An in-depth look and review of the latest all-natural “miracle” product for weight loss and fat burning

So last night we were idling flipping through our Vitacost catalog (they’re an online store for vitamins and supplements) when Tim came across an ad for fucoxanthin pills. At first, we were just making fun of the name, but then I started actually reading the ad.  It was all about fat burning, especially the stubborn belly fat!

Fucoxanthin is a naturally occurring chemical found in brown seaweed.  What has gotten the diet and exercise industry interested is that a recent study at the renowned Hokkadio University in Japan showed that fucoxanthin increased fat loss in rats and mice.  The chemical increased fat burning within fat cells specifically by increasing thermogenesis, which is a process by which your body produces heat.  Your body produces heat by shivering and also by chemical reactions within your cells (to keep you and your organ warm, we are 98.7 degrees internally after all). It’s a bit too scientific to get in to, but you can just think of it as burning fat to warm your body.

At first I was all excited about fucoxanthin.  I mean, it’s touted as a natural chemical that will help your body burn fat, sounds great right?  But then I started to do more research on fucoxanthin and a lot of questions and issues came up.

Issues with and Questions raised by Fucoxanthin

The only study that has been done has been on mice and rats.  There have been no published human studies, so we don’t really know if it it works for humans.

If it does work for humans, we don’t really know what dosage is effective.  From a doctor who actually read and understood the published study:

Note by Dr. Sahelian: The amount of fucoxanthin fed to these mice was 0.2 percent of their diet. For easy calculation, let’s say a person on average eats 1000 grams of food a day. If 0.2 percent of the diet is fucoxanthin, this would mean that they would have to consume 2 grams of fucoxanthin daily to have a similar effect as did the mice. Two grams is 2000 mg. The highest fucoxanthin containing product I could find during an internet search in May of 2008 was 10 mg per capsule. If one were to take even a few capsules a day, iodine toxicity could occur.

Many of the fucoxanthin pills for sale have only 5 mg of fucoxanthin per pill, so if 2000 mg is the effective dose, you would have to take 400 pills a day!

Another major issue is that many of the pills available online aren’t pure fucoxanthin extract, but rather, just brown seaweed powder that just happens to contain the fucoxanthin in it.  By taking the whole seaweed, you’re also taking in a lot of iodine.  While we do need a tiny of iodine in our diet, taking these pills would give you way way more iodine than you’re supposed to have.  This could lead to thyroid problems, iodine poisoning, and for some people, skin issues.

Assuming that fucoxanthin does work, and you were somehow able to get the correct dosage without any extras like the iodine, won’t you get hot? I mean, the thing is supposed to work by increasing thermogenesis. I would think our bodies are pretty good already at maintaining and regulating our body temperature. It would seem that taking fucoxanthin would make you heat up, and if you’re an overweight or obese person, that could get very uncomfortable.

So, the main issues I have with fucoxanthin, despite it being promoted as some miracle fat-burning, all-natural supplement are:

• We don’t know if it works on humans.
• If it works on humans, we don’t know what the effective dose is.
• If we do have the effective dose, it is difficult to get that amount with the pills on the market.
• The pills on the markets contain dangerous amount of iodine.

Now, I have really stubborn belly fat and back fat that just seems to stay no matter what.  While this fucoxanthin initially seemed like it would be a great aide, my research is starting to convince me that it might just be a waste of money.  I know there are tons of great testimonials out there, but having worked in marketing for years now, I can say firsthand that many testimonials are fabricated.  Also, I’ve noticed a new trend now where women (especially stay-at-home moms or young girls) create an online diet blog or journal about their weight loss journey.  They actually look really good and sound really genuine, but most of these are fake and are just another form of guerrilla marketing to get people to buy the products.  It’s usually a company behind the blogs or some techie in India or Russia who gets a kickback from each sale he makes through the blog while pretending to be a Kansas City housewife.

Unless some new study is published or I find a product with pure extract (no iodine plus a high concentration of fucoxantin), I think for now I will focus on making healthy food choices, eating in moderation, daily exercise, drinking a lot of water and taking my daily multivitamin.

Resources:

Wikipedia article on fucoxanthin
Wikipedia articles on thermogenesis
A doctor’s in-depth analysis on the fucoxanthin hype

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