14 DAY TRIAL // The number of overweight and obese people increases every year, because of the more and more “comfortable lifestyle”, lack of exercise or bad food habits. And as gaining weight is much easier than losing it, slimming supplements producers are sitting on a gold mine.
Overweight and obese people all over the world spend a fortune on supplements that are supposed to facilitate their slimming diet, with the weight-loss market being estimated at over $13 billion every year. Two new studies reveal that all these so-called miracle products have no real effect whatsoever. Two doctors from Germany and the UK, presented at the International Congress on Obesity in Stockholm in Sweden, studies that concluded both the same thing: most supplements that are not prescribed or sold over-the-counter have absolutely no slimming effect.
The German study, led by Dr Thomas Ellrott, head of the Institute for Nutrition and Psychology at the University of Göttingen Medical School, chose nine popular slimming supplements from pharmacies, containing cabbage powder, guarana seed powder, bean extract, L-Carnitine, polyglucosamine, Konjac extract, fibre pills, selected plant extracts and sodium alginate formulations.
189 obese patients were given one of the supplements (without any way for the patient of knowing what it was) or fake pills. Two months later, the weight loss was not significantly different between supplements and placebos, between 1 and 2 kg for people having taken the drugs and 1.2 kg for those with the fake pills.
The second study was realised by Dr. Igho Onakpoya of Peninsula Medical School at the Universities of Exeter and Plymouth, UK. He led a review of all clinical trials made so far, of nine supplements like bitter orange, chromium picolinate, calcium, Ephedra, chitosan, conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), guar gum, glucomannan and green tea. After several tests, Dr Onakpoya concluded that none of the supplements had a positive effect on losing weight. There were a few products that had side-effects and that needed further testing. More research should be done because most trials were relatively short and the number of patients too small to establish the safety and the efficiency of a supplement.
People who need to lose weight and rely on these popular slimming supplements risk to be very disappointed. Even if they are said to draw fat and dissolve it, to block the carbohydrates or to stop the hunger, their effectiveness has not been proven clinically.