Dangers of Unregulated Diet Pills

I took a few herbal diet pills in college once on a whim, and I didn't eat anything for a couple of days afterwards. I also did not really get much sleep either. Anything that makes you wired like that and reduces your appetite so completely just is not good for you.

Over-the-counter herbal diet pills is a large portion of the $13 billion supplement business. Many claims about the supposed weight loss benefits of herbal weight loss supplements are very misleading.  First, the scientific evidence is slim that these herbal diet pills help you to reduce your weight.  Second, many of these herbal diet supplements are amphetamine-type stimulants, which can over-stimulate the nervous system, causing ill-health and nasty side-effects. Also, some diet supplements containing ephedra have been linked to serious side effects such as heart attacks, seizures, and death.

The pills I took were supposedly 'ephedra free' and were supposedly totally natural and safe, I do not think I ever felt so polluted and ill in my life. A year later I discovered that the FDA had banned these herbal diet pills I had taken, and I have to wonder what it was I had put in my body.

Herbal diet pills are extremely popular today as an alternative to more traditional methods of weight loss like diet and exercise. Herbal treatments in general are very trendy today, which I find a little worrisome for several reasons.

First of all, just about anything can be in an herbal diet pill. 'Herbs' are a loophole in the United States FDA system, as they are not classified as drugs and therefore don't have the rigorous standards for testing and safety that drugs normally get.

Make no mistake about it though, herbs can be every bit as potent and dangerous as drugs. The difference between medicinal herbs and medicinaldrugs is really quite vague anyway, as most perscription drugs themselves come from a kind of plant or herb.

Most of the time the 'herbal' classification does not last very long; the FDA eventually calls it a drug and brings in the scientists. When that happens herbal diet pills often either become available only by prescription or are banned completely. Snooping around a little from site to site selling herbal diet pills, it is clear that the makers of these things are very familiar with the FDA.

Many sites even use it to their advantage saying things to the effect of 'buy it now before the FDA bans it!'. You need to ask yourself, if the FDA will eventually ban the herbal diet pill you are interested in, should you be taking it at all?

Anyway, just do not be fooled by the word 'natural' in a natural diet pill. I would actually trust a regular diet pill that is FDA approved a lot more than some herbal diet pill concoction that has who knows what in it. The words herbal and natural are marketing ploys and should never be confused with the word safe unless there has been governmental testing to prove it.