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science nutrition <strong>blog</strong>

By Robert Schinetsky

 

The New Year is upon us, and for millions of individuals around the world that means getting back into the daily hustle of work, family, and social obligations. It also is a time when a considerable number of people try to “get fit” by cleaning up their diet, exercising more, and attempting to lose weight.

Without fail, every year this happens.

And, also without fail, there will be no shortage of fad diets, “extreme” fat-burning workout routines, and “quick-fix” weight loss pills.

But, rest assured, there are NO quick fixes, shortcuts, or other amalgamation of fasting/detoxing/cleansing that will produce meaningful, sustainable weight loss.

You have to put in the work, both in the kitchen and in the gym, to build muscle strength, lose fat, and get healthy. Incorporating thermogenic foods can naturally aid in this process by boosting your metabolism.

Now, that’s not to say that supplements don’t have a place in those goals. They most certainly do.

It’s more so that the vast majority of products you’ll encounter during the onslaught of New Year’s advertising are complete and utter garbage. They overpromise and underdeliver, plain and simple.

At Advanced Molecular Labs, we don’t overhype or exaggerate.

We craft supplements that amplify and enhance the work you put in each day. Whether that’s helping you train harder, recover faster, or just live a healthier life.

When it comes to weight loss specifically, a common thread that runs through all of AML’s weight loss supplements is a focus on brown fat thermogenesis.

What is Brown Fat Thermogenesis?

There are two main types of subcutaneous fat in the body:

  • White adipose tissue (WAT) -- “white fat”
  • Brown adipose tissue (BAT) -- “brown fat”

The main difference between the two is that brown fat functions as a metabolically active thermogenic tissue while white fat serves as a storage depot for extra calories that the body doesn’t immediately need or use. Understanding how to increase brown fat naturally can be key in enhancing your body's fat-burning capabilities.

Brown fat generates heat by burning body fat via non-shivering thermogenesis, and it is stimulated, under normal circumstances, when the body is exposed to cold temperatures. Think of brown fat thermogenesis as a sort of “preservation mechanism” that the body uses to survive.

Children have considerably more brown fat reserves than adults, which helps them keep warm. Brown fat stores decline as we age, however, weight loss researchers have found that not only adults possess a fair amount of brown fat, there are certain supplements that can stimulate these brown fat reserves (without the need for cold exposure) but can also increase the amount of brown fat in the body.

Today, we highlight the best fat burning nutrients for 2022 with a specific focus on those that target brown fat thermogenesis and act as thermogenic fat burners!

The 10 Best Fat Burning Nutrients for 2022

Grains of Paradise

Grains of Paradise (Aframomum melegueta) is a species of the ginger family that has long been used in African cooking. Human studies have shown that supplementing with grains of paradise can activate BAT and decrease belly fat.[1,2]

What’s more, these studies found that daily ingestion of Paradoxine also led to reductions in visceral fat -- a type of fat stored within the abdominal cavity that is located near several vital organs, including the liver, stomach, and intestines. Higher levels of visceral fat are associated with increased risk of metabolic complications such as heart disease and type 2 diabetes.

Chile Peppers

Spicy foods have long been touted for their metabolism-boosting effects.

Chile peppers, in particular, not only can cause your mouth to burn and forehead to sweat, but they can also support weight loss and act as natural weight loss supplements by enhancing thermogenesis.

Capsaicinoids, the fiery alkaloids that give chile peppers their tongue-tingling effects, activate the body’s TRPV receptors, resulting in enhanced fatty acid oxidation.

Capsaicin can stimulate the TRPV1 receptor in the mouth, causing noradrenaline to be released, which is beneficial for stimulating brown fat thermogenesis and browning white fat cells. This makes it one of the best belly fat burners available.

