Most diet pills simply try to mask the feeling of hunger. Some others try to boost the number of calories that you burn, or to block your absorption of some of the food that you eat. Almost all of them carry long lists of side effects. In this CLA supplement review, we’ll look at the ways that Tonalin CLA is different than these, and try to determine whether it is a diet pill that works safely and effectively.

Tonalin CLA is not a drug at all, but rather a nutrient found in human breast milk. This specific nutrient actually stimulates your body to start growing lean muscle tissue and to start shedding fat, all without any serious side effects. It seems to be particularly good for shedding fat that is stored around the abdomen—belly fat—which is a major problem area for many dieter. Belly fat is not only one of the least attractive types of body fat, but also among the most dangerous. Belly fat has been associated with Type II diabetes and cardiovascular disease, so focusing on shedding this type of fat is a good idea for more reasons than one.

Click here to buy Tonalin CLA on Amazon

CLA reveiws by people actually using the diet pill have been somewhat mixed. While many CLA reviewers report impressive fat loss, muscle gain, and improved results from exercise, other Tonalin CLA reviews describe no effect at all. That means that even though some hidden variable seems to be controlling the effectiveness of CLA, there is probably very little risk in trying it out. It could be that Tonalin CLA supplement only works with particular metabolic types, or even only within the context of a particular diet plan.

The good news is that no Tonalin CLA supplement user review I’ve yet come across has reported any side effects at all—a very good sign. Some of the research has suggested that certain people might experience some mild side effects of CLA, but these side effects rarely exceeded the side effects of placebos (which are plain sugar pills, meaning that the effect is psychosomatic.) The side effects you might encounter with CLA are the same kind of diffuse side effects you’d expect from anything, mostly diarrhea or nausea.

Because Tonalin CLA is one of the best weight loss pills by helping to build muscle and shed belly fat, it could be an ideal companion for several different types of dieters. Low carb diets such as the South Beach Diet or the Atkins Diet also focus in on losing belly fat, so supplementing with Tonalin CLA might be able to accelerate the progress of your low carb diet.

Tonalin CLA supplements could also be a good addition to a low fat or low calorie diet plan, as dieters on either of these plans run the risk of losing muscle mass, which makes it much more difficult to keep the weight off. Since Tonalin CLA may help to build new lean muscle mass, it could help to avoid this frustration while helping you to shed fat and feel good about the progress you’re making. On the low fat dieting page, I mention that many essential nutrients are fat soluble and so require some dietary fat in order to be properly absorbed, so I can see how taking CLA along with your other nutritional supplements could enhance absorption of some of those nutrients, like vitamin K and vitamin D.

Now that we’ve got the basics out of the way, let’s get into some more depth with the CLA supplement information that is and is not available at this time. A good place to start will be the actual scientific medical literature on CLA, finding out what it is, where it comes from, and what effects it does and doesn’t have on dieters. After that, we’ll take a look at what people who take CLA diet pills are experiencing in comparison to this.

CLA – Review of the Medical Literature

CLA, short for conjugated linoleic acid is a type of fatty acid called a trans fat. There’s been a lot of concern about artificial trans fats in the human diet recently, and for very good reasons, but certain types of trans fats do occur naturally and may actually be healthy. It is believed that CLA is one of these latter types of trans fats, and there are some reasons to believe that it may actually have significant health benefits.

This is one of the reasons why CLA is not listed on US food labels as a trans fat—it’s chemical structure, which is conjugated, causes it to react with the body in a different way than artificial trans fats which have been shown to cause cell mutation, cancer, arteriosclerosis, and all manner of unacceptable badness.

The main source of CLA in most peoples’ diets is from the meat and milk of ruminant animals like cows and sheep. People are able to produce their own CLA to a very limited extent, and as I mentioned earlier, CLA is also present in human breast milk. In fact, one recent study found that mothers who ate mostly “organic” meat and dairy products ended up with significantly higher levels of CLA in their own breast milk. Since the organic label simply means that the cows were not administered hormones or fed any grains grown with pesticides or fertilizers, I imagine that this effect would be even greater for mothers who ate only the beef and milk of cows raised the all-natural way, eating grass out on green pastures. You see, other studies have shown that cows that eat only fresh grass produce CLA in far greater quantities than cows fed the modern way, on dry hay and grain. Eggs are also a very rich source of CLA, and I’d be willing to bet that the eggs you see marked organic free range with extra Omega 3 probably have a lot more of it than their factory-farmed brethren.

