I’ve always been told that when losing fat, it’s impossible to spot reduce. But what about some of these topical fat burners such as Yohimburn that claim to bind to alpha 2 receptor sites and cause your body to continue producing norepenephrine? At least that’s what is says in the FAQ on their website. Can this really work or is it just a scam?
NO IMHO it is nothing but a scam.
Weight loss requires a healthy diet and EXERCISE!
There is no magic pill or combination of pills. Machines sold on TV will gather dust after a few weeks. You have to get off your “laurels” and walk, walk, walk.
Oh I forgot, there is one advertised in the ad section of Pop. Mech. and Pop. Sci that will give you a full 1/2 hour exercise in 4 minutes flat. It only costs something like $15,000. :rolleyes:
Yohimbie has been linked to anxiety, elevated blood pressure, queasiness, sleeplessness, tachycardia, tremor, and vomiting. Not partivularly effective for weight loss. Also, topical creams are famous for poor bioavailability.
This doesn’t spot reducing is impossible through execise, though plenty of people believe that as well. The jury is still out IMHO.
Need more sleep. You can correct the obvious spelling errors, missing verbs, whatever you pedants want ;).
Well, that certainly could be true, but I’m not talking about machines or pills. After all, how would a pill know which part of your body to reduce?
I have no problem losing weight through diet and exercise. I can get to the point where I’m mostly skin and bones except for a few areas. I know that one cannot spot reduce through diet or exercise but isn’t there some relationship between alpha receptor blockers and estrogen and norepenephrine?
I’ve researched it a bit but I can’t find any neative information on the subject. So is this still a scam?
I would have thought those things were very effective for weight loss, especially the vomiting. Not healthy, but effective.
Is it? Do any physiologists at all support the idea that excercise can be effective in spot reduction?
Source: http://www.fda.gov/fdac/reprints/weight.html
Also check out WIN. The Weight-control Information Network (WIN) is an information service of the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK), National Institutes of Health (NIH). WIN was established in 1994 to provide the general public, health professionals, the media, and Congress with up-to-date, science-based information on obesity, weight control, physical activity, and related nutritional issues. See especially the Weight Loss and Nutrition Myths section.
So Yohimburn is a topical cream rather than a pill. So what?
Of course it’s a scam.
No quack fat removal product works for real. If it worked for real everybody would be using it. Instead only suckers do.
Well, I suppose it doesn’t matter whether it’s a pill or a cream. And it is probably likely that this product is a scam. But what I really want to know is whether there is any evidence to suggest that norepenephrine continues to be produced when the alpha 2 receptor is blocked. And also whether norepenephrine has any effect on weight loss. Maybe it won’t reduce fat in particular areas, but is there any relationship between the two?
whether norepenephrine has any effect on weight loss.
It can, but it would be silly to accept only that part of the story and forget the rest. It works the same way as ephedra did, or ephedrine (still sold over the counter) does. It jacks up your metabolism when you take it. Then again, so does caffeine. However, regular strenuous exercise also elevates your metabolism and, unlike epinephrine stimulators, it doesn’t have negative side-effects on your biochemistry and mental state.
Epinephrine isn’t your problem.
Dieting to skin and bones can be a real problem. Especially if your caloric intake is low enough that your body goes into starvation response and tries as hard as it can to hang on to whatever fat you have. The best way to get lose that midriff fat deposit is through proper diet and exercise, not just starving yourself. The easy approach is to use one of the plans like Body for Life (bodyforlife.com) or, even better, check out places like nutritiondata.com and use the BMI calculator to get a handle on how many calories you are burning per day and keep track of what you eat so that you never go more than 15% below your maintenance level. Get a scale that also measures body fat and use it to adjust your diet so that you are losing fat and not lean body mass. Getting rid of midriff fat isn’t easy and no spot cream or supplement is going to make the difference in the long term.
