What You Need to Know About Weight-Loss Supplements, Part 1

Well, my previous post touching on my own eating habits didn't go over so well. Deep breath, clear the decks. I'll take counsel whether to develop that thread as I'd intended. 
In this post, although I'm talking about weight loss, it's not my weight loss. I'm offering some background to Dr. Mercola's recent article about the allure, the myths, the dangers of weight-loss supplements, better known as "diet pills," as well as the important point that they risk contaminating important, effective supplements with their bad name.
As you can imagine, this is a subject I'm really knowledgeable about, and as a taker of supplements (vitamins and minerals, some amino acids, herbs) I also value consumers' free access to the full gamut of herbs, hormones, amino acids and other nutritive aids. Let me give you some useful information.
Foundations. So many important places to start. Let's start with this:
There's no such thing as a diet in a bottle. This should be obvious on the "if it sounds too good to be true, it's probably too good to be true" criterion. But people who resort to diet pills tend to feel emotionally desperate and as such are more likely to be swayed by hype.

from http://jamesdawsonmartin.com/blog/fat-burnerweight-loss-pills-scam-money/

Even the most unscrupulously hyperbolic bottles of weight loss have some very fine print somewhere saying, effectively, your mileage may vary, do not exceed the dose, and that this is not a substitute for a healthy diet and exercise plan.
In fact, I think some weight-loss supplements may have a sort of stealth placebo effect, either by providing an affirmation through their claims or by triggering the person taking them to adhere better to a diet plan because now they're taking action by taking the pill. Sometimes they trigger adherence to a diet plan less subtly. One supplement I've never tried is Alli, which blocks fat absorption, because I've read the horror stories about what can happen if you eat any fat while taking it. In other words, if you're taking this fat-blocking diet pill you can't eat any fat, so you might as well save your money and go on a fat-free diet!

Why do it? Before we go any further, it's important to say why someone might want to take a weight-loss supplement. Although "detox" is such a cliched and carelessly used term at the moment, the detox nuance here is crucially important.
Things may work differently if you're cutting non-excess weight, but if you have excess weight, both excess fat and excess fluid, it is protecting you. This may be true on an emotional level, and/or it is sequestering toxins. Fat binds toxins up away from your circulation; fluid holds soluble toxins in solution so that they don't concentrate to dangerous levels in the blood.
I can't emphasize enough how important it is to understand this, because when you start releasing the fat and the fluid, you're going to need some good hazardous-materials-collection strategies. Many diet pills, especially the loud and unsubtle ones, are basically laxatives and diuretics, often harsh ones. Mostly these will make you pee and poop a lot, with severe cramping, and with nothing to buffer your body from the toxins that were being held in solution. This can lead to dangerous electrolyte imbalances and dehydration.

from http://www.sullivanvitamins.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=5487

(Every grocery store carries some or several variations of this tea. In this case, the single ingredient is senna, about the harshest laxative in existence. Some other brands have a few other herbs, like mallow and wild rhubarb, to mellow it out a bit (pun not intended), but they all have senna, and some have cassia too.)

How do they work? Last point for this post--how do weight-loss supplements do what they claim to do?

