VIDEO: Does Vinegar Have Legitimate Health Benefits?

Host: Welcome back to Dr. Stengler's Natural Healing. It's time for Natural News with Dr. Mark, and we are going to talk about vinegar. It has been used as a folk medicine for many years for things like coughs, athlete's foot, headaches, indigestion, and weight loss. There is actually some research now about vinegar, and Mark's going to tell us all about it.

Dr. Stengler: Vinegar — apple cider vinegar — has been very popular, used by health food enthusiasts such as myself for years. It's interesting; you talk to patients throughout the years and a lot of them just feel better on it. They notice they're less hungry, they lose weight, their blood sugar levels do better. There has been some interesting research come out recently. They did a study with mice, and they found that when they gave them vinegar, they developed 10% less body fat than mice not given vinegar.

The way this works is vinegar contains acetic acid, which is very concentrated in vinegar, and it reduces the absorption of glucose into your cells. Remember, when we eat foods and our blood sugar levels go up, our body releases the hormone insulin to get the glucose into our cells. But when you get a lot of glucose coming in and your insulin levels spike up, insulin causes your body to store fat. So anything you can do to reduce how rapidly the sugars are absorbed into the bloodstream reduces the insulin level — hence you won't gain weight as easily and can lose weight easier. They've also done studies at the University of Arizona, and they found people who took two teaspoons of apple cider vinegar in water with their breakfast experienced a reduction in their blood sugar levels and also lost some weight.

Host: Is it being used to help people who have diabetes now?

Dr. Stengler: That's one of the recommendations — for people who are overweight, people who are pre-diabetic (which is 25% of the population), and of course all people with type 2 diabetes, both children and adults. Here's a very inexpensive, non-toxic, natural way you can bring your blood sugar down and help lose weight.

Host: So you want to make sure it's organic vinegar?

Dr. Stengler: Optimally, but any vinegar will work. It can be just white vinegar, or better is the apple cider vinegar. Apple cider is the most commonly available in the health food stores — that's what people typically use — but the key thing is just vinegar, because that acetic acid you'll find in both.

Host: Can you do too much of it?

Dr. Stengler: It's pretty hard — it's pretty non-toxic. As a matter of fact, you can get it not only in the liquid form but in capsules now too, so people don't want to be pouring it and tasting it. Or making a salad with some vinegar dressing and a little bit of oil — you could use it that way. That's how I generally recommend people do it, or you can take it at the beginning of a meal.

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