The Dangers Of Diet Pills

The Dangers Of Diet Pills

Blame it on television. Everyday we see skinny models walking down a runway and then take a look at our own bodies and decide that we're overweight and need to lose a few pounds. So we try dieting but we can never seem to stay on any one diet long enough to make any difference. Finally, we resort to diet pills. Well, regardless of whether or not diet pills work, there are some very great dangers associated with them that you need to be aware of. After filling you in on the dangers of diet pills, I'll give you some natural alternatives to these pills so that you don't have to risk your health just to lose a few pounds.

In order to understand what the dangers of diet pills are, you first need to understand exactly how diet pills work once in your system. Most people honestly don't have a clue how the process works.

The most common diet pills that you can get over the counter, or even by prescription, work by essentially making your body work harder than it normally would. The most common ingredient in most diet pills is caffeine. What this does is raise the body's metabolism. It does this by a complex process by which the fatty acids of your body get broken down by the caffeine. When this process takes place, it effectively results in a loss of appetite. You simply just don't feel like eating.

While this may seem like a totally harmless process, the truth of the matter is, it's far from harmless. The problem is, because of the way diet pills work and the fact that most people who take them are terribly overweight, the increased metabolic rate that results from taking these pills can lead to some very serious problems, not the least of which is a serious heart attack.

Things are at least not as bad as they were before 2003 when diet pills contained a drug by the name of Ephedrine. It was determined that this drug resulted in serious heart related issues including heart attack. Since then, the drug has been removed. Still, the caffeine alone, which is quite considerable, can still cause heart problems in obese people or those who are underweight and taking pills in order to maintain an unhealthy appearance, which is the other end of this horrible coin.

Aside from the serious problems associated with diet pills, other side effects include the mild case of nausea and dizziness all the way up to kidney damage and strokes. The war on whether or not to even allow these pills to be sold is still going on.

The sad part of all this is, in most cases of obesity, weight can be controlled by simple diet and exercise. Yes, there are some cases where people are overweight because of very poor metabolism. But for a great majority of the population, diet pills are just an easy but dangerous way to solve a problem that has much better solutions.