This article is a transcribed edited summary of a video Bob and Brad recorded in August of 2021. For the original video go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9lSZf7QcB0
Brad: Apple cider vinegar, big topic for weight loss, cholesterol, and blood sugar management. Is it going to help with that? And that’s what we’re going to find out. Is it a viable product to use or not? Apple cider vinegar, I always use the one with the mother. I’ve been using it for joint pain, which we’re not covering. Let’s get right into weight loss.
Chris: So, kind of interesting stuff. Apple cider vinegar, like you say, whether it’s pasteurized stuff, that’s the nice clear bottle, or if you get organic and unpasteurized which is unfiltered, has the mother, which I would tell you is going to be the better one to use just because there’s other bits of nutrients and all good stuff in there with the mother, so I think it’s more complete.
Brad: And that’s kind of a yellowish orange color and it’s got the sediment.
Chris: Yeah. It’s going to have some sediments and it can be cloudy. I mean, apple cider vinegar can be used in a variety of different ways. You can put it on your food, you can drink it. What we’re going to talk about with the dose for all of these is you’re going to put a tablespoon full or 15 ml in 4 oz of water. You’re going to mix it and drink it. That’s one way of doing it. There’s a lot of other ways you can do it. You can just put it on a salad or something to that effect. We’ll just talk about it as a dose, 15 ml.
Brad: If you put more than 4 oz of water, is it going to change anything?
Chris: No. If you drink it all I think it’s fine. For those who’ve never tried apple cider vinegar, it’s got a very sour taste, so it may not present as it’s for everybody, but for some people, they like it. It just depends on your taste buds and what you like. But if we’re going to use this for weight loss specifically, the dose range is either 15ml up to 30 ml and 4 oz of water, or even up to 8 oz. After you consume it, I want you to make sure you rinse and gargle and swish plain water around on your teeth because it can damage a tooth enamel if you don’t protect it right away. Because it’s an acidic product. On the pH scale, it’s about two to three. It’s a moderate acid. So, it’s something you want to be careful with.
Brad: I just want to clarify again. He said two different volumes, either one tablespoon or two, no more than two.
Chris: Not more than two, two is an absolute max. Frankly, when you’re looking at it from a weight loss standpoint, over the 90 days, the research that I’ve found, they had about 45-50 subjects, which still very small, but I think it had enough evidence that shows, if you did the 15 ml and 4 oz of water over 90 days, it cause a 2.7 pound weight loss versus the 30 ml in the water over 90 days caused a 3.6 pound weight loss. So, you’re talking about just a couple of pounds. Well, what does that mean? I think for a lot of people when you have true fat loss, I think it’s something that is going to be beneficial to you.
Brad: I read something about this, the apple cider vinegar, losing the stomach weight in the gut itself.
Chris: Yeah. They seem to say that it targets that. I’ve always been of the mindset that you can lose weight everywhere. I don’t know how true that is. I haven’t found straight up scientific evidence that says that, but there’s a lot of anecdotal evidence that suggests that. I mean, it’s not going to hurt you. The nice thing about apple cider vinegar is that it’s relatively safe stuff. If you’re a diabetic specifically type one, if you are on diuretics or on the special heart medication called digoxin, or Lanoxin, you’d want to use care and caution with that, but we’re going to touch into blood sugar lowering shortly too. It’s something that I think if you want to give it a try, I think it does have some application with some modest weight loss.
Brad: I do want to say one thing about it, after I get done eating the meal, and I’ve got that urge for something sweet that dessert, drink it then. It takes that urge for that sweet tooth right away from me. It’s like, I don’t even think about it.
Chris: And that’s the one thing they say. It may work better if you take it before you eat because it slows down gastric emptying. So that means what your stomach empties. If you feel more full, you’re going to eat less. It kind of delays that and the reason why it might help you with digestion and other things is that acidity might help to drive down and break up food better and because of that delayed gastric emptying, you got more gut transit time for that food to absorb. Your body is getting more nutrients out of the things you’re eating.
Brad: So, take it before you eat. What if you took a little bit before and then afterwards to kill that sweet tooth?
Chris: I mean if you want to kill it, your remedy is going to hurt you because I’ll tell you, it doesn’t taste great.
Brad: It does the trick for me. I don’t want to have that ice cream. That’s not on my mind after I drink the apple cider vinegar.
Chris: That’s going to take away the craving for ice cream, for sure. No two ways about it.
Brad: All right. You want to go on to cholesterol?
Chris: Yeah, why don’t we. Again, we’re going to treat this much in the same way, why it lowers cholesterol? You know, we don’t really have a definitive answer.
Brad: So, we’re talking about if we lower our cholesterol, it’s going to help our circulation.
Chris: It might help with our circulation. It might help with our heart functioning and minimize the risk for heart attack and strokes. They’ve shown that smaller scale studies and more anecdotally, because we don’t have the wide bodies of evidence that show it. I think a lot of it is because you can’t make a ton of profit off apple cider vinegar because it already exists. That’s the thing on big pharma. If you’re in a university setting and you got the gumption for it, guys, if you want to research on why precisely it lowers cholesterol, it would be interesting to know. I can tell you personally, my cholesterol has been high for years. I have a familial deal on my side, my lineage. Unfortunately, you know, I’ve had higher cholesterol and I used it for three months before my appointments. Prior to that, prior to the research that I did on our last video that we did on this, I just wanted to see how it worked for myself. I lowered my cholesterol 20 points.
Brad: You were doing the same dosage?
