Medicine for Weight Loss

Looking slim and beautiful has always been man’s obsession, and needless to say, his hunt for a medicine for weight loss must have begun as early as the dawn of the first civilization itself. A medicine for weight loss certainly seems to be an easier way to get rid of your obstinate fat than all those back breaking exercises and those long dreary jogging sessions on the lonely roads or even than the strict diet routine prescribed to you by your dietician. Won’t it be great if you can just drink some magic potion or swallow some colorful pills and lose weight just like that? Obesity brings with itself a long list of dreaded diseases which could be life-threatening, or at least debilitating if you are lucky enough. Diabetes, heart disease, kidney ailments, hypertension, gout, arthritis, well, the list is nearly endless. To make the matters worse, the strenuous work schedule and all kinds of rubbish being served to you for your meals mean that you constantly live under the threat of one or more of these diseases catching up with you sooner or later.

Researchers have been trying for more than a century to develop some sort of medicine for weight loss with mixed results. These drugs primarily target to alter one of the fundamental processes of the human body, weight regulation, by either altering appetite, or by absorbing calories in greater amount. Several compositions like remonabant, Sibutramine and Lorcaserinetc were initially considered effective and safe as anti-obesity drugs but experience showed that these medicines presented more risks than benefits and many medical associations suspended their use. Currently only Orlistat is being used as an anti-obesity drug and it is recommended that the anti-obesity drugs are prescribed only when their benefits can supposedly outweigh risks for a patient and even then these are not recommended for use for long periods.

Ayurveda, the ancient Indian system of medicine, prescribes several herbs for treating obesity, which have been used by the ayurveda practitioners with a lot of success for centuries. These herbs present little or no harmful side effects and many ayurvedic preparations like slimming shakes, weight loss tea etc are using these herbs for alleviating the weight woes of obese people. Ancient ayurvedic scriptures like Charaksamhita and Shushrutasamhita mention Nagarmotha (biological name CyperusRotundus), Baibidang (EmbeliaRibes), Tagar (ValerianaWallichii), and Kali Mirchi (Piper Nigrum) etc as some of the herbs that can be effective in treating obesity. More research will bring these herbs into more prominence and people across the globe will be able to benefit from their anti-obesity properties.