PatenTrim Review

Jul 09 2008

awhite @ 9:31 am

Patentrim is my top contender in the weight loss category. We rank it first because its green tea component is decaffeinated which I am a fan of. It also has more clinically-backed ingredients than any other pill we’ve reviewed — at the right amounts.

PatenTrim’s Ingredients

ChromeMate (200 mcg) - Chromium Picolinate, as it stands on its own has conflicting research as to its efficacy in regulating blood sugar levels. However, ChromeMate has been clinically shown to be absorbed 18 times more than the standard chromium picolinate. The result: weight loss through blood sugar regulation. ChromeMate is expensive because it is a patented ingredient. As such, you’ll find competitor diet pills including (if any) perhaps 20-50 mcg. PatenTrim impresses us with their inclusion of the clinically correct amount: 200 mcg.

Super CitriMax (1,400 mg) - Super CitriMax’s active component is Hydroxycitric Acid, or HCA. Super CitriMax is actually a standardized level of HCA (which comes from the South Asian fruit Gardinia Cambogia). The nice thing about Super Citrimax is that it has a stimulating effect a la caffeine or green tea, without causing jitters. A few studies supporting Super Citrimax’s efficacy:

Asia Pac J Clin Nutr. 2007;16(1):25-9. Especially effective when combined with Gymnema sylvestre — you’ll see why that’s important in a moment.
Diabetes Obes Metab. 2004 May;6(3):171-80. The study was published again here, adding more legitimacy to the study.

Green Tea Decaffeinated 50% EGCG (1,000 mg) - Green tea is probably our favorite diet pill ingredient. It effectively ingreases the metabolism’s burn rate (which means you’ll be burning more calories and losing weight), has a whole slew of other healthy benefits, and is backed by more research than any other diet pill ingredient available today.

Also, please notice that PatenTrim’s green tea is decaffeinated. PatenTrim is specifically geared toward people that don’t do too great with higher doses of caffeine.

Probably most notable, PatenTrim includes 1,000 mg of green tea at 50% EGCG (think of EGCG as its potency). To give you a comparison, most other diet pills we’ve reviewed have anywhere from 50 mg to 150 mg. The minimum dosage required (based on piles of research) for effectiveness is north of 300 mg. PatenTrim has effectively tripled that. I could go on, but the points probably been made.

ForsLean - 10% Forskohlin (250 mg) - ForsLean is a patented (see the patent here) ingredient that’s been clinically proven to aid in fat lipolysis (burning fat) and retaining muscle mass. While you may not initially think this is such a big deal, it is a big deal! When you’re dieting and calories are being burned left and right, it’s important that you don’t lose muscle mass. Not only for health reasons, but also because you’ll look better as a result.

Also, muscle mass requires more calories to maintain. So a more muscular individual will, all else equal, have a higher caloric burn rate, resulting in lower bodyfat.

Some literature supporting Forskohlin as it relates to burning fat cells:

Horm. metabol. Res. 19 (1987), pp. 358-360
J. Pharmacology and Experim. Therapeutics 238 (1986), pp. 659-664
J. Pharmacology and Experim. Therapeutics 244 (1988), pp. 852-858.

Gymnema Sylvestre - 25% gymnemic acids (200 mg) - Gymnema is used to help control blood sugar levels. Anciently, people in India would chew a few leaves of Gymnema and it would suppress the taste of sugar (which some use to fight sugar cravings).

Studies conducted in India as early as 1930 showed that the leaves of Gymnema sylvestre cause hypoglycemia in experimental animals. This state of hypoglycemia is explained on the assumption that the drug indirectly stimulates insulin secretion of the pancreas, since it has no direct effect on carbohydrate metabolism. ((Source: http://www.gymnema.com/))

We regret we don’t have citations for those studies done in the 1930s. However, one study from 2005 validated the insulin secretion caused by Gymnema sylvestre: H Asare-Anane, GC Huang, SA Amiel, PM Jones & SJ Persaud (2005) Poster Presentations - Stimulation of insulin secretion by an aqueous extract of Gymnema sylvestre: role of intracellular calcium. Endocrine Abstracts, Volume 10 DP1.

BioPerine (5 mg) - Don’t balk at the seemingly low amount of BioPerine in PatenTrim. More isn’t needed. I’ll include a section of our own review regarding BioPerine. The gist of it is that it aids in absorbing nutrients — a critical component that most diet pills don’t look at.

Asian cultures anciently have used long and black pepper for medicinal/health purposes, but obviously actual research is much more welcome. To that end, this was of particular interest from the Department of Biochemistry and Nutrition, Central Food Technological Research Institute, Mysore, India ((Crit Rev Food Sci Nutr. 2007;47(8):735-48.)):

Many physiological effects of black pepper, its extracts, or its major active principle, piperine, have been reported in recent decades. Dietary piperine, by favorably stimulating the digestive enzymes of pancreas, enhances the digestive capacity and significantly reduces the gastrointestinal food transit time. Piperine has been demonstrated in in vitro studies to protect against oxidative damage by inhibiting or quenching free radicals and reactive oxygen species. Black pepper or piperine treatment has also been evidenced to lower lipid peroxidation in vivo and beneficially influence cellular thiol status, antioxidant molecules and antioxidant enzymes in a number of experimental situations of oxidative stress. The most far-reaching attribute of piperine has been its inhibitory influence on enzymatic drug biotransforming reactions in the liver. It strongly inhibits hepatic and intestinal aryl hydrocarbon hydroxylase and UDP-glucuronyl transferase. Piperine has been documented to enhance the bioavailability of a number of therapeutic drugs as well as phytochemicals by this very property. Piperine’s bioavailability enhancing property is also partly attributed to increased absorption as a result of its effect on the ultrastructure of intestinal brush border.

PatenTrim’s Proprietary Blend?

PatenTrim doesn’t hide behind the guise of a “proprietary blend”. They disclose every ingredient at every amount. We find this very, very refreshing. Fenphedra and Thermodrenix are the others that disclose. We recommend them as appropriate.

PatenTrim’s Marketing

We like the fact that their site isn’t full of hype. It doesn’t try and get you emotionally charged to make an irrational decision on some sub-par diet pill product. They’re making an effort to educate their visitors on the ingredients instead of filling their heads full of (probably fake) testimonials and (doctored) before & after photos.

No AutoShip Program

They don’t have one, and we like that.

PatenTrim Pricing

PatenTrim is priced at $69 per bottle. You will find other diet pills at a cheaper price but I suggest you pay a little extra and get ingredients that actually work. You do get discounts as you buy more bottles at a time.

A word should be said here about pricing for diet pills. You’ll find some costing as little as $25. The key though isn’t what it costs nearly as much as what you’re getting. With most every diet pill, you’re not getting enough ingredients to make even one iota of difference.

Now - be careful and don’t be duped by some pill that’s purposely SUPER expensive (Zantrex-3, those devious people from Basic Research, comes immediately to mind), where their whole focus is to make you think, because of the price point, that you really are getting something that’s top quality when you’re not.

In either case, look at the ingredients and then decide if the price fits your situation.

Lifetime Moneyback Guarantee

You can’t beat it. We like to see anything more than 60 days, so a lifetime guarantee obviously fits the bill, and then some.