Anatomy of the Acai Berry Scam

Take a look at the photograph here. It represents thousands of ads and tens of thousands of words that focus on one thing – acai berry juice is useful for weight loss. Showing a slim, good-looking young lady is just an emotional  appeal. In this case the model is holding a glass of acai berry scam -er, juice. The message is, “Drink this juice and look slim and beautiful like me.” Nothing out of the ordinary for this marketing strategy. It is standard operating procedure.

The subject became a scam when Google slapped down hundreds of ads for sending people to fake blogs. These blogs were supposed to be by young ladies who miraculously lost weight by drinking acai berry juice. It turns out that the young ladies didn’t even exist!

What Does Research Have to Say?

Weight loss supplements have been so tarnished by fraud that the FDA, bless their peanut inspecting hearts, has decided to come down hard on companies that make these kinds of supplements. (Do you think for a minute that this has anything to do with the FDA’s real job – i.e., to be the enforcement arm of the pharmaceutical industry? Nah, didn’t think so.) In my view, this subject warrants a lot of digging into actual research. So that is what I have done on the topic of acai scams and weight loss.

Research Overview of Acai Research

The following is a very brief summary of ALL of the research that I could find in the medical literature about acai. I searched the medical database at CAM (Complementary and Alternative Medicine) on PubMed. (This is a free government site that you can use, too.) The keywords that I used, which are the most important kind of terms to search for scientific research about any species of plant, were the scientific name. In this case, the scientific name that is unique to the acai palm is, Euterpe oleracea.

Here is the list of research topics, with their publications dates, on all of the nine articles about acai that have ever been published in reputable scientific journals:

• 2004 Anthocyanins and similar phytochemicals were isolated and evaluated for antioxidant activity and pigment stability.
• 2005 Several commercial and non-commercial samples of acai fruit pulp were found to have antioxidant activity; very little of this activity was due to the anthocyanins
• 2006 Anthocyanins from fruits were found to be potent inhibitors of nitric oxide
• 2006 Seed extracts show potent antioxidant activity, mostly from as yet unknown ingredients
• 2007 Extracts of acai pits show vasodilator effect on rat tissue
• 2007 Acai fruits have good nutritional value
• 2008 Acai fruit pulp and oil inhibit growth of colon cancer cells in culture; effect is not due to anthocyanins
• 2008 Class of phytochemicals called lignans discovered; showed protective effect on breast cancer cell cultures that were stressed by hydrogen peroxide
• 2008 Showed acai pulp to be equivalent to applesauce in increasing plasma antioxidant capacity

Note that the first one appeared in 2004 and the most recent one in 2008. More will be coming in 2009, I am sure. Note also that not one single article has anything to do with weight loss. In the immortal words of Gomer Pyle, “Surprise, surprise, surprise!”

The Gory Scientific Details

If you really want to get more information about these articles, you can do the same search on CAM/PubMed that I did. Or you can see my more complete summaries of the research, with author names, article titles, journal citations, and PubMed ID numbers at my HerbScientist blog. Either way, you will learn that we have a big acai scam on our hands.

Isn’t real science fun?

All the best in natural health,

Dr. D

Here is a Nice Surprise About Fat (Don’t You Deserve One?):

Your body already “knows” how to burn fat naturally while you sleep. This isn’t silly marketing hype, even though marketing hypsters (OK, I made up that term) use it that way. How surprised do you think they’d be to know that they are right on target?

This post offers a little explanation about how nighttime fat burning is supposed to work and how you can make it work better. First off, your peak fat burning period out of every 24 hours is about 9-10 hours after you have dinner … if you don’t snack before bedtime! Some other variables play a role, too. These include when, what, and how much you eat and on the frequency, intensity, and duration of your physical activity.

So why is sleep so important for you on how to burn fat naturally? Actually, sleep itself isn’t the main point. The importance of the time between when you finish dinner and when you have breakfast is the key, which just happens to include a typical night’s sleep.

Mobilizing Belly Fat

Fat cells store fuel that you can use for energy when needed. A few things have to happen before storage fat gets moving. Right after you finish dinner, you are still burning off the food calories that you just ate. If you can avoid eating an evening snack, the calories from your meal will be mostly gone within a few hours, at which time you will start to use up stored carbohydrate, in the form of glycogen, from your liver and muscle tissues. Near the end of digestion, you will start using up fat that is circulating in the blood.

It takes 9-10 hours for your food to be completely digested and your blood fat to be mostly used up. This is golden fat burning time! Your body begins, finally, to mobilize fat from storage and start using it for your metabolism. This fat mobilization period is when your body is supposed to burn fat naturally while you sleep. Doesn’t that sound easy?

Stoking Your Fat Burning Furnace

You really don’t have to do anything at this point except to have breakfast about twelve hours after you had dinner. Ideally, at breakfast your furnace has already been at its fat burning hottest for about 2-3 hours, the period from 9-12 hours after your dinner. That’s really all there is to it for optimizing your metabolism to burn fat naturally while you sleep.

The explanation here of how you burn fat naturally while you sleep leaves out the importance of getting good sleep and otherwise releasing stress at night. These are additional factors that will influence your metabolism. All this means is that you can ensure optimal fat burning by getting good sleep. Good sleep entails several 90-minute periods of alternating between deep and light sleep, over about 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep.

Depending on your health and how well you eat in general, whatever you do to make sure you have about a 12-hour period that includes good sleep between dinner and breakfast will give you your best chance to burn fat naturally every night.

Bedtime Snacks Undermine the Whole Thing

After-dinner snacking, a little bit of ice cream before bed, a midnight snack … all of these will interrupt your prime fat-burning time. Your body simply won’t get to the point of mobilizing stored fat. This is a fact of your normal biochemistry. If you have trouble making it from dinner to breakfast without eating, you either have an underlying health problem or bad habits that you have to overcome, or both. If you want to burn fat naturally, the way your body is meant to do, you must allow it to dip into stored fat for at least a couple of hours every night. This is your simplest, easiest, and best hope for harnessing the power of your own metabolism.

Does How Burn Fat Naturally During Sleep Work for Everyone?

Unfortunately, the answer is that not everyone can benefit from nighttime fat burning as much as they should. Your body has its limits, especially if you have diabetes, hormone imbalance, thyroid deficiency, a poor lifestyle, or are taking a number of prescription drugs. The good news is that most of the things that slow down your fat metabolism are based on poor choices that you can undo. Your body knows how to burn fat naturally while you sleep, so doing whatever you can to be healthy and sleep well will keep you on track to do so.

All the best in natural health,

Dr. D