The only diet product that made a bigger splash than Hoodia Gordonii when it hit the market was GlaxoSmithKline’s Alli diet pill. They were both backed by massive marketing campaigns. There was such a rush on Alli when it hit stores in early June that many small stores sold out that day.

The attraction of both pills is that they work on the digestive system, rather than the heart of the brain. This means you won’t have jitters or a racing heart beat. That doesn’t mean they don’t have side effects as their own. In fact, here is a quote from GlaxoSmithKline’s web site on the matter: “Undigested fat cannot be absorbed and passes through the body naturally. The excess fat is not harmful. In fact, you may recognize it in the toilet as something that looks like the oil on top of a pizza.”. Another web site describes that effect as “anal leakage”.

However, these side effects can easily be avoided. The Alli diet pill attaches itself to enzymes in your stomach and digestive tract, keeping them from absorbing the fat that you eat. Since the fat can’t be absorbed, it passes right through your digestive. This undesired effect can be completely nullified by controlling the amount of fat you eat. It’s kind of like the new drugs to keep people from smoking, while you’re on the medication to quit smoking and you smoke a cigarette it gives you a pretty bad headache. I bet the idea of anal leakage is a pretty good deterrent for most people that are tempted to eat something fattening.

Hoodia works on a completely different mechanism. This diet pill, manufactured by dozens of different companies and sold under several monikers, is classified as an appetite suppressant. The biggest side effect? An empty wallet. Hoodia Gordonii is a rare African plant and demand has shot the price skyward. Most users claim it takes about 1000mg of Hoodia to feel the full effect for a few hours, and 1000mg of Hoodia costs between $14 and $20.

A drug used to treat acute migraine can be safely taken long term to prevent some of the migraines women may experience around the time of their period, research shows.

Results of the study indicate that naratriptan twice daily is well tolerated when taken for 6 continuous days per month for up to 1 year for the prevention of menstruation-related migraine.

“For many of the approximately 18 percent of U.S. women with migraine, menstruation is a predictable trigger of migraine attacks,” notes Dr. Jan Lewis Brandes, from Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville, and colleagues in the journal Headache.

While naratriptan is not approved for the prevention of migraine, it has been shown to be significantly more effective than placebo for short-term prevention of menstrual migraines, they point out. Moreover, this triptan has been shown to be well tolerated for short-term use, although how well women tolerate it over the long term has not been studied, until now.

Long-term tolerability tested
Brandes and colleagues studied the tolerability of naratriptan 1 milligram twice daily starting 3 days before the expected onset of menstrually related migraine and continuing for a total of 6 days. Women in the study had the option to use an additional 2.5-milligram dose for breakthrough migraines.

A total of 457 women took at least one dose of naratriptan on study; 318 and 131 completed 6 and 12 months of treatment, respectively.

According to the investigators, the women tolerated naratriptan well over the course of the study. The only adverse event occurring at an incidence of more than 2 percent during the 6-day treatment periods when naratriptan 1 milligram twice daily was taken was ear, nose, and throat infection (3 percent) — even when an additional 2.5-milligram dose was taken.

Source: Reuters