Looking for a “next level” fat burner that brings a powerhouse of energy? Then it’s time to look at Alpha Prime Supps Top Burn, which has *ephedra* inside. In this article, we explain how it’s all still possible.
300 milligrams of caffeine in a single capsule, and legal ephedra? That’s what you’re getting with Alpha Prime Supps’s Top Burn!
Alpha Prime knows that summertime is limited, but there’s still a bit more time to get that final bit of shredding in. They’ve got a highly thermogenic, highly energetic fat burner for those of you who’ve tried other supplements and are looking for something a bit more. It’s name is Top Burn, and with 300 milligrams of caffeine in one capsule, it’s no joke.
Alpha Prime Supps’s Top Burn: How you formulate an “ECA Stack” without the ‘E’ or ‘A’
In this article, we cover this ultra intense “ECA Stack” replacement, which uses a legal ephedra extract as part of its formula alongside white willow and synephrine to make it happen. It’s heated up by PricePlow favorite, CaloriBurn grains of paradise extract, but has even more heat in store than just that – including thyroid support and a serious amount of rauwolfia.
First, check prices and availability on PricePlow, and then get ready to learn how Alpha Prime’s bringing the legendary stack back:
Alpha Prime Supps Top Burn – Deals and Price Drop Alerts
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Top Burn Ingredients
In a single, one-capsule serving of Top Burn Thermal from Alpha Prime, you get the following:
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Caffeine Anhydrous – 300 mg
Get ready to fire it up here!
Kicking things off with caffeine is always a good move for a fat burner. That’s because, put simply, caffeine is one of the best studied supplement ingredients, with mountains of research showing that it can safely increase athletic performance and your body’s rate of fat burning.
The way it works is that it sends an influx of fatty acids into your cells, ultimately making more energy available to those cells for useful work. It means you’ll be able to push yourself harder in the gym and burn more calories while, at the same time, reducing appetite.[1,2]
However, even in the absence of a workout, caffeine can still rev up calorie burn by increasing your basal metabolic rate. Caffeine does this mostly by promoting thermogenesis, a process whereby cells convert energy (in the form of carbohydrates and fatty acids) into heat.[1,2]
So how does caffeine increase your body’s energy throughput? By inhibiting an enzyme called phosphodiesterase,[1,2] which is responsible for breaking down cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP).[1,2] This matters because cAMP is what regulates your body’s conversion of energy substrates like fat, protein, and carbohydrates into adenosine triphosphate (ATP), your body’s fundamental unit of cellular energy. Higher cAMP levels basically mean a faster metabolism.[3]
Most of us, though, have been using caffeine long before we ever heard about its fat-burning properties. That’s because caffeine is popular the world over for fighting fatigue by inhibiting the action of adenosine, a nucleotide that builds up in the brain during the waking state, and then decreases neural activity in order to make us tired and ready for sleep.[1,2]
The dose used in Alpha Prime’s Top Burn is 300 milligrams, which is pretty standard for athletic and fat-burning supplements, but significantly higher than what non-supplemental caffeine users (i.e., tea and coffee drinkers) are accustomed to consuming in one sitting.
If you aren’t sure how you’ll react to a caffeine dose of this size, work your way up to it before trying Top Burn.
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Ephedra viridis (Leaf) Powder – 75 mg
A close-up look at the label
Savvy supplement consumers might be surprised to see ephedra making an appearance in the year 2022. After all, in 2004 the Food and Drug Administration decided to protect you from yourself when they banned certain alkaloids that occur naturally in the Ephedra plant – chief among them being ephedrine. Much of their reasoning is covered in our article detailing ephedra’s history — the issue back then was that the supplement industry was far less mature at the time, and suppliers were providing some wildly variable extracts, many with too many alkaloids.[4-6] In response, the FDA moved to ban those alkaloids completely.
Ephedra without banned alkaloids are still legal – and still have bioactive constituents!
Anyway, while ephedrine might be banned, ephedra extracts are not, so long as they don’t contain the offending alkaloids Ephedra is in a category that also includes ephedrine, pseudoephedrine, norephedrine, and methylephedrine.
Catechins in Ephedra: Green tea isn’t the only plant with potent catechins! Shown are EC (our interest here), EGC, ECG, and the well-known EGCG
That’s what we have here: an FDA-compliant ephedra extract, devoid of the banned alkaloids.
Fortunately for us, there are still plenty of other bioactive constituents in ephedra that can aid weight loss, including flavonoid glycosides, epicatechin, glycans, and proanthocyanidins. There are also some volatile oils like L-alpha-Terpineol, limonene, and linalool.
