Nigella Sativa Quadruples Fat Loss Success: 8% vs. 2% Rel. Body Fat Reduction in 8 Weeks With NS Before Every Meal

Nigella Sativa Quadruples Fat Loss Success: 8% vs. 2% Rel. Body Fat Reduction in 8 Weeks With NS Before Every Meal

black cumin fat lose fat nigella sativa supplements

Nigella sativa is not well known in the West.

You may remember the SuppVersity special on Nigella sativa from January 2015. A special, in which beneficial metabolic effects of nigella sativa aka black cumin were only one item on a long list of health benefits, of which many had unfortunately been observe in rodent studies.

With a recent study from the Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, there's now evidence for humans that the fat loss benefits of the oil from nigella sativa are real - at least when it is ingested before meals by dieting overweight individuals.

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We are talking about a double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized, clinical trial, with 50 obese women. The participants were randomly divided into an NS oil group (n=25) and a placebo
group (n=25). All subjects received the same standardized diet, the scientists describe as follows:

"All the participants received a moderate fat, nutrient-balanced reduction diet. A dietician designed an individual diet by using the Mifflin equation to determine resting energy expenditure (Namazi et al., 2015). After adding the estimated physical activity coefficient (based on International physical activity questionnaire) and thermic effect of food coefficient (1.1), 500 kcal from the amount of total required daily energy calculated for each subject was subtracted. The resulting diet was composed of 15% protein, 55% carbohydrates, and 30% fat. A 24-hour dietary recall (one weekend day and two weekdays) was applied for assessing the level of patients’ compliance with the diet" (Mahdavi. 2016).

The diet was supplemented with either nigella sativa (NS) oil soft gel capsules (3g/day) with one capsule a 1g being taken 30 minutes before meals or a sunflower oil (SF) placebo capsules for eight weeks, total.

Does timing matter and what about the seeds? While it is difficult to tell, whether the effects would vanish if the oil was timed differently (i.e. not 30 minutes before meals), the mix of active ingredients, including thymoquinone (TQ), thymol, nigellone, nigellicine, alpha-hederin, unsaturated fatty acids, vitamins (B1, B3, B6, E) and minerals (Fe, Zn, Cu) may in fact have to be present in the digestive tract before / during a meal. It is similarly questionable, whether simply eating the seeds will have the same effect. If we assume that they don't "got through" (soaking, grinding or chewing them may help), they should. After all, the seeds contain the same (if not more) of the active ingredients as the oil - even if they are probably less concentrated.

To assess the success of the intervention, the scientists analyzed their subjects' BMI, and anthoprometric indices (body fat by bio-impedance), serum levels of insulin, adiponectin, peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor γ (PPAR-γ) and insulin sensitivity in obese women. Secondary outcomes were effects of NS oil supplementation with a low-calorie diet on liver enzymes and other health parameters. Dietary intake and physical activity were controlled.

Figure 1: Changes in body composition during the 8-week study in the treatment and placebo group (Mahdavi. 2016).

The first somewhat surprising result of the study is that all 50 participants completed the trial - an observation that suggests that both the diet and the consumption of the oil weren't difficult to adhere to. Accordingly, it is not surprising that all women lost a significant amount of boy weight. Especially in terms of body fat, however, the benefits differed according to treatment: While the NS oil group lost -3.6% of their total body fat mass (that's a relative reduction of ~8%), the control group lost only -0.8% (a relative reduction of ~2% | note: I used the values from the table in FT and not the questionable percentages the scientists provide in the abstract, which are even higher, but not in line with the recorded absolute changes in body fat).

These benefits went hand in hand with significantly more pronounced improvements in basal insulin levels, which were reduced by -29.3% in the treatment group and by only -8.6% in the placebo group. In conjunction with the +87.5% vs. 39.4% increase in adiponectin levels, and a significantly higher relative visceral fat loss, it is save to conclude that the addition of nigella sativa did also affect the subject's metabolic disease risk significantly.

Reader Question: Are Black Seeds (Nigella Sativa), Their Oil, Ointments & More Good For Me? What do the Studies Say?

Bottom line: Black cumin or Nigella sativa has been used in traditional oriental medicine as a weight loss aid for centuries. With the study at hand and similar studies in rodents, we are now finally able to confirm what has been "best practice" elsewhere forever.

With that being said, you cannot expect weight / fat loss miracles. No weight loss without dieting, no dieting without effort... taking black cumin oil as weight loss support may accelerate the progress, but eventually it's the energy reduced diet that had the women shed 8% of their superfluous body fat in 8 weeks, not the Nigella sativa oil | Agreed? If not, leave a comment on FB!

References:

• Mahdavi, Reza, et al. "Changes of body composition and circulating adipokines in response to Nigella sativa oil with a calorie restricted diet in obese women." Journal of Herbal Medicine (2016).
• Namazi, Nazli, et al. "Oxidative Stress Responses to Nigella sativa Oil Concurrent with a Low‐Calorie Diet in Obese Women: A Randomized, Double‐Blind Controlled Clinical Trial." Phytotherapy Research 29.11 (2015): 1722-1728.

Path to Fat-Induced Obesity is Sprinkled With Salt - Sodium Boosts Food & Energy Intake & Reduces Fat's Satiety Effect

Path to Fat-Induced Obesity is Sprinkled With Salt - Sodium Boosts Food & Energy Intake & Reduces Fat's Satiety Effect

fat fat gain health lose fat obesity salt sodium weight gain

Think you cannot eat the whole pizza? Add salt - this should "help" with the hardest all-you-can-eat challenges.

I am not telling you something new if I tell you that excess fat consumption has been linked to the development of obesity. I hope that it's also not news to you that the consistent association between high(er) fat intakes and weight gain in epidemiological studies cannot be reproduced in human studies where the diet is just high in fat and doesn't have the perfect "potato chips"-combination of fat and carbohydrate that has not just been proven to increase food intake, but also to have pro-addictive effects on the brain (Hoch. 2015).

The fat to carbohydrate ratio Hoch et al. identified as a crucial determinant of snack food intake and brain reward responses in their 2015 study is yet not the only characteristic feature of potato chips.

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Another similarly striking feature chips share with a couple of other highly addictive foods is their salt content. The same salt content of which Bolhuis et al. write in their soon-to-be-published paper in The Journal of Nutrition that we don't know yet how it interacts with the appetitive effects of fat. Apropos fat, whether fat will increase or decrease your appetite is actually highly individual question. Some studies even suggest that a high fat content has appetite reducing effects - at least in those individuals with a high fat taste sensitivity.

Unfortunately, the results of pertinent studies are inconclusive; and that even in people with intact fat taste sensitivity. In view of previous research showing similar associations between the salt content of snack foods and their appetizing effects as they were observed for high carbohydrate + high fat foosds, Bolhuis et al. speculated that our fat taste sensitivity may be influenced by the co-ingestion of salt. To test this hypothesis, the researchers recruited forty-eight healthy adults [16 men and 32 women, aged 18–54 y, body mass index (kg/m2): 17.8–34.4]. After an initial assessment of their individual fat taste sensitivity, the subjects participated in a randomized 2 x 2 crossover design trial, in which each participant attended 4 lunchtime sessions after a standardized breakfast.

Figure 1: The high salt meals were generally rated as more pleasant, while fat had no effect on the perceived pleasantness of the meal (Bolhuis. 2016).

The meals seemed to be identical elbow macaroni (56%) with sauce (44%); the sauces, however, were manipulated to be

• low-fat (0.02% fat, wt:wt)/low-salt (0.06% NaCl, wt:wt),
• low-fat/high-salt (0.5% NaCl, wt:wt), 
• high-fat (34% fat, wt:/wt)/low-salt, or 
• high-fat/high-salt.  

Ad libitum intake (primary outcome) and eating rate, pleasantness, and subjective ratings of hunger and fullness (secondary outcomes) were measured.

The results indicate that salt increased food (= food weight) intakes by 11%, independent of fat concentration (P = 0.022), while increasing the fat intake had no independent effect of fat on food intake (P = 0.6 for the amount of food, not its energy content).

Figure 2: This is what really counts, the effects of modfiying fat and salt content of the meals on total energy intake during the meals; data in kcal per meal (Bolhuis. 2016).

