Have you ever taken Chromium to decrease cravings for sweet things?

Chromium is supposed to work on your metabolism, not decrease the want for sweets.
Here’s a fact sheet for chromium.

Actually, chromium usually works via the placebo effect to end craving for sweets. But if it fails you, substitute sugar pills. :-)

I will not use this as an opportunity to mention my crippling addiction to placebos.

@mrentropy I’m really glad you didn’t mention it. I just can’t put those sugar pills down myself. Will it help if I suck a bumper for awhile?

Like, what kind of bumper?

So, is there any supplement that does increase metabolism? Or is it all snake oil?

Any chrome bumper will do the trick. It has nothing to do with the chromium, though. It’s just when you are down on your knees in the street kissing an automobile, you can’t pig out on sweets.

There are tons of supplements that claim to increase metabolism. I do not know of any that back that claim up with clinical trials. Perhaps there are some. Another question would be wouldn’t making the body burn energy faster be likely to increase desire for high energy foods like sweets? It could be that the chromium is working, and therein lies the problem.

@ETpro Well, better than trying to blow up a car by breathing into a tailpipe.

Is it ok to mention not being surprised that a homeopathic “treatment” failed, miserably? Homeopathy = modern day quackery.

Homeopathy also equals empty pockets. I don’t even want to think about all the money I spent for arthritis help, whew!

@shilolo I’m glad somebody said it. I was thinking it but biting my lip, or fingers as it were. :-)

@ETpro I’ve mentioned it before here, multiple times (a quick search will identify many threads). You’d be surprised what people “believe” in, and some of that is accented by antipathy to Western medicine. It’s “natural” or “homeopathic”, therefore it must be good…

Try the Food Tree diet. To stop the sugar cravings, you have to stop sugar intake. A week off of it and you won’t feel the desire for it.

…ooh food tree diet sounds interesting….I’ve been looking to decrease sugar in my diet for a while now… but struggle struggle struggle – thanks @rooeytoo

Chromium does not work for me at reducing sugar cravings. I have never seen any observable effect from it.

What does work is an Ayurvedic tradition herb called gymnema sylvestre.

@shilolo Yep, AFAIK, belladonna is ‘natural’ too.
@Marina There is one proven effect all supplements share, however they may work or not work in a homeopathic way. They all help separate you from some of your money and help transfer that wealth to the person selling the supplement.

What about Stevia to replace sugar?, and what about the hype abouy Hoodia?

@faye I find it hard to accept that the human body evolved over millions of years to desperately need bizarre and almost unattainable substances found in the deserts of Namibia or such inaccessible places. Such supplements would not have been available to more than a tiny handful of early man, so our evolving to require them seems highly improbable.

@ETpro – neither did the human body evolve to desperately need all the weird and often toxic substances usually prescribed by doctors and available and pharmacies – so your argument against natural supplements (or at least homoeopathic remedies) should apply to drugs as well, no?

Anyway, the reason anyone needs all these treatments is because we have removed ourselves from a natural and healthy way of living, so ofcourse the body is going to suffer.

My advice for trying to curb the sweet cravings is to have a generally healthier diet – cut out processed foods and things that contain sugar, and when you get sweet cravings, eat sweet fruits. It’s tough (trust me, as a chocolate addict, i know!), but most dietary improvements are going to take a huge effort to implement (unless you’re not a food addict so it doesn’t bother you do change your diet). It does get easier though the longer you’re been doing it.

@NaturallyMe I follow you, but supplements generally proport themselves to be what the body needs nutritionally to heal. Drugs and antibiotics are generally not the same. They are agents that aggressively intervene to change bodily function or attack germs that are causing illness.

@ETpro – Ok. But what about this: all animals have evolved together with plants and many animals use certain plants to treat certain ailments they may be suffering from (certain apes come to mind who do this). So we’ve evolved with plants that are designed (in a way) to help our bodies heal – plants are natural substances as are our bodies, so they work well together. Drugs are most often, in a way, invasive to our bodies because they contain many unnatural elements that are indeed toxic to us. We have evolved with healing plants for millions (or whatever!) of years, whereas, i think, drugs are a relatively modern item that has come into existence very quickly, evolutionary-time speaking, so we have not evolved to deal efficiently enough with these types of drugs, and that’s why they’re still toxic to us.

