nothing helps but limiting your food intake and exercise.