sorry for the long ass link… delete any spaces! 
www.reuters.com/news_article.jhtml; jsessionid=0IK1PELVPSXVUCRBAEZSFEYKEEATIIWD? type=search&StoryID=1092728
Gosh, I hope nobody at the FDA or Human Health Services got fired. I’ve got some other thoughts for “Public Citizen” though. All I know is I’ve got my MD6!
WOOHOO!!! Where can i sign up to become part of a study and get ripped for free!?!?
Something I don’t understand. According to Will Brink’s e-book on dietary supplements, the safety of ephedra has been validated in several studies and he summarizes a few of these. And I believe a few t-mag articles (specifically the ones summarizing studies from the scientific conferences) have given a few examples too. Yet when I go to the FDA site and type in the names of a few popular ephedra products in their adverse reporting database, I get several hits of doctors reporting rapid heart rate and other things as reported in the link. I don’t understand this discrepency. Are patients experiencing incredible mass hysteria or are they exagerrating the side effects they’re feeling from ephedra? And can anyone provide objective opinions? Objective information? (We already have the anti-FDA potshots in the other MD-6 threads.) How does one make sense between the positive studies and the negative info in the FDA database? -Fulton
There isn’t a discrepancy. Reporting a rapid heart beat or saying they feel the jitters is not a health threatening crisis. Most women claim to feel this with any thermogenic. We know that ephedrine can keep you up at night so calling the FDA and reporting lost sleep as an adverse reaction to it is also going to be thrown into those numbers. I am only interested in deaths or health complications, not someone’s over-sensitivity to it as far as its beta agonist effects. Hell, weight lifting increases your heart rate as well. Who should I call about that?
The truth is a recent study published by Dr Boozer and colleagues found 90 mg per day of ephedra with 192 mg per day caffeine safe and effective for weight and fat loss in overweight (but healthy) people over a six month period. The study was very in depth and well-controlled.
The FDA via the NIH has hired The Rand Institute to do a comprehensive assessment of E/C and its relative risk to society. That report will be out in the early fall. Most likely there will be labeling changes and stronger warning labels, BUT it will not be pulled from the marketplace (IMO). There are just as many adverse events in the medical literature and in the MEDWATCH propgram with pseudoephedrine, so the financial impact of pulling both to the Rx and OTC industry is weighed into the equation, favoring us. In essence people should not take the stuff unless they are deemed healthy (normal heart function, BP, etc) and meet the criteria used in the studies. For performance enhancement, research backs that up as well (by Douglas Bell)
Ya know, why not ban tylenol? or asprin? or how about sleepings pills? ANY one of those can call you like ephedrine does! I know how about coffee!!! oh wait! lets ban cars! cause you can die in those too! hey wait! no lets ban breathing!! damn polution!
Why can’t the FDA just slap a bigger warning on it like cigarettes and alcohol have? “If you take this you can die.” That should keep all the morons from abusing it. But seriously, why not the big warning on the label idea?