Regular physical activity along with wholesome and balanced diet is the key to healthy body. Even though most of the people are aware of this, planning and preparing of wholesome meals and daily sports activity takes a lot of time, making people look for faster and easier ways of losing weight. One of these is taking dietary suplements, which has been on rise in the past years. Dietary supplements are by definition foods; they contain plain extracts, vitamins and minerals, which is why most people percive them as product that do not cause side effects. It is cruical to raise awareness of the importance of assesing the suitabilty of an product for the user. Opinion of either pharmacist, doctor or pharmaceutical technician can help a lot in choosing the right product. The aim of master thesis was to evaluate safety and efficiency of diet suplements for weight loss that are on the Slovenian market. We selected 40 ingredients from randomly chosen 65 dietary suplements in which we sought for studies of safety and efficiency. Most commonly appeard and a few random ingredients in dieatary suplements were included in our study. When reviewing the literature, we determined whether the selected ingredients are responsible for weight loss and determined the mechanisms by which they were supposed to work. Thermogenesis was the most common mechanism of action (52.3 percent of food supplements). Average number of ingredients in food supplement is 5.4 with the most common ingredient the green tea (33.9 percent of food supplements), followed by L-carnitine (29 percent of food supplements) and Garcinia (23.1 percent in food supplements). In determing the effectiveness of dietary supplements, we considered supplement potent when containing at least one ingredient being showed effective in humans. As many as 76.9 percent of dietary supplements with several ingredients are said to be effective, while those with one active ingredient are said to be at 10.8 percent. We reviewed the lowest doses used in human studies and compared them with the lowest doses of ingredients in selected dietary supplements for more detailed analysis. Ingredients having lower doses in the studies than the lowest recommended in dietary supplements, were Glucomannan, Gurmar, Green tea, and Green Coffee. When reviewing safety studies, we found that as many as 90 percent of the selected ingredients showed side effects while the percent of dietary supplements containing at least one ingredient with possible side effects is 96.9 percent. Supplement with most side effects is Melissa. According to the data obtained, papaya, ginger, pineapple and cherry show no side effects. Since dietary supplements are available over-the-counter and can be purchased by the user without further consultation, we also felt reasonable to review potential interactions with other dietary supplements and medications. We found that 45 percent of the ingredients potentially enter into interactions with drugs. Supplements packages from various providers can be found on market. Since in this case it is a matter of combining several products, we tried to evaluate the sense of using packages and their safety in the master thesis. We found that the average number of ingredients in the packages is higher at 15.9. All but one of the packages have proven to be effective, but some contain only one effective ingredient. We also found that there was at least one ingredient in each selected dietary supplement package that caused side effects or entered into interactions. According to the data, most dietary supplements and packages help with weight loss, but many of them show side effects or enter into interactions.
|