@NaturallyMe We don’t evolve “with plants” and they are not “designed” to help us. We may affect evolution by breeding plants and animals in order to obtain desired traits (like bigger corn), but there is zero scientific evidence to argue that plants evolved “for us”.

On another point, drugs are “natural” too. Drugs consist of the same basic elements, carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, sulfur (and a few others) as “natural” compounds. Here are pictures of caffeine and adenosine, cocaine, morphine (which is also the same as heroin), coumadin, digitalis, taxol and penicllin. Which one is natural and which one isn’t? Can you point out the unnatural elements that are toxic?

@shilolo – ok well i didn’t mean that plants evolved FOR us, but they evolved WITH us, and since we all evolved together over millions of years, some degree of dependence on each other comes about, the same as animals evolve to depend on each other for a balanced ecology. You evolve to fit in with your environment and vegetation around you.
Also, i meant drugs are toxic in the sense that most of them are detrimental to your health in some way – just read the info leaflet that comes with the drugs. It’s widely known that drugs have negative effects on your body, even though it may treat the problem. However, there are quite a few natural remedies that can be used indefinitely, because all they do is maintian your body, similar to vitamins.
The fact that drugs have derived from natural elements doesn’t mean they’re safe or natural now – they have most times been altered to become artificial elements which may be close to the natural composition of the original thing, but it’s not, and this slight modification may have a huge impact on your body and the safety of using that drug.
Trying natural remedies first is always preferable to jumping into taking drugs. This is my opinion anyway.
But i don’t really wish to get into another debate about the use of natural remedies vs drugs because it seldom ends friendly. I’m an advocate for natural remedies as far as is possible, i detest man made drugs and refuse to use them unless it’s my last resort. Many disagree with me (and people who share my view, i’m used to being in the minority on this subject). So i’m going to propose we agree to disagree right now. :)

@NaturallyMe I’m sorry, but there is no such thing as “dependence” on plants based on coevolution. Also, as you suspected, all of those structures are natural, and none have been changed in any way from the form that they exist in “nature”. By your reasoning, eating a cocoa leaf for it’s stimulant properties is ok because it is “natural”, but taking pure cocaine is unnatural (because it is now a “drug”)?

Again, what do you mean by “altered to become artificial elements”? What’s artificial about purifying a compound, or adding an extra carbon? What’s an artificial element? It always seems to me that people who “believe” in natural remedies make up pseudoscientific statements that have no meaning. I would love to hear an explanation for these things.

@shilolo – And there it starts, the condesending tone. For the sake of not arguing on someone else’s thread here, and because i’ve been through this a hundred times with people like you, i’m unfollowing this post.

@NaturallyMe You’ve got natural selection running in reverse. Plants did not evolve for the benefit of the animals that eat them. Quite the opposite, natural selection pushed them to develop defenses to being eaten. Some developed toxins. Some developed bitter, repugnant tastes. A few developed a trick that actually encourages parts of them being eaten. They grew tasty fruit with hard, indigestible seeds. They thus recruit unwitting animals, who are capable of moving, in spreading their progeny and thus improve their chances of surviving localized changes that might otherwise threaten their existence.

Animals, humans included, were influenced by natural selection as well. We evolved livers and kidneys capable of filtering out the toxins that plants developed. Evolution is rather like military technology. For every offensive weapon, the other side develops a defense. For each new defense, a new offensive countermeasure soon emerges.

To be sure, there are herbs, seeds, roots and such with powerful medicinal properties. Modern aspirin, for instance, was synthesized after we learned from American Indians that white willow bark reduces fever, swelling and pain. But the probability that all humanity was driven by natural selection to need some rare and exotic plant found only in one small corner of the Earth is close enough to 0.00% to be considered nonexistent. For every one natural supplement that actually holds up in double-blind testing as a valid treatment, there are tons that are nothing more than money-making scams.