Thursday July 31, 2014 (foodconsumer.org) -- Li et al. at Virginia Tech, Blacksburg in Virginia, USA published a study in Journal of Medicinal Food suggesting that dietary supplementation with Chinese ginseng can help prevent obesity and metabolic syndrome in people following a high fat diet.

The study showed obese mice fed a high fat diet, which is often used to induce obesity, also supplemented with Chinese ginseng in a dose of 0.5 gram per kg food, reduced body fat mass gain, improved glucose tolerance and insulin sensitivity, and prevented the development of hypertension, compared with mice without access to the dietary supplement.

This study provided obese individuals or those who want to prevent obesity with another weight loss treatment.  Previous studies have revealed many alternative treatments may be used to prevent obesity or help weight loss including spirulina, bitter melon, raspberry ketones, garcinia cambogia, green coffee bean extract among many other dietary supplements.

Additionally, the current study also showed that ginseng supplementation lowered levels of plasma insulin and leptin, but apparently had no effect on plasma adiponectin concentrations in high fat diet-fed mice. 

Body temperature was found higher in ginseng supplemented mice.  But energy expenditure, respiration rate, and locomotive activity were unchanged.   Ginseng also promoted lipid oxidation in the liver but not in skeletal muscle, which may be the reason Chinese ginseng can prevent metabolic syndrome.

Ginseng apparently decreased the expression of several transcription factors associated with adipogenesis in the high fat diet fed mice.

Ginseng supplementation had no effect on genes involved in the regulation of food intake in the hypothalamus.

The study concluded "These data suggest that Chinese ginseng can potently prevent the development of obesity and insulin resistance in HF diet-fed mice."  (David Liu)

Li X, Luo J, Anandh Babu PV, Zhang W, Gilbert E, Cline M, McMillan R, Hulver M, Alkhalidy H, Zhen W, Zhang H, Liu D.  Dietary Supplementation of Chinese Ginseng Prevents Obesity and Metabolic Syndrome in High-Fat Diet-Fed Mice. J Med Food. 2014 Jul 30.