The Shocking Secrets Everyone Should Know About Diet Pills – Redbookmag.com (blog)

Recalls In the Age of the Internet

When the FDA discovers a supplement with an illegal ingredient (usually during one of those random searches), the agency warns the public on its website and asks manufacturers and sellers to pull their inventory in a voluntary action. Often, they cooperate; sometimes, they don't. In 2010, Cohen, who is also an internist, started treating women who'd become sick after taking a weight-loss product called Pai You Gou. It was supposed to be off the market, but his patients didn't know and kept buying it, he says. A study he conducted later revealed that at least two thirds of the weight-loss supplements that were recalled between 2009 and 2012 for containing drugs were still for sale by their manufacturers, and most of them hadn't changed their formulas.

Even if manufacturers do cooperate, consumers can't always count on stores to pull products from the shelves. "Getting the information to retailers quickly can be a challenge," says Daniel Fabricant, Ph.D., chief executive officer of the Natural Products Association, a trade organization that alerts members (including retailers) to tainted supplements. After all, a lot of shops may not have the manpower to cull the FDA's recall announcements.

Then there's the problem of the Web. Doctors in Hawaii were still finding places to buy OxyELITE Pro online nine months after the recall. Attorney Peter Hutt, who represents the manufacturer USPlabs, says company leaders wanted to comply with the recall even though, he says, the people who became ill "had been sick for years," not suddenly after taking OxyELITE Pro. "But you can't send somebody around to visit every health food store and gas station in the country," Hutt says, much less trace every Internet retailer. Even if you could, attorney Blood adds, they may simply list the product as "out of stock" instead of "off the market." A determined shopper will keep Googling until they find it somewhere else.

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In written responses (officials declined our request for interviews), the FDA seemed to share those frustrations: "The network of distributors, wholesalers, and retailers of tainted products is diffuse and fragmented and they can be difficult to locate," they wrote us. "These individuals and businesses are often not registered with the FDA, operate out of residences, and distribute via the Internet, social media, small stores, and mail."

In fact, the FDA doesn't have accurate information for 20 percent of supplement companies, including manufacturers, according to an investigation by the Inspector General. Products are also created all over the world, out of sight of the FDA a lesson Sainah Theodore of Queens, NY, learned the hard way.

In 2012, the then 26-year-old Army Reservist bought a supplement called Natural Lipo X from a locally owned health food store. It was supposed to be no more than an herbal blend that would help burn fat, but within days of taking the green capsules, Sainah began suffering from insomnia, eventually falling into a psychosis that, among other things, caused her to cut up her mattress and pillows. "My family was so frightened," she remembers. Sainah was admitted to a psychiatric ward, where she slept for almost 24 hours before waking up confused and embarrassed. A lawsuit she filed against the store says the product contained two illegal stimulants. Going after the shop was her only recourse she found it nearly impossible to determine who had manufactured the pills themselves. Eventually, her lawyers traced them to a company in China.

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The Shocking Secrets Everyone Should Know About Diet Pills - Redbookmag.com (blog)