I know many people gain too much weight because they eat too much for other reasons (depression, boredom, etc.). But I know that I (and many others) gain too much weight because I am just stinking hungry all the time.
Modern medicine has produced drugs that can make the body do all sorts of things. They have invented a million pain suppressants, they have created drugs that make the body accept “foreign” body parts, they have created multiple types of anti-depressants, etc.
Why making is a hunger-suppressant so difficult? Is on hunger a fundamentally different level than so many other body/mind altering drugs?
Yea, I am sure it could be misused, but that doesn’t stop pain meds from being made.
Whatever happened to all those over-the-counter appetite suppresants that were advertised on American TV in the 80s? Dexatrim seemed like the leading brand, but there were others. I think the terribly-timed Ayds “candy” was another. Did they just not work? Too much potential for abuse? All of the above?
There is a list of drugs there, but I don’t recognize any of them. I am assuming they are either really expensive or don’t work all that well. Considering that 1/3 of Americans are obese, these ought to be the popular products on the drug market today.
Your body senses hunger from several different angles. It can tell when your blood sugar is low, when your stomach is empty, when your circadian rhythm says it’s time to eat…I’m sure there’s more.
Considering all the things an effective pill would have to suppress, is it surprising that they always turn out to be highly dangerous?
To my surprise, Dexatrim is still being sold, but with a different formulation centered on phenylpropanolamine.
And now that I’ve thought about this some more … there are still over-the-counter appetite suppresant commericals on TV – Alli being especially prominent. The marketing seems different, though. In the 80s, they’d imply that you just pop some super-safe Dexatrim, and you wouldn’t feel like eating for the better part of a day. Alli seems to be marketed as more of a long-term, slow-and-steady “diet plan”.
After further research … I’m dead wrong here. The active ingregient of Alli (and it’s prescription form, Xenical), Orlistat, is not a appetite suppresant. Instead, it works by preventing fat absorption from food.
Damn. I got all excited there for a minute. PPA’s been banned for OTC use in the US for over a decade, and I was hoping that had changed. Nope. Dexatrim here uses a proprietary blend of B vitamins, green and oolong teas and panax ginseng. Boo. I want PPA back!
A stereoisomer of methamphetamine. Under trade names dexedrine, benzedrine, and methedrine, the amphetamines were available in OTC medications until the mid 1960s, when they started becoming increasingly regulated, the level of abuse being very evident. You had appetite supressants, stay awake pills and benzedrine or methedrine inhalers for nasal decongestants. People would abuse the latter by taking the inhaler apart and chewing on the amphetamine soaked strips in them.
And, it works best if taken in combination with a lower-fat diet…if you eat fatty foods while taking Alli, the fat just passes right on through, with potentially messy results. :eek:
There are a variety but they all either have bad side effects or stop working after a year or so. Hunger involves various channels, and if one stops working due to a drug another one just seems to overcompensate.
Obesity is pretty hard to control medically. What has been found lately is that after you lose weight and your biochemistry gets all screwy, taking supplemental leptin can help reverse all those changes so you can stabalize at a lower weight. So there might be promise in leptin as a weight maintenance drug, since maintenance is really where all the problems lie. Most people can lose weight, they just can’t keep it off for more than a few years.
