hCg Diet Makes a Comeback

Among the hundreds of drastic and unproven weight loss plans, the controversial hCG diet may take the cake.

Discredited by researchers in the 1970s, the near-starvation diet restricts followers to 500 calories a day for six weeks. At the same time, dieters regularly inject themselves with human chorionic gonadotropin, or hCG, a hormone taken from pregnant women's urine. Proponents say the hCG curbs hunger pangs, makes it easier to stay on a very low-calorie diet — and even releases stored body fat from trouble spots like the belly, hips and thighs.

Followers of the hCG diet acknowledge that the severe calorie restriction feels like a "forced death march." Both supporters and critics agree that evidence is scant to show the hCG works any better than a placebo. Meanwhile, safety data are lacking on long-term use of hCG for weight loss.

"Starving yourself is never a good idea," said Pieter Cohen, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, who criticized the hCG diet this year on "The Dr. Oz Show." "Injecting yourself with ineffective hormones is an even worse idea."

Yet, the long-discredited diet is making a comeback, and the renewed interest has spawned a cottage industry for products that haven't been tested for quality, safety or efficacy, including drops and sprays.

What's also different this time around is that though the hCG diet still exists largely in the realm of alternative medicine practitioners and Internet hucksters, it's also making inroads in integrative clinics headed by medical doctors, where it's offered as part of a "medically supervised" weight loss plan. At least one physicians group is offering hCG training to doctors. And wellness centers and medical spas also tout the hCG diet as the long-awaited magic bullet.

Dr. Mehmet Oz fueled interest in the diet — and appalled some medical colleagues — by featuring anecdotal success stories on his TV show. Whenever scientific studies show something doesn't work, "yet you have real human beings saying they tried it and it works, I get curious," explained Oz, who called the diet "portion-control shock therapy."

There's no question that men and women do lose weight on the diet — as would anyone who eats 500 calories a day. The pounds melt off quickly, and the instant gratification can be intensely motivating to the patients, who have often exhausted most other options. And because so few obesity treatments are successful, some proponents say the anecdotal evidence shouldn't be dismissed.

"If it was as simple as reducing calories and increasing exercise, we'd all be thin," said Nikol Margiotta, who directs the Longevity HCG Diet at the Raby Institute for Integrative Medicine at Northwestern, which is not part of Northwestern Memorial Hospital. Margiotta is a naprapath, a health care practitioner who treats connective tissue disorders using nutrition and hands-on therapy.

On the hCG diet, "there's a focus, a single-minded drive that comes over you," said Margiotta, who went on the diet herself and said she lost 22 pounds in five weeks. "The problem is that you get addicted to the weight loss."

Still, the bulk of research has found no evidence that taking hCG brings about weight loss or fat redistribution, reduces hunger or improves mood. Since the 1970s, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has required labels to state that the hormone "is not an effective adjunctive therapy" for weight loss.

If dieters lose weight on the regimen, the effect is from the ultralow-calorie diet, most studies have concluded, and the hCG is a placebo.

"Unfortunately that placebo comes with other potential harms," said Dr. Melinda Ring, director of the Northwestern Center for Integrative Medicine and Wellness. "In human and animal studies, hCG injections have been associated with many problems, including excessive stimulation of the ovaries, elevated leptin, insulin and cortisol."

One common side effect of the hCG diet is hair loss; calorie restriction starves the body of essential nutrients, though the diet's proponents believe the body gets the calories it needs from existing fat. HCG can also increase the risk of blood clots, headaches, irritability and fatigue.

In men, hCG stimulates testosterone production, which is why hCG is considered a performance-enhancing substance for athletes. But for a woman of childbearing age, hCG taken by injection, nasal spray or orally could generate antibodies that put future pregnancies in danger, said Dr. Rasa Kazlauskaite, an endocrinologist and preventive medicine expert at Rush University Medical Center who specializes in weight gain.

Taking hCG, she said, "may immunize yourself to your own pregnancy," said Kazlauskaite. "You could still get pregnant, but you could potentially have an antibody to the hormone that is needed to maintain the pregnancy," she said. "The longer you use hCG, the higher the chance you could get the antibody."

Source:August 14, 2011|By Julie Deardorff, Tribune reporter