Unanswered Does Forskolin increase muscle growth?

[AML]

I have read that forskolin burns fat and increases muscle. How effective is it? I also read it can lower blood pressure. Does it have any negative effects on the heart? Any info would be appreciated. Thanks

 

[Resolve10]

I have read that forskolin burns fat and increases muscle. How effective is it? I also read it can lower blood pressure. Does it have any negative effects on the heart? Any info would be appreciated. Thanks

Probably the most relevant study.

I think it works best in fat loss and/or maintenance phases, maybe mitigating fat gain amount during a gaining phase.

No issues with heart that I have ever seen.

I am a big fan, I think it’s a great ingredient. Don’t expect huge muscle gains, but can expect better retention on a cut, with added potential benefits to testosterone and bone mass.

It’s short comings would be you don’t necessarily “feel” it (no alpha male feelings, increased pumps, etc) and some stomach discomfort in some.

 

[HIT4ME]

Like Resolve said - you won't feel this. It is a great ingredient, it is effective if you have proper expectations. Will it allow you to lose 20 pounds while eating at Wendys every day? Nope.

As far as heart health, it has some clinical application in heart failure patients - it can increase stroke volume and lower blood pressure to some degree. The only negative is possibly a mildly increased heart rate - but in my use I've never noted anything and I've never seen any of the people on this or any other board complain about it doing this to them to any noticeable degree where they even mentioned it. Also, lowering blood pressure could be a negative if you have already low BP.

Other sides include GI issues. If you have a pre-existing GI issue, Forskolin may increase stomach acid which can make this worse. Finally, large doses of forskolin can induce diarhea - forskolin increases cAMP, cAMP causes water migration into the intestines, and you get a sudden urge to run to the toilet.

There is a lot of marketing saying the diarhea doesn't occur with the higher % extracts, but I think this is marketing based on my experience and logic. 20 and 50% extracts never gave me issues, while 90%+ extracts did. Logically if Forskolin = more cAMP and more cAMP = more water in the intestines, then a less diluted amount of foskolin will increase cAMP more rapidly, thus increasing water infiltration more rapidly and causing diarhea. On the flip side, maybe some people do absorb it quickly enough that the higher extracts do allow it to get absorbed and distributed before it can hang out in the intestines and cause the water infiltration....you may have to experiment if you have issues.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1696672

 

[sdplissken]

Never noticed anything from it. I used the 10%, 20% and 95% extracts. A mild laxative effect and nothing else. As a word of caution I wouldn't use it with tamoxifen during pct.

Tamoxifen resistance by a conformational arrest of the estrogen receptor α after PKA activation in breast cancer

Using a novel approach that detects changes in the conformation of ERα, we studied the efficacy of anti-estrogens to inactivate ERα under different ex…

www.sciencedirect.com

 

[AndroRage]

Probably the most relevant study.

I think it works best in fat loss and/or maintenance phases, maybe mitigating fat gain amount during a gaining phase.

No issues with heart that I have ever seen.

I am a big fan, I think it’s a great ingredient. Don’t expect huge muscle gains, but can expect better retention on a cut, with added potential benefits to testosterone and bone mass.

It’s short comings would be you don’t necessarily “feel” it (no alpha male feelings, increased pumps, etc) and some stomach discomfort in some.

Interesting post, with mitigating fat gain, your referring to GDA type effects or the increase in cAMP? Or I’m way off? How much you used successfully?

 

[Resolve10]

Interesting post, with mitigating fat gain, your referring to GDA type effects or the increase in cAMP? Or I’m way off? How much you used successfully?

The cAMP.

50mg for 12-16 weeks for a noticeable and subtle boost during mass phases is great.

Up to 100mg for shorter periods of fat loss if you can tolerate it.

Paired with a beta agonist provides great synergy. With a ppar agonist (DCP or TTA when it was available) were some of the best fat loss periods I’ve had.

 

[AndroRage]

The cAMP.

50mg for 12-16 weeks for a noticeable and subtle boost during mass phases is great.

Up to 100mg for shorter periods of fat loss if you can tolerate it.

Paired with a beta agonist provides great synergy. With a ppar agonist (DCP or TTA when it was available) were some of the best fat loss periods I’ve had.

Thanks for the detailed response. I may give it ago and try stack with a beta agonist.

Ah yeah I remember DCP... is there any other post agonists as only other I know of is Cardarine I believe? I can imagine the synergy for non-stim fat loss

 

[_Endure_]

Who is making a good 95% besides PES? This is one of those supplements you hear about but never really get a good feel for if it works or not. Alot of claims from the supp companies promoting, a lot of differing opinions in real world though.

 

[De__eB]

Who is making a good 95% besides PES? This is one of those supplements you hear about but never really get a good feel for if it works or not. Alot of claims from the supp companies promoting, a lot of differing opinions in real world though.

Interestingly enough, Sabinsa's patent on Forskolin literally expired today, so in the next year or so you might see more people come to market with high % extracts

 

[AML]

The cAMP.

50mg for 12-16 weeks for a noticeable and subtle boost during mass phases is

The cAMP.

50mg for 12-16 weeks for a noticeable and subtle boost during mass phases is great.

Up to 100mg for shorter periods of fat loss if you can tolerate it.

Paired with a beta agonist provides great synergy. With a ppar agonist (DCP or TTA when it was available) were some of the best fat loss periods I’ve had.

For mass phases does forskolin have any benefits other than fat loss?Does it increase gains in muscle at all or just keep you leaner?

 

[Resolve10]

Interestingly enough, Sabinsa's patent on Forskolin literally expired today, so in the next year or so you might see more people come to market with high % extracts

That’s pretty cool, thanks for the heads up.

For mass phases does forskolin have any benefits other than fat loss?Does it increase gains in muscle at all or just keep you leaner?

Not much to go on with that, but theoretically the boost in cAMP and minor other positive effects could help.

Muscle building is already a slow process, especially considering it’s speed in comparison to say fat loss. So even if it doesn’t directly increase muscle accrual the benefit of possibly slowing fat gain during the muscle gaining process (altering for a positive p-ratio) should only just make a muscle gain phase more effective by allowing you to gain more muscle before cutting down and/or having less fat to “get rid of” when you do shift to a fat loss focused phase.

 

[comeback20]

That’s pretty cool, thanks for the heads up.



Not much to go on with that, but theoretically the boost in cAMP and minor other positive effects could help.

Muscle building is already a slow process, especially considering it’s speed in comparison to say fat loss. So even if it doesn’t directly increase muscle accrual the benefit of possibly slowing fat gain during the muscle gaining process (altering for a positive p-ratio) should only just make a muscle gain phase more effective by allowing you to gain more muscle before cutting down and/or having less fat to “get rid of” when you do shift to a fat loss focused phase.

I heard great things a out Carbolin19 from Biotest as superior Forskolin extract and better absorption..anyone tried it?

 

[mastah]

not enough to see a difference, save your money

 

[aaronuconn]

Like Resolve said - you won't feel this. It is a great ingredient, it is effective if you have proper expectations. Will it allow you to lose 20 pounds while eating at Wendys every day? Nope.

As far as heart health, it has some clinical application in heart failure patients - it can increase stroke volume and lower blood pressure to some degree. The only negative is possibly a mildly increased heart rate - but in my use I've never noted anything and I've never seen any of the people on this or any other board complain about it doing this to them to any noticeable degree where they even mentioned it. Also, lowering blood pressure could be a negative if you have already low BP.

Other sides include GI issues. If you have a pre-existing GI issue, Forskolin may increase stomach acid which can make this worse. Finally, large doses of forskolin can induce diarhea - forskolin increases cAMP, cAMP causes water migration into the intestines, and you get a sudden urge to run to the toilet.

There is a lot of marketing saying the diarhea doesn't occur with the higher % extracts, but I think this is marketing based on my experience and logic. 20 and 50% extracts never gave me issues, while 90%+ extracts did. Logically if Forskolin = more cAMP and more cAMP = more water in the intestines, then a less diluted amount of foskolin will increase cAMP more rapidly, thus increasing water infiltration more rapidly and causing diarhea. On the flip side, maybe some people do absorb it quickly enough that the higher extracts do allow it to get absorbed and distributed before it can hang out in the intestines and cause the water infiltration....you may have to experiment if you have issues.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1696672

I’m not posting this to fear monger or anything, but the below study (yes, it’s in mice) shows that the constitutes of Coleus Forskohlii may cause acute hepatotoxicity (just to be safe, I’ll one again say this is in the murine model ).

Essentially, when mice were given pure Forskolin, the hepatotoxicity wasn’t noted. Therefore the Forskolin in Coleus Forskohlii wasn’t causing the hepatotoxicity, rather the other constitutes in Coleus Forskohlii were.

Dietary Coleus forskohlii extract generates dose-related hepatotoxicity in mice - PubMed

Coleus forskohlii root extract (CFE) represented by its bioactive constituent 'forskolin' is popularly used as a natural weight-lowering product, but the association of its use with liver-related risks is very limited. In the present study, the effect of standardized CFE with 10% forskolin on...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

 

[aaronuconn]

Like Resolve said - you won't feel this. It is a great ingredient, it is effective if you have proper expectations. Will it allow you to lose 20 pounds while eating at Wendys every day? Nope.

As far as heart health, it has some clinical application in heart failure patients - it can increase stroke volume and lower blood pressure to some degree. The only negative is possibly a mildly increased heart rate - but in my use I've never noted anything and I've never seen any of the people on this or any other board complain about it doing this to them to any noticeable degree where they even mentioned it. Also, lowering blood pressure could be a negative if you have already low BP.

Other sides include GI issues. If you have a pre-existing GI issue, Forskolin may increase stomach acid which can make this worse. Finally, large doses of forskolin can induce diarhea - forskolin increases cAMP, cAMP causes water migration into the intestines, and you get a sudden urge to run to the toilet.

There is a lot of marketing saying the diarhea doesn't occur with the higher % extracts, but I think this is marketing based on my experience and logic. 20 and 50% extracts never gave me issues, while 90%+ extracts did. Logically if Forskolin = more cAMP and more cAMP = more water in the intestines, then a less diluted amount of foskolin will increase cAMP more rapidly, thus increasing water infiltration more rapidly and causing diarhea. On the flip side, maybe some people do absorb it quickly enough that the higher extracts do allow it to get absorbed and distributed before it can hang out in the intestines and cause the water infiltration....you may have to experiment if you have issues.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1696672

I’m not posting this to fear monger or anything, but the below study (yes, it’s in mice) shows that the constitutes of Coleus Forskohlii may cause acute hepatotoxicity (just to be safe, I’ll one again say this is in the murine model ).

Essentially, when mice were given pure Forskolin, the hepatotoxicity wasn’t noted. Therefore the Forskolin in Coleus Forskohlii wasn’t causing the hepatotoxicity, rather the other constitutes in Coleus Forskohlii were.

Dietary Coleus forskohlii extract generates dose-related hepatotoxicity in mice - PubMed

Coleus forskohlii root extract (CFE) represented by its bioactive constituent 'forskolin' is popularly used as a natural weight-lowering product, but the association of its use with liver-related risks is very limited. In the present study, the effect of standardized CFE with 10% forskolin on...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

 

[muscleupcrohn]

I’m not posting this to fear monger or anything, but the below study (yes, it’s in mice) shows that the constitutes of Coleus Forskohlii may cause acute hepatotoxicity (just to be safe, I’ll one again say this is in the murine model ).

Essentially, when mice were given pure Forskolin, the hepatotoxicity wasn’t noted. Therefore the Forskolin in Coleus Forskohlii wasn’t causing the hepatotoxicity, rather the other constitutes in Coleus Forskohlii were.

Dietary Coleus forskohlii extract generates dose-related hepatotoxicity in mice - PubMed

Coleus forskohlii root extract (CFE) represented by its bioactive constituent 'forskolin' is popularly used as a natural weight-lowering product, but the association of its use with liver-related risks is very limited. In the present study, the effect of standardized CFE with 10% forskolin on...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

For reference, the HED based on that study, which based the doses on percent of the rodents’ diet, would be roughly:

.005% of diet: 39mg for an 80kg person
.05% of diet: 392mg for an 80kg person
.5% of diet: 3,917mg for an 80kg person
5% of diet: 37,856mg for an 80kg person

It looks like the adverse effects were noted in the 0.5% and 5% of diet conditions, which gives you forskolin doses of ~392 and 3,785mg forskolin assuming they 10% standardization, which is the lowest I’ve seen any standardized extract at. Assuming you’re doing a standard 50mg forskolin per day, even at only 10%, that’s 500mg/day, which is just over the 0.05% HED from the study above.

 

[muscleupcrohn]

I’m not posting this to fear monger or anything, but the below study (yes, it’s in mice) shows that the constitutes of Coleus Forskohlii may cause acute hepatotoxicity (just to be safe, I’ll one again say this is in the murine model ).

Essentially, when mice were given pure Forskolin, the hepatotoxicity wasn’t noted. Therefore the Forskolin in Coleus Forskohlii wasn’t causing the hepatotoxicity, rather the other constitutes in Coleus Forskohlii were.

Dietary Coleus forskohlii extract generates dose-related hepatotoxicity in mice - PubMed

Coleus forskohlii root extract (CFE) represented by its bioactive constituent 'forskolin' is popularly used as a natural weight-lowering product, but the association of its use with liver-related risks is very limited. In the present study, the effect of standardized CFE with 10% forskolin on...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

For reference, the HED based on that study, which based the doses on percent of the rodents’ diet, would be roughly:

.005% of diet: 39mg for an 80kg person
.05% of diet: 392mg for an 80kg person
.5% of diet: 3,917mg for an 80kg person
5% of diet: 37,856mg for an 80kg person

It looks like the adverse effects were noted in the 0.5% and 5% of diet conditions, which gives you forskolin doses of ~392 and 3,785mg forskolin assuming they 10% standardization, which is the lowest I’ve seen any standardized extract at. Assuming you’re doing a standard 50mg forskolin per day, even at only 10%, that’s 500mg/day, which is just over the 0.05% HED from the study above.

