Weight loss Apple Cider vinegar

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A lot of people also swear by the miracles of apple cider vinegar weight loss or the apple cider vinegar diet. Most people believe that consistently taking apple cider vinegar will help get the pounds off while improving health. This article will examine if there is indeed any truth in apple cider vinegar weight loss.

We will have a closer look at apple cider vinegar and skim trough the available research on apple cider vinegar weight loss. We will also review the apple cider vinegar diet as well as other possible health benefits associated with it. At the end of the article, you will have enough information to allow you to make sound decisions about the merit of using apple cider vinegar for losing weight.

In this day and age of information overload, you need to be sure that your weight loss efforts are scientifically proven. Only consider well researched remedies. This is the best return for your time, money and effort. You need to review apple cider vinegar weight loss in the same way.

Apple cider vinegar typically has potassium, pectin, malic acid, calcium, ash and acetic acid. It also has vitamins C, E, A, B1, B2 and B6. It also has some beneficial minerals such as selenium, manganese, copper, zinc, sodium, potassium, phosphorus, magnesium, iron and calcium. The acetic acid in apple cider vinegar gives it its acidic properties.

Mother of Winegar courtesy of Wikipedia(Zinnmann)

Apple cider vinegar is made from the fermentation of either apple cider (a fermented beverage made from apple juice) or apple must (freshly pressed juice that contains the skins, seed).  Apple cider vinegar is also known as ACV and usually has a pale colour. The fermentation process goes through a few steps. In the first step, the bacteria in the fermentation process break down sugar into alcohol. In the next step, the alcohol is further broken down into vinegar.

Unpasteurized apple cider vinegar has mother of vinegar. Mother of vinegar (picture on the right) is the settlement that you would usually see at the bottom of the bottle and is mostly made up of acetic acid bacteria. This is typically the remnants of the bacteria from the fermentation process.

Apple cider vinegar is available in capsules, tablets and its raw liquid form. The capsules and tablets do not contain the mother of vinegar which probably gives it all its health related benefits.

Many people adopt apple cider vinegar weight loss without realizing if there is any merit in doing so. A lot of these remedies are promoted by people with vested interests. One such variation of this promotion is the apple cider vinegar diet. People on the apple cider vinegar diet typically take about 2 to 3 teaspoons of apple cider vinegar before each meal. A lot of people swear by the apple cider vinegar diet. Before you go on running to the store to get a bottle, you need a deeper understanding of what is going on. You also need to look at some of the research done and assess if there is merit in the apple cider vinegar diet.

Insulin resistance is one of the main reasons why so many people gain weight. Until insulin levels are brought back down to reasonable levels, weight loss becomes and impossible task. In order to appreciate the research presented below, you need to have a deeper understanding of how insulin spikes are affecting your waist line. Read the following resources for further information;

Glycemic index, glycemic load, insulin resistance and weight lossComplex and refined carbohydrates for sustainable weight loss

Most of the research related toe apple cider vinegar weight loss is actually based on refined vinegar. The results are extrapolated to extend to apple cider vinegar.

A study was published in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition that can help shed more light on apple cider vinegar weight loss. Participants were given different levels of vinegar concentrations with a portion of white bread at breakfast. Scientists found that higher levels of vinegar concentrations drew a milder metabolic response. In other words there was a lower insulin spike as vinegar dampened the effect of glucose release into the blood stream. The participants who consumed the highest amount of vinegar also registered the highest satiety levels. The scientists concluded that fermented and pickled products containing acetic acid had the potential of dampening insulin spikes as well as increase satiety levels after eating a meal.

Another similar study also yielded similar results. The study was published in the European Journal  of Clinical Nutrition in 2005. Participants were fed cold stored boiled potatoes with vinaigrette sauce. The boiled potatoes were stored at 8 deg C for about 24 hours. Researchers concluded that the high glycemic and insulinaemic features commonly associated with potato meals can be reduced by use of vinegar dressing and/or by serving cold potato products.

Another study was published in the Journal BMC Gastroenterol that specifically looked at the effects of apple cider vinegar on blood glucose levels as well as insulinaemic response in diabetic patients. The researchers concluded that apple cider vinegar did have the same effects as vinegar in dampening insulin spikes. As researches had found earlier, this was achieved by reducing the rate at which glucose was released into the blood stream.

One of the most relevant studies was published in the Journal of Bioscience, Biotechnology and Biochemistry that showed the strongest correlation for apple cider vinegar weight loss. This study was again based on vinegar and not apple cider vinegar.

175 obese participants took a 500ml beverage that contained 15ml of vinegar for a period of 12 weeks. The researchers concluded that body weight, BMI, visceral fat area, waist circumference and blood triglyceride levels were much lower in groups that took vinegar as compared to those that did not. The researchers further concluded that vinegar was effective to reduce obesity levels.

This study deserves a closer look. When dissecting the study further, some interesting information was found that did not exactly correlate with the conclusion of the study. Obese participants that had a BMI between 25 and 30, experienced weight reduction of between 2 to 5 pounds after a 12 week period when they consumed the beverage containing vinegar.

