Nutrition Videos

Hi! I'm Stelios Pantazis. I'm a doctor and I specialize in medical nutrition and metabolic disorders. Today, I'm talking about the use of apple cider vinegar in weight loss. I'll also tell you when and how much you should use to lose weight and what other benefit apple cider vinegar has for your health besides weight loss. Vinegar has been helping in weight loss for almost 200 years, but is there something special in vinegar that helps in weight loss? Vinegar is just an aqueous solution of acetic acid that requires energy for its metabolism, which is achieved with the activation of an enzyme called AMPK. The activation of this enzyme leads, among other actions, to the burning of fatty acids in the liver and muscles and the suppression of the composition of fats, which means that it reduces cholesterol and triglycerides. That's not bad for something that makes our salad tastier. All these are interesting and useful, but in order to recommend something for weight loss, we should also see a real study on humans. Such a study has been carried out. In Japan, 150 overweight people were divided into three groups. All groups consumed a drink with the exact same taste, but, in one group, it contained acids and not acetic acid, and that was the control group. The other two groups consumed a drink that contained either one tablespoon or two tablespoons of apple cider vinegar. All participants were asked to do nothing more and to make no changes to their diet and lifestyle for three months. In the third month, the control group had gained some weight, in the way we all know, while the groups that consumed the drink containing vinegar had lost significant weight. Compared to the placebo, the participants of the group consuming two tablespoons of vinegar daily lost 5 kg until the end of the 12 weeks. This doesn't sound much, but the cost was just a few minutes a day, and they took nothing out of their diet. In my eyes, having read thousands of similar studies on weight loss, this loss seems significant. The researchers went one step further and measured the waist circumference of the participants, and they found that the group consuming two tablespoons of apple cider vinegar a day lost almost 2 cm from the waist, and this was confirmed both with a CT scan and with the measurement of the participants' belly fat. Therefore, this is a weight loss that can certainly improve our health significantly. As it was expected, one month after they stopped consuming apple cider vinegar, the participants gained the weight they had lost, but this happens with everything we do to lose weight. When we stop doing it, we gain the weight we had lost. But isn't this additional proof that this is why apple cider vinegar works? When you stop consuming it, you stop losing weight. All these are very useful and although I almost always use unfiltered apple cider vinegar in my salad too, I want to go back to the activation of AMPK. I know that the promise of weight loss is already significant, but can vinegar offer something more to our health? It can. It has been observed in many animals that the activation of AMPK or similar enzymes leads to significant increase of the life expectancy, namely animals live longer. Is it possible that this is true for humans too? Many experts in human life extension believe that this is possible. Until it's proven if they're right or wrong, it doesn't hurt to make our salad tastier with apple cider vinegar. If you thought this was interesting, please give us a thumbs up. Share it with people who you think might find it interesting and subscribe to our channel in order to get notified when we upload a video. You can also suggest subjects in the comment section. Thank you very much!