Diet Energy Pills

You can find a variety of diet energy pills at your local drug or health-food store, fitness center or on-line --- these energy pills typically promise to slim you down or tone you up. Most are ineffective. Some are dangerous. They are called dietary supplements, not subject to U.S. Food and Drug Administration, FDA, prescription drug safety and effectiveness proofs. Many diet energy pills work on the risky premise that hyping up your metabolism with stimulants speeds up fat-burning.

Ingredients

The word diet means an eating plan. Sometimes you plan your diet for weight-loss and sometimes to prime your nutrition for body building. Diet energy pills promise both in one tablet. According to Vince DelMonte, nationally known fitness expert and on-line host of Your Six Pack Quest.com, the two most common diet energy pill ingredients are guarana and ephedrine. Both are powerful stimulants. Guarana is a South American tree with a higher caffeine content than coffee, and ephedrine is found in the traditional Chinese stimulant herb, ma huang, used for thousands of years to treat asthma. In 2009 the FDA published a list of 69 diet pills containing dangerous and banned ingredients, some of which are highly toxic.

Actions

The supposed benefit of diet energy pills is based on the notion that a stimulant will make you more active and boost your metabolic rate. Higher activity and hyped metabolism do cause you to burn up more energy than you would if you were less active. Energy is measured in calories, so you can increases the number of calories you burn if you use stimulants, according to the Mayo Clinic.

Safety

The stimulants in diet energy pills speed up everything in your body, including your heart and nervous system, often before these systems are conditioned for higher performance. Heart attacks and strokes, even death, as a result of using diet pills have been documented. Research published in 2003 by scientists at the Osher Center for Integrative Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, in "Annals of Internal Medicine," show that less than 1 percent of herbal products sold in the United States contain ephedra, but they account for 64 percent of all reported adverse reactions. According to 2005 case reports published in "Forensic Science International," caffeine overdoses have been fatal. The toxic dose depends on your body size, general health and your use of other stimulants.

Effectiveness

Nutrition scientists at Mayo Clinic say increases in your activity and metabolic rate will help burn off your body fat. But they list most stimulant-style diet preparations as only "possibly effective" and "likely unsafe." They strongly recommend against their use. While Vince DelMonte does acknowledge some effectiveness of diet energy pills, he strictly limits his approval to highly trained body builders, for very short terms and only under carefully supervised and medically monitored conditions.

Disclaimer

Do not attempt to use diet energy pills for an energy boost or for crash-diet weight loss. Even if you are considering only occasional or limited use, the Mayo Clinic advises you to consult your doctor first and discuss other methods based on a simple, nutritious diet and regular exercise.