Weight loss for most is a pain in the butt, a cramp in the leg or an overall headache. If there were a quick, easy and safe way to lose a few extra kilograms people would be running to the store to buy this "miracle" product. Sadly, there is not.
Weight loss for most is a pain in the butt, a cramp in the leg or an overall headache. If there were a quick, easy and safe way to lose a few extra kilograms people would be running to the store to buy this "miracle" product. Sadly, there is not.
Many people have opted for over-the-counter diet pills to cure their weight problem, but many of these have harmful side effects.
Audrey Kolster*, 25, took diet pills for over four years to combat her weight issues. She began taking diet pills at 17. “I was unhappy with my body weight and I was looking for a fast solution,” she said. To Kolster, having the perfect body represented being beautiful. “I was unhappy with my body. I felt I was overweight compared to my friends. I felt that having an amazing figure would make me look more attractive.”
She began taking a range of over-the-counter products. The thought of losing a few extra kilograms seems like a dream come true. TV bombards us with easy and simple ways to lose weight: Cream you can rub on which takes 10 cm off your bum and thighs; "tasty" milkshakes which purportedly suppress your appetite; vinyl sauna suits which help you “sweat yourself skinny”; and, last but not least, “wash yourself skinny with a bar of soap”.
Off-the-shelf diet pills market themselves as weight-loss remedies. Some contain amphetamines, which promotes weight-loss by raising metabolism or suppressing the appetite. However, just because it makes it to the shelf of your favourite store doesn't mean a diet pill is safe or effective.
The diet pill industry is estimated it to be worth around R7 billion a year. Some regulated dietary pills have been used effectively for people suffering from morbid obesity; however, there are 155 000 products on the market that have never been independently checked for content, quality, safety or efficacy – so we don’t know reliably know what they contain or how exactly they work.
Rhodes Pharmacy professor, Roy Jobson, says this poses a huge public health risk to South Africans. Jobson has done extensive research into the diet pill industry. Out of the thousands of unregistered medicines entering the market every year, the Medicines Control Council (MCC) last January ordered the suspension of all sales and marketing of just one of these products, Simply Slim, until it has been assessed in terms of its safety, quality and efficacy.
Jobson hopes more of these products will be scrutinised in future. He believes they should not be made available to “a largely uninformed public who are unaware of the pharmacological effects of a variety of active ingredients in these products”.
Simply Slim claimed that their product would assist with weight loss, without needing dietary changes, and without exercising. A pharmacist had the product independently tested and it was found that it contained Sibutramine, which was not listed as an ingredient.
Sibutramine is a Schedule 5 drug which means that it can only be obtained on prescription from a medical practitioner. A medical doctor prescribing sibutramine would know that the drug has serious contra-indications, Jobson says. “A significant warning is that sibutramine should be avoided in combination with any substance likely to increase a person’s blood pressure.”
Another ingredient listed in Simply Slim is synephrine, a constituent of "bitter orange" or "bigarade orange" (Citrus aurantium). “Synephrine is likely to cause an increase in blood pressure and has been implicated in serious adverse reactions, such as heart attacks and strokes,” Jobson says.
A number of weight-loss products on the market contain synephrine, which may pose a risk to a person with a predisposition to hypertension, or other medical conditions. Meanwhile, Simply Slim has announced that they are going to launch a new product.
Jobson says, “We can only assume that the MCC will require evidence that the new version/product is safe, effective and of good quality before it will allow it to be registered as a medicine or made available to the public.” Audrey Kolster says only some of the products she used listed possible side-effects on the packaging. The side effects can be serious. “I also have a friend who was taking the same diet pills I was on. I had no side effects, but she ended up in hospital because her throat closed up and she experienced difficulty breathing,” Koster says.
While taking one of her many diet pills, Kolster said she got a rude awakening. “I could feel my heart beating rapidly. I was so worried that I would have a heart attack at the age of 22.” But, leaving aside the risk of side-effects, do these pills help to fight flab? For Kolster the jury is out. “They never really worked. I did lose a few kilograms, but that could have been due to the exercise I was doing and the change in my diet, which you were required to follow for the pills to ‘work’. On the other hand, when I stopped taking them – and stopped exercising and eating differently – I put the weight back on,” she says.
Jobson's research has shown that each product may have a different mechanism for fighting weight-gain. “Those products which claim to burn fat or boost metabolism, etc., may have some of these actions to a limited degree – but the side effects (such as for synephrine) can be really dangerous. "Others that claim to be ‘fat blockers’ usually contain a substance which can be shown to block fat at very high doses, but which also sometimes have the unfortunate and unpleasant side effect of causing anal leakage.”
I am no stranger to this market. Like many self-conscious teenagers, I worried about the way I looked. I would stare in the mirror and not like what I saw. Most of my friends were super skinny. I, however, was not. I had not grown out of my "puppy fat" and I was deeply unhappy.
I began taking diet pills to help combat that extra flab. I remember feeling sick most of the time. My tummy burned and ached and I ended up spending most days on the loo. Reality hit me straight in the face. I knew that I was putting my health at risk in order to fit in.
The cost of beauty I was not prepared to pay. Living in a body conscious society has a huge impact on many individuals. Even though a gorgeous skinny on TV tells you that you can wash away the pounds or pop a pill to take away the fat, it’s not true. There is no fast solution to fight the flab. It’s not as simple as one, two three. It’s more like eat right and exercise. The cost of beauty is not worth your life, or that unpleasant side-effect of a leaky bum.
