By David Blyweiss, M.D.

Consuming fat to rid your body of fat may seem counterintuitive, but for one type of fat, it’s true! Conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) is a unique fatty acid in grass-fed meat and dairy that can actually help dieters reduce body fat. First isolated from grilled ground beef in the early 1980s, studies also suggest that CLA can help slow down cancer’s complex progression and tame inflammation.

Here’s how CLA works to discourage weight gain: When you take in more calories through food than you burn off through exercise, all those extra energy units have to go somewhere. If you’re like a lot of people, these calories wind up being deposited into your fat cells. Not only are jam-packed fat cells responsible for that expanding waistline, they also promote unhealthy changes in your blood pressure, cholesterol levels and, because of increased estrogen levels and pro-inflammatory cytokines, can lead to many chronic degenerative diseases.

CLA helps make life miserable for fat cells. First, it inhibits an enzyme called lipoprotein lipase that shuttles fat molecules from the bloodstream into the cells.  It encourages lipolysis, or the breakdown of fat that’s already in storage. In some studies, CLA has shown an ability to actually encourage fat cells to commit a form of cellular suicide called apoptosis—which results in fewer places for fat to hide. At the same time, CLA promotes the transport of fat into exercising muscle cells, helping them both burn off calories and become more toned.

In Norway, scientists from five separate institutions teamed up for a study involving people who were healthy but overweight. For the first year, two-thirds of the individuals took CLA while a third took placebo soft gels that contained olive oil. In the second year, everyone took CLA. At the end of two years, all the people in this study showed significant reductions in body fat, body mass index (BMI), a standard measure of obesity, and weight.

A meta-analysis featured in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition looked at 18 studies that examined CLA’s impact on body fat. They found that CLA, at an average dose of 3.2 g per day, helped reduce body fat and effectively prevented the fat regain typically experienced by yo-yo dieting. Other studies show that CLA works especially well in the presence of an anabolic stimulant, like resistance training or aerobic exercise.
While battling the bulge is a major goal for many people, fending off cancer may just be America’s number-one health concern. And here, too, CLA has come up big in a number of studies, such as a Swedish investigation that shows a link between high CLA intake and reduced colorectal cancer risk. Other research pinpoints this fat’s ability to also thwart breast cancer. CLA has been shown to interfere with tumor development and to keep cancerous cells from spreading to nearby organs.

What’s more, CLA appears to regulate immunity by helping to strengthen the body’s natural defenses while protecting against the inflammatory damage the immune response can cause. That’s important because low-level inflammation has been linked to an ever-growing list of disorders, including cancer, cardiovascular disease and arthritis.

So whether you are looking to lose weight, guard against cancer or keep inflammation at bay, CLA is your go-to nutrient. Most studies in humans have used 1.8 to 6 grams per day of CLA. But, since there is some evidence that too much CLA may boost lipoprotein(a) and blood glucose levels, I recommend taking no more than 3 grams of CLA daily, divided into three equal doses, for no more than three months at a time. During those three months, you can garner the most benefit from this figure-friendly fat by pairing it with a low glycemic diet, better sleep habits and a regular exercise program that combines both aerobic and resistance training.

References:

Gaullierm JM. Supplementation with Conjugated Linoleic Acid for 24 Months Is Well Tolerated by and Reduces Body Fat Mass in Healthy, Overweight Humans. Journal of Nutrition. 2005 135: 778-784.
Larsen AE. Effects of conjugated linoleic acid on myogenic and inflammatory responses in a human primary muscle and tumor coculture model. Nutrition and Cancer. 2009;61:687-695.

Taylor JS. Conjugated linoleic acid impairs endothelial function. Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology. 2006;26:307–312.

Whigham LD. Efficacy of conjugated linoleic acid for reducing fat mass: a meta-analysis in humans. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. 2007;85:1203-1211