Moreover, research studies indicate that ingesting just a single dose of capsinoids can ramp up brown fat thermogenesis.[4,5] Other studies give evidence that meals enriched with capsaicin can increased both energy expenditure and lipid oxidation (aka “fat burning”).[6,7]

Dihydrocapsiate is a non-pungent relative of capsaicin, which means that it doesn’t cause the same tongue-burning sensation or GI irritation that capsaicin might. Despite packing less gustatory punch than capsaicin, dihydrocapsiate still has been found to enhance fat oxidation and energy expenditure.[8]

Doses even as low as 6mg per day of capsinoids are associated with an increase in fat oxidation and subsequent loss of abdominal fat.[9]

FYI, AML ThermoHeat Cocktail contains 9mg of dihydrocapsiate (as CapsiAtra) -- 1.5 times more than the dose documented in research to promote weight loss!

Grape Skin Polyphenols

Grapes and other dark-skinned fruits are packed with potent polyphenols, with one of the best-known ones being resveratrol.

While the polyphenols found in grapes and other fruits are typically viewed from the standpoint of supporting cardiovascular health and resisting oxidative stress, they can also brown white fat, inhibit adipogenesis (the creation of new fat cells), support insulin sensitivity, boost metabolism.[10,11]

Kaempferol

Kaempferol is a compound that may not be as familiar as some of the other fat burning nutrients listed here, but after reading more about it, you’ll start to wonder why you don’t see it included in more weight loss supplements.

Kaempferol is readily found in a number of foods common to the diet including broccoli, tea, and grapefruit and has been found to stimulate thermogenesis in muscle cells.

That’s not a typo, either.

Fat cells aren’t the only cells in the body that burn energy via thermogenesis, muscle cells can as well![12]

When a muscle contracts, it generates heat, which is part of the reason you feel hot and start sweating during intense physical activity.

As it turns out, researchers discovered that skeletal muscle also performs non-shivering thermogenesis, meaning it can give off heat and burn energy outside of exercise.[12]

Furthermore, Kaempferol also stimulates thyroid hormone production, which in turn activates thermogenesis in brown fat.[13]

What this means is that kaempferol has the very unique rare ability to stimulate thermogenesis in different types of cells in the body, making it one of the most intriguing inclusions in AML Thermo Heat Cocktail as well as the original ThermoHeat.

Ginger Root Extract

At the start of this article we discussed Grains of Paradise and mentioned that it was a relative of ginger. Well, as it turns out, ginger also contains some fairly formidable pro-fat burning compounds.

Whereas Grains of Paradise contains 6-paradol, ginger contains gingerols.

Gingerol is related to capsaicin and piperine (the main bioactive in black pepper) and similarly stimulates assorted spice receptors on the tongue, specifically the TRPV1 receptor. Gingerol also promotes browning.[14]

This, in turn, triggers thermogenic energy expenditure in a similar fashion to capsaicinoids which ultimately helps reduce body fat.

5-HTP

5-HTP is the direct precursor to serotonin -- a neurotransmitter, most commonly associated with feelings of well-being. Neuroimaging studies indicate that obesity is often associated with decreased serotonergic signaling.[15]

Furthermore, systemic serotonin administration has been found to reduce food intake.[16]

Most recently, a systematic review and meta-analysis appearing in the highly reputable journal, The Lancet, noted that serotonin-agonists (such as topiramate) appear to be the best drugs in reducing weight.[21]

5-HTP is a direct precursor to serotonin, and can be found in Thermo Heat Nighttime.

5-HTP supplementation has been found to help curb cravings and reduce appetite.[17,18] Additionally, 5-HTP supplementation may inhibit the intake of calories from carbohydrates.[22]

Serotonin also has been noted to potentiate BAT sympathetic nerve activity and thermogenesis.[19,20]

Serotonin also serves as a precursor to another popular (and effective) sleep aid and under-the-radar BAT activator…

Melatonin

Melatonin is most well-known as the hormone that regulates the sleep/wake cycle, but what you may not realize is that melatonin also plays an important role in energy metabolism and body weight control.

