I’ve written about this before. In the 18 months since the Las Vegas Fox affiliate touted the amazing results that a local chiropractor has had with his patients and their amazing weight loss results little has changed here. Yesterday our generally better news station, the local CBS affiliate ran this piece which points to warnings from a local cosmetic surgeon about “black market HCG” or Human Chorionic Gonadotropin.

Lane Smith, MD, a “quadruple board certified plastic surgeon” seemed happy to appear on the local news expounding on the virtues of HCG as a weight loss drug and moreover warn people about the risks of HCG if he isn’t providing it. Dr. Smith says on camera, “It’s especially dangerous if you do the wrong doses, or you know there are even versions where they [the patients] get cat HCG.” To which I ask 2 things: 1. If there is no legitimate use for weight loss of HCG how are his doses any less wrong? and 2. If the hormone is from cats then it isn’t HCG (Human) is it?

It bears a little repeating that Human Chorionic Gonadotropin (HCG) is a legitimate human hormone that has a number of legitimate medical uses, none of them weight loss. I wrote in great detail about this in May of 2008.

The original Simeone diet plan remains largely unchanged in the way that these modern snake oil salesman are hawking their wares. Daily injections of HCG and ridiculously low calorie dieting. The scientific literature is clear on this, so much so that nothing has been published since the meta-analysis in 1995 with regards to the 1954 diet, though there is lots of research on HCG, aquick search of PubMed makes that clear.

The FDA still takes a strong position on this with a black box warning on the product inserts with all formulations of HCG:

HCG HAS NOT BEEN DEMONSTRATED TO BE EFFECTIVE ADJUNCTIVE THERAPY IN THE TREATMENT OF OBESITY. THERE IS NO SUBSTANTIAL EVIDENCE THAT IT INCREASES WEIGHT LOSS BEYOND THAT RESULTING FROM CALORIC RESTRICTION, THAT IT CAUSES A MORE ATTRACTIVE OR “NORMAL” DISTRIBUTION OF FAT, OR THAT IT DECREASES THE HUNGER AND DISCOMFORT ASSOCIATED WITH CALORIE-RESTRICTED DIETS.

The promise of easy weight loss is almost irresistible to a public desperate for easy and quick solutions. Sadly, fitness and sustained weight loss have no easy and quick answers. Letting a fast talking salesman extract money from your wallet on the latest get-thin-quick scheme, be they outright con artists or misguided physicians, is a sure way to make sure only your bank account gets lighter.

Her Take: Another twist on the HCG diets that has recently popped up is the use of homeopathic doses of HCG. These programs claim to reset the hypothalamus and help patients lose weight permanently. Unfortunately, I can’t find a single study to supprt these claims, only anecdotes. In fact, all my searches seem to find is people eager to sell HCG either as injectables or as homeopathic drops.