Recommended Sites
Home

The Diet Patch

What exactly is a “Diet Patch?”

Everything evolves, and weight loss products are no exception. Oral supplements have been around for decades, promising everything from assistance in weight loss to magically melting away pounds while you sleep. The next evolution seems to have arrived in force, with advertisements for “Diet Patches” saturating late night TV, magazines, radio, and the Internet.

The idea behind the effectiveness of the diet patch is two fold; first, offer supplementation that in someway advances an individuals weight loss progress; second, provide an easy way to put this supplementation into play. While different company’s patches contain different ingredients, they all offer the same vehicle for getting their product in you; the transference of the supplement via skin absorption through wearing the infamous patch.

The patch is supposed to be placed on smooth skin and left on for a period of time, up to a full day. While you go about your daily routine (which includes, according to many of the advertisements, eating whatever you like) the appetite suppressing / energy boosting / fat melting substance on the patch oozes into your skin, and from there your bloodstream, and gets to work.

Do Diet Patches Work as Advertised?

Clinical tests have yet to prove any diet patches effectiveness. Supposing for a moment that the claim of skin absorption-to-blood stream action of the patch is accurate (and again, no clinical trials have proved that they are), consider what it is the patch manufactures are trying to put in you. Guarana, a caffeine-like stimulant for increasing the metabolism; Chromium, used to balance blood sugar levels; and in one of the more infamous cases, seaweed; do any of these help you loose weight?

The science behind thermogensis, which is at its simplest the burning of calories at a higher rate than the consumption of calories, is valid. Caffeine and other thermogenic-affecting foods and supplements (like grapefruit, for instance) have long been touted as the way to go for fat burning, and in many cases has been shown to be effective; but not in patches.

The Atkin’s Diet made famous the need for monitoring blood sugar levels when dieting, but chromium effects, along with the guarana, will only produce mild benefits that will have no lasting effect without a change of exercise and eating habits; unlike the patch manufacture’s claims of effortless weight loss.

Seaweed, specifically bladderwrack, contains a high iodine content. Iodine can help low or sluggish thyroids to perform better, preventing low energy levels and fat retention. What if you have a normal-performing thyroid gland? In that case, the extra iodine has no effect.

A Google search for “The Diet Patch” really tells the story of this latest diet evolution; the first result was for a company that sells a diet patch, and the second for an article warning against them on a diet-fraud watch site; the results after followed the same pattern, alternating between those who would send up the patch as the best way to lose weight, and those who would send you the patches where they think they belong; in the trash.