How to Get the Weight Loss Benefits of Ephedra Without the Risks
“How to Get the Weight Loss Benefits
of Ephedra Without the Risks” Thermogenic drugs like DNP can cause
people to overheat to death; they can increase resting metabolic
rates by 300% or more. A more physiological spread would
range about 10 times less, from a 30% slower metabolism in
people with an underactive thyroid to a 30% higher metabolism when
the part of our nervous system that controls our fight-or-flight
the response is activated. In response to a fright or acute
stress, special nerves release a chemical called noradrenaline
to ready us for confrontation.
You experience that by your skin
getting paler, cold, and clammy as blood is diverted to
your more vital organs. Your mouth can get dry as your
digestive system is put on hold. Your heart starts to beat faster. What you don’t feel is
the extra fat being burned to liberate energy for the fight. That is why people started taking
ephedra for weight loss. Ephedra is an evergreen shrub used
for thousands of years in China to treat asthma because it causes
that same release of noradrenaline that offers relief to asthmatics
by dilating their airways. In the United States, it was appropriated
for use as a metabolic stimulant, shown to result in about two
pounds of weight loss a month in 19 placebo-controlled trials.
By the late 1990s, millions
of Americans were taking it. The problem is that it had all
the other noradrenaline effects like increasing heart
rate and blood pressure; and so, chronic use resulted in
strokes, heart arrhythmias, and death. The FDA warned the public of the
risks in 1994, but it wasn’t banned until a decade later after a
Major League pitcher dropped dead. In the current Wild West
dietary supplement recommendation, a supplement can be marketed
without any safety data at all and the manufacturer is
under no obligation to disclose adverse effects that may arise.
No surprise, then, that online
vendors assured absolute safety: “No negative side effects,”
“100% safe for long-term use.” The president of Metabolife International,
a leading seller of ephedra, assured the FDA that the company
had never received a single “notice from a consumer that any serious
adverse health event has occurred….” In reality, they received 13,000
health complaints, including reports of serious injuries,
hospitalizations, and deaths. If only there was a way to get
the benefits of ephedra without the risks. There is, but to understand it,
first, you have to grasp a remarkable biological phenomenon
known as the diving reflex. Imagine yourself walking
across a frozen lake and suddenly falling through the ice,
plunging into the icy depths. It’s hard to think of a greater instant
fight-or-flight shock than that.
Indeed, noradrenaline would be
released, causing the blood vessels in your arms and legs to constrict
to bring blood back to your core. You can imagine how fast
your heart might start racing, but that would
be counterproductive because you’d use up
your oxygen faster. Remarkably, what happens instead is
your heart rate slows down. That’s the diving reflex,
first described in the 1700s. Air-breathing animals are born
with this automatic safety feature to help keep us from drowning. In medicine, we can exploit
this physiological quirk with what’s called a “cold face test.” To see if a comatose
patient has intact neural pathways, you can apply cold
compresses to their face to see if their heart immediately
starts slowing down. Or more dramatically,
it can be used to treat people who flip into an
abnormally rapid heart rate. Remember that episode of ER
where Carter dunks the guy’s face into a tray of ice water? (It was on TV when I was
in medical school and a group of us would
gather around and count how many times they violated
“universal precautions.”) OK, but what does this
have to do with weight loss? The problem with noradrenaline-
releasing drugs like ephedra is the accompanying rise in
heart rate and blood pressure.
But what the diving reflex shows is
that it’s possible to experience selective noradrenaline effects,
raising the possibility that there may be a way to get the metabolic
boost without risking stroking out. Unbelievably, this intricate
physiological feat may be accomplished by the simplest of acts—instead of
drowning in water, simply drinking it. Wait, what? You can boost your
metabolism by drinking water. Buckle your safety belts;
you are in for a wild ride, which we’ll continue next.
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