If You Can't Lose and Control Your Weight Then Diet Pills Must Be the Answer

Or Not. Do Diet Pills Work?

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Weight Loss is Such a Challenge that Many People Believe that Our Vaunted Drug Industry Must Have a Solution

A pill for this, a pill for that. Pills for everything... and weight loss pills for our failure to control what we put into our mouths.

There are two major groups promoting the use of diet pills: First, is the pharmaceutical industry and second is the natural products industry (there are actually sites extolling the powerful effects of FAT BURNERS). Both operate in the same way and promote pills as THE solution to your weight control needs.

Interest in pharmacotherapy for obesity continues to increase because it's so difficult to achieve successful long-term weight management with lifestyle changes alone.

But, once used, it must be continued because when stopped, people regain all the weight they lost.

The newest pharmaceutical is Alli which is an over-the-counter half-dose of the drug Orlistat.

Now, I have a real serious PhD from the Department of Physiology at the Temple University School of Medicine in Philadelphia. There, I was taught how to do research. These make-up artists are just scamming you on the virtues of these FAT BURNER products!

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How Do the Drugs Work and How Well

Orlisat is a lipase inhibitor:

it inhibits an enzyme that digests fat
the undigested fat has to come out of your body and it does so in not pleasant ways
in recent studies orlistat caused a 6 pound loss vs. 4 pounds on no drug and diet

Drop-out rates on orlistat were 33% and on sibutramine 43%.

Sibutramine increases feelings of fullness after a meal so, in theory, one eats less.

Orlistat causes gastrointestinal side effects and sibutramine is associated with increases in blood pressure and heart rate. Both drugs appear to help with weight loss, but scientific evaluation is difficult because of high drop-out rates in clinical studies.

Long-term use of pharmacotherapy requires monitoring:

1 year treatment by sibutramine in association with behavior modification and a structured meal plan was three times more effective than drug treatment alone
therefore, drug treatments alone provide the full risks of drug treatment without full medical benefits
the point: you still have to eat less, there's no magic in the drug

Orlistat is one of two FDA approved drugs for long-term use.

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What About the Natural Product Diet Pills?

Do you get all the same unwanted e-mails that I get touting the benefits of all these natural weight loss aids?

You know, Hoodia as Seen on Oprah or 60 Minutes.

Lets name them, there aren't that many:

hoodia
green tea
ephedra
caffeine
acai berry

Hoodia gordonii, a South African herb used to suppress appetite.

I must be missing something because Oprah seems to be the gateway for exploring all the "hot" weight loss plans. All these herbs, her trainer Bob Greene, her medical guru --�Dr. Oz, how are they helping?

OK, so what happened with Oprah? If all this stuff is so cuttng-edge and effective then what of those recent pictures of Oprah in People Magazine?

Am I missing something here? Or am I just missing the disconnect?

So Hoodia is supposed to suppress your appetite (so you eat fewer calories -- sort of the theme of this site and my books).

And what about the research?

There isn't any. It's folklore.

I searched the National Library of Medicine on the search term "hoodia for weight control." The web page popped up and said, "Your search for 'hoodia for weight control' retrieved no results."

Hmm... no studies. Are the marketers of the miracle herb aware that there's nothing to this but folklore? Hey, I'm not down on folklore, so it may work. Yes?

Ephedra can provide a small metabolic jump but is sort of useless over the long-haul.

Ephedra and green tea: Both promoted to increase metabolism (so you can burn more calories).

How much?

Do they work?

Green tea pops up your metabolic rate ever so slightly.

Yes, and by a couple of percent. Even if I'm generous they up the ante by about 3%. And they're not additive, taking both doesn't double it. So, say 3% on a person who has a�resting metabolic rate of�1,500 calories per day -- the herbs can up the ante by about 45 calories per day (it always comes down to calories, doesn't it?)

Walk a mile: 100 calories. See my point?

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What's the Diet Pill Conclusion

Both pharmaceutical and natural don't seem to offer much hope. Both work on altering one's caloric intake. Nothing new because as I show on this site and in my books, calories are the sole dictator of weight gain, loss, and control.

The diet pills must have some association with eating less and exercising more to realize their full benefit. But the percent of benefit that they provide is very small.

The only free lunch I'm aware of is:

the low-carb diet, no hunger, automatic 30% reduction in food intake with no effort on your part
imagine the effect of reducing your calories by 30%!
no diet pill even gets close
and vibration exercise
no effort and fat loss
new study just showed a reduction of 7% in body fat in vibrating rats

Check out my pages on vibration exercise and read the pages on the low-carb diet. These powerful tools are available right now through Dr. Gregory Ellis's Ultimate Diet Secrets, your one stop shopping zone for matters related to weight loss, anti-aging, and optimal health.

And what you get here is not some shop-worn cliche of biased science, just the facts as they exist. I had to do it for myself so you might as well reap the benefits of all my on-the-fore-front research.

Don't rely on diet pills for weight loss, learn HOW to lose and control your weight: take charge!