African Mango and Leptin page 2

[Terry H]

Is it okay if I fry them in oil or add spices to them? I don't want to interfere with the juju....

[bloodorchid]

like i said in another thread, an african mango supp advert i read the fine print on said to adopt a low carb diet while taking it

so

i think that's where the weight loss comes in

[Miscellangela]

And also, of course I'd like to see follow-up studies from other Universities that get published in peer-reviewed journals ... not to say that I generally don't trust Universities in Cameroon where the researchers have hotmail email addresses, but considering this page from a major manufacturer of the pills:

Irvingia: Understanding the Risks of Leptin Resistance - Life Extension

My skeptic sense is beginning to twitch.

I actually had to write an article about African mango a few years ago (yeah, it's not new). Every single study I could find about it was from the University of Cameroon (export interests?) Most of them were led by the same guy.

[emmie]

Several years ago, there was a local 'health' show on TV here (NYC), and one of the regulars was an MD obesity researcher and clinician. He very excitedly reported on their leptin research, convinced it would be a breakthrough in weight management.
After several months, he reported that they'd determined that the body's leptin is not as easily 'manipulated' as they had assumed, and that it would be impossible to create any substance that would affect a person's leptin levels to modify weight. These were well-funded researchers in a major medical center focused on obesity 'solutions.' Yet they abandoned leptin research because of the way our bodies function.

From that time, 'leptin' has been bandied about as a 'significant' aspect of weight management--and that's true; it's significant. But, like a person's metabolism, it cannot be tinkered with to produce weight loss willy nilly. If the African Mango was so wonderful and produced such great results, someone would already be a millionaire from its production/marketing.

[Miscellangela]

Several years ago, there was a local 'health' show on TV here (NYC), and one of the regulars was an MD obesity researcher and clinician. He very excitedly reported on their leptin research, convinced it would be a breakthrough in weight management.
After several months, he reported that they'd determined that the body's leptin is not as easily 'manipulated' as they had assumed, and that it would be impossible to create any substance that would affect a person's leptin levels to modify weight. These were well-funded researchers in a major medical center focused on obesity 'solutions.' Yet they abandoned leptin research because of the way our bodies function.

From that time, 'leptin' has been bandied about as a 'significant' aspect of weight management--and that's true; it's significant. But, like a person's metabolism, it cannot be tinkered with to produce weight loss willy nilly. If the African Mango was so wonderful and produced such great results, someone would already be a millionaire from its production/marketing.

Bingo. I always say - the "cure" for obesity would be one of the most significant medical breakthroughs ever. If Pfizer and Astra Zeneca and Glaxo Smith-Kline haven't figured it out, (With the funding of a small nation), no penny-ante supplement company has it on lock.

If it ever comes, it will come from Big Pharma, be prescription-only, and cost a fortune.

[pklopp]

I actually wrote my first blog post on leptin which may prove interesting to some. If you are interested, you may wish to have a look at it, but it is fairly lengthy.

I also had a thread here on MDA about it.

To summarize things, if you don't want to chase those links down:

It is unclear that leptin is a satiety hormone. It is just as likely that it is a hunger hormone which induces food seeking behaviour when the body determines that energy stores are low. If it is indeed the case that leptin levels constitute a low energy warning signal, then you would expect that an organism would respond only to low levels of leptin, once you cross into what the body deems to be the "safe" zone, ever increasing levels of leptin are irrelevant.

The evidence seems to suggest that this is indeed the case. However, since researchers were hoping to find a cure for obesity in the form of a leptin pill, they latched on to the concept of "leptin resistence." The waters are significantly muddied by the existence., albeit very rare, of individuals with malformed hypothalmic leptin receptors, and individuals with malformed leptin proteins.

For those with malformed leptin proteins, injecting recombinant human leptin results in this exogenous but functionial leptin binding to the functioning receptor in the hypothalmus where it induces satiety. For those who have malformed receptors, there is not much that can be done. The problem there is with brain structure, which is difficult to address therapeutically. But, in either case, both of these pathologies are very rare.

With this background ... I don't see how African mango can possibly do anything with respect to "leptin resistance."

-PK