from: http://www.123rf.com/stock-photo/fat_to_thin.html

Knowing the answer to this can help a person decide which kind of supplement might support them. In the right context, some of these supplements can support weight loss, but only in the right circumstances, correctly used, and with the right support.
I could think of eight basic categories/modalities of supplement. I'll line them out briefly here and give some examples in the next post.
(1) Laxatives and diuretics -- as discussed just above. Bad idea, may bring about transient fluid weight loss but usually with negative consequences. On the other hand, a really high-quality herbal cleanse, well supported by a good practitioner and accompanied by green juices, skin brushing, and perhaps colonics and saunas, can support weight loss as part of gentle and healthy removal of stored toxins.
(2) Stimulants. Yep -- a good many weight-loss supplements contain some or several forms of caffeine (straight-up caffeine, coffee or green or oolong tea extract, kola nut, cacao bean), often compounded with B vitamins, for quick stimulation. This may be helpful for a quick boost of focus, but it can also lead to an equal and opposite crash later. Ephedra (ma huang) and Bitter Orange Extract fall in the same category but, interestingly, green coffee bean extract is something different.
Laxatives and Stimulants are the sledgehammers; the other kinds of supplement work in subtler ways, and there are some overlaps between them.
(3) Supporters/activators of hormones, either stimulating the pancreas or the liver, or supporting the adrenals or thyroid, or affecting blood sugar balance. Many of these work by virtue of high antioxidant contents which are generally helpful in reducing inflammation.
(4) Creators of a sense of satiety, either by physically providing bulk or by working with leptin, the so-called satiety hormone.
(5) Binders that prevent absorption of nutrients in general (and also bind up toxins and escort them out), not the same as a laxative or a bulking agent.
(6) Blockers of absorption of a specific nutrient (carbohydrate or fat).
(7) Alternative sources of fuel for the brain for sustained energy and reduced cravings
(8) Neurotransmitter supporters to improve mood and reduce cravings.

f

from http://www.whats4eats.com/beverages/sorrel-punch-recipe

That's it for this post! To recap: trust your b.s. meter, beware of letting go of fat and fluid too fast, and understand that there's a bunch of dross out there, but there are also many different types of supplement that may be helpful. All of the best ones are holistic--they're beneficial for other things than just weight loss--and often they're adaptogenic, which means they provide the support needed in the given environment, weight loss here, perhaps weight gain there.

In the next post, I'll give some examples of the eight categories outlined above and address the question of whether it's better to take a pill with a combination of contents, a single-herb pill, or go direct to the powder/leaf/bark/flower. The answer isn't as straightforward as you might guess.

Notes from the Road, Cities, Kay Ryan, Was it Really You? Supplements

On the Road

When I used to go on the road, I used to travel with almost nothing - a small backpack/bookbag for weeks and weeks, by the skin of my teeth, not knowing what my next connection would be… Anxiety would be through the roof, I'd always be underfed - and somehow I got there in the end. This time, I have a laptop, cellphone, camera (although I forgot to bring its charger) and a cooler full of food, supplements and a couple changes of clothes. Anxiety has still been high, but it's definitely much easier. The contrast, as well as the journey itself, has forced me to reflect on how deeply ingrained 'civilization' is within us, how far it is true that a human's 'natural environment' to some large degree today is 'the city,' where buildings dominate lives and in better cities are full of and surrounded by greenery, where food is purchased and money is earned and spent. A pretty intense conclusion for someone who has tried to 'go back to the wild' so much.

Here are some snapshots of the journey so far, with some reflections on the whole concept of the 'Art of Truth' that I was grappling with this time last week - what an enormous picture is contained in every moment, how to speak its truth, how to interpellate it without interrupting and altering it.

First, though, the poles of my journey: I'll be in Fairbanks for tomorrow evening, for two weeks of focusing on the art and craft of writing - delectable! I'm in Anchorage tonight, where the MFA Residency is taking place, together with a wonderful series of public readings, which I'm missing! And I left Homer, where earlier this week I might have had an intense 'near miss' in the 'making connections' world, or just to express some intense admiration.

Kay Ryan, Was it Really You?

On Tuesday evening, we went to a poetry reading at home in Homer, at a little gallery that holds music and spoken word events too. It's a beautiful little space with some amazing artwork. These baskets are for our wonderful friend Lynn, who is learning how to make them - they're made from kelp harvested from our beaches!

We had to leave early for a dinner engagement, but were there for most of the reading by Mary Mullen, a resident of Ireland for the past 15 years or so who was raised on a homestead in Soldotna (72 miles north of Homer).Her Alaskan roots, her Irish now, and her daughter, who has Downs Syndrome, were the anchoring themes of her writings, which were limpid and heartfelt. 

