They are supposed to help shift excess weight and all you have to do is take a couple of pills a day. Easy peasy.
I used them for about a week, drank aloe vera juice (which by the way literally tastes like vomit) restricted my diet but nothing happened so I stopped taking them and bought a family sized bar of Dairy Milk. Patience is not one of my virtues.
However I am so glad I stopped taking them after reading the latest diet pill horror story.
Eloise Parry was a 21 year old student in the prime of her life, last week she died after taking diet pills containing an industrial chemical DNP (dinitrophenol) which is a toxin similar in substance to TNT. A lethal amount was just 2 pills, Eloise had taken 8.
Unfortunately reports such as these are becoming increasingly common, as the obsession with the 'perfect' body is taking over.
Social media such as Twitter and Instagram have let us get closer than ever to our favourite celebrities and their constant updates of selfies, belfies and thigh gaps. With 'diet' pills easier than ever to get hold of, the sad reports of young people dying for diets will keep on increasing.
When I was about 14 the diet pill of 'the moment' was called Hoodia. I read celebrity magazines and thought I can get a body like that if I take these pills. 10 minutes and a few clicks later, my pills were on their way to my house and I was on my way to a new body.
I remember telling friends I had bought them and they called me mad and stupid but that made me just want to prove them wrong and show them that I could do it.
There are not many things in life I can say I am happy that I failed at but my Hoodia diet lasted only a few days and before long the pills were in the bin and I was happily eating chocolate cheesecake again.
Unfortunately though, these pills are far to easy to get hold of and for impressionable young girls with the determination to lose weight (unlike me) they are deadly.
I have dabbled twice and luckily I have been ok, but what if the pills that I picked had contained a deadly substance that I was not aware of?
I don't think banning pills would work as that could cause more harm with increasingly desperate people grabbing whatever they could find on the black market but there needs to be some sort of regulation and education.
Most of these deadly pills are sold as pesticides and not fit for human consumption so how are people able to get hold of them?
I looked at the back of my diet pill bottle...
I have no clue what is in these pills and didn't bother to check before I had taken them. The deal was sealed when I read online that they can 'help you lose weight.' I picked these up in my local Holland and Barrett which I may add there is nothing on this particular bottle which claims to aid weight loss, in fact the bottle doesn't claim anything other than the pills are raspberry ketones.
However the same can't be said for some of the pills available online...
Before customers are able to buy these pills there should be warnings that pop up and maybe even a questionnaire called 'do you understand what is in these pills?' With a list of ingredients and potential side effects including: Death.
Or all 'diet' pills should have to be tested and on the bottles it should read: Fit for human consumption. If the bottle doesn't state that scentence, they should not be able to be sold online, in shops or anywhere. Anyone ignoring this should be jailed immediately as a danger to society.
I'm just throwing out ideas but something needs to be done before these pills cause more misery.
We should also be educating our children that if something seems to be too good to be true, then it probably is and if you eat crisps, chocolate and sweets everyday and don't exercise enough, you will get fat.
It's sad but true, eat less and move more because a quick fix could end up with you being put in the ground quicker than you expected.
No comments:
Post a Comment