The Benefits of Exercise in an Ingredient

Paul Clayton, PhD, chief scientific advisor for ingredients supplier Gencor, discussed the company’s new ActivAMP ingredient, introduced at Natural Products Expo West.  By activating an enzyme called AMPk (AMP-activated protein kinase), ActivAMP provides many of the same benefits as exercise, including healthy glucose levels, reduced body fat, and a healthy weight.

“Exercise switches on an enzyme called AMPk, which you can think of as a metabolic master switch,” Clayton explains. “When you do physical exercise, whether it’s fight or flight, you’re telling your body, through this enzyme system, don’t store calories; burn them, because we need energy. So when you switch this enzyme on, you stop depositing fat and you start burning it. You start increasing mitochondria activity and muscle performance and you start experiencing more glucose uptake, so you become insulin sensitive once again. You start losing belly fat. And your arteries become more flexible and your blood pressure comes down because your resting glucose is normalizing.”

ActivAMP is extracted from the adaptogenic herb Gynostemma pentaphyllum, which Clayton says is used traditionally in Korea as a tea for the elderly and infirm. Gencor offers the ingredient as a free-flowing powder, including for tablets and capsules. ActivAMP can take advantage of several health claims:

1)   Helps reduce body fat

2)   Helps promote moderate weight loss

These are backed by clinical research, including a 12-week randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study on 80 overweight human subjects that showed benefits, in the treatment group, for body fat mass, percent body fat, body weight and BMI, and total abdominal fat.