Baseball star Manny Ramirez injected hormones derived from pregnant women's urine, and was suspended for 50 games in 2009. Women across America "are streaming into doctors’ offices and weight-loss clinics" and paying upward of $1,000 a month for syringes and a supply of the pregnancy hormone hCG, the NY Times reports in a fascinating article about the diet trend. The hormone, which is derived from the urine of pregnant women, is highly controversial—the FDA has warned that hCG has not been shown to help weight loss or to “decrease hunger and discomfort” from low-calorie diets. But hCG seems to be popular once again, and some doctors are happy to prescribe it.
"From an anecdotal point of view, physicians all around the country have seen people losing a tremendous amount of weight with this stuff, and you cannot afford to ignore that," says society doctor Lionel Bissoon, who cannot afford to ignore the $1,150 he gets from each patient who starts up his hCG program. Skeptics say hCG amounts to little more than a placebo, and that the weight loss is attributable to the near-starvation died that many users adhere to: 500 calories a day. In 1995, an analysis found that only two out of 14 clinical trials showed that users of hCG lost more weight, felt less hunger and had an improved body shape. And one of those trials was co-written by an advocate of the diet.
The FDA also warns that one patient on the hCG diet had a pulmonary embolism! Still, the law of averages says you'll be fine on a 500 calorie diet and daily hormone injections. "I had a friend who did it before her wedding," one 35-year-old woman tells the Times. "She looks great." And Dr. Martin Keltz, director of reproductive endocrinology and infertility at St. Lukes, says it's possible hCG helps with muscle town. "There’s a reason Manny Ramirez took it," he tells the Times, referring to the baseball star who was suspended for 50 games in 2009 for hCG use. And did you see how svelte Ramirez looked in his wedding gown? Eat your heart out, A-Rod!
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