Lipotropic Shots: Fact or Fiction?
November 07, 2016Lipotropic Shots: Fact or Fiction
References: Priority Health, Empower Pharmacy, Hepatology, Amer Jr Clin Nutr, Blood Review,
Ever heard of lipotropic injections? I hadn't, until a few months ago. When a client came to me and asked if I would give them to her, because her doctor in Arizona was using them and she could lose weight with them, I paid attention. When I was asked a second time, I sat up and started reading.
The literature goes back to the 1930s when fatty liver started raising its head as a problem. Charles Best was researching how to help the liver recover from fatty liver. It was his initial research that sparked interest and discovered many of the agents that worked. Today as many as 50% of Americans over age 60 have fatty liver without even knowing it. It slows down our energy flow, our ridding of toxins, our efficient burning of fat.
We see it as being overweight, and wanting to lose weight. Well, who doesn't want to do that? What do the shots do? They combine the compounds that have been found to increase your liver's efficiency of metabolism. The benefits are considered to be the preservation of muscle, the burning of fat, the enhancement of energy, and the improvement in liver function. The ingredients include methionine, choline, and inositol, along with all the B vitamins and l-carnitine. The ingredients work because together, they have a synergistic effect. And many aren't well absorbed from the gut. Hence, a shot. Many folks include betaine as an oral supplement along with the shots to enhance it even better. That is well absorbed orally.
From what we now know of mitochondrial function, this is exactly the process of helping the mitochondria access and burn energy more efficiently. In fatty liver, our liver is all clogged up with little fat globules, inhibiting the liver factory from working efficiently. With the ingredients of the lipotropic injections, your liver's mitochondria start clearing the liver of backed-up fat and your peripheral mitochondria to be able to burn more of it.
Suddenly, my lights turned on. All the literature I read shows that lipotropic injections improve the methionine cycle, and help lower homocysteine. So, now I get it. I've been trying to help folks lower homocysteine to improve risk of Alzheimer's disease. Many of us have homocysteines hovering in the 10-12 range, some even higher. For every point over 7 of homocysteine, your risk of AD goes up some 16%. The narrative we use with Alzheimer's is that we want your brain to learn to run on ketones, or fat. To do that, we need to cut carbs and increase the efficiency of our methionine, homocysteine cycle.
Son of a gun, the Lipotropic Shots do that! Coming at it from a different way. So, maybe they are fact. The fiction part of me suspects that this is a bit of marketing hooey. Can't you get all this from food? What does it take a shot to get it into you?
WWW. What will work for me. I've ordered all the ingredients for my office and I'm going to run an experiment for myself. I'm looking for some hard-nosed skeptics, who want to lose weight and who are willing to give themselves a shot every week/day. If you are willing to do this, I will set up a regiment of shots for you for cost. I want to take the first 5 people who give the office a jingle and are willing to give feedback. I want your weight before and after 12 weeks of shots. You have to keep exercising, cutting carbs and eating sensibly. Let's see if this old-fashioned idea still has legs.
Pop Quiz
1. Lipotropic shots have ingredients that reduce your ability to burn fat and help you burn carbs? T or F? Answer: False. Go back and read the column. It appears that lipotropic shots increase the ability of your cells to turn all energy, and preserve muscle.
2. Lipotropic shots got their name from research in the 1930s aimed at reducing fatty liver? T or F? Answer: True
3. Today, we understand that lowering homocysteine has some overlapping effects, as both processes are aimed at enhancing the methionine, homocysteine cycle, that helps your body get rid of toxins and burn energy more effectively? T or F? Answer: True
4. Can't you get all this stuff from food? Answer: Apparently not.
5. Is this just a marketing gimmick? Answer. Let's try and find out. (Editor's note from 2021: 10 sequential clients received 10 IV infusions each. One lost weight. We stopped offering them)