A slightly different picture emerges for the total energy intake, though. Here, the salt intake still mattered (significant with high vs. low salt meals), the main determinant of the total energy intake, however, was the fat content of the meal, with the high-fat meals triggering a whopping +60% (P < 0.001) increase in energy intake in the average subject.

Figure 3: When the diet was high in salt, the mediating effect of fat taste sensitivity on food intake (in g) is lost (Bolhuis. 2016)

Unlike the amount of fat in the meals, the sex of the participants had an effect on the food intake (P = 0.006), with women consuming 15% less by weight of the high-fat meals than the low-fat meals.

More importantly, however, the fat taste sensitivity appeared to decrease signifi-cantly with increasing amounts of salt in the high-fat meals (fat taste x salt interaction on delta intake of high-fat - low-fat meals; P = 0.012), which tended to trigger a satiety effect in the fat sensitive subjects only if they were also low in salt (see Figure 3).

The Overfeeding Overview: High Fat, Carb, Protein, MCTs, Leptin, Testosterone, T3 & Reverse T3 - Get an Overview of the Consequences of Short- & Long-Term Overfeeding - Yes, the existing research shows that high fat intakes (in the presence of carbo-hydrates) are the most fattening.

Bottom line: As the authors of this intriguing study rightly point out, their results "suggest that salt promotes passive overconsumption of energy in adults" (Bolhuis. 2016) and as if that was not bad enough, even those who are sensitive to a higher fat content of food will be fooled into overeating when the high salt content of said foods overrides the fat-mediated satiation.

Ah,... before you rejoice and start eating tons of unsaltet potato chips - there's one thing I should remind you of: even though an excessive increase in dietary fat (from 0.6 to 15.5 g/100g) did not have a main effect on food intake by weight, it led to a 60% higher energy intake, irrespective of the salt content of the meal - an observation that should remind you of the "volume hypothesis" of satiety | Comment!

References:

• Bolhuis, Dieuwerke P. et al. "Salt Promotes Passive Overconsumption of Dietary Fat in Humans." The Journal of Nutrition (2016): Ahead of print.
• Hoch, Tobias, et al. "Fat/carbohydrate ratio but not energy density determines snack food intake and activates brain reward areas." Scientific reports 5 (2015).

Is Lard More Fattening Than Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil!? 17% Extra Weight, 32% Extra Fat Gain + Increased Appetite

Is Lard More Fattening Than Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil!? 17% Extra Weight, 32% Extra Fat Gain + Increased Appetite

diabesity fat fats health homa-ir insulin lard obesity oil oils partially hydrogenated fats partially hydrogenized fats QUICKI shortening transfats vegetable oils

Not all fats are created equal and lard and hydrogenated vegetable oils are not on the top-list of "healthy fat choices".

Our perspective on fat has changed significantly over the last decade. While some people still propagate that "fat is bad" and "should be generally avoided", most experts have stopped bashing fat in general and are now focusing on saturated fats. Saturated fats as they occur in lard,.. but wait! If you take a closer look at the fatty acid composition of lard, it turns out that it contains "only" 39.2% saturated, but 45.1% mono- and 11.2% polyunsaturated fats. That's actually not too far off of the average vegetable shortening with a saturated to monounsaturated to polyunsaturated fat ratio of 25.0 / 41.2 / 28.1% (nutritiondata.com)

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In contrast to said even more dreaded partially hydrogenized vegetable fats, which contains a whopping 13.2g of transfats per 100g, lard is yet mostly trans-fat free. That's a good thing, right? After all, high trans-fat intakes have been associated with increased inflammation and cardiovascular disease  (Hu. 1997; Lopez-Garcia. 2005. Now, while experimental evidence confirming negative effects in humans is non-existent, negative effects have also been observed in controlled animal experiments. It is thus more than reasonable to assume that of two of the most commonly used fat sources for cooking, i.e. lard and hydrogenated vegetable-shortenings, the former, the trans-fat free 100% "natural" fat source should be the healthier one.

Figure 1: Fatty acid content (g) of the three test diets (Kubant. 2015)

To check the validity of this hypothesis, scientists from the University of Toronto fed male Wistar rats for 14 weeks diets which contained either (1) high vegetable fat (HVF, 60 kcal% from vegetable shortening) or (2) high lard fat (HLF, 60 kcal% from lard). A group of rats that received the normal-fat chow (NF, 16 kcal% from vegetable shortening) served as control (see Figure 1). Body weight, food intake, adipose tissue mass, serum 25[OH]D3, glucose, insulin and fatty acid composition of diets were the scientists' main outcome data - data that confirm that not everything we take for granted will actually stand the test of science.

