'Thunder God Vine' The Miraculous Cure for Obesity? The Truth Revealed!

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A Chinese plant used in traditional medicine for various ailments caused massive weight loss in obese lab mice, according to a new study.

The thunder god vine is a plant frequently used in Chinese traditional medicine for arthritis and inflammation, according to the researchers. Its extract contains celastrol, a component that is found to have caused the extreme weight loss in obese mice, according to Discovery News.

Celastrol is said to be more effective for weight loss than bariatric surgery that involves reducing the size of the stomach—a surgical option for obese people to lose weight.

For the study, the researchers made use of obese mice and gave them high doses of the thunder god plant extract for one week. The mice that were given the compound ate 80 percent less food and in three weeks, lost 45 percent of their body weight.

The mice group that did not receive the compound maintained their eating habits and did not lose any weight at all.

The study was published this week in the journal Cell. Umut Ozcan, co-author of the study and physician at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children's Hospital, says that celastrol's weight-loss properties are the most effective compared to all weight-loss substances discovered so far.

The extract allows the body to be more sensitive to the hormone leptin, a substance that helps curb appetite in people with normal weights. However, it works differently in obese people because their "brains are deaf to leptin," Newsweek has learned

"During the last two decades, there has been an enormous amount of effort to treat obesity by breaking down leptin resistance, but these efforts have failed. The message from this study is that there is still hope for making leptin work," Ozcan said via Washington Post.

Additionally, researchers found out that celastrol also lowers the mice's cholesterol levels and increase liver function and glucose metabolism.

If such effects were to be found in human studies, Dr. Ozcan says that "it could be a powerful way to treat obesity and improve the health of many patients suffering from obesity and associated complications, such as heart disease, fatty liver and type 2 diabetes."

However, the efficiency of the extract has not yet been tested in human clinical studies. For now, scientists warn people not to use it because further research is still needed to confirm the safety of the substance for the human body.

"Celastrol is found in the roots of the thunder god vine in small amounts, but the plant's roots and flowers have many other compounds. As a result, it could be dangerous for humans," Ozcan said.