You’d think side effects like nausea, queasiness and vomiting would lead to weight loss. But they don’t in most people – most folks don;t get all the side effects from a medicine they take. You can get those side effects from erythromycin or Prozac too, and no one suggests these are effective for weight loss. The fact yohimbine can be dangerous is the reason it is far safer to use in a cream without many systemic effects rather than a tablet.
You could take 2,4 dinitrophenol to lose weight by decoupling fat metabolism. Killed a lot of folks in the 1930s when in vogue. But it worked, I suppose.
Many people are happy to coclude spot reducing is a myth since fat loss occurs from the whole body, not just one point. This is not the case, however, for putting on fat – lots of folks do so in preferential locations. You’d probably think that there are dozens of solid journal articles proving spot reduction is a myth. Care to find a few, rather than repeat some doma uncritically? Liposuction is a form of spot reduction, no? Who am I to say it isn’t possible under certain circumstances just because it’s trendy to do so? You ask all the physiologists. I’m not saying it is usual, or easy.
Oh yeah. And tremor? Really good cardio.
Sure they do. Some people lose (and gain) fat on their buttocks first; others lose (and gain) fat on their stomach or their love handles first; others lose (and gain) on their breasts first.
But that’s not the point of the argument against spot reducing. The point of that argument is that you, as an individual, cannot choose where you are going to reduce your fat. You can’t wake up and say, “OK, i’m going to start an exercise or diet regimen that will remove fat from my stomach first.”
If you are the sort of person who naturally loses fat from your stomach first, then good. But if you’re not, there’s nothing you can do to change that.
At least, that’s how i’ve always understood the arguments against the validity of spot reduction.
But as I’ve understood it, those pockets are there for a reason, not because of luck really. From what I’ve researched, it’s because of alpha 2 receptor sites in certain areas of the body, often due to estrogen, and also genetics.
If these particular sites cause someone to store excess fat and reduce the production of norepenephrine, then theoretically, wouldn’t blocking these sites cause the fat tissue to reduce at the same rate as the fat on the rest of your body when you lose weight?
It is still used, more than you think, in some bodybuilding circles.
Anyone have any solid information on Lipostabil?
It’s been a while, but wouldn’t you need to stimulate the beta receptors as well as block the alpha receptors? Otherwise, you’re just going to prevent yourself from storing fat there.
There’s also the question of how the drugs would know which alpha receptors to bind to.
Ok so if I decided to say, jog 30 minutes a day and do 100 sit ups, that would have the same effect on tummy pudge as jogging for 45 minutes - The first course would give me stronger abdominal muscles but not necessarily get rid of the stomach fat any faster. Correct?
I think it’s fair to say that physiology is far more complex than our current ability to do tests which apply to all people in all circumstances. It’s not always so easy to test things like spot reducing well (working out one body part and seeig no spot reduction implies that particular exercise doesn;t work for spot reduction, but says nothing about other exercises/diet/medicines, etc.). Defining spot reduction is a start, say you define it as the ability to want to lose fat in a certain spot (usually the stomach where plenty of people deposit it preferentially). Some limited stuidies show fat loss in general occurs over the body. This does not show spot reduction is not possible in some circumstances. Expert opinion is a weak form of evidence. I give people medical advice almost every day, and plenty of the stuff I learned in medical school (benefits of drugs like Prepulsid, hormone replacement therapy, etc. etc.) has been greatly modified. Plenty of people who promote drugs promising “spot reduction”, including my take on yohimbine cream, are scam artists. Doing a web search for “spot reduction” shows lots of people repeating “spot reduction is a myth”. Doing a search for “spot reduction journal article” does not return a cornucopia of good research, however. If you believe something just because people say it a lot, perhaps the terrorists have already won. 
Actually, jogging for 45 minutes would have more effect on your stomach pudge. It depends on how you did your 100 sit-ups, did you do them fast enough and without rest to make it aerobic. In fact, doing the situps will make your ab muscles larger, and might emphasize your pudge until you eventually lost the weight.
Showing off your six-pack is all about dieting, not doing sit-ups. We all have abs buried under there somewhere. 