re chromium as dietary suppliment for weight loss in article apr newsgate sps mot com rhca melton sps mot com henry melton writes my wife has requested that i poll the sages of usenet to see what is known about the use of chromium in weight control diet suppliments she has seen multiple products advertising it and would like any kind real information my first impulse was yuck a metal but i have zero data on it what do you know henry melton i ll tell you all that i know about chromium but before i do i want to get a few things off my chest i just got blasted in e mail for my kidney stone posts kidney stones are primarily caused by diet as is heart disease and cancer when i give dietary advise it is not intended to encourage people reading this news group or sci med nutrition where i do most of my posting to avoid seeing a doctor nothing can be further from the truth kidney stones can be caused by tumors and this possibility has to be ruled out but once it is diet is a good way of preventing a reoccurance same thing with heart disease and cancer if you suspect that you may have a problem with one of these diseases don t use what i m going to tell you or what you read in some book to avoid going to a doctor you have to go hopefully you will find a doctor who knows enough about nutrition to help you change your risk factors for both diseases as part of a treatment program but the odds are that you will not and that s why i m here when my wife detected a lump in here breast i didn t say don t worry my vitamin e will take care of it any breast lump has to be worked up by a physician plan and simple if it s begnin which most are fine then maybe a diet change and supplementation will prevent further breast lumps from occuring but let me tell you right now if you have tried diet and supplementation and another lump returns get your butt into the doctor s office as fast as your little feet can carry you better yet have a mammography done on a regular basis my wife kept putting her s off both myself and her gynocologist told her she needed to have one done her gynocologist even scheduled one but she didn t show up too busy running the operating room for the biggest hospital in tulsa one more thing i am not an orthomolecular nutritionist this group uses high dose vitamins and minerals to treat all kinds of disease there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that vitamins and minerals can and do have drug actions in the body but you talk about flying blind man this is really blind treatment no drug could ever be used as these vitamins and minerals are being used i m not saying that some of this stuff couldn t be right on the money it may well be but my approach to nutrition is a lot like that of weinsier and morgan the two m d s who wrote the new clinical nutrition textbook my push is the nutrient reserves and the lab tests needed to measure these reserves and then supplementation or diet changes to get these reserves built up to where they should be to let you handle stress that s where i m coming from folks blast away if you want i m not going to change put me in your killfile if you want i really don t care i m averaging e mail messages a day from people who think that i ve got something important to say but i m also getting hit by a few with an axe to grind that s life chromium is one of the trace elements it has a very limited but very important role in the body it is used to form glucose tolerance factor gtf gtf is made up of chromium nicinamide niacin glycine cysteine and glutamic only the chromium and the niacin are needed from the diet to form gtf some foods already have gtf liver brewers or nutritional yeast and black pepper when chromium is in gtf a pretty good absorption is seen about but when it is simply present as a mineral or mineral chelate chromium picolinate it s absorption is much lower to lowest for all the minerals i ve been posting in misc fitness and chromium has come up there several times as a fat burner chromium is among the least toxic of the minerals so you could really load yourself up and not really do any harm i wouldn t do it though the adequate and safe range for chromium is to ug per day the average american is getting about ug per day from his her diet chromium levels decrease with age and many believe that adult onset diabetes is primarily a chromium deficiency i can cite you several studies that have been done with glucose tolerance in type ii diabetes but i m not going to because for each positive one there also seems to be a negative one as well i m convinced that the problem is bioavailability when yeast gtf is used good results are obtained but when chromium itself is used the results are usually negative in addition to type ii diabetes chromiuum has been examined in cardiovascular disease and glucoma again with mixed results as far as cardiovascular disease is concerned since a high blood glucose level can lead to cardiovascular disease this possible link with chromium isn t too surprising glucoma is a little more interesting muscle eye focusing activity is primarily an insulin responsive glucose driven metabolic function if this eye focusing activity is impaired by a lack of glucose due to a poor insulin response intraocular pressure is believed to be elevated in a fairly large study of pts with glaucoma the one consistent finding was a low rbc chromium j am coll nutr but this one preliminary study should not prompt people to go out and start popping chromium supplements for one thing just about every older person is going to have a low rbc chromium unless they have been taking chromium suppleemnts yeast since glucoma is often found in older people it s not too surprising that chromium was low in the rbc s if chromium supplementation could reverse glucoma that would prompt some attention i suspect that there will be a clinical trail to check out this possible chromium link to glucoma you could find out what your body chromium pool size was by either the rbc chromium test or hair analysis most clinical labs are not going to run a rbc chromium there are plenty of labs that will do a hair and nail analysis for you but i wouldn t use them there is just too much funny business going on in these unregulated labs right now here s weinsier and morgan advise on chromium they do not consider chromium to be one of those minerals for which a reliable clinical test is available they don t like the hair and nail analysis labs either and they also recognize the rbc chromium is primarily a research test that is not routinely available in most clinical chemistry labs this has to change and as more labs run a rbc chromiuum it will what then do they suggest make a diagnosis of chromium deficiency based on a documented clinical response to chromium run a glucose tolerance test before and after chromium supplementation once you make the diagnosis put the patient on ug of crcl orally each day or grams of yeast per day what s my advise don t take chromium supplements to try to loose weight they just do not work that way if you want to take them and then exercise that would be great do include yeast as part of your diet most americans are not getting enough chromium from their diet if you do have a poor glucose tolerance ask your doctor to check your chromium status when he or she says what in the world are you talking about just say please get a copy of weinsier and morgan s new clinical nutrition textbook and do what they say to do with patients who present with a poor glucose tolerance if you can t do that i ll find a doctor who can thank you very much marty b