Several pieces of research indicate that melatonin helps to reduce body weight and abdominal fat without lowering calorie intake or increasing physical activity levels. Melatonin does this by increasing the mass of brown fat as well as brown fat thermogenesis, which results in greater fat burning and energy expenditure![24,25,26,27]

Melatonin also defends against mitochondrial dysfunction and adipose tissue dysfunction via several anti-inflammatory/antioxidant actions.[28,29]

FYI, systemic inflammation is a common characteristic of both obesity and type 2 diabetes.

Dopamine Precursors

Our society has an obsession with dopamine, and it’s pretty understandable why. Dopamine makes us feel good. It makes us happy, enthusiastic, energized, and motivated.

Dopamine also has a role in fat burning as the neurotransmitter regulates neurons that initiate the thermogenic process.

The problem with most things that release dopamine (stimulants, social media, video games, etc.) is that they don’t replenish the substrates the body uses (vitamins, amino acids, etc.) to synthesize the invaluable neurochemical.

That’s why Advanced Molecular Labs includes dopamine precursors in both our pre workout supplements, productivity supplements, energy shots, and weight loss aids.

Furthermore, studies indicate that supplementation with dopamine precursors increases dopamine production and function, which ignites a cascade of biological processes that lead to greater energy expenditure in a dose-dependant manner.[30,31,32]

Olive Leaf Extract

Olive leaves are rich in numerous polyphenols, including oleuropein.

Animal research notes that oleuropein increases levels of the fat-burning hormones adrenaline and noradrenaline, and it also ramps up uncoupling activity of a protein in fat cells called uncoupling protein-1 (UCP-1_, which would lead to increased energy expenditure.[34]

It’s also worth mentioning that uncoupling proteins can account for ~10% of the mitochondrial protein content in brown fat.

Additional research indicates that supplementation with olive leaf extract supports thyroid function and may increase thyroid hormone T3 2.5x above baseline.[35]

Ursolic Acid

Ursolic acid is a compound found in many plants that been shown to increase skeletal muscle and brown fat levels as well as decrease diet-induced obesity.[36]

Ursolic acid has also been shown to increase the expression of UCP-1 (see above for more on UCP-1). This effectively boosts the thermogenic capacity of brown fat.

Together, these actions give ursolic acid the unique ability to increase both the activity and quantity of brown fat, providing a formidable 1-2 punch for fat loss

Bonus Fat Burning Nutrients: Caffeine + Synephrine

For the finishing touch on frying fat in the new year, we have formidable combination of caffeine and p-synephrine.

There’s not much to be said for caffeine that you probably already don’t know or have experienced first hand.

It boosts energy, alertness, athletic performance, and dopamine.

Caffeine also helps suppress appetite, increase lipolysis, fat oxidation, and energy expenditure. In fact, research has shown that a single dose of 100mg of caffeine (about the same caffeine as you would get in a cup of strong coffee) can increase energy expenditure by approximately 100 calories per day.[37]

P-synephrine is a compound found in bitter oranges that stimulates beta-3 adrenergic receptors on fat cells. This leads to activation of brown fat thermogenesis, resulting in an increased resting metabolic rate in humans, with no adverse impact on heart rate or blood pressure. Other popular weight loss stimulants stimulate beta-1 and beta-2 adrenergic receptors, which can have unfavorable effects on heart rate and blood pressure.

The combination of caffeine and synephrine has been studied in humans and found not only to be effective for increasing energy expenditure and athletic performance, but also well tolerated[38,39]…the same of which cannot be said of other stimulants commonly used in weight loss applications.

Takeaway

There you have it!

The BEST fat burning nutrients for 2022 which can be found across the AML family of products, including Thermo Heat Cocktail, Thermo Heat Nighttime, Thermo Heat Fat Burning Protein and the ORIGINAL Thermo Heat.

Stay tuned for our next feature where we’ll dive deep into the WORST fat burning nutrients for 2022!

 

©Copyright Advanced Research Media
©Reprinted with permission from Advanced Research Media, Inc.

References

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