Conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) is one of the good trans fats, which we get from beef or dairy products; it lowers the melting point for fat metabolism. Watch Eva Selhub, MD, explain how CLA works to increase your body's ability to burn fat faster.
Conjugated Linoleic Acid or CLA is one of the good trans fats that we have actually had access to. We get it through beef or dairy product because our body doesn't make it self, and it's a good trans fat because it lowers the melting point or fat metabolism. The first thing to understand is how fat melts, and if you think about fat on a frying pan and turning on the heat it will melt.
So in general you want to increase the heat of the body, we call that thermogenesis. Thermo, heat. Genesis, creating. We want to expand energy and create heat, that's why exercise can melt that. And theorating to be able to do the same by lowering that melting point, so it takes less heat, for that fat to burn, and what we believe happens is that it keeps fats cells from swelling, and so therefore they are smaller and also increases the speed within which they break down into smaller particles and again then they're easier to melt out way.
And so it's very effective to add CLA to your diet, or taking as a supplement and what it'll do is it'll increase the tendency for those fat cells to break down and to burn into energy which then allows that fat to melt.
Eva M. Selhub, MD, is a clinical associate in medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Benson Henry Institute for Mind/Body Medicine, and an instructor in Medicine at Harvard Medical School.
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