The Price of Using Diet Pills to Lose Weight

The weight loss industry worldwide is more than a trillion dollars strong with newer products being launched every day. But what is the price that people pay to look beautiful and slim? Your life isn’t the price that you ought to pay for an hourglass figure! Private weight losing clinics prescribe diet pills as if they were sweets. In fact, there are many instances where banned drugs such as amphetamine were prescribed freely. Some common side effects of diet pills include:

• Drugs such as sibutramine suppress the nervous system to burn fat thereby causing an increase in blood pressure and heart rate. This exposes the risk of heart attack and even cardiac arrest especially among those that suffer high blood pressure. Some pills that claim to keep the body energetic actually stimulate the nervous system. Such stimulations increase a person’s risk to heart attack and stroke.

• Other side effects include headache, dry mouth etc. These drugs cause disturbance in the sleep patterns leading to insomnia. While insomnia may seem harmless, it has serious implications including increasing a person’s risk to Type II diabetes, fatigue, stress and tiredness. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that 1 in 6 car accidents are caused by sleep drivers and even equates fatigued driving to drunk driving.

• Over the counter diet pills are known to contain phenylpropanolamine. Recent studies have found that this active ingredient can raise the risk of stroke.

• Most pills use diuretics. When misused diuretics can cause strip the body of essential fluids and cause potassium deficiency. The cells in your body need water balance to function efficiently. Loss of water causes irregular heartbeats, disorientation, and fainting.

• The liver is responsible for clearing the body of chemicals and other toxins. But these diet pills are so potent that they damage the liver. While stopping the intake may reverse the damage, long term usage of these pills damages the liver forever.

Of course, the side effect of each drug changes with the pills. These drugs are intended only for short term use, but people in their ignorance often take it beyond their intended use. This can be very dangerous, and even cause permanent damage, even death. This does not mean that obese people have to lose hope. They can certainly use pills provided they are prescribed by their physician who also strictly monitors their use. Besides, natural remedies can also help a person lose weight.