Slimming medicines fail to keep the promise of a slim and trim body

Jamshedpur, Feb. 3: The desire to look slim and trim by taking slimming pills has burnt the fingers of many young women in the steel city.

The desire for a flat stomach drove 22-year-old Amrita Kaur, a resident of Bistupur, to purchase a bottle of “so called” herbal slimming pills.

A week later Amrita started vomiting. She was also suffering from loose motion for three days. She had gone weak and was virtually turning into a skeleton.

Rinky Kumari, a student of Graduate Women’s College, suddenly turned rickety and developed gynaecological problems.

She had taken a course of slimming pills for about a month and she ended up losing appetite.

Amrita and Rinky are just two among a growing populace in the city that is fast being shaken from their reverie of the dream figure with the help of slimming pills.

The side effects left behind are far too many and sometime irreversible.

“After the birth of my child I was planning to reduce the extra fat and I had started taking ayurvedic slimming capsules on the suggestion of a city-based beauty parlour. It was a three month-long course but within a week I fell sick,” said Namrata vouching never to take such capsules again.

“I was following a television advertisement and since the medicines were herbal ones, I thought it will be harmless even if they do not bring the desired effect. I have developed a gynaecological problem now in the middle of my slimming course,” said Rinky, another consumer.

According to local physician A.K. Misra, “Most of the capsules are ayurvedic but herbs and seeds used in the slimming pills are kept a secret. No one can say how a slimming pill will react inside the body.”

“Slimming pills always have side effects. The worst part is that sometimes we find it difficult to suggest remedies as most of the pills are not made in a scientific way,” he said.

In the absence of a qualified ayurvedic person, even the government finds its hands tied.

District drug inspector Javed-ul-Haque said the market is flooded with different types of slimming pills but expressed his inability to take any action against it.

“A drug inspector’s job is to check allopathic medicines only. The Drugs and Objectionable Advertisement Act is applicable only to the allopathic drugs. So the manufacturers of ayurvedic slimming pills are taking advantage of the absence of additional power vested with the drug inspectors to check ayurvedic medicines,” said Haque.

When surveyed, eight out of 12 beauty parlours’ owners operating in the steel city told The Telegraph that they have stopped prescribing ayurvedic medicines for slimming purpose.

Some of the beauty parlour owners said they used to provide slimming capsules to their clients beside prescribing ayurvedic pastes for massaging and external use but the pills resulted in severe side-effects and so they have stopped prescribing them.

But chemists and druggists are doing a brisk business out of the ayurvedic slimming capsules.

K. Agrawal of Agrawal Medicals, Sakchi, said herbal pills are always in demand. “I stock all sorts of ayurvedic pills, but I prefer to sell them on prescriptions,” he said.

Another medical store owner, A.K. Chowdhary of Laxmi Medical Stores, said he has a good stock of slimming pills. “Selling ayurvedic pills is not illegal,” he said.

District civil surgeon Shiv Shankar Birua said, “I will start a survey soon to check the effect of slimming drugs on consumers. The drug inspectors will be given additional charge to inspect such drugs during the survey.”