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14.05.2016

Lose three kg in three months without dieting: chitosan

A new synthetic form of chitosan helps people to lose 1 kg weight a month, and researchers from India have written about it in Nutrition Journal. The amount of weight loss is not much, but it's better than nothing, you would think. So it's a bit of a shame that a large amount of the weight loss is decline in muscle mass.

Chitosan
Chitosan is a controversial slimming supplement. It's a polysaccharide which is created when the enzyme chitine-deacetylase converts chitine.

Chitine is the material from which the hard exoskeleton of crabs and insects is made. Most of the chitosan on the market is made from crab and lobster shells, but in this study the researchers used chitosan that had been produced by an Aspergillus niger fungus in a bioreactor. The chitosan was manufactured by the Belgian KitoZyme, and goes by the name of KiOnutrime-CsG.

It is not clear whether KitoZyme had any involvement in the study. The researchers in India were part of Ethicare Clinical Trial Services, a commercial research company in Ahmedabad. It's unlikely that they provided their services for free, but where the money for the study came from is not revealed in the article. An employee of KitoZyme is named as co-author of the publication.

Study
The researchers gave 56 overweight people 5 capsules each containing 500 mg chitosan every day for 90 days. They took 1 capsule early in the morning, 2 capsules a quarter of an hour before lunch, and another 2 capsules before their evening meal. The subjects swallowed the capsules with water. A control group of 30 people were given a placebo.

Results
The subjects in the chitosan group lost – without dieting or doing extra exercise – about 3 kg bodyweight. That was a statistically significant effect.

The fat percentage and waist circumference measurement both decreased in the chitosan group. Those effects were statistically significant too.

Muscle mass also declined in the chitosan group. That effect wasn’t earth shattering, but it was significant.

A quick sum
Compared with the placebo group the chitosan group lost 2.8 kg bodyweight and 1.2 kg muscle mass. So more than 40 percent of the lost weight took the form of muscle mass.

Hmm.

Source:
Nutr J. 2016 Jan 8;15(1):3.

More:
After 432 days of taking chitosan you'd be 1 kg lighter 24.10.2010

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