This new form of chromium reduces body fat, helps build muscle mass, lowers cholesterol and stabilizes blood sugar.

Just imagine a trace mineral that can build muscle like a steroid without the harmful side effects, that can reduce body fat, lower total cholesterol as well as low density lipoproteins (LDL, the "bad" cholesterol), stabilize blood sugar and help to prevent or to manage diabetes.

You have just imagined a new form of chromium called chromium picolinate that works biochemical wonders.

That chromium picolinate has appeared on the scene now is especially fortunate since an article that appeared not long ago in a nutritional journal disclosed that 90 percent of American adults take in less than the government's minimum recommended amount of 50 micrograms of chromium per day.

Unfortunately, the nation's alarmingly high annual per capita intake of sugar -- estimated at between 120 and 140 pounds -- intensifies the dietary loss of chromium and opens the way for adult-onset diabetes and heart and artery disorders.
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Furthermore, we assimilate only about one to two percent of chromium from foods like organ meats and beef and just one-half to one percent of the chromium from most supplements.

Chromium picolinate's arrival means that you now have one of the most absorbable chromiums ever and that there's no excuse for not taking the 50 to 200 micrograms recommended in government studies.

One of the men behind this breakthrough is Gary W. Evans, Ph.D., a professor of chemistry at Bemidji State University in Bemidji, Minn.

Evans and his team discovered that a chemical found in the kidneys and liver, picolinate, is a chelator, which, when combined with chromium (and other minerals) enables the mineral to penetrate the walls of the intestine and enter the bloodstream, where it can perform its job.

Among the major clues that led Evans and associates to their discovery is the fact that a genetically transmitted disease, acrodermatitis enteropathica (AE) -- a severe rash -- develops in newborn babies after they have stopped nursing from an infant formula. If not managed, AE can lead to death.