Weight loss at what price to one’s health?
DURBAN-based insurance broker consultant Chantel Gaillard, 47, is one of the many who’ve had serious adverse reactions to the “wonder” weightloss product Secret Fat Burner.
It was a combination of being desperate to lose weight for a wedding she and her husband were planning to attend in Poland; seeing others losing weight on the product, and being assured it was “totally natural”, that saw Gaillard pay a colleague more than R600 for a month’s supply of “The Secret” – as it’s called – last year.
“I had read up on all the claimed ingredients – things like bitter orange extract, cassia seed, green tea extract, guarana and aloe – and was confident that it was a totally natural product.”
But within a month, Gaillard started to experience severe heart palpitations.
Her doctor sent her for blood tests which confirmed a hyperactive thyroid.
“He asked me what medications I was taking and I didn’t think to mention The Secret because to me it was a herbal product,” she says.
She was prescribed a drug to control her thyroid and a beta blocker to slow down her heart, which she took during her threeweek overseas trip – along with her “Secret”. Her symptoms lessened but didn’t stop.
On her return to Durban, Gaillard was referred to an endocrinologist, with whom she did share her Secret habit.
“Immediately she said, ‘that’s the problem. I’ve heard about this from colleagues’.”
Gaillard stopped taking everything – her “natural” Secret and both medications.
Her thyroid returned to normal as a result, but not her heart.
She was referred to a cardiologist who prescribed medication to regulate her heartbeat.
“I have tried to wean myself off it, but the problem re-occurs, so I may well have to take these meds for the rest of my life.”
It turns out – surprise! – that the big secret of the Secret is that it contains some pretty serious ingredients, one of them banned.
On receiving reports from a number of endocrinologists who had had patients come to them with overactive thyroids after using The Secret, the Society for Endocrinology, Metabolism and Diabetes of South Africa (Semdsa) recently had the product tested by an independent accredited laboratory which revealed the reason for those side-effects – the presence of hydrochloro-thiazide, sibutramine, levo-thryroxine and triiodothy-ronine.
For starters, sibutramine has been banned in many countries and is no longer registered as an ingredient which can be sold in SA because the appetite suppressant was found to increase the risk of irregular heart rhythms and stroke.
The others are scheduled ingredients, and products that contain them, should only be sold with a prescription.
Semdsa said people taking the product could get palpitations, anxiety, heat intolerance, aggravation of hypertension and cardiac complications, such as atrial fibrillation and cardiac failure.
Semdsa head Dr Nazeer Mohamed said the society had twice contacted the SA Health Product Regulatory Authority‚ asking them to take action, with no response.
As the society says, that banned sibutramine aside, this product should be registered as a medicine, and it’s not. So it’s being sold illegally in terms of the Health Professions Act.
Under the Consumer Protection Act, products have to be labelled correctly, and everyone in the supply chain is liable for any harm caused to a consumer, as in South Africa’s listeriosis outbreak.
The colleague who sold Gaillard the Secret had left their workplace by the time Gaillard established what was causing her symptoms, so she never told her.
When I contacted that sales agent this week, she said Gaillard’s was the first adverse report she knew of. Asked who she sourced her Secret stock from, she said “from Johannesburg”, and confirmed the suppliers called themselves “The Secret Team”.
When I asked for their names, she abruptly ended the call.
It was the same with two other Secret agents I contacted.
There have been claims and counter claims of fake versions of Secret Fat Burner products being sold in near-identical packaging – a convenient counter to claims of users suffering adverse effects.
Here’s the thing: if a weight loss product is proving to be wildly effective – in the absence of any changes to diet or lifestyle – you can be sure it contains some hardcore drugs with potentially dire health implications.
And it should definitely not be peddled without a prescription by a sales structure shrouded in secrecy.