The Truth About Diet Pills (& One Collegiette's Horror Story)

Four years ago, Taylor wanted to lose a few pounds. She experimented with diet pills for three years off and on, from Hydroxy Cut to Quick Trim to lipozene and several others. Transferring schools caused her to put on a little weight, so she turned to diet pills as her main method of weight loss for an upcoming cheerleading season. In September, she was rushed to the hospital for swollen kidneys. In the past two months, she has been to the ER three times, all for kidney problems caused by diet pills.
 
The sad truth is more and more collegiettes™ are succumbing to pressures to look like beanpoles from peers and the media. Instead of living a lifestyle committed to eating right and exercising regularly, they’re turning to a dangerous alternatives, like diet pills. Her Campus turned to health and wellness experts Jackie Keller, Susan Holmberg, and Catherine Garceau to get the skinny on the dangers of diet pills.
 
What are diet pills?
“Most of them fall into the category of appetite suppressants, although there is also the category of fat inhibitors,” says Jackie Keller, wellness coach and founding director of NutriFit, a healthy food company that provides full nutritional support, including fresh meals, food products, educational materials and Professional Wellness Coaching. “But the majority of what I see in [the college] age demographic is over-the-counter or prescription appetite suppressants. These primarily work by tricking the body into believing that you are not hungry, by affecting the brain chemicals that affect appetite.” Diet pills interfere with the hunger signals your brain sends to the rest of your body. Your body is no longer in command of determining one of its basic primary needs, which can start a domino effect with your body’s other cycles, like offsetting your body’s schedule when it comes to bowel movements and menstruation.
 
Susan Holmberg, a nutritionist, weight coach, and behavioral therapist explains, “diet pills often contain things that act as a laxative and types of fiber that would ideally keep you fuller longer.” Diet pills confuse your body into believing it does not need food when it most likely needs some fuel. Sure, you may be going down a pants size, but at what cost? Your brain and body no longer function naturally; they are under the influence of risky pills.

So what’s in diet pills?
Most girls get so caught up in the excitement of losing weight they don’t even bother looking at the ingredients. Susan Holmberg explains the pills often contain stimulants like guarana (made from the seeds of a Brazilian plant that acts as a stimulant and diuretic) and caffeine. Anyone who has pulled an all-nighter with the help of espresso or Mountain Dew knows the side effects of too much caffeine (think jittery hands and racing heart). Ashley, a senior at Wake Forest, admits the stimulants got to her. “It made my heart rate abnormally fast to the point where it was really scary.  It also kept me up at nights and made me very jittery.”
 
Stimulants like guarana and caffeine not only increase your heart rate, they also induce a rush of adrenaline. “So your body is running on adrenaline, which stimulates the flight-or-fight instinct in your body and makes you feel stressed,” explains Catherine Garceau, Olympian and health educator. Feeling stressed becomes your body’s natural state of being—even when you aren’t stressed. This causes a lot of wear and tear on the body physically, mentally, and emotionally. The consistent adrenaline rush and feelings of stress tire out the body physically, but they also make girls think that feeling this way is healthy and normal—even though it isn’t.