Combo of Old Pills Creates New Diet Pill

Diet pills have been a controversial thing for several years. Most of the time the company tries to get a celebrity to endorse them thus making us all believe that they are good for us and inevitably we end up spending boo-koo's of money on something that really doesn't do much of anything. When I was in high school I remember watching the Trim Spa comercials with Anna Nicole Smith ("Trim Spa baby yeah", you guys remember what I'm talking about?). Well I also remember when she passed away adn many people were talking about the insane drug addictions she had. I was on the bus early my sophmore year of high school and I remember some kids talking about Trim Spa and they were basically alluding to the fact that sure we could look like Anna Nicole if the distributers were to put cocaine in the product because that was what was making her thin. I don't know whether any of that is true, but I do know one thing about diet pills and that is the one's you buy over the counter can be overwhelming because there is just too much.

Fen-phen was the ingredient in weight loss pills in the '90's that was supposed to cause amazing results. Well it may have helped with weight loss, but it also caused problems with heart valves, thus the FDA taking it away in 2007. This year like any other year, people have been trying to find a solution to growing obesity rates in medication. In 2010 alone two diet pills have been "nixed" according to health.com because of possible links to cancer. However a third drug has gotten approval from the FDA panel and its name is Contrave.

What makes this pill so different you may ask, well it seems that it is a combination of two different pills that are already approved. It is a combination of naltrexone, a medication prescribed to treat alcohol and cocaine addiction and bupropion, more comonley known as Welbutrin, a medication used to assist peopel when they quit smoking and an antidepressent.

"It's kind of a neat little approach. They've taken two drugs that have been around for a very long time with relatively good safety profiles and put them together, hoping that the combined action might be better at controlling eating," said Paul Kenny, PhD, associate professor of molecular therapeutics at Scripps Research Institute in Jupiter, Florida. "It's a double whammy."

They may have found the key to assisting in the fight of obesity in America.

"Obesity is really a crisis," says Michael Aziz, MD, an internist with Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. Two-thirds of the U.S. adult population is either overweight or obese while a growing number of adolescents are climbing into the danger range, many developing type 2 diabetes at younger and younger ages. The problem is not a pill but the way we live our lives."

Aziz is not alone in this thought process, Gene-Jack Wang, MD, a senior scientist with Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York agree's that a lifestyle change is really what is going to matter.

"I don't think any medication [will work] without behavior change," said Wang. "If you don't change your behavior, nothing will help you."

The FDA's advisory committee has given the tumbs up, but that doesn't mean that the FDA has to approve the new medication, however they normally follow the advice given by the panel. This was a fascinating story and if it is something that works than that would be fantastic, but no matter what remember that there is no miracle pill out there to make everything go away. Medication is mearly in existence in terms of weight loss to assist. A lot still lies on our own shoulders to make the right food and exercise decisions. What do you think about this new creation? Is this something you would try? Have any of you tried diet pills in the past? Do you know of any that have assisted you? Let me know!

To read the full article about this new medication that I learned all about on CNN. Feel free to click on the link to read in much more detail.