2008 Studies & Research Blog

When scanning the ingredient profiles for some of the more popular fat loss supplements you will notice the trend towards overloading them with various stimulants. You’ll see the likes of yohimbine, various methylxanthines like caffeine, and the up and comer phenylethylamine. Their primary mode of action is to reduce appetite, increase mental alertness, and manipulate various adrenergic receptors to potentiate thermogenesis in the hopes that they will elicit some drop in body fat accumulation.

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While this approach is certainly valid, often there are drawbacks to using such compounds. They can induce anxiety, sleeplessness, increased cortisol production, and often cause a negative shift in the receptors they are trying to manipulate. Fortunately, there are other pathways in the body which can also help increase the thermogenic effect by raising metabolic rate which also avoid some of the side effects classical stimulants have been known to elicit.

Kaempherol is a polyphenolic ingredient found in numerous edible plant species. A research group from the Harvard Medical School investigated the effects of kaempherol treatment on the human skeletal myoblasts. They found that kaempherol indeed increased energy expenditure and oxygen consumption via multiple pathways.

The most prevalence pathway manipulated was Dio2 expression. This gene is important in encoding the type 2 deiodinase (D2) that activates thyroxine (T4) to 3,3′,5-triiodothyronine (T3). Now some of you are thinking that increased T3 levels aren’t a good thing, but maybe those of you that are “hardcore” think it’s positive. In reality, slightly elevated T3 levels increase basal metabolic rate and increase thermogenesis which is very beneficial to fat loss. Overall, it appears that researchers from Havard Medical School uncovered the potential of kaempherol as a viable weight loss aide.

In closing, it appears kaempherol as the ability to increase metabolic rate by manipulating thyroid activity. The hardcore audience out there is probably well aware of the effectiveness of raw T4/T3 supplementation so these findings will certainly be of interest to them. However, this could appear attractive as well to supplement connoisseurs interested in an ingredient that won’t increase cortisol levels, negatively modulate various adrenergic receptors, or quite basically leave them feeling “cracked out.”

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