Do Diet Pills Work?
“Target your trouble spots and effortlessly melt away the fat!” There are literally hundreds of different products out there saying something like that, promising results that sound good, but are ultimately too good to be true. And most natural diet pills don’t work.
The bigger problem however is the fact that some of these supplements can be extremely dangerous. The side effects of caffeine are simply inconvenient for most. But think ephedra. Ephedra was connected to sudden death, heat stroke, heart attacks, and a number or other serious side effects, with the most severe being connected of course to death. But that doesn’t mean that you should go running to your local pharmacy.
Prescriptions Aren’t Always Better
Sure, you would think that prescriptions would be proven, safe enough (being FDA approved and all), and otherwise, prescriptions would provide some kind of guarantee. But that is simply not true. Think of fen phen, which was technically a big deal on the over the counter market. Fen phen is a mix of prescription Phentermine and prescription Fenfluramine, created because somebody thought that these two prescriptions would counteract one another’s side effects while promoting greater weight loss benefits, even though Fenfluramine was not technically a diet pill.
As it turned out, the combination thereof created a more deadly blend than any experts anticipated. Ultimately, fen phen was banned for causing the side effects most commonly associated with prescription Phentermine, which is still the most popular prescription diet pill. Companies have since tried to introduce other prescription combinations, which have been rejected due to what has been cited as “too high a risk when compared to possible benefits.” And this brings up another point.
I understand combining prescriptions to try to counteract side effects, but what about effectiveness? Aren’t prescriptions supposed to be all powerful? Unfortunately not. The most common complaint among consumers is that prescriptions are not powerful enough, which isn’t surprising when you consider that Orlistat, the active ingredient in Alli, has only been proven to help users to lose 5-10% of their body weight (20 pounds for a 200 pound individual) in a year-long study when combined with a no fat diet! That isn’t that much. Studies on prescriptions actually reflect extremely small and even insignificant weight loss results in most test groups ironically.
Do Natural Diet Pills Work?
Once you get past the ephedras, hoodias, acais, and reservatrols of the diet world, there are natural diet pill ingredients that are clinically proven to promote weight loss without serious health risks. You do have to diet and exercise in order to achieve results.
Ingredients like green tea, evodiamine, guggulsterones, and coleus forskohlii, some of which also come in more powerful and safe patented forms, have been clinically proven to promote weight loss results, when used in certain amounts such as 400mg for green tea, 200mg for evodiamine, or as much as 1500mg for something like garcinia cambogia.
But the most important thing to remember is that there is no such thing as a magical diet pill, and there is nothing that will “magically melt away the pounds” without diet, exercise, and otherwise effort from you. Once you get past that common misconception, it should be considerably easier to find diet pills that work.