Shed excess weight safely with OPTI-CAP
Here’s a safer way to lose weight effectively, all through the amazing abilities found in astaxanthin and black pepper. With OPTI-CAP, you can boost your metabolism.
Using the combined powers of both astaxanthin and black pepper extract, piperine, OPTI-CAP can help you make faster progress with your weight-loss programme. Add regular exercises and even intermittent fasting, you will get to your ideal weight sooner than you think.
OPTI-CAP is formulated with clinically proven active ingredients: BioPerine® Piperine & Astareal® Astaxanthin that helps you to achieve your healthy weight loss goals, naturally and scientifically.
But what makes both astaxanthin and black pepper extract in OPTI-CAP so effective?
Piperine, the black pepper power source
As the most traded spice since antiquity, black pepper (Piper nigrum) has earned the royal title of ‘The King of Spices’. A native of the Malabar Coast in Southwest India, it first gained widespread use along the pathways that will eventually become the Silk Road, enhancing the taste of food.
The spice contains a bioactive compound called piperine, which gives it the distinct hot, spicy flavour. This compound is also why black pepper has become an accepted supplement with many health benefits.
As a patented black pepper extract, BioPerine® contains at least 95% piperine and has undergone clinical studies in the United States and several other countries, proving its safety and efficacy as a supplement.
Besides having the potential to assist the body’s absorption of some compounds that have low bioavailability, such as curumin, piperine is also shown to promote healthy weight loss.
Fat-burning potential
Similar to most spices, such as chillies and ginger, black pepper powder generates a metabolic process that produces energy at the cellular level in the body, called thermogenesis.
It increases sweating, reduces water retention, eliminates toxins accumulated within the body and raises the basal metabolic rate (BMR) in the body. BMR is a good indicator of how efficient your body is as it shows how much calories your body needs in order to perform basic functions while resting.
Knowing your BMR puts you in a better position to manage your weight, either for gaining, losing or maintaining, as it gives you an idea of how much to consume by counting the amount of calories you eat. BMR is also shown to increase with more muscle mass, which is why including resistance training in your workouts helps to burn more fat.
Piperine breaks down fat cells, especially when you fast or exercise in a process called lipolysis, which hydrolyses stored energy in the form of fat to power the body.
In a 2017 study by Kim, Jisu et al, stated that: “Our findings demonstrate that piperine promoted beneficial metabolism during exercise by regulating carbohydrate/fat metabolism and redox signals. Therefore, piperine may be a candidate supplement for improvement of exercise ability”1.
In a 2019 study by Arner et al, it was proven that lipid, or fat, removal rate decreases during ageing. This lipid turnover, which is the capacity to store and remove lipids, slows down as we get older, causing the body to gain excessive fat, especially if we do not adjust to this slowdown.
However, recent scientific studies have also shown that piperine shows promising anti-obesity effects that interfere with the activity of genes responsible for the formation of new, mature fat cells. A research team led by Park, Ui-Hyun et al in 2012 showed that piperine has the ability to interfere with the genes that help form fat cells, potentially reducing the chance for obesity2.
Astaxanthin, the antioxidant powerhouse
From the ‘King of Spices’, we now introduce the ‘King of Carotenoids’, astaxanthin.
This naturally occurring blood-red pigment comes from a freshwater microalgae called Haematococcus pluvialis, which forms a nutritional source in the marine food chain.
Because of that, it gives salmon, crabs and shrimps their characteristic red-orange colouration on their bodies. Initially used as a commercial food additive in the aquaculture industry, it was later discovered to be a potent antioxidant, with broad anti-inflammatory properties.
After countless clinical studies, astaxanthin shows many beneficial applications in health, just in the past two decades.
Promoting better metabolism
Astaxanthin works at the cellular level. In a study3 by Ikeuchi, Mayumi et al in 2007, inhibited the increases in body weight and weight of adipose tissue that result from feeding a high-fat diet in mice.
They concluded that, “These results suggest that astaxanthin might be of value in reducing the likelihood of obesity and metabolic syndrome in affluent societies.”
The results show that astaxanthin “ameliorates insulin resistance by mechanisms involving the increase of glucose uptake, and by modulating the level of circulating lipid metabolites and adiponectin.” Adiponectin plays an important role in reducing insulin resistance, which can lead to obesity and diabetes4.
When the body is more sensitive to insulin, it becomes more efficient at metabolising blood sugar, hence lowering the accumulation of fat in the body. If the body becomes insulin resistant, the accumulation of that hormone will induce the body to burn more carbohydrates than fat, which increases the urge for carb-rich foods and inadvertent weight gain5.
Furthermore, astaxanthin encourages the production of a hormone called adiponectin, which regulates how the body uses glucose and fats. When a person has a higher accumulation of fat in his or her body, the body could have low adiponectin levels and high levels of inflamed fat cells.