Chris: I did 15 ml, 4 oz of water everyday right before dinner. For whatever reason, my cholesterol for the first time in years was in a healthy range. You can’t take that to the bank if you’re a physician or a cardiologist out there, you certainly may scoff at it a little bit, but I would tell you that there’s enough anecdotal evidence that suggests that it may be beneficial for you. It’s not going to hurt you. Same warnings if you have gastroparesis you need to be cautious.
Brad: Gastroparesis is?
Chris: Is when your stomach doesn’t want to push food through there.
Brad: Is there another name for it? A layman’s name
Chris: Slow gastric emptying.
Brad: Okay. People usually know they have that.
Chris: Your doctor’s going to tell you. It’s more common with type one diabetics. It’s something that we do want to be mindful of. Always check with your doctor or pharmacist, making sure they’re looking at your profile because if you’re on diuretics, that could affect things too with electrolyte balance and how your potassium levels are because that’s important for your heart.
Brad: So the water pills?
Chris: Yeah, the water pills. You want to be careful with that, but I do think that does have a positive affect on cholesterol and can probably lead us into the blood sugar lowering too.
Brad: Yes, let’s segue right into that.
Chris: So, with diabetes, there’s two types, type one, and type two. Type one is the one that everybody must have insulin, type one, this is probably not for you. Your insulin dependent and the way that this lowers blood sugar could be dangerous for you because if you get too low and you didn’t make an insulin correction, you could have serious problems. This is something that, again, type one I would take off the table. It’s one thing if it’s like in your salad dressing already because there are types of things that you use have a vinegar base. It doesn’t necessarily have to be apple cider vinegar. I think from that standpoint, it’s just something to be aware of. Use in moderation, use accordingly. If you’re going to try and use it to help an adjunct, it’s considered mostly safe and most of the studies that we find what they’ve done is an excellent example. We’ve talked about this before, if you do 15 ml and 4 oz of water and you take it before a high carbohydrate meal, the example used was a bagel and orange juice, it diminished the blood sugar that went into the bloodstream tremendously. So that effect when you’re a type two diabetic is going to have a big effect for you because blood sugar controls everything from a diabetic standpoint. Realistically, this is an adjunct that I think would be used with exercise and diet and obviously medication therapy that your doctor has provided for you. Talk with your doctor to see if it’s appropriate but I think it’s a reasonable thing to bring up because there are clear studies, again, not large bodies of studies, but you’re talking about a couple hundred people in multiple studies that have clearly shown whether it’s in the bagel and the orange juice study. They’ve also done another one with white bread specifically. They show a tremendous decrease, like 5% reduction in the amount of postprandial or after eating blood sugar levels. It’s got a benefit to it. They did a study to taking it at bedtime, which we’ll talk about one of the side effects is reflux and heartburn, but taking it before bed, if you do that, make sure you take in lots of water to make sure it’s in your gut and moving before you lay down, so we don’t cause heartburn. They showed that people lower their blood sugar when they wake up in the morning by 4%, and 4% doesn’t sound like a large number but if you’re teetering on the edge and there’s a big number, they talk about which is an A1C. If you’re just on the border and you want to get down to a lower level, it’s got its place and it shows it eloquently that it’s got its place. There’s a couple of downsides with apple cider vinegar that we must be careful with. We want to protect our teeth so, after you use this, you want to make sure you rinse and gargle well, because it can damage the enamel on your teeth. Some people find that it can cause heartburn so, we do want to be careful with that. Staying upright after you take it for 30 minutes would be ideal. When I say that before bed dosing for the people that want to consider that, stay upright for 30 minutes, and make sure you’ve consumed plenty of water on top of it to it to absorb into your system as quickly as possible and not reflux back up. Heartburn can be damaging and problematic. So, we must use a modicum of care when we’re going to use this. You do want to protect yourself and you want to talk to your doctor and your pharmacist to make sure it’s appropriate for you.
Brad: That it?
Chris: That’s pretty much it.
Brad: I did want to mention a couple of things. They're anecdotal, but people that comment on our other apple cider vinegar videos, they said it got rid of their heartburn, which I don’t know how that works.
Chris: I looked at that a little bit too, and it seems like it’s almost more homeopathic at that point. You’re taking acid to treat acid. There are burgeoning amounts of anecdotal evidence, not a lot of large-scale studies that do suggest that it may be beneficial. So, in certain populations, I think it’s something you can consider, but consider with caution, just like anything else. If it helps you, we’ve solved a problem and I think that’s wonderful but again it’s not for everybody. Some people aren’t going to like the taste, but I mean, at some point I think it does have some possible benefits that I think are worth exploring.
Brad: For me personally, joint pain in my hands it’s helped. About 3 or 4 years ago, I couldn’t even close my fists and it came on suddenly and I was concerned, and I’d wake up in the morning and I could never make a full fist, which was weird because I’m an active person. I was concerned about how I was going to function, you know? And so, I started taking this from a friend of mine who, it’s a long story, but anyways, within two weeks I noticed things getting better. So, I took it for about a month or two and I’ve got about 80% better and I just quit taking it because it doesn’t take taste that well and I felt functional. Recently, I started taking it again because my finger is sore from an accident. It seems to be improving it again. I think it’s got some good, anti-inflammatory benefits. It’s working for me personally and I can’t vouch it, I’m not going to give it a blessing for everyone.
Chris: Don’t be afraid to speak up to your doctor and speak up to your pharmacist. Let’s make sure it’s safe, but I think it’s got an application if you’re considering it.
Brad: If you’re a healthy person, you’re not taking any medication and you just take the doses that we’re talking about.
Chris: I think it’s reasonable to try. If you do, I think we’ll see some positive results.
Brad: All right, have a good day and be careful!
Chris: Thanks guys!
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