# Berberine for Fat Loss — Not Muscle Gain (Here’s Why)

## Метаданные

- **Канал:** High Intensity Health
- **YouTube:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmyUXH54k0M
- **Дата:** 01.02.2026
- **Длительность:** 13:36
- **Просмотры:** 11,193

## Описание

Berberine isn’t for everyone, but for people with insulin resistance and metabolic dysfunction, the benefits outweigh theoretical hormone concerns.

Here's the video that generated controversial comments: https://youtu.be/tAg4NmvmRg0

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-----------------------------------------Show Notes--------------------------------------

0:00 – Intro
0:20 – Paul Saladino says don’t take berberine
0:30 – What berberine is & why people use it
1:20 – Does berberine really lower DHT?
2:05 – The creatine + DHT contradiction
2:30 – Who berberine is actually for
3:12 – Metabolic health vs bodybuilding goals
3:45 – Appetite suppression & ketones
4:30 – Why context matters (PCOS, insulin resistance)
5:10 – Fat mass, aromatase & hormone changes
5:49 – Berberine, cravings & evening overeating
6:43 – Gut bacteria, incretins & GLP-1 effects
7:47 – Why berberine research changed everything
8:32 – Blood glucose monitors & glycemic variability
9:27 – Berberine’s effect on ketones (personal data)
10:19 – Possible mechanisms: microbiome & mitochondria
11:10 – When not to take berberine (training timing)
11:54 – Responding to Paul Saladino’s position
12:51 – Human studies vs cell & animal studies
13:35 – Final thoughts: nuance over binary thinking

## Содержание

### [0:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmyUXH54k0M) Intro

Paul Saladino doesn't recommend bourberine. Bourberine will decrease dihydrotestosterone. You shouldn't take bourberine. These are recently published comments on a video that I made all about the science of bourberine. So, let me just pause and talk about what the evidence actually says about bourberine hydrochloride, which as many of you know, I'm a big fan of because it's been used for 3,000 years. It has a huge

### [0:20](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmyUXH54k0M&t=20s) Paul Saladino says don’t take berberine

dossier of safety. There's multiple randomized placeboc controlled studies comparing bourberine to placebo for a natural way to optimize metabolic health. Now some people will take things

### [0:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmyUXH54k0M&t=30s) What berberine is & why people use it

from tissue culture studies and there was one study finding that bourberine has mild anti-androgen activity in the context of prostate cancer. So therefore it could be used as an adgivant to prostate cancer therapy. So people look at these tissue culture studies or animal model studies and say see you shouldn't take that. Well here's the thing about bourberine. Bourberine is an herb that has been used for again 3,000 years. It's a catalyst, meaning it can be used to help to optimize lifestyle changes specifically for people who have metabolic health problems. So, I want to address Paul Saladino's comment later, but I'll talk about this comment right here from Dan Po 918. That's his uh YouTube handle. He says, "Bourine bourberine affects DHT in a negative way, assuming you don't want to crush your DHT.

### [1:20](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmyUXH54k0M&t=80s) Does berberine really lower DHT?

Bourberine downregulates androgen receptors while inhibiting testosterone conversion to DHT. Lose weight, stop eating junk, uh, and carbs around exercise, blah, blah. Okay, so look, I agree with most of what he's saying, but here's the thing about DHT. Now, you know, we've talked a lot about creatine over the years. Well, there was one study finding that creatine in rugby players when they did a 20 gram load phase increased DHT. So then when I make videos about creatine, people like, don't take creatine, it causes hair loss. It increases DHT. So you all need to get consistent with your criticism here. On the one hand, you don't want to touch creatine because it increases DHT purportedly again. But that is largely an effect of the exercise induced increase in strength that have a compensatory response in the post-

### [2:05](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmyUXH54k0M&t=125s) The creatine + DHT contradiction

exercise window to increase androgen levels. So on the one hand, you're saying DHT is really bad, but now you're saying don't take bourberine because it will lower DHT. So which one is it? Right? Folks need to get really consistent with their messaging here. So, look, I'm not saying that bourberine is good for every single person on planet Earth. I'm not saying we should put bourberine in the water, but if you haven't noticed, about 93. 4% of US adults have some degree of poor metabolic health. You go to the grocery store, Chevron, you see

### [2:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmyUXH54k0M&t=150s) Who berberine is actually for

store, you go to the Chevron, you see rampant metabolic health here in America. Bourberine is a tool that can help those individuals with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, with insulin resistance, with high triglycerides, with increased waist to hip ratios, increased visceral atapost tissue. It's a tool because it guess what? It increases ketones. This is why I'm such a big fan of bourberine. I got a I and I know my conflicts of interest. Y'all, I have a supplement manufacturing facility as well as supplement company. I'm a huge fan of bourberine. I know our raw material vendor is uh wild harvesting bourberine from the Himalayan mountains. We work really closely with them. It's one of the best bourberines you can possibly buy in the world. I've experienced tremendous personal benefit from this as have my personal clients, friends, and family members. I've seen the changes. Bourberine is effective. Is

