What It Is

This article will address some of the more common weight loss dietary supplements. Will they have side effects to your well being while aiding your weight loss goals ? Will they even have any affect, be it help or a hindrance? People often look for some fantastic supplement that will solve all their weight loss problem. The reality is that an over the counter dietary supplements are not a cure all and need to be used in conjunction with other weight loss methods.

As part of a weight loss plan, people add weight loss dietary supplements to a diet and exercise program in an effort to kick start the process. In most cases, dietary supplements are a concoction of herbs, plants, amino acids, and vitamins. Before you add some thing like this to your diet you should generally check with your doctor. Some of these ingredients may be things like caffeine or the like. The aim being to speed up the metabolism.

This last piece of advice is prudent as many supplements do not have Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval. They are not regulated in other words. They do not meet the criterai by which other medicines are deemed suitable. Indeed, the FDA can force companies to remove a product from the market if evidence is found showing that the product is not fit for human consumption.

Ephedra was a well known example of a popular weight loss dietary supplement that was discontinued. This was after stories surfaced that it led to seizures, increased blood pressure, lead to depression, and was linked to chronic headaches. The label on many supplements may not accurately reflect their ingredients, since the FDA does not regulate these pills.

Since ephedra is no longer available on the market, bitter orange is being promoted, even though it hasn’t shown any effect with weight loss. New research suggests that it has the same effects as ephedra did on the body. An unhealthy and unsafe weight loss dietary supplement, bitter orange has yet to be pulled from store shelves.

Guar gum and chitosan have been shown to be two very popular but ineffective weight loss dietary supplements. Ingestion of these two dietary supplements for weight loss is not encouraged anymore. Their long term effects on the body are not known since neither of them has been studied or tested for that in particular. However, it has been shown that they do not contribute or help dieters to reduce appetite or lose weight.

However some very simple supplements are thought to be beneficial in weight loss when they are added to a special diet and a consistent exercise program. These are green tea and St. John’s Wart. They help to suppress the appetite to some extent and also increase the metabolism which helps to burn more calories for less physical effort. Green tea is available in various forms, including pills, patches and, of course, tea.