Visit any health food store or look online, you'll find hundreds of 'herbal' weight loss supplements, many of them claiming to have incredible benefits. Although it's tempting to try new pills, the possible side effects and safety concerns are not usually listed. And while some of them may be promising, others can do more harm than good.

Natural food store herbal diet pills are big business. Many claims about the supposed weight loss benefits of herbal weight loss supplements are very misleading. First, the scientific evidence is slim that these herbal diet pills help you to reduce your weight. Second, many of these herbal diet pills are amphetamine-type stimulants that can over-stimulate the nervous system, causing ill-health and nasty side-effects. Also, some diet supplements containing ephedra have been linked to serious side effects such as heart attacks, seizures, and death.

While the pills I took were supposedly 'ephedra free' and were supposedly totally natural and safe, I don't think I ever felt so befouled and afflicted in my life. A year later I discovered that the FDA had banned these herbal diet pills I had taken, and now I wonder what it was I had put in my body.

Herbal diet pills are very popular these days as an alternative to more traditional methods of weight loss like diet and exercise. Herbal treatments in general are very trendy today, which I find a little worrisome for several reasons.

First of all, just about anything can be in an herbal diet pill. 'Herbs' are a kind of loophole in the FDA system, as they are not classified as drugs and therefore do not have the rigorous standards for testing and safety that drugs normally get.

Make no mistake about it though, herbs can be every bit as potent and harmful as illegal narcotics. The difference between medicinal herbs and medicinal drugs is really quite vague anyway, as most prescription drugs themselves come from a kind of plant or herb.

Most of the time the 'herbal' classification does not last very long; the FDA eventually calls it a drug and brings in the scientists. When that happens herbal diet pills often either become available only by prescription or are banned completely. When researching herbal diet pills, it is clear that the herbal pill manufactures are very familiar with the FDA.

Unscrupulous sites even use it to their advantage saying things to the effect of 'buy it now before the FDA bans it!'. You need to ask yourself, if the FDA will eventually ban the herbal diet pill you are interested in, should you be using it at all?

Do not be fooled by the word 'herbal' in an herbal diet pill. It is better to trust a regular diet pill that is FDA approved a lot more than some herbal diet pill concoction with it's unregulated and monitored contents. The words herbal and natural are marketing ploys and should never be confused with the word safe unless there has been FDA testing to prove it.