万花筒 2008-05-07&05-08

I like to eat so I could just see my stomach get a little more training. Raheem Babalola is a model and actor who says he popped this pill for the last 4 months and lost about 10 pounds without changing his diet or exercise habits.

 It’s keeping those cells those fat, those new fat cells from coming sit in those areas. It's attacking them, it's saying,  you know what, no, you can’t stay here. You gotta go.

 Raheem  is talking about a new supplement claiming to be the newest fat fighting breakthrough. It’s called DEX-C20 and the label says it contains Caralluma Fimbriata a cactus 1 plant found in India. It’s supposed to give you energy, help you burn calories and reduce your appetite.

 I look at this product is what I call a kick-start and a maintenance balancer.

 Dr. Richard Goldfarb is a researcher who is paid by the makers 2 of DEX-C20 to conduct a pilot study of the product.

 Weight loss varied 3 from as little as five pounds up to 13 pounds in this 30- day period. But everybody on the study had weight loss.

 But his very small study involved only 10 patients and no control group. Yet the conclusion surprisingly states quote “we recommend DEX-C20 as a primary product in the fight against obesity 4.” It’s a recommendation that some experts say goes way too far.

 I probably made a strong statement but again a lot of it has to do with my own personal bias 5 too because I took it and lost, you know, 10 probably up to 12 pounds. So perhaps….

 But you can't make a statement like that with, based on personal bias.

 No, I didn’t, but I’m saying what did influence is the fact that, we were ten for ten. Nobody had any major side effects.

 The bigger issue here is that dietary supplements are not regulated by the Food and Drug Administration. This means the makers don`t even have to study the product or prove that it really works, and you have no way of knowing what`s really inside the capsule.

 The studies do not support weight loss with these products.

 Dr. Tod Cooperman is the president of Consumerlab.com, a company that independently tests ingredients in nutritional 6 supplements. He says DEX-C20 raises a lot of questions.

 Our belief is that the marker compounds have not yet been identified for this particular form of Caralluma. So it`ll be very difficult though not impossible to know for sure if it’s really in there.  

 And when it comes to what’s really inside any supplement. Dr. Cooperman says you can’t always trust the label. His lab tested more than 2000 products over the last decade and found a problem with one out of every four.

 Most often it doesn’t contain all the active ingredient that it claims. You really don’t know what’s inside the bottle unless you can go and test it, so it’s a buyer-beware situation.

 I` d love to be able to report there`s a silver bullet out there, that`s gonna make you lose weight, but for now most experts agree the marketing 7 is way ahead of this science. The makers of DEX-C20, by the way, say they have already started allergy 8 study.

 I'm Doctor Sapna Parikh, Fox 5 News.