In article <1993Apr29.145140.10559@newsgate.sps.mot.com>, rhca80@melton.sps.mot.com (Henry Melton) writes: >  > My wife has requested that I poll the Sages of Usenet to see what is > known about the use of chromium in weight-control diet suppliments. > She has seen multiple products advertising it and would like any kind > real information. >  > My first impulse was "Yuck! a metal!" but I have zero data on it. >  > What do you know? >  > --  > Henry Melton   I'll tell you all that I know about chromium.  But before I do, I want to  get a few things off my chest.  I just got blasted in e-mail for my kidney  stone posts.  Kidney stones are primarily caused by diet, as is heart  disease and cancer.  When I give dietary advise, it is not intended to  encourage people reading this news group(or Sci. Med. Nutrition where I do  most of my posting) to avoid seeing a doctor.  Nothing can be further from  the truth.  Kidney stones can be caused by tumors and this possibility has to  be ruled out.  But once it is, diet is a good way of preventing a reoccurance. Same thing with heart disease and cancer, if you suspect that you may have  a problem with one of these diseases, don't use what I'm going to tell you  or what you read in some book to avoid going to a doctor.  You have to go. Hopefully you will find a doctor who knows enough about nutrition to help  you change your risk factors for both diseases as part of a treatment  program(but the odds are that you will not and that's why I'm here).  When  my wife detected a lump in here breast I didn't say, don't worry my vitamin  E will take care of it.  Any breast lump has to be worked up by a physician,  plan and simple.  If it's begnin(which most are) fine, then maybe a diet  change and supplementation will prevent further breast lumps from occuring. But let me tell you right now, if you have tried diet and supplementation  and another lump returns, get your butt into the doctor's office as fast as  your little feet can carry you(better yet, have a mammography done on a  regular basis, my wife kept putting her's off, both myself and her  gynocologist told her she needed to have one done).  Her gynocologist even  scheduled one, but she didn't show up(too busy running the Operating Room for  the biggest Hospital in Tulsa).  One more thing, I am not an orthomolecular nutritionist.  This group uses  high dose vitamins and minerals to treat all kinds of disease.  There is  absolutely no doubt in my mind that vitamins and minerals can and do have  drug actions in the body.  But you talk about flying blind, man this is  really blind treatment.  No drug could ever be used as these vitamins and  minerals are being used.  I'm not saying that some of this stuff couldn't  be right on the money, it may well be.  But my approach to nutrition is a  lot like that of Weinsier and Morgan, the two M.D's who wrote the new  Clinical Nutrition textbook.  My push is the nutrient reserves and the lab  tests needed to measure these reserves and then supplementation or diet  changes to get these reserves built up to where they should be to let you  handle stress.  That's where I'm coming from folks.  Blast away if you want, I'm not going to change.  Put me in your killfile if you want, I really  don't care.  I'm averaging 8-10 e-mail messages a day from people who think  that I've got something important to say.  But I'm also getting hit by a  few with an axe to grind.  That's life.  Chromium is one of the trace elements.  It has a very limited(but very  important) role in the body.  It is used to form glucose tolerance factor (GTF).  GTF is made up of chromium, nicinamide(niacin), glycine, cysteine  and glutamic.  Only the chromium and the niacin are needed from the diet to  form GTF.  Some foods already have GTF(Liver, brewers or nutritional yeast, and black pepper).  When chromium is in GTF, a pretty good absorption is  seen(about 20%).  But when it is simply present as a mineral or mineral  chelate(chromium picolinate) it's absorption is much lower(1 to 2%, lowest  for all the minerals).  I've been posting in Misc. Fitness and chromium has  come up there several times as a "fat burner".  Chromium is among the least  toxic of the minerals so you could really load yourself up and not really  do any harm.  I wouldn't do it though.  The adequate and safe range for  chromium is 50 to 200ug per day.  The average American is getting about  30ug per day from his/her diet.  Chromium levels decrease with age and many  believe that adult onset diabetes is primarily a chromium deficiency.  I  can cite you several studies that have been done with glucose tolerance in  Type II diabetes but I'm not going to because for each positive one, there  also seems to be a negative one as well.  I'm convinced that the problem is  bioavailability.  When yeast(GTF) is used, good results are obtained but when  chromium itself is used the results are usually negative.  In addition to  Type II diabetes, chromiuum has been examined in cardiovascular disease and  glucoma, again with mixed results as far as cardiovascular disease is  concerned  Since a high blood glucose level can lead to cardiovascular disease,  this possible link with chromium isn't too surprising.  Glucoma is a little  more interesting.  Muscle eye focusing activity is primarily an insulin  responsive glucose-driven metabolic function.  If this eye focusing activity  is impaired(by a lack of glucose due to a poor insulin response), intraocular  pressure is believed to be elevated.  In a fairly large study of 400 pts with  glaucoma, the one consistent finding was a low RBC chromium. J. Am. Coll.  Nutr. 10(5):536,(1991).  But this one preliminary study should not prompt  people to go out and start popping chromium supplements.  For one thing,  just about every older person is going to have a low RBC chromium unless  they have been taking chromium suppleemnts(yeast).  Since glucoma is often  found in older people, it's not too surprising that chromium was low in the  RBC's.  If chromium supplementation could reverse glucoma, that would  prompt some attention.  I suspect that there will be a clinical trail to  check out this possible chromium link to glucoma.  You could find out what your body chromium pool size was by either the RBC  chromium test or hair analysis.  Most clinical labs are not going to run a  RBC chromium.  There are plenty of labs that will do a hair and nail  analysis for you, but I wouldn't use them.  There is just too much funny  business going on in these unregulated labs right now.  Here's Weinsier and Morgan, advise on chromium.  They do not consider  chromium to be one of those minerals for which a reliable clinical test is  available(they don't like the hair and nail analysis labs either, and they  also recognize the RBC chromium is primarily a research test that is not  routinely available in most clinical chemistry labs).  This has to change  and as more labs run a RBC chromiuum, it will.  What then do they suggest? Make a diagnosis of chromium deficiency based on a documented clinical  response to chromium(run a glucose tolerance test before and after chromium  supplementation).  Once you make the diagnosis, put the patient on 200ug of  CrCl3 orally each day or 10grams of yeast per day.  What's my advise?  Don't take chromium supplements to try to loose weight (they just do not work that way).  If you want to take them and then  exercise, that would be great.  Do include yeast as part of your diet(most  Americans are not getting enough chromium from their diet).  If you do have  a poor glucose tolerance, ask your doctor to check your chromium status.   When he or she says, "what in the world are you talking about", just say,  please get a copy of Weinsier and Morgan's new Clinical Nutrition textbook  and do what they say to do with patients who present with a poor glucose  tolerance.  If you can't do that, I'll find a doctor who can, thank you  very much.