Acai Berries for Skin Care?
So Opera is at it again and the latest craze in health supplements is here: acai berries. If you’ve visited many websites recently, you’ve probably even seen a few banner ads for acai weight loss supplements. Acai berries are notable for a few reasons. Like so many other supplements, they are packed with antioxidants. Acai berries are said to possess even more antioxidant power than blueberries and blackberries. That’s well and good, but you know how I feel about antioxidants (when it comes to treating any real ailment, don’t expect much). More interesting are the other benefits of acai, namely its purported ability to both decrease your appetite and increase your metabolism. That certainly sounds like a powerful combination for weight loss. Some users have even noted that their skin tone improved, which caught my attention.
The claims of increasing your metabolism in a fashion that enhances your skin tone made acai sound quite similar to another supplement that I’m rather familiar with - vitamin B5. So I got to looking at how acai brings about these effects. Sources that actually explain *how* the acai berry works are pretty rare, but it turns out that the berry’s ability to improve your metabolism stems from the fact that it delivers a healthy dose of omega fatty acids (including omega 3’s, 6’s and 9’s).
While the acai berry contains these fatty acids, it does not provide them in a readily available form. It is much harder for your body to obtain these ingredients from acai, compared with sources such as fish oil, for example. This begs the question: If you want a more powerful metabolism boost, why not just take fish oil?
The unique thing about acai is that it also helps decrease your desire for food, thanks in part to its high fiber content. This is pretty unusual in a metabolism booster. Most products that have the same effect make you more hungry, not less. For instance, many vitamin B5 users notice an increased appetite as their metabolism ramps up from taking B5.
In any case, acai berries are certainly a powerful supplement with some great health benefits, but whether they’re the answer for you depends on what you’re looking for. If it’s mainly the metabolism benefits, you will probably get stronger effects from fish oil or vitamin B5, but considering the whole package, acai berries are still a nice option, just don’t expect dramatic changes overnight like some of the ads out there claim.
