Last Updated on May 16, 2023
Dietary supplements and weight loss pills may appear to be a magical cure for people who have a strong desire to decrease or maintain their weight. The makers of these goods make grandiose claims about the qualities of their medicines, but the majority of these assertions are not supported by clinical evidence. In actuality, there may be unintended risks to your health in the medications that promise to help you lose weight or burn fat. Despite the dangers of utilizing diet supplements, there is still a growing market for these goods, particularly among people with eating disorders.
According to Eating Behaviors, up to 50% of those who fit the criteria for an eating disorder utilize over-the-counter weight loss pills, herbal supplements, or prescription medications. You can endanger yourself by using weight loss pills unless you’re doing it for valid medical needs under a doctor’s care.
What are Weight Loss Pills?
Prescription drugs that control your appetite and food cravings are known as weight loss pills, sometimes known as weight loss meds or anti-obesity medications. Numerous anti-obesity drugs that assist manage hunger and food cravings have been licensed in recent years.
Drugs for weight loss decrease your appetite, which lowers the number of calories your body consumes daily. You will lose weight over time if you eat fewer calories. In particular for sweets and fatty, salty, high-calorie foods, several anti-obesity drugs assist reduce cravings and manage compulsive eating.
Be aware that just because a weight loss pill or supplement is offered in eye-catching packaging at a nearby pharmacy or by an internet retailer doesn’t guarantee that it’s secure. Many customers are unaware that goods sold as dietary supplements are not subject to government regulation unless they contain a new substance. It is the manufacturer’s duty to demonstrate the safety of a supplement, however not all manufacturers meet this obligation. Numerous producers have been charged with making deceptive statements about their goods, including prescription components in their supplements, or creating products in hazardous conditions.
Read: Hidden Dangers: What to Avoid in Processed Foods
How Weight Loss Pills Work
There are several options available if you’re looking for dietary supplements to aid with weight loss. The firms that sell these products assert that the substances in their dietary supplements can aid in the pursuit of your desired outcomes.
They assert that the ingredients in their products will reduce your appetite (chickweed, bee pollen, fennel), make you feel full before you’ve consumed too much (guar gum, psyllium), speed up your metabolism (caffeine, guarana, synephrine, B-complex vitamins), reduce the amount of fat your body produces (green tea, hydrocitric acid, flax seed), and prevent your body from absorbing the fat from the foods you eat (chondroitin).
Dietary supplements can be found in almost any oral dosage form, including pills, capsules, powders, liquids, and teas. Taking some products with or without food depends on the product. Dietary supplements sold over-the-counter claim to speed up your body’s metabolism, which is how your body uses energy. Caffeine is the main component of supplements like Dexatrim with Metabolic Support. This central nervous system stimulant may aid in fat burning through a process called thermogenesis. However, the dangers of using these stimulants can outweigh the advantages.
5 Dangers of Weight Loss Pills
1. Increased risk of heart attacks.
Many weight loss pills operate by increasing your heart rate and metabolism to increase the number of calories you burn. Due to the lax regulation of dietary supplements, many of these stimulants are prescription-level medicines that have been taken off the market and are now being reintroduced.
These medications can induce irregular heartbeats (arrhythmias) and damage to or malfunction in the valves of your heart because they artificially raise your heart rate and blood pressure. The actual cardiac muscle itself could also sustain injury. All of these may put you at risk for cardiovascular disease, a heart attack, a stroke or bleeding in the brain in the future.
2. Increased risk of liver failure.
Your liver is a vital organ that aids in digestion removes toxins from the body, and regulates blood sugar. However, taking supplements can compromise the liver’s ability to do these critical tasks.
Fat burner dietary supplements, a class that includes various herbal and tree-derived compounds, have been linked in one Mount Sinai Medical Center research from 2011 to acute liver toxicity and failure.
When you consume these things, your liver must process the constituents and chemical byproducts, which might result in an accumulation of potentially hazardous enzymes. Additionally, studies have connected several weight loss pills to hepatitis, a kind of liver inflammation that can cause lifelong harm or scarring.
3. They are mostly ineffective
Numerous diet medicines only contain caffeine and other diuretics, which deplete body water. This initially lowers the weight on the scale, but this is not real fat loss, and the water weight will soon come back. Extreme water loss brought on by diet pills might also result in serious dehydration.
4. No change in habits
Adopting a better lifestyle and changing your food and exercise habits are necessary for long-term weight loss. You are not encouraged to improve your awareness of how foods and exercise affect your weight by taking a tablet as a quick fix. If you believe a pill will do the work for you, you are less likely to read food labels, keep track of your food intake, and find time to exercise. Continually using medications will not work; once you quit, your bad habits and starting weight will return.
5. Addiction
Diet pills are a class of medications that, although working toward the same end result (usually weight loss), do so in a variety of ways. Amphetamines, anti-anxiety medications, and antidepressants are frequently found in them. These medicines are not only extremely addictive, but they are also a deadly combination.
Additionally, some individuals may experience co-occurring disorders (such as depression or an eating disorder) and develop a dependence on the medication’s effects.
Read: Is Intermittent Fasting Beneficial for You?
Why Weight Loss Pills are Dangerous
Natural does not mean safe
The word “natural” brings up ideas of pastoral landscapes and farms collecting fresh and organic roots, fruits, and vegetables that may be processed into wholesome pills that can assist the body in losing weight safely. The fact that these pills are free of chemicals and synthetic substances may give the impression of safety. There are new, purportedly all-natural treatments for obesity released every year, and these medications frequently include efficacy testimonies.
Many times, even when a weight loss supplement makes a claim to be natural, it still contains artificial ingredients. Numerous studies have revealed the presence of prescription drugs and other man-made ingredients in traces in many of these natural weight loss pills. On the label of these products, these potentially dangerous ingredients are frequently not disclosed.
Exaggerated claims
Be sceptical of supplements that promise dramatic weight loss. It might not be healthy to lose more than two pounds every week, and diet pills that promise weight loss of 30 pounds in just a month are not only impractical but also risky. Celery juice and apple cider vinegar have been promoted as miracle weight loss treatments, however, these claims have been shown to be grossly exaggerated. Unfortunately, those looking to lose weight could fast spend a lot of money on these scams.
We all know that nothing worthwhile ever comes easy in life and that there is never a time for shortcuts. So regardless of how alluring the claims seem, any medicines that promise to be a quick way to lose weight should be seen as potentially harmful.
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