Hydroxycut Banned-It’s About Time
As you may have read in the news, Hydroxycut, the wildly popular weight loss supplement, has finally been banned. The FDA has cited serious liver damage and even death in certain users.
It’s about time the FDA stepped up to the supplement companies who produce and market supplements without regulation. The multi-billion dollar supplement industry has influenced federal regulators to give them a “free ride” when it comes to producing supplements. Currently, supplements in the market don’t have to prove that they are safe or effective-or even whether they contain the ingredients they claim. mayo clinic diet
In case you don’t know the story of how supplement companies have literally getting way with murder since 1994, here is the quick and dirty version:
Orinn Hatch, the Utah senator, with huge backing from the supplement industry (which is largely based in Utah), fought against forcing supplement manufacturers to prove that their produtcs were safe. It’s bad enough to put the bottom line of corporations in your state in front of the health of the entire country. What’s even worse was that Senator Hatch’s son was a lobbyist for these same supplement companies at the same time that this law was put into effect. Can you say conflict of interest?
The situation is so out of control that even though the FDA has banned Hydroxycut, it doesn’t even know what ingredient may be causing the problem. This is due the fact that the supplement manufacturer isn’t obligated to provide the ingredient list.
Large scale, pharmactical grade safety regulations aren’t needed for supplements-which are generally safe. But to let the supplement makers get away with putting contaminated products and misleading claims on the shelves without an ounce of liability is downright criminal.
Brian Dean MS, RD is a registered dietitian and researcher. After years of research, Brian has set his sights on helping those with lower back pain. He serves on the Medical Nutrition Committee for The American Society for Nutrition and is a professional member of numerous research organizations including the International Association for The Study of Pain, American Chronic Pain Society, and The American Dietetic Association. He recently created a research-based lower back pain treatment program , ‘The Back Pain Diet’ which is available from his website Stop Lower Back Pain.
hi Doctor, i just came across the news about hydroxycut too and i was shock. I have just bought the hydroxycut hardcore for about a month now, and have taken a number of pill. Do you think i should go for a body check?
Hello,
I would recommend getting yourself checked out. It certainly won’t hurt. Ask your doctor to order a blood lab test called an LFT (liver function test) panel.
Hi Brian,
Thanks for the support and reading my blog. You have some great posts on here. Best of luck!
Lexx
Supplements are still 1000x safer than most pharmaceuticals. 6,000 people die a year from aspirin alone! Facts are that pharmaceuticals are the real danger. Ephedra was wrongfully banned in 2004, and it is back on the market , no longer banned because it is safe unlike all the pills. Heath Ledger died of what again? Not supplements!
Get your facts straight and wake up to the reality that Medical Doctors are pill pushers for big pharma.
Yes, most supplements are safer than most pharmaceuticals.
There are many reasons for this:
1. The population that takes prescription drugs are generally already sick, older, and live a less healthy lifestyle than those that take supplements.
2. Many supplements are benign and have little to no impact on the human body.
3. More people in general take prescription drugs than supplements.
I said at the end of my article that supplements are generally safe-which they are. My point was that we should have some oversight over the companies that produce, manufacture, and market potentially dangerous compounds.
To say that supplements are 1000x safer is baseless exaggeration.
I hope you can see that I do have “my facts straight”. Do you?
Actually Brian the facts are closer to Tom’s facts. Pharmaceutical drugs are by statistics the fourth leading cause of death in north america. They have not even proven that it is hydroxycut that caused the liver damage. Even if it is the case that hydroxycut caused the damage when you look at the statistics of how many doses are sold and how many adverse reactions occured it is not even close to the same percentages caused by pharmaceuticals at large. Yes Hydroxycut may not be perfectly safe but it is far from the demon that you are making it out to be. Also while it may be true that some supplements cause problems should we make it extremely difficult to get supplements by changing the laws so as to ruin the supplement industry? The benefits of the easier rules outweigh the risk. I live in Canada, we have the stricter regulations and they are not good for the consumer or the manufacturer. The truth is the government are hypocrites due to about 1000 reasons. I would say if you want to get on a “real” concern bandwagon….how about the fact that the government still allows one of the most toxic elements to be placed in your teeth next to your brain….MERCURY AMALGALMS. That is a real concern. Not a couple people who probably had liver problems to begin with who probably abused hydroxycut. It is just another witch hunt just like ephedra.
Hi John,
Thanks for your response, you make some great points.
I think I need to clarify my point a bit.
My point is not that Hydroxycut (or other supplements) are inherently more dangerous than pharmaceutical drugs-they clearly aren’t and I never claimed them to be so.
My point is that they go completely unregulated. There is another safe, natural, and extremely healthy thing we put into our bodies everyday that is regulated by the government. In fact, if the government stopped regulating this, there would be wild protests.
That my friend is food. Food is strictly regulated by the government for safety. If they regulate a tomato they should be regulating Hydroxycut.
My other point that the legislation behind the decision to not regulate was extremely unethical.
I agree that there are greater public health threats than the lack of regulation of the supplement industry. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t an important issue.
It’s relatively clear Brian, that you are engaged in a battle of wit with those that are lacking any real “armamentarium”. Unfortunately with people like “Tom” and “John”, you have your classic anti-pharma/government conspiracist propaganda. In fact, all you have to do is just harken back to “john’s” statement to see frank hypocrisy. He mentions that it hasn’t been proven that hydroxycut has cause frank liver toxicity then refers to the dangers of mercury amalgams, well where the evidenced based argument proving their toxicity. While most pharmaceuticals have the potential for greater adverse effects than their comparative nutraceuticals, they also have far stronger potential for disease management/cure; that’s the clear double edge sword nature of pharmaceuticals. It’s relatively clear that nutraceuticals for the most part(besides a small handful like fish oil, etc) rely on the placebo effect at best, in addition to the ignorance, naivety, and the need for instantaneous gratification of humankind.
It’s sad to see people fight so strongly for the lack of regulation in the supplement market; ironic that people the food that comes to people’s table(which for the most part has relatively limited processing in comparison to supplement/nutraceuticals) is more regulated than the nutraceutical market.
It is clear “jon model” that you do not have one clear point. I did in fact make some very clear and potent points. The bottom line is without getting complex and cutting to the chase… Ephedra works for weight loss…. it is a fact. Why did they ban ephedra? Health risks are the excuse. The real reason is the pharmaceuticals found it threatening. Ephedra had health risks, very minor health risks. Hydroxycut was possibly made more dangerous today because of greedy regulation by the pharmaceuticals by the ban of ephedra. The bottom line is we should with your model just regulate ourselves into complete communism. I also cannot verify that tomatoes are so highly regulated but I would suggest that from what i have read regarding vegetables is that the use of pesticides and herbicides when fruits and vegetables and imported can contain serious know carcinogens. This is something that everyone eats every day. This is in stark comparison to the small amount of people who use herbs like hydroxy. This actually brings another point. How food kills so many people each year. We had better ban meat! kills a lot of kids and adults every year. The argument never ends. However when you look at the actual numbers the herbal supplement industry comes out as one of the safest industries there is.
It’s about time people showed up on these ” doctors’ ” blogs and set them straight. Brian Dean and Jon Model very rightfully got shot down here. They are both full of it.