If you haven’t heard about the effects of CLA yet you had better keep reading..

A Deficiency of CLA in the diet may very well be a major factor in causing fat accumulation in most adults. What is CLA? Conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) is a healthy fat found mostly in dairy products as well as meat and is a potent antioxidant. Current research findings suggest that CLA has a host of benefits for the average athlete or bodybuilder.

Background info and the benefits of CLA

Interest was first stimulated in this supplement in 1988 when a University of Wisconsin researcher discovered its cancer-fighting properties in a study of rats fed fried hamburger. CLA isn’t produced by our bodies but it can be obtained through foods, such as beef, lamb and whole butter and milk.

CLA has shown anti-oxidant, anti-carcinogen, and anti-catabolite, as well as a powerful immune system enhancer properties. The most common accolades of CLA research to date has been the assistance in fat burning while building and retaining lean muscle.
The most common suggested benefits of CLA use.

Increased metabolic rate: This is a benefit for anyone trying to stay lean and improve body composition.
Enhanced Muscle Growth: CLA looks to shuttle excess calories away from your fat cells and towards your active muscle tissue. More muscle means a higher metabolic rate and more fat burning.
Lowers cholesterol and triglycerides: Research suggest CLA may be a good natural alternative to prescription pills for treating high cholesterol and triglyceride levels.
Lower insulin resistance: CLA research looks to have a promising effect on lowering insulin resistance, which has been shown to help prevent adult-onset diabetes and can help with weight management.
Enhance immune system: No need to explain why this is beneficial, got to keep healthy to keep active.

A supplement actually shown to help you drop body fat and increase lean muscle!

CLA supplementation has been shown to improve lean mass to body fat ratio, decreasing your fat stores, especially in the abdomen and enhancing lean mass. One of the ways CLA achieves this reaction is by enhancing the insulin sensitivity so that fatty acids and glucose can pass through the muscle cell membranes and away from your fat cells. It will literally shuttle calories away from your fat stores and to your muscle tissue for increased growth, thus improve overall body composition.

Why do we need to supplement CLA if we eat plenty of its dietary sources?

Unfortunately changes in the way modern society feeds its cattle has not helped us in this regard and we have seen a decline in CLA content of our dairy and meat products since 1960.
For cows to have the best possible CLA content they need to be grazing on green grass rather than artificially fattened in feed lots. Studies have shown that the meat from grass-fed cows can contain up to four times the amount of CLA as their non-grass eating counterparts. Today’s dairy products alone have only about one third of the CLA content they used to have before the 1960’s.
CLA is chemically related to linoleic acid, but appears to have opposite effects in certain important areas. For instance, linoleic acid stimulates fat formation in adipose tissue, while research supplest that CLA inhibits fat formation. Another difference lies in tumor formation; linoleic acid tends to promote tumor growth as it is quite inflammatory. While research suggests that CLA is a inhibitor of tumor development.

Research

Researchers from Norway studied a group of healthy but overweight men and women, who were given 1.7g, 3.4g, 5.1g or 6.8g of CLA per day. All groups showed a significant reduction in body fat and increase in lean mass, but the effects were much less in the lower range of CLA supplementation. All groups did however show a reduction in blood fat and cholesterol levels.
Subsequently, Swedish researchers studied 25 obese men ages 39–64 for four weeks and found that those taking 4.2g of CLA per day showed an average loss of waist circumference of 1.4cm.

Conclusion

A deficiency of CLA in the diet may be a major factor in causing so many people to gain fat. CLA is a potent anti-oxidant, anti-carcinogen, and anti-catabolite, as well as a powerful immune system enhancer. While CLA is an anti-oxidant it appears to prevent cancer via other mechanisms of action.
If you are thinking about trying to increase your dietary CLA naturally think again. If you wanted to get the benefits shown in CLA research, you would have to consume at least 500g of mostly saturated fat, each day to get meaningful amounts, which would be about 3 grams. That is over 4,500 calories per day just from fat alone! Therefore if you want to get your CLA intakes to the levels used in research, you must supplement CLA.
Summer is around the corner, don’t wait too long to get beach ready. Come check out our range of CLA.

Source:
http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/mike8.htm