CLA supplementation, as in a diet pill, is tricky, because CLA is actually more than just a single substance. It is actually an entire family of more than a dozen fatty acids that all have a similar chemical structures. Most studies of CLA supplementation have only paid attention to three or four of these, so it’s difficult to distinguish the possible effects of the full spectrum of CLA fats versus the limited spectrums that have been studied.

From the research that has been done, there does seem to be some good reasons to think that even the limited-spectrum CLA that has been studied is probably beneficial for humans. One of the most notable findings on CLA supplementation in humans has been a tendency toward reduced overall body fat and especially reduced abdominal fat when the supplement is taken by people who are healthy and get regular exercise. The most effective dose of CLA for fat loss, by the way, seems to be 3.4 grams per day.

However, there are still some things we’re not sure about with CLA supplementation. Some studies have shown that CLA increases total body glucose uptake, which is a good thing. However, studies have also indicated that it may reduce insulin sensitivity, which would be a bad and fairly contradictory thing. It could be that insulin is reacted to differently in the presence of CLA, or that CLA is processed differently in people with varying body types. Several studies have found no change at all in insulin sensitivity. Overall, I think it seems like there is no way to know exactly what is going on in this area just yet, but caution may be warranted before people who are seriously overweight or who suffer the effects of any metabolic syndrome begin supplementing with CLA.

There are also some concerns that CLA supplementation may increase your levels of C-reactive protein, which is an indicator that is used to determine how well your body’s system for using antioxidants to prevent cellular damage is working—higher levels mean there may be a problem. On the other hand, some researchers suggest that CLA may increase levels of glutathione, which is your body’s own natural super-antioxidant.

The scientists do not seem to know, at present, whether the effects of CLA on sugar and fat processing are entirely positive or negative. It is possible that the two are perfectly balanced, or that supplementing with CLA is simply a wonderful idea, or that it could actually cause some damage. The only research showing any actual potential for damage, however, has been on rats and baby chickens, so there is currently no evidence that CLA supplements are dangerous for humans.

Clinical trials on humans have shown no serious side effects in the recommend dose range (3 to 5 grams per day), and animal studies suggest that serious adverse effects are unlikely even at very high doses.

What is Tonalin CLA?

Tonalin CLA is a patented form of CLA based on a unique manufacturing process in which CLA is created from safflower oil. It is the best-selling form of CLA, and the manufacturer claims that their proprietary process for making CLA results in fewer non-natural forms of CLA than you might find in other synthetic CLA products. Personally, I wish they would just extract the stuff from eggs or milk, but since they’re not doing that I generally assume that animal-derived CLA may not be as cost effective.

Also, to the best of my knowledge, neither Tonalin nor any other manufacturer of CLA make known the final chemical composition of their products. Since, as I mentioned before, there are actually more than a dozen different chemicals that all fall under the umbrella of CLA, this means that there is no way to know how complete or narrow a spectrum of CLA you are actually consuming. For that matter, the research doesn’t go into much detail about the composition of naturally-occuring CLA from animal-based food products either.

Tonalin CLA Reviews

I love this product. I had been using a lower dosage, but bumped it up and see a huge difference in my thighs and belly fat. My legs have never looked better! No change in diet at all, but increase in walking (which I had done before but never had results like this from exercise alone) and I am loving my body.

I have been trying TonalinCLA for about 2 weeks and without changing my eating habits I have lost about 7lbs. I think that this is a very effective addition to my daily regimen.

Hate to be the negative one, but I can’t say I really saw or felt anything worth buying this product. Will not buy again. CLA has many health benefits, but as far as helping cut fat I can’t say it did a lot for me.

I used this product for six months using recommended dosage and above recommended dosage. I experienced no effect.

This worked well for me! I was already pretty lean when I started this product. It helped me get a deep 6 pack and in a few weeks and 8 pack…Yea Baby!! But after about 2 months of use I started to notice my stomach would get a bit upset when I took the first three pills in the morning on an empty stomach! So I had to eat something right away. No jitters, no high BP, or any of that associated with stimulants.

CLA came pretty highly recommended by fellow dieters on a support forum,and after only 7-10days I could see some mild results. However, after the entire bottle was gone, those initial results now seem paltry in comparison to the rave reviews CLA has garnered (to the point I now question whether it was CLA as much as the change in diet & increased exercise).

This stuff is fantastic! It has helped me cut cravings down to a minimum and I have dropped 5 pounds in 2 weeks. I also exercise and watch what I eat. Nothing is a miracle short of surgery/starvation, but this does work if used with a healthy menu and work out program.

I really like Tonalin CLA it helped me lose the last few pounds I needed to lose for a special event and my belly fat really shaped up quite a bit.