Are Diet Pills really Helpful or Not?

When you look at Youtube, Instagram, etc, you can see so many advertisements that promote diet pills. Also, it is common to see acquaintances around you getting help from diet pills when they go on a diet. It may be questionable whether these pills are really helpful or harmful to the body, so in this article, we will look at the mechanism of diet medicine and what side effects exist.

First, we have to clearly distinguish diet pills from diet supplements. Diet medicines can be taken only when prescribed by doctors. On the other hand, diet supplements are health functional foods that can be easily purchased at online shopping malls.

Diet supplements are made by extracting ingredients from food. Examples include the bark of the Garcinia cambogia tropical fruit, tea skins, catechin in green tea, and narinjin extracted from grapefruit. Supplements have less risk of side effects than medicines, but they are not obligated to conduct clinical trials in drug licensing, making it difficult to know information about which ingredients are mixed. And the reported cases of side effects of diet supplements are also increasing every year.

In the case of diet medicines, there are anorectic which suppresses our appetite, and colipase which inhibits the decomposition of fat and prevents it from being absorbed into the body. Anorectics include fenfluramine, and colipase includes orlistat(Xenical).

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Fenfluramine, a clinically effective appetite suppressant, releases serotonin from nerve terminals and inhibits its reuptake. Considerable evidence suggests that these effects mediate its anorectic activity. The d-isomer of fenfluramine is particularly specific in affecting serotonin mechanisms.

Orlistat is a reversible inhibitor of lipases. It exerts its therapeutic activity in the lumen of the stomach and small intestine by forming a covalent bond with the active serine residue site of gastric and pancreatic lipases. The inactivated enzymes are thus unavailable to hydrolyze dietary fat in the form of triglycerides into absorbable free fatty acids and monoglycerides. As undigested triglycerides are not absorbed, the resulting caloric deficit may have a positive effect on weight control.

Through the pandemic season, many people have tried to lose weight, but they have to be careful when relying on medicine. You should carefully examine what drugs you take, what mechanisms they work on, and what side effects they have. I hope many people will be able to read this article and go on a healthy diet in the future. B