Are Diet Pills Bad for the Heart?

Weight loss pills promise quick results but come with serious risks like high blood pressure & fast heart rate. Learn about safer alternatives.

Are Diet Pills Bad for the Heart?

Weight loss pills that promise to speed up metabolism and suppress appetite can be risky and can cause high blood pressure, fast heart rate, and lung and heart problems. Taking a weight-loss medicine can also lead to similar heart conditions. This is because weight-loss drugs often contain stimulants, which help you be more alert and less interested in food, according to Dr. But when a drug promises to speed up your metabolism, it can also increase your heart rate. In people susceptible to atrial fibrillation, or afib, the most common type of arrhythmia, or irregular heartbeats, these stimulants may trigger an episode.

Weight-loss medicines are not for people who expect to lose just a few kilos. Some first-generation diet pills were risky for the heart. New drugs may have expanded options for treating obesity. But what effects does Saxenda have on the heart? In clinical trials, Saxenda was found to produce a small decrease in systolic blood pressure (the top number) of approximately 2.8 millimeters of mercury. However, treatment with Saxenda has also been shown to be associated with an increase in heart rate of 3 beats per minute.

Over time, older weight loss drugs that increased heart rate were found to be associated with more serious cardiac side effects, so this is an area of concern and an important area that needs to be paid attention to for further research. The FDA-approved weight loss drug Meridia has even been shown to substantially increase the risk of heart attack and stroke, while, ironically, it offers no weight loss benefit to most people who took it. Larry Bachorik said the agency was somewhat restricted in its ability to regulate the combination of diet pills because it was a drug use that was never approved in the first place. So if there are no FDA-approved weight loss products or not, how do you lose weight? In short, reducing calories. Observations, made in the normal course of medical practice rather than in clinical studies, cannot be used to estimate the risk of diet pills.

15 percent of those taking Belviq achieved even greater weight loss, at least 10 percent of body weight or more, compared to 5 percent of those in the placebo group. While therapeutic lifestyle changes, through healthy dietary changes and more physical activity, remain the preferred first-line strategy for weight loss, many people with obesity have struggled, for various reasons, to achieve adequate weight loss only through changes in style of life. With all the hype about weight loss products on TV, the Internet and even in wellness clinics, it's easy to swallow the idea that a diet pill may be your answer. For millions of severely overweight Americans, taking a pill to reach a healthier weight quickly may seem appealing. According to experts, this is the first obstacle — and one of the main obstacles overcome — for drugs specifically aimed at weight loss. If you're considering using a weight-loss medication or supplement, it's important that you first learn everything you can.

These prescription weight-loss drugs work by manipulating the receptors in your brain that decide how you respond to hunger. Topiramate, on the other hand, has an unclear mechanism for causing weight loss, and several pathways are postulated, including separately reducing appetite and adipose (fatty) tissue. For the first time, a drug has been shown to help people lose weight and keep it off for several years without increasing the risk of heart problems — a safety milestone that may encourage wider use to help curb the obesity epidemic. Liraglutide, when used to treat diabetes, also causes weight loss and reduces heart risks — although cardiac safety at the dose used for weight loss has not been tested. Before turning to weight-loss medications and their potential risks, consider safer options such as modifying your diet and adding exercise to your daily routine.

Diet and exercise are the first steps that doctors recommend but medications can also be considered for people with a dangerously high weight who cannot lose enough pounds by other means.