How does the new miracle drug Alli work? Depends!

[elfs]

You may have heard about the new over-the-counter drug, Alli, which promises to help you lose weight. It's not a hunger-blocker; you can still (and will still want to) eat all you've always eaten. It's not a metabolism booster; your body still consumes the same calories it always did. Alli works by blocking your gastrointestinal tract's normal fat-absorption mechanism. All those fats and oils you eat, and their calories, never make it into your bloodstream.

Alli has a nasty little side effect. Remember Olestra and all the joking about "anal leakage potato chips"? Alli causes your GI tract to treat your entire diet's worth of fat and oil as if a quarter of it was olestra. The reality check is that the human GI tract isn't actually designed to pass fat and oil. Alli will cause you to crap your pants. This is not supposition. This is what GlaxoSmithCline tells you on their website.

The only way to avoid this side effect: Glaxo tells you to "eat a lowfat diet." Uh, if you were doing that already, would you really need Alli in the first place?

[Hat tip to Broadsheet (it's Salon, YKTD), who does the math, calculates that the average savings per meal is about 36 calories and writes, "If someone were to ask me how many calories it would take to get me to risk shitting myself in public, it'd be a hell of a lot more than 36."]

Comments

[fallenpegasus]

When Olestra came out, I tried it. Several bags of chips and such. Any ill effects were no worse than one would expect from eating that much *normal* oil.

And looking at the numbers bore that out. The FDA made them report the side effect because it was showing up slightly more often than in the control groups, who were eating normal oils.

It was on the order of 2% in control, 2.5% in the olestra eaters. Eating a more oil than your body wants to metabolize right now causes "anal leakage", and it's done so since the first time a mammel discovered eating seeds as a food source.

Big fucking deal.


I suspect that Alli's numbers are about the same. Anyone have the numbers? Or have a link?


As RAH said: What are the facts? Again and again and again -- what are the facts? Shun wishful thinking, ignore divine revelation, forget what "the stars foretell," avoid opinion and testimonials, care not what the neighbors think, never mind the unguessable "verdict of history" -- what are the facts, and to how many decimal places?