Advalean Fat Burner Review: Does Advalean Work?
Touting a powerful formula that attacks fat in 6 ways, Advalean is another of the many fat burners I receive questions about daily. Some of the most common Advalean questions are…
Does it work? Is the formula really that revolutionary? And so on.
Special note: Advalean is an “As Seen On T.V.” product. Often manufacturers use TV and radio promotional campaigns to increase profit margins and avoid accountability to the consumer. I’ve written an enter article about why you should be wary of such products — click here to read it!
If you’ve had an experience with Advalean you’d like to share (positive or negative), please contact me here! Here’s what one visitor sent me about her experience…
I ordered Advalean on 12/21 today is 1/18 and I still haven’t received my order — despite many emails to their support department.
They have a non-working phone number on their site, so the only way you can correspond is through email. They were quick to charge my card but I still have no idea where my order is.
They claim the first one was lost in a fire.. and then they resent but can’t provide a tracking number. I am going to the better business bureau..
Please let people know not to order from this company. They have no service and I feel they took my money and ran.
Dawn (sunryz710ATyahoo.com)
While Advalean might present its formula to be something really special, it is simply a recompilation of many of the same ingredients common to most popular fat burners on the market today. Sure, Advalean may be marketed slightly differently, but it’s not a revolutionary product.
To demonstrate, let’s look at each one of the components of Advalean, and decipher fact from fiction…
1. Metabolic formula: According to the advertising, the Metabolic Formula “Speeds up your metabolism helping you burn off the calories you consume with each meal”. I don’t like their wording, because it is implied that it will help you burn off ALL the calories in a meal, which is simply not the case.
Green tea, the only element of the metabolic formula which has actually been shown to elevate metabolism, might help the average individual burn off an extra 100 calories per day. That’s not a significant enough number to impact your diet. The other elements of the Metabolic formula — l-carnitine (reviewed in full here) and alpha lipoic acid (reviewed in full here) are both great supplements, but neither contribute to an elevated metabolism.
2. Energy formula: Claims to provide the necessary energy to both keep you moving and motivated. Also claims to raise your body’s internal temperature and burn fat through the process of thermogenisis. This element of the formula contains yerba mate and ginseng.
Yerba mate provides a hearty helping of caffeine — a mild, but not amazing fat burner — and ginseng may or may not provide helpful with energy levels. Drinking a couple of strong coffees a day will provide you with similar benefits.
3. Thyroid Support Formula: The makers of Advalean claim this element of the formula will help you burn more calories by stimulating your thyroid gland. The main component of this part of the compilation is something called bladderwrack.
Bladderwrack (or brown seaweed): touted by various supplement makers to burn fat, bladderwrack contains a high concentration of iodine. Iodine is used by the thyroid gland to make the various thyroid hormones necessary for optimal performance. Low or sluggish thyroid performance can lead to low energy levels or overweight.
Of course, iodine supplementation is only helpful if you actually have low levels of thyroid hormone, and are not overweight for other more common reasons — like the over consumption of calories and a sedentary lifestyle (incidentally, overconsumption of iodine can actually pose a health risk).
Despite this, research showing bladderwrack to be an effective weight loss supplement is “dodgy” at best. More research needs to be done to verify its effectiveness. Nonetheless, bladderwrack does seem to be effective for reducing blood sugar levels — helpful for reducing cravings caused by insulin resistance and simple carbohydrate overconsumption.
4. Appetite Control Formula: claims to be helpful for suppressing appetite, and decreasing caloric consumption. There are two components of this formulation…
Garcinia Cambogia extract (standardized for hydroxycitric acid or HCA): While early animal studies indicated otherwise, a recent study published in the JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association) showed hydroxycitric acid to have no effect on weight loss.
Hoodia Gordonii: a succulent (a cactus of the aloe family) found in the Kalahari desert of South Africa. Although these are early days, there is some hope (and a little evidence, trials are still being run) to suggest Hoodia is a very effective appetite suppressant.
From what I’ve read though, it appears that real, potent hoodia is actually very hard for supplement manufacturers to get their hands on. So it’s hard to gauge the efficacy of the hoodia contained in any product — in fact, some products touting Hoodia in their formulations may not actually contain any. At this point anyway, Hoodia is one of the most over-hyped and unsubstantiated weight loss product on the market today. (You can read a full review of Hoodia here, and visitor feedback on Hoodia here!
5. Fat Block Formula: The makers of Advalean claim that their product “blocks over 12 grams of fat each time you take it!”. This is a completely unsubstantiated claim, not backed by any peer reviewed study. In fact, the main component of this element of the compilation, Chitosan (reviewed here!), has been demonstrated several times to have no effect on fat blockage at all!
6. Carbohydrate Block Formula: OK, here’s where it gets really good. The makers of Advalean claim they “use a special blend of ingredients to block up to 2700 starch calories”. Again, this is a completely unsubstantiated (and ridiculous) claim. There is no scientific merit for such a statement. This formula contains chromium polynicotinate, and phaseolus vulgaris (white kidney bean extract).
While chromium is a great supplement and useful for moderating insulin function, it does not block carbs (to read a full review of chromium, click here!).
Initial research with white kidney bean extract for carb-blocking was promising, but this clinical study which concluded…
“Clinical trends were identified for weight loss and a decrease in triglycerides, although statistical significance was not reached. Phase 2 shows potential promise as an adjunct therapy in the treatment of obesity and hypertriglyceridemia and further studies with larger numbers of subjects are warranted to conclusively demonstrate effectiveness.”
As you can see, the Advalean compilation is big on promises and claims, and not so big on scientific validation of such. Thus, I’d be greatly surprised if you experienced much in the way of results with this product (of course, unless you make the appropriate changes to your diet and lifestyle, no product will provide much in the way of benefits).
