Can untold thousands (if not millions) of people be wrong? Sadly, yes. Those poor souls who shell out an estimated $2 billion annually for weight-loss fads are setting themselves up for disappointment and heartbreak (if not heart disease). Because in their effort to reduce pounds, they are shrinking their wallets paying for pills made from Garcinia Cambogia and Forskolin. And a lot of unscrupulous Internet marketers are profitably exploiting this ill-advised consumer urge using scam and fraud techniques to get consumers to overpay for ineffective pills. The Net is overloaded with web pages extolling the virtues of their versions of both Garcinia Cambogia and Forskolin……it’s a seller’s jungle out there. Yet, there’s no science to support them and, worse, most all of these offerings are horribly overpriced. That’s probably one of the reasons that the Federal Trade Commission recently cracked down on the crackpots selling these two substances. And the National Institute of Health issued a warning about the use of these supplements.
Just about every authoritative study of these two substances have consulted that:
- Neither pill has not been demonstrated to cause weight loss, except possibly in rodents.
- Its clinical efficacy and safety have not been established.
- Forskolin (also called Coleus forskohlii) raises blood levels of testosterone, probably not a good thing.
- Garcinia is not superior to simple calorie reduction and exercise. It may have a role in helping patients lose weight by assisting motivation and enlisting placebo effects…..which means it works about as well as sugar pills.
- The adverse effects of Garcinia include headache, nausea, upper respiratory tract symptoms, and gastrointestinal symptoms.
There is simply inadequate evidence for anyone to make the claims that these two nutrients result in weight loss. Yet, use of weight-loss supplements in the United States is fairly common. The government estimates that approximately 15% of U.S. adults have used a weight-loss dietary supplement at some point in their lives. So far, the marketers appear to be winning…..and weight-loss consumers losing.
Forskolin does NOT induce weight loss, but a semi-reliable study suggests that it has the potential of preventing rebound weight gain and boosting testosterone levels. This study was widely criticized for not being comprehensive enough as it involved only 15 obese men taking 250mg of 10% forskolin twice a day for 12 weeks. No women were included in the study. That’s pretty much all of the legitimate science we could find on forskolin. Science-Base Medicine researcher Harriet Hall reviewed it a few years ago and gave forskolin two very big thumbs down.
Recently, some Net scammers began hawking forskolin. Natural Pure Forskolin (previously known as ForskolinFast) was created in 2014 but launched sometime in 2015. It claims to be the pill that will help you lose up to 5 pounds a week. All without the need of ‘expensive surgery,’ ‘exhausting exercise,’ ‘strict low calorie diet’ and ‘excuses.’ Contra HealthScam has blacklisted this service and we agree. Avoid it and any other online seller of forskolin. ContraHealthscam also reports that Nutra Forskolin is even nastier; it is a celebrity click-bait scam using fake news articles to promote its products. Notably, Nutra Forskolin is that it doesn’t have its own website. first article, the testimonial photos are stolen and the comments are fake. Also, when you click on the order button you won’t see any Nutra Forskolin to buy. Instead, you are redirected to sites such as Exclusive Forskolin, Forskolin Diet Secret, etc. Take a look at these sites, and you’ll quickly notice that they are the same. The only difference is that the label on the bottle is changed to match the website’s name.