Scientific Family

Bipasha Das Jun 26, What is Garcinia Cambogia? Blow are the key benefits of garcinia cambogia: Suppress unhealthy appetite: Using garcinia or HCA can help a person feel full throughout the day- achieving satiety early. Some people who have used the supplement claim that it helps them feel full and supports their weight loss process. Improve the digestive system: Garcinia improves digestion and gastritis health.

Besides churning pounds of unhealthy body food, Garcinia Cambogia works amazingly to increase the BMR- basal metabolic rate, thus making your body hormone to work better. Lower cholesterol: Older studies have supported the fact that garcinia may be useful for lowering cholesterol. People have long used the dried gambooge rinds for chutneys or curries, and sometimes as an aid for stomach problems.

Garcinia Cambogia

But in the late s, scientists identified a substance in the rind of the fruit called hydroxycitric acid, or HCA, which has some potentially attractive qualities. A fruit extract that could interfere with the body's production of fat? The appeal is obvious. However, good results in test tubes don't always translate to an entire person. Some studies say HCA works, and some say it doesn't.


  • How Much Do We Know?.
  • What Is Garcinia Cambogia?.
  • penny hoarder lose weight?
  • Is Garcinia cambogia safe?.
  • treatment for saggy skin after weight loss?
  • weight loss prince frederick md?
  • weight loss dizzy fatigue?

Animal studies of HCA showed that mice taking the substance ate less, lost weight and produced less fat from sugar. Human studies had more conflicting results. One weight loss trial showed no difference between people who took Garcinia cambogia and those who took a placebo pill. Other trials linked HCA to weight loss and healthy blood lipid levels lipids are fats. If a pharmaceutical company wanted to sell HCA as a drug, the company would have to find stronger evidence that the substance worked, coming from better-designed clinical trials. Without that data, HCA wouldn't pass U.

Food and Drug Administration approval, Ulbricht said. A further meta-analysis of the two trials with good methodological quality [ 6 , 25 ] revealed a nonsignificant difference in weight loss MD: 0. One study [ 2 ] reported a significant decrease in fat mass in the HCA group compared with placebo , while two studies [ 4 , 24 ] reported a significant decrease in visceral, subcutaneous, and total fat areas in the HCA group compared with placebo.

In contrast two other studies [ 5 , 25 ] found no significant difference in body fat loss between HCA and placebo. Adverse events reported in the RCTs included headache, skin rash, common cold, and gastrointestinal GI symptoms. In most of the studies, there were no major differences in adverse events between the HCA and placebo groups. However, in one trial, GI adverse events were twice as frequent in the HCA group compared with the placebo group [ 25 ]. In total, there were 88 drop outs.

A further 45 participants were reported to have been excluded from the analysis in one trial [ 5 ] because they either took a mixture of HCA and placebo 28 , or were males The objective of this systematic review was to assess the efficacy and effectiveness of HCA as a weight reduction agent. The overall meta-analysis revealed a small difference in change in body weight between the HCA and placebo groups. The effect is of borderline statistical significance and is no longer significant on the basis of a sensitivity analysis of rigorous RCTs. Arguably the overall effect size is also too small to be of clinical relevance.

The overall meta-analytic result corroborates the findings from one of the studies without suitable data for statistical pooling [ 31 ], but is at variance with another study [ 4 ]. The overall result should be interpreted with caution. The pooled data from some of the studies were adjusted values. Three studies with small sample sizes [ 6 , 29 , 30 ] seemed to have influenced the overall meta-analytic result in favour of HCA over placebo.

If these three trials are excluded, the meta-analysis result is no longer significant. The result of our systematic review corroborates the findings from a previous systematic review of weight loss supplements, which reported that the weight reducing effects of most dietary supplements is not convincing [ 32 ]. HCA is a commonly marketed as a complementary weight loss supplement.

The meta-analysis from this systematic review suggests that HCA is not as effective as conventional weight loss pills, for example, orlistat. This contrasts quite sharply with the results from the meta-analysis of HCA clinical trials. All of the studies included in this review had methodological issues, which are likely to have affected the outcomes in these trials.

This is supported by the values from the overall meta-analysis result which suggested substantial heterogeneity. Most of the studies included in this systematic review had small sample sizes. Only one included study [ 25 ] reported that they performed a power calculation. Larger study sizes with a priori sample size calculation will help eliminate a type II error i. Only one study [ 25 ] performed an intention to treat ITT analysis, while all the participants in three other studies [ 24 , 26 , 27 ] were reported to have completed the trial.

Share via email

In one study [ 5 ], participants were excluded due to mixed-pill ingestion an error in coding of pill bottles resulted in some participants receiving a mixture of HCA and placebo. Male participants were also excluded from the analysis of this RCT because they were too few in number compared with females in the trial. It was also unclear to which intervention group the excluded participants belonged to in this study.

