Early, small, conflicting, or animal-only. Not actionable alone.
The calorie number on the thumbnail is about triple what was measured, and the trials came up short on fat. So why does anyone lose weight dancing? We think the answer is a calendar, not a calorie table.
A new randomised trial measured thigh muscle by MRI before and after. The loss is real, lifting halved it, and the number that actually moved was protein.
Thirty Japanese adults, sixteen weeks, and cognitive scores that rose and then fell again a month after the tablets stopped. An independent panel says nobody has repeated it.
The confident objection is that your gut destroys it. A six-month trial in 54 people says body stores rose by a third. The unanswered question is whether that does anything for you.
One study links this plant to testosterone and it was done in male albino rats. Four years later the same three authors, at the same doses, reported enzymes leaking out of liver and kidney cells.
Eight men in a sealed metabolic chamber showed the mechanism plainly: alcohol speeds your metabolism up and stops your fat-burning cold. Then thirty-one population studies failed to find the weight gain.
The paper the ranges trace back to opens by saying no accepted ranges exist. It derived them from BMI cut-offs, needed your age and ethnicity to do it, and called the result provisional. That was 2000.
Thirty-one percent of American adults take one. After 84 randomised trials the task force could not say whether it helps or harms. There is one small real signal, and one ingredient they tell you to stop.
Across 16 randomised trials, protein source did not change strength or absolute lean mass. The one real edge for animal protein was 0.90 lb, in under-50s, and one of its intervals touches zero.
Something real does happen: blood levels of the vitamins go up. What has not been shown is that it buys you anything. The biggest brand's own trial ran thirty people for four weeks.