Figure 2: Body weight and fat gain over 12 weeks on control (low fat) or high fat diets w/ lard (HLF) or hydrogenated vegetable oils (HVF) as main fat sources (Kubant. 2015).

In contrast to what common sense would dictate, the rodents in the lard group were not leaner and healthier. In fact, the data in Figure 2 tells you that the exact opposite was the case: The rodents on the high lard diet gained significantly more body weight and - more importantly - body fat and did not, as some may now speculate, simply store the extra energy away instead of having it float around in the blood and ruin their insulin sensitivity (see Figure 3).

Figure 3: Markers of glucose metabolism at the end of the study (data expressed relative to control | Kubant. 2015)

So, basically, the scientists, who had even speculated that lard, due to its naturally high vitamin D content "may act to reduce the metabolic consequences associated with obesity, as suggested by other investigators" (Kubant. 2015), had to realize that their prediction was wrong. Whether lard is simply unhealthier or whether the effect was a results of the comparably lower food intake of the vegetable shortening group is difficult to say. What we do know, however, is that the animals who were on the lard diet consumed more calories than the HVF group. That 1g/day of extra food, however, was enough to have the scientists conclude that the rats have a strong preference for the taste of fat sources containing long-chain fatty acids (that is, oleic and linoleic), but by no means enough, to fully explain the significant difference in weight and body fat gain.

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So lard is much worse than transfats? I wouldn't dare making a general statement about lard vs. vegetable shortenings based on this study. One thing I would like to remind every saturated animal fat worshipper of, however, is that his beloved "saturated fat sources" like lard are in fact hardly saturated at all. The common lard, the scientists used in the study at hand, for example, has higher amounts of polyunsaturated fatty acids in it than the average vegetable shortening. Its (by the saturated fat lovers dreaded) content of omega-6 fatty acids in the form of linoleic acid, which is currently everybody's favorite scapegoat for being obese, diabetic or whatnot, is even three times higher!

What we must not forget, either, are the divergent results about the fattening effects of transfats from monkey and rodent studies. While the one existing monkey study showed higher levels of intra-abdominal adiposity and insulin resistance in monkeys fed trans fatty acids (TFAs) for 6 years under a controlled feeding regimen (Kavanagh. 2007), a more recent study in rats found that dietary TFAs fed ad libitum (as much as the rodents wanted) did not influence food intake or body fat accumulation (Ochiai. 2013). Now, monkeys are more reliable than rats, right? Well, yes, but if the monkeys are on an energy restricted and the control diet was no lard diet, but rather the "perfect monkey diet", the rodent study with its realistic ad-libitum access to food and a diet composition that was more akin to what people eat these days becomes increasingly attractive. Overall, however, it doesn't really make sense to use any of these studies to speculate about the practical significance Kubant's rodent study has for men. If you asked me, it is not even relevant, anyways, because neither lard nor hydrogenated vegetable oils should be a regular part of your diet | Learn why in a previous SuppVersity Article or tell me what you think on Facebook!

References:

• Hu, Frank B., et al. "Dietary fat intake and the risk of coronary heart disease in women." New England Journal of Medicine 337.21 (1997): 1491-1499.
• Kavanagh, Kylie, et al. "Trans fat diet induces abdominal obesity and changes in insulin sensitivity in monkeys." Obesity 15.7 (2007): 1675-1684.
• Kubant, R., et al. "A comparison of effects of lard and hydrogenated vegetable shortening on the development of high-fat diet-induced obesity in rats." Nutrition & Diabetes 5.12 (2015): e188.
• Lopez-Garcia, Esther, et al. "Consumption of trans fatty acids is related to plasma biomarkers of inflammation and endothelial dysfunction." The Journal of nutrition 135.3 (2005): 562-566.
• Ochiai, Masaru, et al. "Effects of dietary trans fatty acids on fat accumulation and metabolic rate in rat." Journal of oleo science 62.2 (2013): 57-64.