The optimal dose of HCA is currently unknown. Two included studies which differed widely in results [ 25 , 29 ] also differed widely in dosage of HCA. Though one of these studies claimed the bioavailability of the HCA used in their trial was high [ 25 ], the dosage of HCA used was almost twice that used in the other trial [ 29 ]. A nonlinear, significant correlation between the dosage of HCA and body weight loss seems to exist Figure 4.

Garcinia cambogia was the main source of HCA in most studies, with Garcinia atroviridis being the source of HCA in one included study [ 2 ]. None of the trials used Garcinia indica as an intervention. It is unclear if the strain of Garcinia species influences the bioavailability of HCA. Furthermore HCA is also reported to be found in Hibiscus subdariffa [ 8 ], and none of the studies included in this review used HCA extracted from this plant species.

The duration of the studies included in the review also differed, with a range of 2 to 12 weeks, and mode of 8 weeks. This is probably too short a time to assess the effects of HCA on body weight. There was some variation in the design of the RCTs included in the review.

All of the studies included had parallel-study designs except two which were crossover trials [ 26 , 27 ]. Four included RCTs comprised three intervention groups [ 6 , 26 , 27 , 29 ]. None of the included studies indicated whether or not outcome assessors were blinded, and seven studies did not specify the source of funding [ 2 , 4 , 6 , 24 , 28 , 29 , 31 ]. The failure of study investigators to adhere strictly to the CONSORT guidelines [ 10 , 11 ] may have contributed to the variation in methodology and heterogeneity of the trials included in the review.

In most of the trials, there were no significant differences in adverse events between HCA and placebo. This seems to corroborate the report in another article [ 34 ] which suggested that HCA is safe for human consumption.

Journal of Obesity

A few of the studies reported a positive effect of HCA on the blood lipid profile [ 6 , 24 , 29 — 31 ], while one did not find any significant difference between HCA and placebo on this blood parameter [ 2 ]. However, given the short duration of the studies involving the use of HCA, it is unclear how safe this dietary supplement is on the intermediate and long term. In , the Food and Drug Administration FDA warned consumers about the potential for serious adverse effects associated with the consumption of hydroxycut, a popular HCA-containing slimming pill. This resulted in the withdrawal of this supplement from the market [ 35 ].

All of the studies included in this review except two [ 26 , 27 ] incorporated some form of dietary control into their trials, with participants in one study receiving high fibre diets [ 25 ]. Half the number of studies in this review did not institute any form of exercise. The extent to which the variation in these lifestyle adjustment factors could have influenced study results is uncertain. Two studies [ 28 , 31 ] reported a significant reduction in appetite in the HCA group , but not with placebo.

Three other studies did not find any significant difference between HCA and placebo groups in terms of satiety effect [ 5 , 26 , 27 ]. All of the studies described their participants as overweight, obese, or both. This systematic review has several limitations.


  1. Nutrition Tips For You: What is Garcinia Cambogia? Is It Good for Weight Loss?.
  2. womens body slimming vest?
  3. Benefits of Garcinia Cambogia.
  4. You may also like:.
  5. So...is it true? Can garcinia cambogia help you lose weight?.
  6. Though our search strategy involved both electronic and non-electronic studies, we may not have identified all the available trials involving the use of HCA as a weight loss supplement. Furthermore, the methodological quality of most of the studies identified from our searches is poor, and most studies are of short duration.

    These factors prevent us from drawing firm conclusions about the effects of HCA on body weight. However, the magnitude of this effect is small, is no longer statistically significant when only rigorous RCTs are considered, and its clinical relevance seems questionable. Future trials should be more rigorous, longer in duration, and better reported. Onakpoya was funded by a grant from GlaxoSmithKline.

    Garcinia Cambogia - Supplement Facts and Effects | Live Science

    The funder had no role in the preparation of the paper. Hung, R. Perry, B. Wider and E. Ernest declare no potential competing interests. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. We will be providing unlimited waivers of publication charges for accepted research articles as well as case reports and case series related to COVID Review articles are excluded from this waiver policy.

    Sign up here as a reviewer to help fast-track new submissions. Journal overview. Special Issues. Academic Editor: S. Received 13 May Revised 13 Jul Accepted 22 Oct Published 14 Dec Abstract The aim of this systematic review is to examine the efficacy of Garcinia extract, hydroxycitric acid HCA as a weight reduction agent, using data from randomised clinical trials RCTs.

    Introduction The prevalence of overweight and obesity has increased over the last decade [ 1 ], and current measures have not been able to stem the tide. Authors Year Main outcome s Main diagnoses of participants Randomisation appropriate?