The presence of these compounds means that even a neutered ephedra extract is a powerfully effective fat burning ingredient.[7-10]
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Synephrine HCl – 50 mg
But now it’s time to attempt to replace those lipolytic alkaloids that were lost when ephedrine was pulled from ephedra extracts!
Considered a cousin of ephedrine, synephrine is a fully legal alkaloid that’s been shown to increase metabolism. In one study, synephrine supplementation increased subjects’ basal metabolic rate by 183 calories per day, compared to a placebo control.[11]
Besides increasing the amount of energy you burn at rest every day, synephrine is also an effective ergogenic aid that can increase your body’s endurance and power during a workout.[12]
Synephrine’s mechanism of action is beta agonism,[13] the same as ephedrine. The reason synephrine isn’t banned is that it’s not nearly as strong as ephedrine – at the same dose, the effects are far less pronounced.[13] Research has shown that despite its ability to increase fat burning, synephrine has a more minimal effect on heart rate and blood pressure, compared to ephedrine and other flavonoids.[14,15]
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ProGBB (Gamma-butyrobetaine Ethyl Ester HCl) – 50mg
ProGBB is a trademarked form of gamma butyrobetaine (GBB) developed by SYNMR Biotechnology. GBB is a carnitine precursor, which gets converted into L-carnitine by gamma-butyrobetaine dioxygenase (BBD).[16]
GBB Supplements add to the “carnitine pool” by increasing the reagent — GBB — which goes on to make more carnitine if your body needs it!
By raising carnitine levels, GBB can help aid fat loss. Carnitine is responsible for moving fatty acids into your cells’ mitochondria, which, in turn, burn those fatty acids for energy.[16]
GBB does this by increasing the activity of brown adipose tissue, a type of fat tissue that drives thermogenesis. Ultimately, most of the calories that GBB helps you burn are lost as heat, which is why carnitine has been observed to raise the temperature of lab animals who take it.[17]
That’s why we sometimes refer to GBB as “the super carnitine that makes you sweat.”
If you want to learn more about what GBB is and how it works, read ProGBB: The Gamma Butyrobetaine Supplement that Enhances Carnitine, our in-depth discussion of this stellar ingredient.
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CaloriBurn GP Aframomum melegueta (Seed) (Standardized to 6-paradol 12%) – 50 mg
CaloriBurn is a trademarked Aframomum melegueta extract, developed by NNB Nutrition. It’s standardized for 6-paradol, a molecule that also occurs in ginger and is largely responsible for the root’s signature flavor.
CaloriBurn preserves all of the metabolism-enhancing bioactive compounds from aframomum melegueta
We like 6-paradol because it helps change your body’s fatty acid composition for the better. 6-paradol intake has been shown to help convert white adipose tissue (WAT) into brown adipose tissue (BAT). These two types of fat tissue serve very different functions: WAT helps your body build up long-term stores of energy that are tapped under starvation conditions, while BAT is the location where a process called non-shivering thermogenesis takes place, in which your body burns calories for heat, usually to maintain its core temperature in cold conditions.[18]
In other words, the higher your BAT to WAT ratio, the more energy you’ll burn off as heat,[19,20] giving you a faster metabolism. One interesting aspect of this process is that BAT doesn’t just burn fat: it can also use glucose as a substrate for non-shivering thermogenesis.[21]
The ability of BAT to use both substrates means that even if you don’t lose weight, having more BAT can improve your glucose levels and blood lipids.[21]
This third-party lab result confirms that we have true grains of paradise, with at least the four peaks we also want. See more in our main CaloriBurn article.
Multiple human studies have produced evidence that grains of paradise can be effective for speeding up metabolism. In one study, researchers actually measured the basal metabolic rates of healthy men between the ages of 20 and 32 after consuming a grains of paradise extract. The study authors found that the supplement increased the rate of calorie burn.
In another study, women aged 20 to 22 who took a grains of paradise extract had significantly lower levels of visceral fat by the end of the study period.[22]
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White Willow (Salix Alba) Bark Extract – 50 mg
White willow bark extract is standardized for salicin, a precursor to aspirin. Salicin itself has aspirin-like effects, but is actually metabolized into acetylsalicylic acid (aspirin) and other salicylates after its ingested.[23,24]
Salicin and its salicylate derivatives have powerful anti-inflammatory properties,[25] which can be crucial for weight management as chronic inflammation is strongly associated with insulin resistance and obesity.[26,27]
Aspirin and the other salicylates, which have broadly similar mechanisms of action, have been investigated as potential therapeutic agents in the treatment of type 2 diabetes, owing to their ability to reduce blood glucose and increase insulin sensitivity.[28]
How you say “ECA Stack” without saying “ECA Stack”
Part of aspirin’s effect on blood glucose can be attributed to the fact that it stimulates mitochondrial respiration, shifting cells’ metabolism away from fat oxidation and toward glucose oxidation. Since everyone is so obsessed with “being in ketosis” these days, increasing sugar burning might sound like a bad thing, but think of it this way: the more glucose your cells burn, the less time that glucose hangs out in your bloodstream where it can potentially form advanced glycation end products (AGEs) or damage surrounding tissue via hyperglycemia.[29]
Aspirin also has powerful anti-estrogenic effects because of its ability to inhibit aromatase, the enzyme that converts testosterone into estradiol estrogen.[29]
Because it has these properties, aspirin is part of the famous “ECA” stack that consists of ephedrine, caffeine, and aspirin. Although the ECA stack received wide anecdotal and scientific support as a weight loss supplement, the aforementioned FDA ban on ephedrine put a damper on the ECA party.