### [3:12](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmyUXH54k0M&t=192s) Metabolic health vs bodybuilding goals

it for everyone? Absolutely not. It's not. This is a tool for people who can't lose weight. This is what I'm recommending. So again, if you're trying to be a bodybuilder, why are you worried about taking bourberine? You just want to take steroids, do whatever. Like, you don't need this is not for you. I'm not recommending bourberine for everyone. Again, I'll make this very clear. Bourberine is a tool for people that have metabolic health challenges. insulin resistance, increased visceral adipos issue, you have a large abdomen, you have sleep apnea, you have non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, you have high triglycerides, you have low

### [3:45](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmyUXH54k0M&t=225s) Appetite suppression & ketones

HDL, you have high fasting insulin, pre-diabetes, which again is a lot of people out there. So that's why I make these videos. There's a lot of human clinical studies to suggest that bourberine is effective. And guess what? It's actually anti-androgenic for women as well in the context of polycystic ovarian syndrome. We know that PCOS is characterized by hyper androgen levels in women and those can lead to the insulin resistance and the symptomology that is related to PCO PCOS. So for all the people that are like bourberine's anti-androgenic what about DHT? 5 minutes ago you were complaining that creatine increases DHT so you shouldn't take it. So it's like these comments and I know all of you watching don't write these comments. It's a small subset of people but on the internet I see so much binary thinking. You know, you see one

### [4:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmyUXH54k0M&t=270s) Why context matters (PCOS, insulin resistance)

study in a tissue culture or an animal model and then you like apply that to every other study that comes out. It's like no, we have to have what's called nuance, nuanced thinking and the context. So the context of people who would benefit from bourberine are people who have a hard time improving their metabolic health or losing body fat. That's who it's helpful for. If you're trying to optimize muscular hypertrophy, bourberine's not for you. Now, it might help you, you know, suppress your appetite in the evening time if you dose it then. And that's not really an anabolic time anyway, right? You're going to bed. You're fasting, right? You don't need muscle anabolism, you know, at 9:00 p. m. at night, right? You

### [5:10](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmyUXH54k0M&t=310s) Fat mass, aromatase & hormone changes

actually should be more in a catabolic state and have this rhythmicity in your cyclical muscle protein synthesis to catabolic ratio. And so, you know, bourberine can be helpful for some bodybuilders potentially, especially if they're prone to overeating crap in the evening time, which can be counterproductive because guess what? One of the best ways to lower androgens in your body is to increase fat mass. We know that people who are insulin resistant and who are overweight or overfat more specifically tend to have increased conversion of testosterone to estrogens and they have lower dihydrotestosterone lower and receptor sensitivity increased estrogen aromatase

### [5:49](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmyUXH54k0M&t=349s) Berberine, cravings & evening overeating

all of these things. We know that as you get more and more overweight your fat cells actually start to increase the formation of this HSD1 I think it's called. This is an enzyme that uh can actually take testosterone. The aromatase enzyme uh can rip testosterone to estrogen, right? And so we know this to be true. We also know that as you get more overweight, sex hormone binding globbulin increases, which takes your free testosterone and binds it up to a proteinous like carrier in the serum that decreases the free testosterone levels to your cells. So really important to consider the context, friends. And this goes back to the whole premise and the nuance and the context of using bourberine for poor metabolic health. People that have metabolic syndrome, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, insulin resistance, you know, minor changes in androgen receptor sensitivity or DHT is not their concern. We're trying to get fat out of the

### [6:43](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmyUXH54k0M&t=403s) Gut bacteria, incretins & GLP-1 effects

liver. We're trying to suppress appetite. We're trying to prevent them from eating junk food and drinking soda pop. And this is exactly where bourbering comes in because if you haven't taken it before, you may not know this, but it has a nice appetite suppressant effect because it has it's speculated. We don't know all the mechanistic reasons why bourberine works, but it's theorized to affect the increin hormones within the gastrointestinal tract. Now because increins like GLP-1, GLP2, P Y you know all these gip one there's all these 26 different increin hormones are now a kitchen table topic conversation thanks to semiglutadin and ompc. We can talk about these things. Bourberine is a natural way to increase bacterial diversity as well as secretion of these critically important hormones. uh it might also have some peripheral effects, but we know that bourberine is actually really poorly absorbed because it's working within the gastrointestinal tract and affecting the diversity and the abundance and relative ratios of your uh intestinal ecology or your bacteria that then has a systemic effect in terms of appetite suppression. Um

### [7:47](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmyUXH54k0M&t=467s) Why berberine research changed everything

you know, the real reason why I got super excited about bourberine, I mean, I was actually a consultant for a company back in uh the mid 2000s, a company called Zyogen, and I saw all the research come out about bourberine. I'm like, we have to come out with this. Because back then, the practitioners that were prescribing more natural remedies for insulin resistance and diabetes, we didn't really have a lot of good tools. There was cinnamon, there was chromium, and venadium. Like, that was it. All the supplements for blood sugar, they all had those compounds in there. there was this sineuin uh patented uh cinnamon extract and these things but they really didn't work that well like they were fine but they didn't work that well and then the research on bourberine came out and I saw this in PubMed I remember exactly in 2009 where I was living in Colorado when the studies came out I emailed the executive committee of the company I was

