Currently This

The FDA has banned Ephedra again. They banned it, someone challenged the ban, you could sell it again, the court supported the FDAs claim and now they banned it again. They took it off the market because 155 people died over five years while using it as a weight loss supplement. In supporting the ban, the court ruled that, at only a pound per week, the weight loss benefit was too small to be outweighed by the risk of heart attack if you use the supplement.

The supplement makers need a better lobby.

Six years back, I was an enthusiastic ephedra user. I started that diet at close to three hundred pounds and if I had only lost fifty two pounds in a year it would still have had huge health benefits for me. After all, your doctor tells you that even a ten percent weight loss can lower your chance of heart disease and diabetes. So - even if it had only been that fifty two pounds in as many weeks, I would have had a healthier heart than when I started.

But I didn't lose a pound a week. I lost roughly three pounds a week. In three months I lost thirty pounds and the only thing I did differently in that time was use an ephedra supplement. At that point, I hadn't changed my diet or joined the gym. Thirty pounds, three months, just ephedra.

Then I joined a gym and changed my diet and by the time I plateaued, I had lost eighty pounds. Eighty pounds in less than a year. I had been battling my weight all my adult life - I tried every diet you can think of, I tried exercise, nothing helped but ephedra and I never - never - experienced any heart problems while using it. In fact, it can be argued that the weight loss benefits to my heart while using it were spectacular. I was healthier for using ephedra. I had started to jog. I was able to do more things with the kids, was able to go into a restaurant and be invisible. I was thumbing my nose at all the people who had dismissed me over time because I was fat and I was loving it.

Then they banned ephedra because some people were having heart problems while using it, and the weight started coming back. I was still exercising, still watching what I ate and the weight started coming back. Ultimately, sixty of the eighty pounds I had lost came back and I can say this - it's bad to be fat but it's a hundred times worse to lose weight, thumb your nose and get fat again. Have you read Flowers for Algernon? It's like that.

In 2004, the Wall street Journal reported that roughly 15,000 people a year die from gastrointestinal bleeding caused by over the counter pain relievers like naproxen sodium (Aleeve) and ibuprofen (Motrin). Now, say that figure was exaggerated. Cut it to one percent of that figure. Say the actual number of annual deaths attributable to Motrin or Aleeve were only 150 people. That means that in the five years that 155 people died of ephedra related issues, 750 died from Aleeve and Motrin. But those are still on the market and ephedra has been banned. If that isn't a lobbying issue, I don't know what is.

When I found out recently that the ban had been challenged and lifted, I started buying and stockpiling ephedra. I have enough to last a year at half the dose I originally took. I'll buy more - I think I have until August 31st to get it. On the one hand, I think why bother if I have to stop and the weight creeps back. But maybe I can keep that from happening this time. I don't know. Who knows? I do know I don't want to stay like this and I can't do it on my own. After all, according to the National Institutes of Health, 150,000 deaths are attributable to obesity issues in 2000. At one point, I considered bariatric surgery, but dismissed the option as too dangerous - it has a one percent death rate. That means that 150 die every year from complications after stomach banding surgeries (those plastic surgeons must have a helluva lobby, too).

So - to recap:

1. 150,000 deaths a year due to obesity
2. 150 people die a year after having stomach banding surgery
3. 750 people die every year after using over the counter pain relievers like Motrin or Aleeve
4. 31 people die in a year while using ephedra

And given all this, I choose ephedra.