Much has been written about the action of chromium in your body to help improve your health and aging process and enable you to lose weight in a more efficient manner. Dr. Barry Sears’ initial work on nutritional factors and the body’s response (Enter the Zone) discusses the connection between inflammation, chronic diseases, and blood insulin levels. He was the first to talk about the fact that insulin levels are better predictors of heart disease than cholesterol levels. He showed how restricting calories along with a well-balanced diet decreased blood sugar levels and made your body insulin more efficient.

Dr. Sears also noted that chromium is known to help blood sugar (glucose) move from the bloodstream into the cells, where it is able to be utilized in energy production. Of course, glucose is the one “fuel” that keeps our body energy going, but it must enter our body’s cells for this fuel to be used. Everything we eat is either directly metabolized from carbohydrates and protein to become sugar or is stored as fat which can later be converted to sugar.

How important is chromium in maintaining our body at its optimal level, losing weight, and keeping on an anti-aging pathway? As you have seen from previous articles and from your own reading and research, the only pathway that has been proven for certain to be “anti-aging” is adequate nutrition with caloric restriction. Everything else including chromium supplements is simply adjunctive to this. In other words, the basic essential for all diets is to follow that pathway. A diet which includes too many calories and too many high-glycemic carbohydrates simply won’t keep you full of energy and looking good to the level that you desire.

Chromium also seems to improve insulin levels by lowering blood sugar. If your blood glucose is high because it is unable to enter the cells, your body’s homeostatic system calls for more insulin to be produced. Insulin levels are unhealthy when they are high and better when they are low. The stimulation of insulin levels secondary to high blood glucose levels is also an important factor in creating the craving for carbohydrates that develops only a short time after you have eaten carbohydrates. If your insulin level goes too high, a rebound drop of blood glucose may cause you to develop hypoglycemia, which will give you dizziness, precipitate headaches including migraine, and cause muscle weakness or confusion. Early research work done on rats fed a diet lacking in chromium showed that the rats developed an intolerance to glucose and were not able to keep blood sugar levels normal. Once chromium was reintroduced, the diabetes-like symptoms disappeared.

Even though chromium is “hyped” as a weight loss and muscle-building supplement, you need to look closely at these claims. Some of the weight-loss/fat-burner claims are based on research done years ago by those who used that information wrongly to promote profitable marketing schemes. Claims may say that their product is anabolic or muscle building, but studies have shown that this is not true. However, in adequate amounts chromium helps maintain your body homeostasis and enhances your body’s metabolism.

For example, the collagen proteins and glucose in your body have the ability to combine to create a glycosalate which precipitates in your collagen; it creates muscle stiffness and tightness of the joints with arthritis. It also does the same things to your heart muscle. Chromium is able to help glucose cross cell barriers and enter cells where it can be burned, thus reducing the level of these A.G.E.s. (Advanced Glycation End Products) in your tissues, thus reducing inflammation. While it moves the glucose out of the bloodstream and into cells, chromium also acts on your hypothalamus to improve its function. With fasting, caloric restriction, and adequate levels of chromium, your hypothalamus is able to perform its functions such as keeping your body temperature level up, maintaining good sleep, maintaining your libido, and stabilizing your moods. If your blood sugar level is too high due to diet and low chromium levels, then the hypothalamus simply signals the body that it’s time to eat or drink something else.

Where do we find chromium? We need to look at real foods as usual. It has been noted that asparagus, beef, liver, diary products and eggs, fish, seafood, whole grain products, and fresh fruits can get more chromium into your blood stream. In addition, grape juice, broccoli, whole grains, and garlic offer increased amounts over other foods. Polished rice and white bread are very poor sources for this, and eating a lot of sugary foods burns up the chromium needed to metabolize it. Staying on a low-glycemic, low-calorie diet helps you maintain your adequate chromium levels. Too much exercise (probably above 3,000 calories of aerobic exercise a week) actually causes more excretion of chromium in your system and increases your needs. Calcium supplements may also decrease the ability of your body to absorb chromium.

The recommended dietary intake of chromium is about 50-200 micrograms a day, and about 9 out of 10 Americans, Canadians, and British are eating less than 33 micrograms a day. The usual chromium level in a multivitamin such as Centrum Silver is 45 micrograms and is listed as 38 percent of the daily value. This probably speaks for taking a multivitamin daily because not only is chromium present in trace amounts in a multivitamin, but also boron, nickel, vanadium, magnesium, silicon, and many other minerals. In other words, supplementing your diet with a multivitamin daily is a good idea.

In summary, it’s probably useful to maintain your chromium levels with a low-level supplement, not in mega-doses. Remember that it is only one of the many nutrients needed for your body, so don’t let it become the “major thing.” In other words, chromium supplements are not going to make you lose weight. You can help yourself to lose weight, and chromium can be an adjunct to that. Stay in the “Zone” with a balanced diet of carbohydrates, protein, and fat, all of which should be selected carefully for the best nutritional and insulin-controlling features. 

Dr. Carraway is the director of the Plastic & Cosmetic Surgery Center of EVMS. Call 757-557-0300 for more information.