### [8:32](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmyUXH54k0M&t=512s) Blood glucose monitors & glycemic variability

working for I'm like we have to come out with Bourberine they're like the data is not really that impressive I'm like are you kidding me like here's this study here's that study here's this and then now you know some 15 years later we have tons of data And we now have a lot of really good reviews. Check out myioscience. com. You can go to Amazon. Look at the bourbering fasting accelerator. Like this stuff actually works. And we have tons of research to support this. Again, in context for people that are struggling to lose those extra few pounds, struggling to decrease liver fat, and struggling to optimize their metabolic health. This is just one tool. It's not the only intervention. it is an option that folks could consider if they're not getting the results they want. And again, you know, in 2015 when I started to wear my blood glucose monitor, the Abbott Freestyle Libre, I noticed just how effective uh bourberine was at at really kind of squashing the peaks and valleys in your glucose. And we refer to

### [9:27](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmyUXH54k0M&t=567s) Berberine’s effect on ketones (personal data)

this more sort of clinically as glycemic variability. So, you really don't want a lot of variability, a lot of peaks and troughs in your glucose. You want a decreased glycemic variability. Tons of research to support why this is effective. I'm not going to get into, you know, the nuances there, but I found the other interesting thing is again taking bourberine decreased glycemic variability, which had an effect on appetite. You didn't have the cravings for the cookies and the crackers and the snacks. That was like, hm, how is this working? I was like, I wonder I was just curious like does bourberine increase ketone levels? And lo and behold, I had my precision extra ketone meter and I checked my ketones and boom, they were like 3 millmer. I'm like, okay, was this a oneoff? Was this did I take ketones that day? Did I take MCT oil? I was trying to figure it out. Day after day

### [10:19](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmyUXH54k0M&t=619s) Possible mechanisms: microbiome & mitochondria

when I would take Bourberine, 90 minutes later, my ketones were through the roof. And I was like, okay, something is going on here. And we know, of course, ketones have all sorts of signaling properties throughout the brain. They are anti-inflammatory. You can go down a whole rabbit hole on PubMed and type in NLRP3 inflammosome and ketones and like you'll be blown away at how ketones can affect immune signaling in the body, mitochondria functioning in the body. So it turns out that probably how bourbering is affecting ketone synthesis and increasing ketones is by way of changing the short- chain fatty acids from your gut bacteria in your colon. And we know that the healthier your microbiome is, the more butyric acid or butyrate that your largely bifidobacteria will make and that can be converted uh into uh ketone body. So that's one possible mechanism. It might

### [11:10](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmyUXH54k0M&t=670s) When not to take berberine (training timing)

affect the mitochondria and so forth, but that's why I get so excited about bourberine because this is a caloriefree way to increase levels of ketones in the body, which then of course can affect appetite and cravings for food, particularly hyper palatable junk food and things like that. So again, you know, if you're worried, if you're a bodybuilder and you're trying to optimize every pom mole of DHT, then don't take bourberine. It's really that simple. Or if you do take it, take it at night. You know, you don't want to take it around training. And I've been, I think, very clear over the past 10 years of making these videos that you shouldn't take bourberine around exercise. This is something that can specifically help you with cravings in the evening time. Now, someone says, "Well, Paul Saladino does not recommend bourberine. " Well, I know Paul Saladino.

### [11:54](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmyUXH54k0M&t=714s) Responding to Paul Saladino’s position

He's been in my house. We've had dinner. you've, you know, gone wakeboarding, like wake surfing. Uh, I generally agree with the things that he says, but as you might know, Paul Sadino changes his mind every 5 minutes. You know, one thing, one minute, you know, fruit and vegetables are the worst things that you could possibly have, and then now he's recommending honey, and then, you know, he's changing it. Well, fruit is okay, you know. So, what I like to look at is the prepoundonderance of evidence. There's multiple as I mentioned randomized control trials uh small pilot studies you know open label studies uh involving bourberine and it's clearly shown to been shown to be more effective or equally as effective as metformin for optimizing metabolic health and so for people specifically with metabolic health issues I don't see why we shouldn't consider this natural wildcrafted bourberine that has been used again in traditional Chinese medicine for 3,000 years I mean this is the thing that I think you know, again, all these new things I'm skeptical of ithr, NMN, NAD, all these stuff, but bourberine is

### [12:51](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmyUXH54k0M&t=771s) Human studies vs cell & animal studies

not is in a different category than those compounds because it's been used for so long and has a pretty good safety record. Uh, and then now we have the sort of empirical research from, you know, major institutions um and major journals that are finding that it's effective. So, those are my two cents on bourberine. Again, I appreciate your comments. I'm not trying to pick on anyone in particular, but um I do get irked at times when people are like the keyboard jockeyies and see one tissue culture or one animal model study or the rugby study in creatine saying, "Don't take creatine. It increases DHT. " It's like you're totally losing the forest through the trees. All right, folks. What are your thoughts? Let me know in the comments section below. As always, I'm grateful that you tune in at the very end.

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*Источник: https://ekstraktznaniy.ru/video/17284*