Profile:
Product Specification : 50-90% HCA
Latin Name: Garcinia Cambogia.
Product Type: Fine gray white powdered extract
Part of the Plant Used: Fruit
Extract Method: Grain Alcohol/Water

What is Garcinia Cambogia extract?
Hydroxycitric acid (HCA), is the active ingredient extracted from the rind of a little pumpkin-like fruit, Garcinia cambogia, from India and Southeast Asia. Dietary supplements and a wide variety of weight loss formulas, contain Garcinia Cambogia extract to inhibit fat production and suppress appetite. A number of products include extracts (about 50% HCA) under the brand names Citrin (Sabinsa) and CitriMax (InterHealth) and a new one called Regulator is a 98% pure potassium HCA from a small Irish supplement company.

HCA can inhibit an enzyme in cells, citrate lyase, which is needed for the conversion of carbohydrates into fat. In the cell, carbohydrates are broken down into citrate compounds, which are then converted (by citrate lyase) into another compound; acetyl coenzyme A (acetyl CoA) the metabolic building block for fat synthesis. By blocking the conversion of citrate into acetyl-CoA, HCA can suppress fat synthesis. Acetyl CoA is further converted into malonyl CoA, a compound which may block the actions of carnitine acyltransferase in shuttling fatty acids into the mitochondria to be burned. It is important to note, however, that the citrate lyase enzyme, is only significantly active under conditions of carbohydrate overconsumption. In others words, unless you are eating a lot of carbohydrate-type foods (bagels, pasta, potatoes), and overloading your carbohydrate storage capacity (muscle and liver glycogen stores) there is no significant conversion of carbohydrates into fatty acids anyway (and HCA may not work for you). If, however, you arere chowing down on low-fat high-carb foods at every meal, then your glycogen stores will be over-flowing and your citrate lyase enzymes are going to be working over time converting those excess carbs to fat. OK, so now that you have blocked the fat production, you have to do something with those excess carbs. They can not be stored as glycogen because those stores in liver and muscle are already full, so it is thought that the body disposes of them by increasing carbohydrate oxidation (burning them). As a result of these fully loaded glycogen stores, some researchers have suggested that a (side effect) of HCA supplementation may be a suppression of appetite which would reduce food intake and promote weight loss.