How Does Apple Cider Vinegar Work?

Video Transcript

"My name is Christine Marquette and I'm a registered dietitian with The Austin Regional Clinic and I am going to talk to you about how apple cider vinegar works. Now there are a lot of folk tales about apple cider vinegar for a variety of uses whether it is curing cancer, losing weight, controlling diabetes, killing head lice. There has a variety of things that apple cider has been reported to be useful for. Now there actually isn't a lot of scientific data backing up most of these uses. There are a few studies that show potential. A couple of these studies show potential particularly with diabetes. Some of the studies show the initial studies show that apple cider vinegar or really any vinegar for that matter for some reason the acidic acid seems to lower the absorption of carbohydrates and hence lowers blood glucose levels. Again that is in the very early stages of research and that is one potential roll for apple cider vinegar. But again we can't really recommend it for that use because it is very limited data. The same thing with weight loss. There is very limited data there and kind of related to the diabetes research, it eventually does slow the absorption of carbohydrates or allow your body to not digest all of the carbohydrate you consume. There is a potential for digesting fewer calories hence a small modest amount of weight loss. Again very preliminary research, it isn't exactly known for sure if that is how it is working if it actually is preventing some carbohydrate digestion or if it is just making your insulin response more efficient so the primary sources of apple cider vinegar would be in either liquid form or tablet form and in the research that has been done the tablet form did not work because it did not contain the acidic acid whereas the liquid form did so that is something to keep in mind. Using apple cider vinegar is not necessarily a health risk you can definitely include it in salad dressings, in pickling products so from that perspective you can definitely use it as part of your normal diet but again there isn't a lot of research that shows hard evidence that it will cure any particular condition so keep in mind when using apple cider vinegar. Use it more because you want to have it as part of a salad dressing or as a pickling process not because you are relying on it to treat health conditions."