Is CLA a good slimming supplement?

CLA has been around the weight loss industry for a while now. It like almost every other substance used by dieters has had very controversial results. Some of the studies point to it being helpful, most of the studies say that is it not worth your money. It has been linked to building muscle and burning fat even while on a caloric deficit. It is supposed to increase lean body mass and therefore it has to be some kind of a miracle drug. But is this all true? I have done some testing on my own body with CLA with various different doses. And I have had results.

What is Conjugated Linoleic Acid?

CLA is the name used for a group of polyunsaturated fatty acids which have 18 carbon and two double bonds between the carbons. The double bonds are conjugated which means that they have a single bond between them. This is a distinct quality since normally the fatty acids have at least two single bonds between the double bonds. So they are not conjugated. Hence the name Conjugated Linoleic Acid.

It was discovered by accident while a group of scientist were studying mutagens in beef. Those researches surely had no idea then what kind of a hype would be around CLA as a dieting supplement. They found the substance in 1979 when diet supplements were not used like today.

As the definition of CLA is so broad that it only includes that the carbon chain has 18 carbons and that there is two conjucated double bonds, there is a lot of variety of CLA. That makes some interesting differences since not all of the isomers can work the same. Can they? Our bodies are pretty smart machines and they can tell the difference between a placement of a double bond by the charge distribution around the molecule and the shape difference that a double bond in a different place causes.

Helpful for dieters - What are the effects and the side-effects?

Well conjugated linoleic acid is not just a weight loss supplement. It has a lot of health benefits also. There are many different studies which have studied the different isomers in both human and animals. In the sudies where they found that CLA decreased the fat mass and increased muscle mass they usually used a mixture of 10-trans-CLA and 11-cis-CLA. Those of you who don't know what that means do not really even need to know what that means. Just stick by with knowing that it was those isomers that were studied related to fat loss and muscle gain. As a regular dieter it is not important to know the IUPAC by heart and know exactly how the molecule looks like from seeing its IUPAC name. So I will leave that to another post or not.

Back to the studies. It was found that in the test subjects - which were by the way animals at this stage - it had tremendous effects. It significantly decreased the amount of body fat and increased the lean body mass. It looked like this mixture of isomers was a wonder drug which would replace all the other diet pills and mass gainers. Well at least the weight loss industry and the global media thought so.

Scientists have learned that animal testing usually doesn't mean a thing. Well sure you can make hypothesis and assumptions. If the supplement does not kill the animals it might not kill the human test subjects. But if any assumptions can be made towards CLA being a fat loss agent there had to be some controlled double blind human testing.

Well after getting the money to do the testing, and ofcourse the approval to do the tests. There had to be enough data that proves that CLA is not dangerous to human. Well at least not life threathning. So they did the human tests with double blind and they found basically nothing. No fat loss and especially no muscle gains. This was depressing.

After a few years the scientists have found some disturbing facts about CLA. The most used isomer in CLA supplements has been shown to cause insulin resistance. This is actually completely backwards. If you lose weight your insulin sensitivity goes up which basically means that your insulin resistance goes down. But while using CLA it goes the other way around. This might mean that CLA does not contribute to a healthy lifestyle but au contraire it drives you towards type 2 diabetes. After all, insulin resistance is the main reason for type 2 diabetes. If you already are in risk for type 2 diabetes I would not suggest you to take CLA but seek for diabetes medical supplies instead.

There has also been shown a indisputable link between high CLA intake an atherosclerosis. Although atherlosclerosis migh be linked to insulin resistance also. So by the looks of it CLA is not much of a health supplement neither is it a diet pill especially with the doses of multiple grams per day that are recommended by the companies promoting these products. Does it have any other "benefits"?

As it comes to show that CLA is not completely bogus. The isomers 9-cis-CLA and 11-trans-CLA have been studied quite a lot also. They have not been studie for weight loss but for other health benefits. In animal testing a mixture of these conjugated linoleic acid was found to have effects on cancer cells. These isomers are concidered the natural isomers. But as it comes to human testing it has not yet been proven that these CLA isomers have effects in preventing cancer in human. There are studies that point to this way but the results are not "scientifically relevant".

Where To Find it?

As scary it is it can be found in dairy fat. Does this mean that we should avoid eating dairy products since it is not actually that good for the diet. No it does not mean that. The conjugated linoleic acid found in dairy fat is natural and therefore it is not an extract. It is in its natural form. When the isomers are combined with a natural mixture of dairy fat they have not been shown to have all the negative effects of pure mixtures of one or two isomers. This means that at a natural state, conjugated linoleic acid could actually have some of the positive effects on weight loss that everyone thought it might have. And besides, dairy products have been shown to aid weight loss because of multiple reasons. Calcium being one of them. And after all most of the people who do not eat dairy products have a calcium deficency anyway so there is no reason to cut back on dairy because of CLA.

Supplements

Well as it is beginning to show that you propably should not use conjugated linoleic acid in as high amounts as the supplements usually contain there might not be too much sense in buying them. Better results can always be achieved with a proper weight loss program. But if you decide to buy them I can't do anything about it. Remember that the commercial CLA products don't have much to show about their efficency. But as it is with other supplements, most of them don't really have nothing solid and yet they seem to work. At least people think that they do. When choosing your CLA pills make sure that the product you are buying is no too expencive. Like other weight loss supplements the price range tends to vary quite a lot. And if you read the post above you know that what you are looking for in the products, is not how much CLA it contains, but more likely what isomers it contains. Find the products that have the good isomers, then choose the one that is the most cost effective. That meaning it has the most CLA for a dollar. After all cost efficency is what finding the perfect slimming supplement is all about.