The main part of vinegar is acetic acid or AcOH. There are probably two ways in which apple cider vinegar weight loss works. The first is the role that apple cider vinegar has in regulating blood glucose level. The acidic nature of apple cider vinegar plays a big role in this. Research has shown that when consumed with meals, it has a tremendous effect in reducing the rate at which glucose is released into the blood stream from the gut. This results in lower amount of insulin hormone released into the blood stream.

Insulin is a very potent fat storage hormone. After each insulin spike, the hormone lingers around in the body. When there is excess insulin in the blood stream, it becomes nearly impossible to lose fat. Your body will have a tendency to store fat even though you have reduced calorie intake. This is one of the ways in which the acetic acid helps apple cider vinegar weight loss.

Another research paper published in the The Journal of Bioscience, Biotechnology and Biochemistry in 2007 attempted to explain vinegar’s role in facilitating fat loss. According to researchers of this study, acetic acid inhibits the expression of genes that promote fat storage. This is the second way that apple cider vinegar weight loss is probably affected. Vinegar has also been shown to have other beneficial effects such as reduce blood pressure and cholesterol levels.

You will see from all the research done on the subject thus far that it is the acetic acid in the apple cider vinegar that influences weight loss efforts. The acidic nature of vinegar helps regulate glucose metabolism. Acetic acid also helps switch-off genes that promote obesity.

With that in mind, you can expect the same results irrespective of whether you take pure vinegar, vinaigrette dressing or apple cider vinegar. It is the concentration of acetic acid in the vinegar that seems to have an effect on glucose metabolism, satiety levels as well as the ability to switch off genes that promote fat storage.

According to some experts, there are some cons of apple cider vinegar weight loss. Apparently, the fermentation process may actually rob a lot of the nutrients that are usually present in the apple. This argument makes sense to a certain degree. There is not much merit in trying to derive health benefits from apple cider vinegar if those benefits are coming solely from the minerals and vitamins.

The fermentation process takes a lot of the nutrients and fiber out of the skin and fruit. It would be better to just eat the apple whole. From this argument, the only health benefit of apple cider vinegar is the presence of the mother of vinegar.

Apple cider vinegar has been shown to reduce blood pressure as well as cholesterol levels. As mentioned earlier, this is really the direct effect of the vinegar content. You would derive the same benefit irrespective of whether you are taking apple cider vinegar or refined vinegar.

Others believe that you could improve digestion by taking some apple cider vinegar before meals. There is some merit in this point as increased stomach acidity does help with better digestion.

Another argument put forward for the health benefits of apple cider vinegar weight loss, is its ability to shift urine acidity. There is not much research available on the subject and much of the publicity is due to a book written by Dr Jarvis entitled Folk Medicine: A Vermont doctor’s guide to good health. Dr Jarvis followed 24 patients for 2 years and kept track of their urine analysis. He found that he could predict the onset of illness by detecting alkalinity in their urine. He also found that he could shift urine alkalinity back to the acidic region by them consuming apple cider vinegar. Shifting urine alkalinity apparently helped avoid the onset of illnesses.

To sum it up, most of the health benefits of apple cider vinegar weight loss is derived from the vinegar as well as the mother of vinegar. As mentioned earlier, the mother of vinegar provides a lot of useful bacteria that may aid in the gut.

The apple cider vinegar diet requires that you take 2 to 3 teaspoons before every meal. When you do this, the rate at which glucose is released after each meal is better regulated. This results in lesser amounts of insulin secreted. This is the secret behind the apple cider vinegar diet.

We could only find one study that directly showed the effects of apple cider vinegar weight loss. I have to say that the effects were not that impressive either. Losing 2 to 5 pounds of weight after 12 weeks is an average achievement. Most people on a healthy diet and a good exercise regimen can expect to lose up to 2 pounds of pure fat each week. The point that I am trying to make is that apple cider vinegar should be considered only as a supplement your weight loss efforts. You cannot depend on it solely to meet your weight loss goals.

You should definitely avoid taking apple cider vinegar in capsule or tablet form. Since these do not contain the mother of vinegar, you could derive the same benefits by taking a multivitamin and adding vinaigrette to each meal. After all, it is the acetic acid that helps regulate glucose metabolism and that is also available in vinaigrette dressing.

The only way to have sustainable weight loss is by adopting a healthy lifestyle. This requires that you adopt the 7 keys of correct weight loss. When you adopt these 7 keys of correct weight loss, the weight will come off effortlessly. Best of all, the weight comes off and stays off. You can use a lot of weight loss tricks to compliment your healthy lifestyle. The effects of apple cider vinegar weight loss is one of them.

There are no quick fixes for weight loss. The process of losing weight follows the law of the farm. You cannot expect to find a magical solution that will yield magical weight loss with minimum or no effort on your side.

It would be nice if you could augment your weight loss efforts with the 2 to 5 pounds of weight loss achieved over the 12 week period. But as I have said, this has to compliment your efforts. Your whole weight loss strategy cannot be based solely on the apple cider vinegar diet or apple cider vinegar weight loss.

Public date: 06/19/2011
// Categories: Food & Nutrition Tips
// Tags: apple cider vinegar, benefits of apple cider vinegar, cider vinegar and weight loss, health benefits of apple cider vinegar, vinegar and weight loss, weight loss supplement Back to topParamjit is passionate about getting the message out there on how to achieve healthy and sustainable weight loss.