The prior ten to fifteen years has seen an exploding market of non-prescription dieting and fat loss products. The selling point to products which are more natural has not been lost on those who provide such diet products. That is the reason why you always see the use of herbal ingredients on the labels because the marketing is effective. Nonetheless there definitely are some significant issues with this overall strategy and usage of these kinds of ingredients. While most people tend to be more informed than ever, there are still millions who place a lot of faith once they read, natural. That presumption often leads them to use it having a high degree of trust. However, many herbal products do have possible negative effects, and there can often be dangerous interactions with medications. Still, an additional situation concerns the individual who has a propensity to react badly to a specific herb.

But there is much more to consider in this overall scenario with weight loss products. There are far too many herbal plant products for clinical and scientific investigation to fully study for health and safety. Sometimes you will see references to studies, but be careful that the study has not been bought and paid for. As is straightforward, that shows certain difficulties along the lines of unbiased research. It is fairly clear concerning the expected results of that kind of study. There will be many ethical challenges associated with that circumstance as is plain to see. Consumers who use them are taking tremendous risk, possibly and based on the exact ingredients.

Out of all the so-called herbal diet supplements in the past, very few have been significantly studied. But, take ephedra plus caffeine for instance, those two in fact will cause temporary weight loss. However, you may remember that ephedra was banned in the US not many years ago. Well, incredibly enough something completely new appeared on shelves, hoodia. Fortunately, some solid investigation has been done on hoodia, but certainly not enough. You should be aware of that hoodia can present dangerous potential side effects for certain people. The way hoodia works is it interrupts the capability for the brain to recognize thirst and hunger sensations. If you have any health concerns, and even if you don't, you must find out all you can prior to using it.

We will talk about a horrible example of what can go wrong with herbal substances. This happened in Belgium, and what happened is about seventy people had failure of their kidneys once they took an herbal diet product. Fifty additional people sustained various degrees of kidney problems. Also, there was clearly proof of lesions that were cancerous in a number of the kidneys that had been taken from those people. The organic compound used was Aristolochia fangchi, but the terrifying part was that it was inadvertently employed in place of a totally different herbal compound.

There isn't any doubt that herbal plants have their place in alternative medicine. Having said that, clearly any person should exercise extreme caution. Unfortunately there will always be a portion of people who will never exercise good prudence in these circumstances.