One reason for fat cells to become inflamed is due to visceral fat, which lies within the abdomen and lines the various organs in there. Excessive visceral fat causes fat cells to be inflamed and this in turn, interfere with normal hormonal functions and communication between body cells, affecting hunger levels, weight, brain function, and other areas of your health.
But thanks to a first-ever randomised, placebo-controlled human study by Yoshida, Hiroshi et al, suggested that astaxanthin consumption increases adiponectin in humans6. The increased adiponectin secretion shrinks inflamed fat cells and reduces the rebound effect of fat cells multiplying.
It potentially reverses the unhealthy status of fat cells and improves insulin sensitivity. This, in turn enhances glucose utilisation and fat burning so you can attain your ideal healthy weight.
And when taken together with exercise, astaxanthin offers the best fat-busting effect, better than just exercise or taking supplements alone. So body fat reduction is about increasing metabolism in the muscle and this works in sync with exercise.
OPTI-Cap boosts effects of exercise
As everyone knows, exercise is important for a healthy being to maintain good health. Exercise itself can help you with your weight, reduce risks of heart diseases and even manage blood sugar and insulin levels.
Exercise also releases endorphins, which help alleviate your mood and invariably your mental health. It also helps pump blood, an essential biological component, throughout the whole body, keeping your mental faculties sharp as you progress age gracefully.
And looks like astaxanthin can complement exercises, thanks to its powerful antioxidative characteristic that protects muscle mitochondria and related components against oxidative stress such as the enzymes located within the mitochondrial membranes.
This was shown in a 2020 study7 which revealed that astaxanthin promotes muscle health by reducing oxidative stress.
The idea is that it lowers lactic acid, muscle fatigue and soreness while boosting power output and accelerates body fat reduction.
This is further backed up by a study by Djordjevic, B et al., which showed that astaxanthin supplementation could prevent exercise-induced free radical production and the depletion of non-enzymatic antioxidant defense8.
It helps increase muscle strength and endurance, hence it will improve recovery from lactic acid and muscle soreness. In fact, during the Olympic Games 2020 in Japan, athletes were sponsored by Astareal astaxanthin throughout the training and competition.
Astaxanthin’s ability to increase lipid metabolism in the muscle combined with exercise encourages body fat reduction.
Dosage administration/suggestion
Take 1 capsule of OPTI-Cap a day after breakfast, then another capsule before turning in for the night.
SUMMARY: OPTI-CAP supports healthy weight management through
- Increasing thermogenesis
- Enhancing metabolism
- Improving metabolic syndrome
- Acting as a fat burner to shrink fat cells
- Enhances muscle strength and recovery
References
- Kim, Jisu et al. “Piperine enhances carbohydrate/fat metabolism in skeletal muscle during acute exercise in mice.” Nutrition & metabolism vol. 14 43. 4 Jul. 2017, doi:10.1186/s12986-017-0194-2
- Park, Ui-Hyun et al. “Piperine, a component of black pepper, inhibits adipogenesis by antagonizing PPARγ activity in 3T3-L1 cells.” Journal of agricultural and food chemistry vol. 60,15 (2012): 3853-60. doi:10.1021/jf204514a
- Ikeuchi, Mayumi et al. “Effects of astaxanthin in obese mice fed a high-fat diet.” Bioscience, biotechnology, and biochemistry vol. 71,4 (2007): 893-9. doi:10.1271/bbb.60521
- Mashhadi et al. (2018). Astaxanthin improves glucose metabolism and reduces blood pressure in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus. Asia Pacific journal of clinical nutrition. 27. 341-346.
- Saravanan Bhuvaneswari, Elumalai Arunkumar, Periyasamy Viswanathan, Carani Venkatraman Anuradha, Astaxanthin restricts weight gain, promotes insulin sensitivity and curtails fatty liver disease in mice fed a obesity-promoting diet, Process Biochemistry, Volume 45, Issue 8, 2010, Pages 1406-1414, ISSN 1359-5113, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.procbio.2010.05.016.
- Yoshida, Hiroshi et al. “Administration of natural astaxanthin increases serum HDL-cholesterol and adiponectin in subjects with mild hyperlipidemia.” Atherosclerosis vol. 209,2 (2010): 520-3. doi:10.1016/j.atherosclerosis.2009.10.012
- Wong, Sok Kuan & Ima-Nirwana, Soelaiman & Chin, Kok Yong. (2020). Effects of astaxanthin on the protection of muscle health (Review). Experimental and Therapeutic Medicine. 20. 10.3892/etm.2020.9075.
- Djordjevic, B et al. “Effect of astaxanthin supplementation on muscle damage and oxidative stress markers in elite young soccer players.” The Journal of sports medicine and physical fitness vol. 52,4 (2012): 382-92.
