Garcinia Cambogia?

dreamoffatt
dreamoffatt Posts: 34
in Food and Nutrition
Hi all!

There seems to be a lot of recent hype over this new fruit/fruit extract garcinia cambogia - seen on Dr. Oz as they say. I was wondering if anyone has heard of this or tried this fruit/fruit extract? Does it help, or is it just another scam?

Replies

  • sprale
    sprale Posts: 117 Member
    A lot of it is probably just hype. However, I do take a supplement that contains garcinia cambogia and I find it to be a helpful appetite suppressant. Certainly not necessary for losing weight, but it can be helpful if used properly. Changing my diet and exercising more has had more of an impact, though, definitely, overall, especially changing my diet.

    I did, however, try taking a more potent dose of garcinia cambogia and while I was on it had a bad reaction to a medication that it intensified the effects of. So I just take my small dose of it in my supplement when I feel like it.

    Some of the sites that sell it might be spammy/scammy, I don't know where you are looking, but if you get it from somewhere like Amazon it is probably safer.
  • OMGeeeHorses
    OMGeeeHorses Posts: 732 Member
    http://www.ragtaghealth.com/l/garcinia5?t=gs.gcam1

    read this!!

    you never want one that has Calcium in it, as it interacts and decreases the helpful benefits of the Cambogia.
  • qtgonewild
    qtgonewild Posts: 1,930 Member
    of course its a scam. your first clue is dr oz. your second clue is look around you, obese people are everywhere. if losing weight was as easy as taking a pill, we'd all be thin.
  • jayres67
    jayres67 Posts: 28 Member
    My grandmother has taken it for several months, and she swears by it..... It may be effective as an appetite suppressant, but I highly doubt it's a miracle fat burner that Dr. Oz is portrays it to be.

    I personally don’t like putting pills in my body, especially ones that are not FDA approved. I would recommend just using this app. ~Jordan
  • SherryTeach
    SherryTeach Posts: 2,836 Member
    My grandmother has taken it for several months, and she swears by it..... It may be effective as an appetite suppressant, but I highly doubt it's a miracle fat burner that Dr. Oz is portrays it to be.

    I personally don’t like putting pills in my body, especially ones that are not FDA approved. I would recommend just using this app. ~Jordan

    I absolutely do not take any supplements, especially ones that have never been tested or approved. Just log your food, stay in your calories and get on with it.
  • Safiyandi
    Safiyandi Posts: 151
    Dr. Oz pretty much stated in an interview he did back in January that he cares more about how many viewers he has than he does about the scientific validity of the things he promotes.

    As for garcinia extract in particular, trials suggest it's no different from placebo. (http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=188147)
  • missiontofitness
    missiontofitness Posts: 4,059 Member
    Hi all!

    There seems to be a lot of recent hype over this new fruit/fruit extract garcinia cambogia - seen on Dr. Oz as they say. I was wondering if anyone has heard of this or tried this fruit/fruit extract? Does it help, or is it just another scam?

    I heard someone talking about "needing this" in Walmart recently.
    This is my ideology behind weight loss drugs:

    - If it's legit, it won't be sold in stores like Walmart
    - Do you plan on taking those pills for the rest of your life, to maintain any weight loss you may experience while on them?
    - If it's legit, why isn't it approved by the FDA?
    - Would you rather healthy weight loss, or possibly wasting money on a placebo-type pill, when you could invest that money in nutritionally dense food?
  • Ready2Rock206
    Ready2Rock206 Posts: 9,487 Member
    seen on Dr. Oz as they say

