Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Diet Pills, Are They Harmful?

By Ricardo d Argence

If you've ever skimmed the pages of a fitness publication, you couldn't have missed all the ads for diet pills. It seems that diet pills get the most attention. Which should cause one to wonder if diet pills do more harm than good.

Diet pills have a good possibility to help with weight loss and this appeals to people who have had a hard time losing weight past especially. But such gains must be weighed against potential dangers of diet pills, such as hazardous side effects. One should be aware of the dangers of diet tablets before taking any.

Most diet tabs crushes appetite, which leads to lesser consumption of calories in a day, but consuming lesser calories gives your body insufficient energy and decelerates your metabolism. Obesity is usually caused by a slow metabolism.

Ephedrine is used in a large number of diet pills as it increases the heart rate and metabolism rate which could lead to heart attack or stroke. This is a drug that should not be taken if you have high blood pressure, or heart and thyroid problems. This has been linked to a number of deaths and serious illness.

Caffeine is a common ingredient in diet pills. Always read the label and any that say they contain more then 300mg of caffeine should not be taken as this could be very harmful to your health, because like ephedrine, caffeine raises your heart rate and blood pressure and again could lead to a heart attack or stroke.

Symptoms of diet pills can be few to severe depending on what is in them. Some diet pills, especially the stimulant based diet pills, are habit forming and as such can be abused. Abuse of these drugs may lead to dependence. Check with your doctor before taking any prescription diet pill to find out if they are habit forming and what signs you should look out for to alert you to this problem.

Seek your doctor's advice, or research the diet pills or food supplements, before seeking their aid in your weightloss ventures. Make it a personal goal to exercise regularly and to eat healthy foods because you will succeed with your weight loss goals.

Although these weight loss drugs do work, an increase in beneficial effects occurs when regular exercise is undertaken along with a change in eating habits. The type of balanced food groups would be oats, cereals, rice, potatoes with fruit and vegetables as the best source of minerals, fiber and vitamins. Good exercise plan with the use of weights will help improve the body's ability to burn off the calories and maintain a healthy heart.

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