Warnings About Ephedra and Alli

When you're eager to lose excess pounds and you see an endless supply of weight loss products being advertised, it's very difficult to know what to do. Do you buy an exercise DVD or do you try weight loss pills? It's not easy to decide and weight loss pills are often sold as being the easiest way to slim. Even if you decide the type of product to buy, it's difficult to know whether they're over-exaggerating or not.

When choosing diet pills, you may have come across Ephedra and Alli. The thing is, you need to know what you're getting yourself in for with them.

Ephedra

This is one of the most controversial of slimming pills because until relatively recently people throughout the US were enjoying the weight loss benefits from it. Unfortunately there were a number of people who weren't so lucky and ended up ill… or dead. Also, criminal gangs were buying it to produce the street drug crystal meth. So it's no wonder the FDA decided to ban it.

But not everyone is happy about the ban because they're now left without their much-loved Ephedra.

You might think that because of all the problems that Ephedra is a man-mad chemical however this isn't the case. It's actually from a Chinese herb Ma Huang which has long been used as a treatment for hay fever and asthma. But it also works as a stimulant and as a result the negative-effects people have experienced include heart attacks, hypertension, seizures and nervousness.

As you can imagine, there are now lots of overweight people looking for the best alternatives to Ephedra. You might notice that many of the alternative pills include Bitter Orange but there are a lot of concerns over this product too.

Alli

Alli is the only pill you can buy for weight loss that's been approved by the FDA as safe for being sold over the counter. However before you rush out to buy it there are some things you might want to find out.

First of all you should understand how it works. There's an enzyme that digests the fat you eat and Alli prevents this from working properly. The result is that up to 25% of the fat you eat will leave your body without being digested. This means that the fat exits your body in an unpleasant way - greasy farts, greasy stools and uncontrollable bowel movements are frequent.

Interestingly, the makers of Alli claim that this is actually a good thing and describe it as "treatment effects." It's like a warning system that tells you you're eating too much fat and that you need to cut down.

Another problem is that Alli will block any kind of fat - good and bad. So if you're making an effort to eat oily fish and other healthy oils you'll find that Alli will just block them. Not good at all.