
The effects of a Nutritional Supplement
(eXfuze Seven+) on blood glucose; a
double-blind, randomized study
316-319
Correspondence
Gary M. Booth, Professor of Plant and Wildlife Sciences,
Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah.
Email: gary_booth@byu.edu, Phone: (801)422-2458 (Office), (801)
636-6363 (Mobile).
This report is an analysis of a randomized, double-blind study which was conducted to determine whether eXfuzeTM Seven+, a nutritional supplement, could lower the blood glucose levels. All volunteers (n = 883) from the Huntsman Senior World Games who were participants at St. George, UT, were to consume randomly, either the eXfuzeTM Seven+ drink, (treatment A) or a commercially obtained grape juice (treatment B; placebo). We used Bayer’s CONTOUR® blood glucose monitoring units to measure before and after blood glucose levels. All the participants voluntarily consented to be a part of the study and their ages and genders were also noted down for further analysis. A SigmaPlot11.0 ®statistical program was used to compare the treatment A (n = 496) and the placebo (n =387) by using t-tests which showed that treatment A had a blood glucose lowering trend as compared to the placebo (p-value = 0.024). Further analysis showed that gender did not affect the treatments (p-valuefemales = 0.120, p-valuemales= 0.063). Also, age did not affect the data (p-value = 0.2). When analyzing the treatment data of the individuals with a change which was greater than or equal to 0, the p-value was found to be less than 0.001, thus indicating that treatment A appeared to cause less spiking of the blood glucose than the placebo. By graphing these data, we saw a pattern where the treatment A data-points tended to aggregate closer to zero than the treatment B data-points. Therefore, this study strongly suggests that the eXfuzeTM Seven+ treatment causes a downward trend in the blood glucose levels as compared to the placebo.
Background: eXfuzeTM Seven+ (eXf+) is a health supplement containing various botanical fruit extracts which have purported health benefits.
Aim: To determine the effects of eXfuzeTM Seven+ on the blood glucose levels.
Materials and Methods:Treatment cups (one-ounce) which were labeled as ‘treatment A’ (eXf+) and ‘treatment B’ (placebo) were given to 883 participants from the 2009 Huntsman Senior World Games which were held at St. George, Utah; each participant received a cup containing one ounce of a particular drink. The pretreatment and post-treatment blood glucose levels of the volunteers were measured by using Bayer’s blood glucose monitoring units. Furthermore, the ages, genders, sports, and before and after dosing-times of the participants were noted. All the participants voluntarily agreed to participate in the study as a part of the health screen which was provided by the Huntsman Senior World Games. The participants were asked to return within a 30-60 minute time interval to take a final glucose measurement. There was no attempt to control the participants’ consumption of food or drink before the treatment, but they were encouraged to avoid simple carbohydrates after drinking the treatment or placebo. A total of 296 valid data points were collected from the individuals who consumed eXfuzeTM Seven+ (treatment A), and a total of 287 valid data points were collected from those who consumed commercially the available grape juice (treatment B; placebo). SigmaPlot 11.0®was used to determine the t-tests and the homogeneity of the variance. Further analysis was done by using the statistics programme called SAS®.
Results: The p-values from both the statistical programmes showed the same levels of significance, differing only slightly due to a difference in the number of data points which were used for the analysis. An initial comparison between all the treatment A and placebo data resulted in a statistically significant difference (p=0.024). The overall mean change for treatment A was -1.77 mg% of blood glucose, whereas the mean change for treatment B was +1.88 mg% of blood glucose. Hence, treatment A, with its decreasing trend, was significantly different than the placebo’s increasing trend. The analyses of gender versus treatment and age versus treatment resulted in no significant differences (p=0.9119 and p = 0.680 respectively).
Conclusions: The data clearly show that eXfuzeTM Seven+ causes a significant decreasing trend in the blood glucose levels.