Chromium Revisited: Cause for Concern?

The fitness press had a field day with it. "Chromium causes DNA damage!" they trumpeted. The anti-supplement contingent nodded sagely, as if to say, see, we told you to be careful with those newfangled supplements.

And, of course, since I have long recommended chromium picolinate to my readers, my board was flooded with posts: "What's the story?" "Is chromium picolinate dangerous?"

And the answer is ...

Absolutely, positively not. Chromium picolinate is and always has been one of the safest and most useful supplements on the market, shown to be of value in dozens and dozens of studies by distinguished researchers, and is perhaps one of the least toxic substances you can ingest.

Then where did the media get this "DNA damage" story?

Well, pull up a chair.

The first thing you have to understand is the difference between in vivo and in vitro studies. In vivo means "in the living body or organism." In vitro means "in glass, as in a test tube." An in vitro test or experiment is one done in the laboratory, usually involving isolated tissue, organ or cell preparations (Taber's Medical Dictionary). As even a non-scientist can imagine, there is a world of difference in how things behave in these two distinct environments.

The study that was so badly reported and misunderstood by the media was a study done on hamster cells in vitro. In other words, large amounts of chromium picolinate were applied directly to the unprotected cells of hamsters in a glass tube. Now here's what you need to know about that: Virtually any trace element if directly applied in huge concentrations to a basically unprotected cell in a test tube is going to be a catalyst for reactions and cause a lot of mischief. That's true whether the trace element is chromium, copper, iron, zinc, you name it. And that is exactly what was done in this "experiment." This is entirely different from what happens in a living mammal, where the organism is greatly protected.

Not only that, but the researchers believed that the picolinic acid was the "offending" compound, not the chromium. (Chromium picolinate supplements bind chromium to picolinic acid). But if that's true, how come in all these years of using zinc picolinate supplements, there has never been so much as a whisper about any problems with the picolinic acid when it's bound to zinc?

Interesting little sidebar, something to think about: The patent for chromium picolinate expires pretty soon, and there is a huge race on to find and patent an alternative chromium supplement that works just as well; if anyone does develop such a substance, and if the public is made sufficiently afraid of the chromium picolinate form, there is potential for a whole lot of cash to be made. So far, no one has developed anything that works as well as chromium picolinate.

I called Dr. C. Leigh Broadhurst, author of the brilliant must-read Diabetes: Prevention and Cure and one of the smartest researchers I know. Dr. Broadhurst is one of the people who puts this stuff under a microscope and figures out exactly how it works and what it does. She is a geochemist whose intellectual wattage could power "Star Wars."

I asked her whether chromium picolinate caused DNA damage in people.

The answer was simple. In a word: No.

Dr. Richard Anderson, probably the most internationally respected researcher on chromium, working at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, has subjected rats to several thousand times the dosage of chromium picolinate likely to be taken by human beings. No problems. And in a well-known study by Mirsalis, reported in the austere and conservative textbook Modern Nutrition in Health and Disease, mice were given chromium at concentrations that ranged from reasonable human dosages all the way to "the upper limit of palatability in rodents." Even these ridiculously high doses could not produce a toxic effect.

Dr. Anderson is quoted in Dr. Broadhurst's book as saying, "The number of people with diabetes also taking supplemental chromium will increase dramatically as the medical community becomes more aware of the overwhelming evidence documenting a role of chromium in the prevention, alleviation and treatment of diabetes. Chromium is ... a nutrient that functions in the normal control of glucose, insulin, blood lipids and related risk factors associated with diabetes and cardiovascular diseases."

Will I continue to recommend chromium picolinate supplements for their demonstrable effect on blood sugar and insulin metabolism?

You bet I will.

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