    Right there is all I need to know it's pure crap.
  • yayamom3
    yayamom3 Posts: 939 Member
    This past summer, I went from running 10-15 miles per week, to having constant leg pain and leg weakness. I tried everything I could think of to get past this mysterious ailment, to no avail. After about three months of progressively getting worse, I finally decided I needed to make a doctor's appointment. That same day, I read an article about how many people are coming to believe that Nutrasweet is causing false MS-like symptoms. Well, I rarely eat/drink anything with Nutrasweet in it, so I knew it wasn't the culprit. But it started my thinking about what in my diet could have changed in the previous three months. Bingo! I started taking this supplement. I immediately discontinued it, and I was running again within two weeks. That's it. Learned my lesson. No more herbal supplements for me.
  • SoLongAndThanksForAllTheFish
    SoLongAndThanksForAllTheFish Posts: 831 Member
    Don't do it, so far its just another fad with no convincing evidence it does anything except lighten your pocketbook, and cause stool loosening in some.
  • richardheath
    richardheath Posts: 1,276 Member
    Garcinia cambogia is also know by the less mundane name of a tamarind.
    Contrary to Dr. Oz’s introduction that “you are hearing it here first,” there is nothing new about Garcinia. There’s no breakthrough, no fresh research, no “revolutionary” discovery. In the weight-control field, Garcinia cambogia is old hat. Extracts of the rind of this small pumpkin-shaped Asian fruit have long been used in “natural weight loss supplements.” Why? Because in theory, they could have an effect.

    The rind of the fruit, sometimes called a tamarind, is rich in hydroxycitric acid (HCA), a substance with biological activity that can be related to weight loss. Laboratory experiments indicate that HCA can interfere with an enzyme that plays a role in converting excess sugar into fat, as well as with enzymes that break down complex carbohydrates to simple sugars that are readily absorbed. Furthermore, there are suggestions that Garcinia extract stimulates serotonin release, which can lead to appetite suppression.

    Laboratory results that point toward possible weight loss don’t mean much until they are confirmed by proper human trials. And there have been some: fifteen years ago a randomized trial involving 135 subjects who took either a placebo or a Garcinia extract equivalent to 1500 mg of HCA a day for three months, showed no difference in weight loss between the groups (Heymsfield et al. 1998). A more recent trial (Kim et al. 2011) involving eighty-six overweight people taking either two grams of extract or placebo for ten weeks echoed those results. In between these two major studies there were several others (Onakpoya et al. 2011), some of which did show a weight loss of about one kilogram over a couple of months, but these either had few subjects or lacked a control group.

    Basically, it is clear that if there is any weight loss attributed to Garcinia cambogia, it is virtually insignificant. But there may be something else attributed to the supplement, namely kidney problems (Li and Bordelon 2011). Al­though incidence is rare, even one is an excess when the chance of a benefit is so small. So Garcinia cambogia, like green coffee bean extract, can hardly be called a miracle. But it seems Dr. Oz puts his facts on a diet when it comes to fattening up his television ratings.

    http://www.csicop.org/si/show/dr_ozs_questionable_wizardry
  • SoLongAndThanksForAllTheFish
    SoLongAndThanksForAllTheFish Posts: 831 Member
    Garcinia cambogia is also know by the less mundane name of a tamarind.
    Contrary to Dr. Oz’s introduction that “you are hearing it here first,” there is nothing new about Garcinia. There’s no breakthrough, no fresh research, no “revolutionary” discovery. In the weight-control field, Garcinia cambogia is old hat. Extracts of the rind of this small pumpkin-shaped Asian fruit have long been used in “natural weight loss supplements.” Why? Because in theory, they could have an effect.

    The rind of the fruit, sometimes called a tamarind, is rich in hydroxycitric acid (HCA), a substance with biological activity that can be related to weight loss. Laboratory experiments indicate that HCA can interfere with an enzyme that plays a role in converting excess sugar into fat, as well as with enzymes that break down complex carbohydrates to simple sugars that are readily absorbed. Furthermore, there are suggestions that Garcinia extract stimulates serotonin release, which can lead to appetite suppression.

    Laboratory results that point toward possible weight loss don’t mean much until they are confirmed by proper human trials. And there have been some: fifteen years ago a randomized trial involving 135 subjects who took either a placebo or a Garcinia extract equivalent to 1500 mg of HCA a day for three months, showed no difference in weight loss between the groups (Heymsfield et al. 1998). A more recent trial (Kim et al. 2011) involving eighty-six overweight people taking either two grams of extract or placebo for ten weeks echoed those results. In between these two major studies there were several others (Onakpoya et al. 2011), some of which did show a weight loss of about one kilogram over a couple of months, but these either had few subjects or lacked a control group.

