hCG Diet

Steer Clear of hCG — Myth Dispelled

They say there’s no shortcut to a perfect body—not if you’re unwilling to consume a pregnancy hormone and negligible food.  Cue the hCG diet, put forward as a possible way to lose weight quickly and effectively by the British endocrinologist, Albert T. W. Simeons, who at the time of this ‘discovery’ was studying pregnant women on low-calorie diets and overweight boys with pituitary complications caused by Frölich’s syndrome, he administered low doses of hCG—human chorionic gonadotropin—and claimed that it not only caused weight-loss.  The weight lost was fat and not muscle.  Although the popularity of the hCG diet cannot be denied, there lies no scientific proof in its viability to date and in many ways the very idea of going on a hCG diet is overstepping legal bounds.

What exactly is the deep, dark secret of the hCG?  It appears that the answer is: nothing.  The diet is, according to the FDA and most health professionals, a scam designed to fool people into purchasing expensive diet plans and hCG injections.  Additionally, the very sale and purchase of hCG injections is illegal, as hCG hormone is a prescription drug and cannot be sold without a prescription in the United States.  Some researchers into the matter claim that the hCG injections don’t contain the secret ingredient at all.  In fact, it is quite possible that they are simply fake, and that they act as placebos for the people who have faith in the powerful effects of the diet.

Nonetheless, despite the shortage of scientific evidence, it is puzzling as to how people have actually lost weight from this diet in the same manner the diet claims—up to 30 pounds in 30 days.  Success stories like the British stylist Alison Edmund appear here and there and put the scientific community to test.  In spite of these breaking news, there remains no doubt in a nutritionist’s mind: the magic of the diet is the extremely low calorie intake (only 500 calories a day, and that’s less than half the number of calories consumed by prisoners in Auschwitz!) coupled with the placebo effect, which makes the dieters adamant on the fact the hCG works.

However, even if the crash diet is to be credited to have motivated people to lose weight so fiercely, it can’t be overlooked that it brings with it many side effects and dangers.  The FDA has received at least one case of pulmonary embolism of a dieter on hCG and that’s only the tip of the iceberg. Scientists and researchers only know so little about hCG side effects with a poor diet, as research into hCG being important for weight-loss has been abandoned once it was concluded that it plays no role in it, and so the repercussions of daily consumption of hCG cannot be casually tabulated.  Some of the side effects of hCG are headaches, blood clots, leg cramps, constipation, temporary hair thinning and breast tenderness.  And coupled with a 500-calorie diet—the risks are well beyond leisure.

Although every other people would die for a silver bullet for weight-loss, the bullet would not matter much once you’re dead.  So don’t fall for the hCG diet.  There are a lot many other diets which can deliver you the results better than you expect.

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