Every once in a while you’ll see a supplement trying to recreate some version of the ECA stack, which is pretty much what Alpha Prime is doing with Top Burn. Here, instead of ephedrine, you have ephedra + synephrine. And instead of aspirin you get willow bark extract, an aspirin-like compound and aspirin precursor.
We like this strategy, and expect it to be effective.
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CapsiAtra (Cayenne Pepper Fruit Extract) – 25 mg
CapsiAtra is a sweet pepper extract developed and trademarked by Glanbia Nutritionals. It has 2.3% dihydrocapsiate, and is meant to be a less-spicy alternative to capsaicin powders, providing thermogenesis but without the afterburn.[30-33]
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Rauwolscine (2.5 mg) & Rauwolfia vomitoria Extract (1.5 mg)
Extracts of the Rauwolfia vomitoria plant are usually standardized for rauwolscine. Interestingly, Top Burn from Alpha Prime contains both the purified active ingredient and the rauwolscine-containing full spectrum plant extract.
Rauwolscine is an alkaloid often referred to as “alpha yohimbine.” Although it has a similar mechanism of action to yohimbine, and similar effects, it’s much stronger.
Yohimbine itself is also a bioactive constituent of Rauwolfia vomitoria extracts. Like rauwolscine, it’s an alpha-2 antagonist, which means that it activates the adrenaline and noradrenaline receptors in your cells, thus mimicking the action of those hormones.
The upshot is that yohimbine reduces appetite,[34] aids weight loss,[35] and improves focus.[36] Rauwolscine does the same – it helps prevent your body from storing fat, while increasing its body’s supply of accessible energy.[37,38]
Tolerance of rauwolscine varies from individual to individual: most people are fine, but some will get jitters.
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3,5-Diiodo-L-Thyronine – 150 mcg
3,5-Diiodo-L-Thyronine, is a thyroid hormone metabolite often used in fat burner supplements because of its powerful ability to increase metabolic rate and fat oxidation. Also known as T2 (following the same naming convention as T3 and T4, the thyroid hormones themselves), this ingredient has stimulant-like pro-metabolic effects without causing adverse cardiovascular events associated with stimulant use, like increased heart rate or blood pressure.[39-41]
It should go without saying that if you have a diagnosed thyroid condition, or even suspect you might have one, you should consult with your doctor before taking T2.
Dosing suggestions
This is a one capsule product, so there’s not much to say besides take it in the morning before eating and get ready to go.
AP suggests that you do not take more than two capsules in any 24 hour period. This is definitely one that you don’t mix with other stimulants, not even coffee or tea!
For training, we definitely suggest stacking it with the Alpha Prime Supps Legacy Pump formula, which is stimulant-free and will provide some nitric oxide and ergogenic enhancement.
Top Burn: When you need it strong and in a hurry
The Top Burn fat burner is exactly what it says it is – thermal. This is not for rookies, it’s not for beginners, and it’s not for anyone with a low stimulant tolerance. It’s powerful and it’s nearly guaranteed to wire you up.
Follow our Alpha Prime Supps news on PricePlow.com/ap-regimen#news
If you’re low on time in your prep, or the average weight loss capsule isn’t doing it for you lately, then this is one of those “next level” options that bring serious heat. This brings “ECA stack” style power without it actually being the ECA stack.
Additionally, the high-energy components should keep your head and body going in the gym, even when calories are low. We don’t always want to be in a ridiculously tired state from dieting, but it does happen towards the end of preps… and Top Burn is the kind of fat burner that helps competitors get over the final hurdle.
Alpha Prime Supps Top Burn – Deals and Price Drop Alerts
Get Price Alerts
No spam, no scams.
Disclosure: PricePlow relies on pricing from stores with which we have a business relationship. We work hard to keep pricing current, but you may find a better offer.
Posts are sponsored in part by the retailers and/or brands listed on this page.
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