    Basically, it is clear that if there is any weight loss attributed to Garcinia cambogia, it is virtually insignificant. But there may be something else attributed to the supplement, namely kidney problems (Li and Bordelon 2011). Al­though incidence is rare, even one is an excess when the chance of a benefit is so small. So Garcinia cambogia, like green coffee bean extract, can hardly be called a miracle. But it seems Dr. Oz puts his facts on a diet when it comes to fattening up his television ratings.

    http://www.csicop.org/si/show/dr_ozs_questionable_wizardry

    GJ I didnt feel like looking this kind of data up again for posting, same conclusions, different source :) Not only do people eat tamarinds anyways on a daily basis for many thousands of years and have no lore associated with it causing weight loss to my knowledge, but some people have unpleasant reactions (aside from commonly reported diarrhea), I would only buy it to try if you need a laxative and other laxatives aren't working for you.
  • AlongCame_Molly
    AlongCame_Molly Posts: 2,835 Member
    You lost me at "Dr. Oz".
  • dlbaron
    dlbaron Posts: 79 Member
    I recently responded to another thread about this- I wouldn't recommend it. I work in a shop where tons of people come in looking for the new Dr Oz recommended supplement every week. I consider myself a guinea pig so I can give honest recommendations to customers and friends, so I've tried garcinia cambogia and I don't notice any results. Also telling: the people who come in for the garcinia are usually overweight and only buy that one product, which to me indicates that they just grab the newest fad product hoping for a quick fix. The thinnest people we get in the store are buying protein powder, high quality vitamins, supplements, and green powders, and, for the most part, low sugar, whole foods with as little processing as possible. I would never dismiss ALL supplements the way a lot of people on the MFP forums do, but I also wouldn't blindly believe in a product for which I've heard no scientific or anecdotal evidence. It seems like people who see results with the garcinia simultaneously improve their diet and exercise routines.... So just do that. It will work.
  • ashleycarrender9
    ashleycarrender9 Posts: 1
    this stuff works for me it makes me no where near as hungry i have more energy my stomach fat is disappearing so fast i love it just check out my photos i tried dieting reducing calories exercising nothing til i took these pills
  • mockchoc
    mockchoc Posts: 6,573 Member
    this stuff works for me it makes me no where near as hungry i have more energy my stomach fat is disappearing so fast i love it just check out my photos i tried dieting reducing calories exercising nothing til i took these pills

    Looks like you just had a baby not long ago. It's normal for your belly to go down and lose fat afterwards. I am sure it's not from the Garcinia.
  • thoyamma
    thoyamma Posts: 22 Member
    I am Indian and I have a garcinia cambogia tree at home. I used to eat the fruit cooked with fish and I swear it really helped me lose weight.
  • sojojoshua
    sojojoshua Posts: 37
    http://sojojoshua.blogspot.in/2012/03/kudam-puligambooge-garcinia-cambogia.html

    check this out... ive given the pictures of the tree and how i used it to really help me lose weight.... but I used to have the fruit dried and cooked...not the pill
  • mockchoc
    mockchoc Posts: 6,573 Member
    http://sojojoshua.blogspot.in/2012/03/kudam-puligambooge-garcinia-cambogia.html

    check this out... ive given the pictures of the tree and how i used it to really help me lose weight.... but I used to have the fruit dried and cooked...not the pill

    I loved reading your blog. Especially about Egypt and the garden etc... Good luck with your weight loss.
  • Sarauk2sf
    Sarauk2sf Posts: 28,072 Member
    There is no scientific basis for its benefits on fat loss...unless you are rat. The results have not been replicated in humans.

    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21936892

    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11134690

    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9820262
  • nicenhealthy
    nicenhealthy Posts: 61
    I bought it on impulse (70% HCA) and still hold doubt over its viability. Regardless, I have found it diminishes my appetite by a small degree and helps me sleep. I do not recommend anyone purchase it, go for something that is well-researched. I have read studies where it helps burn fat after exercise but the reported effects were so small, it's laughable and really not worth it at all. :smile: It was just an experiment haha... Least it helped me sleep.

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