A new study published in the journal Obesity found that dietary supplements do not result in dramatic weight loss, as they claim. In fact, it is rare for people taking these supplements to lose a significant amount of weight, research showed. Tempting claims, but are the products compliant?. Does it help you lose weight? Natural Medicines, an independent group that looks at supplement research, says there is not enough reliable evidence to qualify it.
The National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health states that chitosan has not been shown to be effective in losing weight. Chitosan usually does not cause side effects, but some people have an upset stomach or constipation. If you are allergic to shellfish, you should not take chitosan, because it is made from shellfish. Natural Medicines says there isn't enough evidence to assess how well glucomannan works for weight loss.
Glucomannan can also make it difficult for the body to absorb medicines. Therefore, take your medicine 1 hour before or 4 hours after using glucomannan. Awareness of fitness and weight loss has increased exponentially in recent years. Almost two-thirds of adults try to lose weight.
When the adoption of lifestyle modifications, such as having a healthy diet and exercising regularly, did not produce the desired results, people turned to dietary supplements or pills to lose weight. The use of supplements for weight loss has been a debate for several years. There is no clear evidence to support whether dietary supplements play a role in weight loss. Many popular supplements are not only ineffective, but also have harmful side effects, such as constipation, diarrhea, high heart rate or kidney problems, says Sopczak.
The review also noted that dietary supplements are not regulated by the FDA as strictly as many other prescription and over-the-counter drugs, meaning that those products can be marketed without the same level of quality testing to prove their effectiveness. The best way to lose weight and keep it off is to follow a sensible approach that incorporates a healthy eating plan, reduced calorie intake, and moderate physical activity under the guidance of a health care provider. Proven ways to lose weight are eating healthy foods, reducing calories, and being physically active. But if a supplement is found to be unsafe, the FDA may issue warnings or ask for it to be recalled.
While there is a possibility that some of these supplements such as green coffee extract, CLA, and chromium may help support your weight loss efforts, Kumar says there aren't enough randomized controlled trials yet to show that they result in significant, sustained weight loss on their own. Chromium picolinate supplementation reduced body weight by 1.1 kg more than placebo, but the amount of weight loss was not correlated with chromium picolinate dose. At the end of the trial, all groups lost weight and had a smaller waist circumference, but there were no significant differences between groups. Any effect that supplements have on the number of calories you burn or the way you metabolize fat is minimal and most do not have enough reliable scientific evidence to prove their effectiveness.
The FDA no longer allows the use of ephedra in dietary supplements due to the safety concerns listed below, but the information is provided here in response to continued interest in this ingredient. And when studies are done, they usually only involve a small number of people taking the supplement for only a few weeks or months. Some weight loss supplement labels do not declare the amount of caffeine in the product and only list herbal ingredients. In this study, treatment with chitosan reduced body weight (average weight loss of approximately 2.5 kg) compared to placebo (average weight loss of approximately 1 kg); addition of ascorbic acid led to further reductions in body weight of approximately 1.5 kg compared to chitosan alone.
After the FDA banned weight loss products containing ephedra, many manufacturers switched to bitter orange, but it is not clear whether it is safer. When my patients ask me about weight loss supplements, I explain that there is no good substitute for portion control and exercise. . .
