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Pyruvate supplements: Sorting the facts from the fiction...

Not only is pyruvate reported to have a "phenomenal effect" on weight loss by burning fat, it's also supposed to boost your performance in the gym.

Does it work? Or is pyruvate just another in the long line of supplements to promise much but deliver little?

Pyruvate

Some of the initial research on pyruvate supplements was completed in the late 1970's.

Scientists discovered that pyruvate (along with a compound known as dihydroxyacetone, which is in the same chemical family as pyruvate) helped to prevent the development of fatty livers in rats fed ethanol [2].

It appears that the combination of dihydroxyacetone and pyruvate (DHA-P for short) somehow reduced fat storage.

Based on these early findings, researchers wanted to see if DHA-P had the same effect under normal dietary conditions [2]. A group of rats was fed liquid diets containing DHA-P for 112 days. The group consuming the DHA-P combination stored 32% less fat than rats on a normal diet.

It appears that the reduced fat gain was the result of an increase in heat production. Rather than being stored as fat, excess calories were being used to generate heat. This led the researchers to conclude that DHA-P increases the metabolic rate.

Several years later, further research was conducted on a species of rat known as the Zucker rat [1]. Their diets were supplemented with one of three treatments: pyruvate, dihydroxyacetone, or a combination of the two.

All three supplements acted to reduce weight gain. But pyruvate appeared to have the strongest effect. It seems that pyruvate reduced weight gain in obese Zucker rats by increasing their resting metabolic rate.

Once pyruvate had shown promise in rats, the next logical step was to see if it worked in humans...

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