Sunday, February 22, 2009

Do Your Homework on Diet Pills

By Cal Stevens

When choosing a diet pill, the first thing that you should look at are the ingredients. While this may sound obvious, you would be surprised how many people seem to ignore this step. The following are some guidelines to use when researching diet pill ingredients so that you can evaluate the potential effectiveness of a supplement before you purchase.

First of all, when analyzing an ingredient that's contained in a diet pill, make sure that you get your information from credible and reputable sources. You certainly don't want to take the pill companies' word for it; they are the ones trying make money off of you purchasing their product and will naturally be very biased. Always confirm their claims by doing your own research. Some great sources for unbiased clinical research and information can be found at such places as PubMed.gov, Wikipedia, and peer-reviewed and published medical journals.

Something that you'll often see when searching for diet pills is that they'll cite research and twist it so that it looks as though the research was done on their product, when in fact, it was done on an ingredient that the product contains. Now, it's good that they cited that research, I just wish they would be more upfront about the information that they provide. You should also always be skeptical of claims about studies if they don't give you the reference for you to verify yourself.

The importance to research the ingredients yourself is made clear in the popularity of some of the latest fad diet pill ingredients (for example, acai berry and hoodia gordonii). These two ingredients are touted all over the internet as being the next secret to weight loss. And one would easily be convinced after reading all of the hype. The fact of the matter is, however, that these two ingredients aren't backed by a single legitimate, well documented scientific study. They may have good health benefits, but they won't help you lose weigt (despite what all the diet companies tell you).

Unfortunately, once you find a diet pill with proven ingredients your work isn't quite over. Even though a product may have good ingredients, those ingredients must be included in high enough amounts for them to function as well as they did when they were studied in clinical testing. Most diet pills on the market hide the amounts of their ingredients by using 'Proprietary Blends.'

The reason that verifying the amounts is important is because most ingredients have only been proven to be effective when they are used in high enough dosages. For example, if a certain ingredient was proven effective in the study when used at 1,000 mg per dosage, the diet pill would need to contain the same amount in order to work in the same way. Most diet pills use only a fraction of the recommended dosages and use a proprietary blend so that you don't know much of the ingredient is actually included. So when possible, look for diet pills that fully disclose the amounts.

Yet another ling to keep an eye out for: extremely long lists of ingredients. Now, I'm not saying that a diet pill is automatically bad if it does have a lot of ingredients. But what I am saying is that some companies will try to fool you into thinking that its the best diet pill because they have a list of ingredients a mile long. Often because they have so many, they aren't able to include each on in high enough amounts to be effective.

Some of what you've read may seem like common sense. It is. But it's so often overlooked by consumers that diet pill companies are making a killing by providing sub-par products. When it comes down it, the ingredients are the only things that make a pill effective. So make sure you do your homework to make the right choices when picking diet pills. - 16004

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