Weight Loss Supplement Side Effects - Health Impact of Diet Pills - Men's Health
More than two thirds of Americans are overweight or obese, according to the National Institutes of Health — and supplement companies are cashing in. About 15 percent of adults in the U.S. have used a dietary weight-loss supplement at some point in their lives, spending roughly $2.1 billion a year on those in pill form. "The obesity epidemic is not going away, and it's easy for companies to see how a pill for this will maximize profits," says Mark Moyad, M.D., director of Preventive and Alternative Medicine at the University of Michigan and author of The Supplement Handbook . "The irony is that we've had drugs that work — they could help people lose weight, and sometimes very large amounts of weight — but they also just destroyed the body." He points to Meridia — the brand name for a drug called sibutramine — as one recent example. "This is maybe the biggest-selling weight-loss drug of all time, and for a while it seemed like people were losing weight ...