- Why Chromium helps with weight loss
- Chromium increases muscle mass gain
- Chromium controls blood glucose and high cholesterol
- Chrome sources
Chromium helps to lose weight because it increases the action of insulin, which favors muscle production and hunger control, facilitating weight loss and improving body metabolism. In addition, this mineral also helps to control blood glucose and lower cholesterol, being important in cases of diabetes and high cholesterol.
Adult women need 25 mcg of chromium per day, while the recommended value for men is 35 mcg, and chromium can be found in foods such as meat, eggs, milk and whole foods, as well as in supplement form. capsules, sold in pharmacies and health food stores.
Why Chromium helps with weight loss
Chromium helps in weight loss because it enhances the action of insulin, a hormone that increases the use of carbohydrates and fats by cells. In addition, the increased action of insulin also helps to decrease the feeling of hunger, as the desire to eat appears when this hormone is low in the body.
Without chromium, insulin is little active in the body and cells run out of energy very fast, needing more food shortly after a meal. Thus, chromium increases weight loss because it makes the cells take advantage of all the carbohydrate ingested at meals, delaying the feeling of hunger.
Chromium increases muscle mass gain
In addition to reducing hunger, chromium also stimulates muscle production, as it increases the absorption of protein in the intestine, and makes it more used by muscle cells after physical exercise, favoring hypertrophy, which is muscle growth.
The increase in the amount of muscles causes the body's metabolism to also increase, starting to burn more calories and increasing weight loss. This is because the muscle is very active and consumes a lot of energy, unlike fat, which uses almost no calories. So, the more muscles, the easier it is to lose weight.
Chromium controls blood glucose and high cholesterol
Chromium helps to control blood glucose because it increases the consumption of glucose by cells, decreasing blood sugar and improving diabetes control. In addition, chromium also helps control cholesterol, as it works by lowering LDL cholesterol (bad) and increasing HDL cholesterol (good), being very important to prevent and treat diabetes and high cholesterol.
Chrome sources
Chromium can be found in food mainly in meat, fish, eggs, beans, soy and corn. In addition, whole foods such as brown sugar, rice, pasta and whole wheat flour are important sources of chromium, as the refining process removes most of this nutrient from food. Ideally, these foods that are sources of chromium should be consumed together with a source of vitamin C, such as orange, pineapple and acerola, as vitamin C increases the absorption of chromium in the intestine. See the amount of chromium in foods.
In addition to food, chromium can also be consumed as capsule supplements, such as chromium picolinate. The recommendation is to take 100 to 200 mcg of chromium daily with lunch or dinner, preferably according to the doctor's or nutritionist's guidance, as excess chromium can cause symptoms such as nausea, vomiting and headaches.
Watch the following video and learn about other supplements that help you lose weight and decrease your appetite:
