Almost forgot to get back to you on
Cyanidin 3-glucoside (c3g). Considering the lack of well-designed studies and clinical trials about this compound, there isn’t really an established guideline when it comes to dosage. When I was trying to get my hands on some C3G, it was hard to determine how much I’d need for a month supply due to the lack of studies on humans. Note I was trying to get my hands on some pharmaceutical grade C3G (
Cyanidin 3-glucoside chloride). In most of the studies I’ve gone through, dosage ranged anywhere from 150mg to 2000mg has been used. An article from T-Nation mentioned effective dose ranges from minimum 500 mg to 600 mg.
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Also according to T-Nation C3G is pretty expensive and has low bioavailability, but regarding these two points lots have changed over the years. The T-Nation article was written 11 years ago, so probably back then getting high quality C3G was difficult to come by.
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Effective C3G Dosing ( excerpt from T0Nation)
It's simple. Find raspberries or blueberries that actually contain high levels of C3G and then eat 12 pounds of them per day.
Too bad that's not really feasible. Besides, blueberries (and the other berries and their extracts) that contain C3G also contain quercetin and other compounds (anthocyanins and anthocyanidins) that can either inhibit or diminish the effects of C3G.
So, even if you had a bottomless pit of a stomach, it's literally impossible to eat enough blueberries or raspberries or berry extract to achieve any repartitioning effects from C3G.
And lastly, to make C3G even workable as a super-repartitioning compound, it needs to be formulated with enhanced bioavailability. So in summary, to be highly effective, you need a pure C3G compound that's bioengineered with enhanced bioavailability.
The only problem is, at the time we started this project, no one had produced C3G in a purified state and in quantities suitable for drug or supplement applications. The only pure C3G being sold was intended for research and it cost $1,200 for 100 mg. That means it would've cost more than $60,000 just to manufacture a single bottle of C3G!So if we wanted pure C3G, we had no other choice but to make it ourselves.
This may come as a surprise, but we started this project a little more than six years ago. In January, 2005, Biotest began working with a drug-development group to produce a pure C3G compound. This past January (2011) – exactly six years later – Biotest finally received its first bulk shipment of C3G. It's a good thing we stuck with the project, too, because other than the material we produced, there's currently no production quantities of C3G available anywhere in the world.
Still, there is a small handful of supplements on the market formulated with crude extracts that claim to contain C3G. But just as the case with fresh berries and berry extracts, none of these products contain the purified form of C3G or anywhere close to the amount of C3G required to be effective for nutrient repartitioning. Furthermore, none are designed to enhance the absorption of C3G.
When I tried to order C3G hydrochloride I was quoted
- 72g Cyanidin 3-O-glucoside chloride $350 USD (98% purity)
In terms of bioavailability, this is a wild assumption that I’m making so don’t quote me on this as no research has been conducted on the chloride form of C3G yet, but adding chloride to C3G could perhaps help in enhancing its bioavailability. Again this is a wild guess.
For those of you a bit familiar with pharmacology, if you notice lots of drugs will have chloride or hydrochloride (HCL) after their name. The reason for this is that some drugs require a salt to be added to them to ensure that they can dissolve in the stomach or be absorbed into the bloodstream. Sometimes salts make medicine more stable so that it has a longer shelf life. More than 50% of all available medicines exist as salts. Hydrochloride is the most commonly used salt, and 15.5% of all drugs contain it. In fact, when buying medication, there is one term you will probably see more than most, hydrochloride.
The reason why hydrochlorides are common in pharmaceuticals boils down to the fact that they are soluble. This means that their effectiveness as a form of medication increases when taken. This is because when the tablet dissolves after being taken, it can move through the bloodstream easier, making it a more effective treatment.
There are some medicines, for example metoprolol, that have two different salts (in this example metoprolol tartrate and metoprolol succinate). If a medicine has two different salts these are usually not interchangeable.
Other common salts include:
- sodium (9%)
- sulfate (4%)
- acetate (2.5%)
- phosphate or diphosphate (1.9%)
- chloride (1.8%)
- potassium (1.6%)
- maleate (1.4%).
The choice of salt primarily comes down to the pH of the medicine (this is how acidic or alkaline it is). Other factors that affect salt choice include the natural stability of the medicine, its intended use, how it is going to be administered (such as by mouth, by injection, or applied on the skin) and the intended dosage form (such as a tablet, capsule, or liquid).
Salts may also be added during the manufacture of a controlled-release form, to improve a medicine's taste, its effectiveness, to make it less painful if it is going to be injected or to extend the patent life.
Sorry for getting a bit too scientific there.
Back to C3G, considering that no studies have been conducted yet on the
C3G chloride, I’ve decided to wait a bit before going ahead and trying it. I’d definitely need to have a long discussion with someone who specializes in pharmacology. That being said, it’s a shame that there are very few studies out there conducted on humans and no appropriate dosage has been determined because CG3 really seems to have lots of potential:
- supports lean muscle mass growth
- reduces adipose tissue
- antioxidant and neuroprotective effects.
There’s this company that produces high quality C3G called
CyaniMax. But there again very few research.
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