 

[HIT4ME]

I have to look more into those studies, they are interesting. There is also some work that shows Foskolin has some CYP450 activity in mice as well.

Ultimately, however, as you pointed out we are talking rodents here and lots of stuff happens in rodents that don't happen in humans, good and bad.

Forskolin has been on the market for 20+ years, with 10-20% extracts being the standard for half that time, and those extracts are often used in the studies as well. I may be wrong, but I have never heard of a single case of liver damage associated with forskolin in a human. Hardly definative, but it is the best evidence we probably have atm.

 

[muscleupcrohn]

I have to look more into those studies, they are interesting. There is also some work that shows Foskolin has some CYP450 activity in mice as well.

Ultimately, however, as you pointed out we are talking rodents here and lots of stuff happens in rodents that don't happen in humans, good and bad.

Forskolin has been on the market for 20+ years, with 10-20% extracts being the standard for half that time, and those extracts are often used in the studies as well. I may be wrong, but I have never heard of a single case of liver damage associated with forskolin in a human. Hardly definative, but it is the best evidence we probably have atm.

You would be correct from what I’ve read. Human studies using a standard dose seem to note no adverse effects on liver parameters (most didn’t seem to monitor it at all, but this one at least did):

In a double blind and randomized manner, 23 females supplemented their diet with ForsLean (250 mg of 10% CF extract, (n = 7) or a placebo [P] (n = 12) two times per day for 12-wks. Body composition (DEXA), body weight, and psychometric instruments were obtained at 0, 4, 8 & 12 weeks of supplementation. Fasting blood samples and dietary records (4-d) were obtained at 0 and 12-wks. Side effects were recorded on a weekly basis. Data were analyzed by repeated measures ANOVA and are presented as mean changes from baseline for the CF and placebo groups, respectively.

No clinically significant interactions were seen in metabolic markers, blood lipids, muscle and liver enzymes, electrolytes, red cells, white cells, hormones (insulin, TSH, T3, and T4), heart rate, blood pressure, or weekly reports of side effects.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2129145/

Given the existing research, and the rodent study noting the effects at doses much higher than what humans should be using, even at the lowest commonly used 10% extract, and the seemingly quickly reversible nature of said effects in the rodent study, I wouldn’t be overly concerned, but, that said, if I can get a 40% or a 95% extract for a similar price to a 10% extract, there’s no good reason not to.

 

[comeback20]

So nobody tried the Biotest Carbolin19?

 

[Resolve10]

So nobody tried the Biotest Carbolin19?

No reason to spend that much for Forskolin and no reason to think enhanced bioavailability (or whatever the angle they are using to sell this stuff) matters.

 

[crowbar46]

I've used Carbolin a number of times (none recently). I would have to disagree that it is no more effective than standard extracts: I found it to be considerably more effective for me. It's not only the increased bioavailability of the compound, but the increase in half-life with the attachment of the ester. However, the question really is, is it worth the price they charge? if you wait for the 20% discount, it is for me when I choose to use this supplement (which is not often).

Crowbar

 

[00A]

I've used Carbolin a number of times (none recently). I would have to disagree that it is no more effective than standard extracts: I found it to be considerably more effective for me. It's not only the increased bioavailability of the compound, but the increase in half-life with the attachment of the ester. However, the question really is, is it worth the price they charge? if you wait for the 20% discount, it is for me when I choose to use this supplement (which is not often).

Crowbar

How did you take it? I got a bottle ready to try, not sure how to incorporate in with existing stack

 

[HUTCHYY56]

It works great for just improving overall body composition. Especially effective stacked with yohimbine or EC. As for the percentage extract and GI issues, I use a 20% one and have no issues. I’ve also used a 95% one and had no issues, but the 20% is cheaper

 

[comeback20]

Hey so you confirm Carbolin19 is better than any other Forskolin...thats what I thought!

I've used Carbolin a number of times (none recently). I would have to disagree that it is no more effective than standard extracts: I found it to be considerably more effective for me. It's not only the increased bioavailability of the compound, but the increase in half-life with the attachment of the ester. However, the question really is, is it worth the price they charge? if you wait for the 20% discount, it is for me when I choose to use this supplement (which is not often).

Crowbar