Chromium Picolinate For Blood Sugar Control & Weight Loss

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Today’s 30-Second Summary

If you don’t have time to read the whole email today, here are some key takeaways:

• Chromium supplements boast benefits for glycemic control and weight loss, but where does the science stand?

  • Today’s main feature explores the science for it indeed improving glycemic control, as well as the science for how it doesn’t affect weight loss. Also, some important notes about safety!

• How’s your hydration looking today? For most people, at any given time, it’s not great. But it doesn’t have to be that way!

  • Today's sponsor NativePath is offering a 365-day money-back guarantee on their range of electrolyte and amino acid drink mixes, which are great for your kidneys, bladder, and pelvic floor muscles.

• Today’s featured book is about “longevity for the lazy”—basically, optimizing the cost:worth ratio to get good benefits without it being one’s full-time occupation.

Read on to learn more about these things, or click here to visit our archive

A Word To The Wise

Watch and Learn

Exercise and Fat Loss (5 Things You Need To Know)

It’s easy to think “I’ll eat whatever; I can always burn it off later”, and if it’s an odd occasion, then that’s fine; indeed, a fit and healthy body can usually weather small infrequent dietary indiscretions easily. But…

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Monday’s Research Review

Chromium Picolinate For Blood Sugar Control & Weight Loss

First, a quick disambiguation:

• chromium found in food, trivalent chromium of various kinds, is safe (in the quantities usually consumed) and is sometimes considered an essential mineral, sometimes considered unnecessary but beneficial. It’s hard to know for sure, since it’s in a lot of foods (naturally, like many trace elements)

• chromium found in pollution, hexavalent chromium (so: twice as many cationic bonds, if this writer’s chemistry serves her correctly) is poisonous.

We’re going to be writing about the food kind, which is also possible to take as a supplement.

In this case, supplementing vs getting from food is quite a big difference, by the way, since (unlike for a lot of things, which are often the other way around) the bioavailability of chromium from food is very low (around 2.5%), whereas chromium picolinate, one of the most commonly-used supplement forms, boasts higher bioavailability.

Does it work for blood sugars?

Yes, it does! At least, it does in the case of people with type 2 diabetes. Rather than bombard you with many individual studies, here’s a systematic review and meta-analysis of 22 criteria-meeting randomized clinical trials that found:

Source: Systematic review and meta-analysis of the efficacy and safety of chromium supplementation in diabetes

Type 1 diabetes does not have anything like the same weight of evidence, and indeed, we couldn’t find a single human study. It was beneficial for mice with artificially-induced T1D, though wait no, we have an update! We found literally a single human study:

Chromium picolinate supplementation for diabetes mellitus 

Literally, as in: it’s a case study of one person, and the results were a modest reduction in Hb A1c levels after 3 months of 600μg daily; the researchers concluded that ❝chromium picolinate continues to fall squarely within the scope of "alternative medicine," with both unproven benefits and unknown risks❞.

As for people without diabetes, it may reduce the risk of diabetes:

Risk of Type 2 Diabetes Is Lower in US Adults Taking Chromium-Containing Supplements

However! This was an observational study, and correlation ≠ causation.

Furthermore, they said:

That “over one-quarter consumes supplemental chromium” brought our attention to the fact that this is not talking about specifically chromium "monosupplements" (definitely not quarter of the adult population take those), but rather, “multivitamin and mineral” supplements that also contain a tiny amount (often under 50μg) of chromium.

In other words, this ruins the data and honestly the benefit could have been from anything in the “multivitamin and mineral” supplement, or indeed, could just be “the kind of person who takes supplements is the kind of person who lives a lifestyle that is less conducive to becoming diabetic”.

Does it work for weight loss?

We’re running out of space here, so we’ll be brief:

No.

There are many papers that have concluded this, but here are two:

Chromium picolinate supplementation for overweight or obese adults

and

The potential value and toxicity of chromium picolinate as a nutritional supplement, weight loss agent and muscle development agent

Is it safe?

Science’s current best answer is “we don’t know; it hasn’t been tested enough; we haven’t even established the tolerable upper limit, which is usually step 1 of establishing safety”.

Nor is there an estimated average requirement (if indeed there even is a requirement, which question is also not as yet answered conclusively by science), and science falls back to “here’s an average of what people consume in their diet, so that’s probably safe, we guess”.

(that average was reckoned as 25μg/day for young women and 25μg/day for young men, by the way; older ages not as yet reckoned)

You can read about this sorry state of affairs here.

Want to try some?

Notwithstanding the above lack of data for safety, it does have benefits for blood sugars, so if that’s a gamble you’re willing to make, then here’s an example product on Amazon.

Note: the dosage per capsule there (800μg) is half of the low end of the dose that was implicated in the serious kidney condition caused in this case study (1200–2400μg), so if you are going to try it, we strongly recommend not taking more than one per day.

Take care!

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One-Minute Book Review

Longevity for the Lazy: A Low-Work Campaign Plan to Living to 100 and Beyond – by Dr. Richard Malish

There are some people who devote all their resources to longevity, which can become a full-time occupation, not to mention a very expensive endeavor. This book’s for those who want to get the best possible “bang for buck” by doing the things that have the most favorable cost:worth ratio.

Dr. Malish covers what can be done easily for personal longevity, as well as what technological advances can be enjoyed that those before us didn’t have as options. He also discusses the diseases that are most likely to kill us, and how to avoid those.

He preaches a proactive approach, but one that is simple and consistent and based in good science, and good statistics. Indeed, while he’s served 20 years as an army doctor and a cardiologist, he now works as a healthcare policy consultant, so he is well-placed to advise.

The style of the book is halfway between regular pop-science and a textbook; you can either read it cover-to-cover, or skim first though the key points, highlight boxes, summaries, and the like. He also provides a time-phased task list, for those who like things to be laid out like that.

Bottom line: this is a very good, methodical guide to living longer without making it a full-time occupation.

Click here to check out Longevity For The Lazy, and enjoy healthy longevity that gives you time free to enjoy it!

Penny For Your Thoughts?

Wishing you the most well-informed start to the week,

The 10almonds Team