But - I was distracted: I couldn't take my eyes off a lady in the audience who looked so much like Kay Ryan (as I've seen her in photographs at least) that I was blushing and sweating agonizing between wanting to go and talk to her, realizing that I couldn't possibly do such a thing, and what if she wasn't Kay Ryan at all? Kay Ryan, by the way, has just gotten through being the Poet Laureate. In terms of poets that I'm reading at the moment, she's my current obsession. And the reason for this made the agony of wondering if this was her even more acute, because one of the things that I'm venerating and also using to think with so much about her work is the distance she interposes between intense feelings and their poetic expression. She herself has said something like that she didn't want to spill body fluids all over her poetry! So, listening to this very honest woman's very personal and confessional poetry whilst wondering whether this other, older woman in the audience was my current idol who is teaching me how not to write confessional poetry (or how to write non-confessional poetry) was especially excruciating.

I left, wondering. Agreed with Phil that probably it wasn't her - she lives in Marin County, what would she be doing in the pouring rain in Homer?

But that's not the end of the story. When I spoke to my friend Lynn, she mentioned apropos of something else that she'd heard that Kay Ryan would be reading in Soldotna this coming Sunday! So that woman must have been Kay Ryan! Was I the only person there who recognized her, who cared so much? What would Mary Mullen have felt, to know that she had such a distinguished audience? Did I just miss a uniquely intimate opportunity to have a conversation with the person who produces this poetry I so admire?

A Different Lifestyle - Dipnetting

I got up to Anchorage thanks to the Red Salmon run - all of south-central Alaska, numbers swollen with tourists and 'snowbirds,' is on the move, dipnets of all shapes and sizes strapped on to vehicles ditto, fishing at the mouths of the Kenai and Kasiloff rivers, or (as Phil prefers) taking a boat across Kachemak Bay to China Poot creek. Our friend Joe and his sister came down for some, and Phil and I joined them.  Phil did, anyway. In as deep as he could possibly go, of course!

See Phil in his golden fleece?

A whole different truth, here - a whole different lifestyle, little kids in chest-waders, wielding dipnets, a whole moveable city of RV's with all kinds of portable creature comforts and rubbish, all picked up and set down in these very remote areas. Some people had very high-tech, shiny, expensive equipment; others (like us) had dip-nets fashioned from copper pipe and old bits of gill-net; we saw a little kid wielding a dipnet whose handle was a recycled crutch! Old, heavyset men in chestwaders dragging coolers full of fish along the sand in dinky little plastic sleds. Imagine going every year with your family, possibly coming from outside Alaska just for the possibility of scooping up red salmon in a big net, plucking last year's sand off of all the equipment, repatching the waders...even loading up the little rubber dinghy and braving the strong current there to try to catch some from a boat (can use a bigger net that way).

Anchorage Opportunities

In Anchorage today, I picked up a last couple of supplements that the ND recommended to help me with anxiety and fatigue during the next couple of weeks - help to keep those at bay, that is. One of them was simply 'rescue remedy,' which I was raised on and so familiar and comfortable with - my mum would drop some onto our tongues any time we had an accident or shock. It's the most famous of the Bach Flower Remedies, and has something of an instant calming effect, working on the essence/energy level.

[Sorry for the mess here - I dropped that image in and can't do anything with it, can't move it, can't remove it, nothing - anyone with blogger expertise - please help!]

 The other one works on a more metabolic and chemical level - it is a phospholipid called Phosphatidylserine. I could have gotten the exact thing for cheaper online, but I got the closest thing I could find at the natural food store. Anchorage is a treat for me, boasting a natural food store as it does. This supplement is sold as a supplement that promotes acuity and brain function, but it's definitely a strong adrenal medicine too, which was why the ND gave it to me in the first place a couple months ago. It's so expensive, but it does work! If I hadn't been being cheap with myself, I'd have been hitting it hard this week, having been so anxious: it really does help, and I haven't always been a person to notice big differences from supplements.

The library here is so beautiful - 

Z.J. Loussac Public Library, to give its full, imposing title.

- and check out the schauspieler fountain! Especially check out the plants around the border - most of the edge plants are parsley! - Beautiful curly parsley too. Some huge red cabbages and kale too.