Chris Shugart
Lean Body, Healthy Brain
Take this stuff for a happy, healthy brain. As a bonus, it'll keep you lean.
As a young lifter, I only bought supplements for muscle gain or fat loss. As a not-so-young lifter, I'm still chasing body composition improvements, but also healthspan goals. "Healthspan" is a long-overdue idea from biomedicine. It's not just about longevity; it's about living longer without disease and disability.
I've taken one body-composition supplement for years: C3G or cyanidin 3-glucoside (Buy at Amazon). C3G shrinks fat cells and limits fat storage while increasing and enhancing calorie-burning brown adipose tissue. It's like a natural glucose-disposal agent, allowing me to eat more carbs and use them for muscle gain instead of storing them as body fat.
Now, newer research shows that this same anthocyanin helps with my other goal: not becoming a sad, senile old fart.
C3G and the Brain
As we age, our brains start to get cranky. One of the things it does is accumulate amyloid-beta (Aβ) peptides, a fragment of a larger protein called amyloid precursor protein (APP) involved in normal brain function.
In healthy brains, Aβ is cleared efficiently, but this balance of clearance and production can get disrupted. Plaques form and neurons get oxidative damage. It leads to the hyperphosphorylation of the protein tau, causing neurofibrillary tangles. All of that is a fancy way of saying Alzheimer's disease.
A study published in the Journal of Neuroinflammation found that oral administration of C3G for 16 weeks reduced Aβ peptides. C3G also enhanced autophagy-related markers and improved synaptic plasticity, resulting in better cognitive function. This study was done on mice with Alzheimer's, but the results are promising.
Another review in the European Journal of Pharmacology highlighted the neuroprotective effects of C3G in central nervous system disorders. C3G exhibited preventive and therapeutic activities in conditions like cerebral ischemia, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and multiple sclerosis. It did this by inhibiting oxidative stress and neuroinflammation and modulating the signaling pathways related to neuronal survival and function.
Finally, a related study published in Foods found that adults who ate sticky black rice (a natural source of C3G) for five days showed improvements in anxiety, depression, and stress perception.
Overall, these studies suggest that C3G naturally supports brain health and mitigates cognitive decline associated with neurodegenerative diseases.
Where to Get C3G
Black rice, blackberries, and blueberries contain small amounts of C3G, but you'd have to eat buckets of them daily to get a pharmaceutical dose. Supplementally, Indigo-3G Nutrient Partitioning Agent (Buy at Amazon) contains 300 mg of C3G per serving in a specialized delivery system to increase bioavailability.
