Researchers in China believe they have found the weight loss Holy Grail in a native plant extract that holds the key to burning fat without having to exercise - but it might not be entirely safe.

Berberine is a bitter-tasting plant alkaloid that has a long history of medicinal use in Chinese and Ayurvedic medicine. It is present in the roots, rhizomes and stem bark of various plants including Hydrastis canadensis, Coptis chinensis, Berberis aquifolium, Berberis vulgaris, and Berberis aristata.

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Guang Ning and his team at the Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine recently found that berberine  helps weight control in obese mice by both activating brown fat and helping turn ordinary white fat brown, reports New Scientist.

Brown fat, which was only first discovered in 2009, is a type of fat that burns calories by turning energy into heat. Since its discovery, researchers have been trying to find ways to increase brown fat activity so that people can lose weight without exercise.

Ning's team gave the mice berberine every three days for a month. Scans of the mice showed that the brown fat between the shoulder blades burned more calories than  in the mice not given berberine. There were also signs that the white fat in their groin had begun to act like brown fat. As a result, the mice that were fed a high-fat diet actually had better control over their weight.

But bereberine may not be the wonder drug people hope it is, according to Henri Huttunen, at the University of Helsinki in Finland. Huttunen lead a team that recently published a paper linking the extract and toxicity in the central nervous system of rodents.

"My understanding is that there are hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people who use berberine," Huttunen told New Scientist.  "If this was a pharmaceutical we would begin by showing it's safe and then looking at efficacy," says Huttunen. "But because it's a supplement there's much less concern about the safety - which I find a bit disturbing."

However, as Ning points out, people in China have been taking berberine for 2,000 years. But he agrees it's necessary to test the extract's safety profile: "Toxicology must be studied for the long-term application in obesity treatment."

TagsChinese Plant Extract Holds Dieting Holy Grail But is it Safe, brown fat, Berberine, Guang Ning, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, New Scientist, Chinese medicine, Ayurvedic medicine, Henri Huttunen, Chinese Plant Extract Holds Weight Loss Holy Grail, But is it Safe?