People will always look for a fast fix for weight loss or simply want to utilize diet pills to help speed the process up.

Besides some prescription drugs like phentermine and others, the single most popular diet product was ephedra. Apparently a large portion of the diet pill buying population still think ephedra is highly effective due to the continued strong interest in ephedra.

People wouldn't have continued to search for it by the millions every year during the time of the FDA ban on ephedra, if they didn't think it had helped them in some fashion to lose weight. If ephedra products didn't work, they would not have been wildly popular for over 10 years.

A comparison really cannot be made between patented weight loss drugs manufactured by the pharmaceutical industry and an all-natural herb that cost less than half the price of a prescription. Plus the fact that in numerous, well qualified, scientific studies is was proven that ephedra caused just as much weight loss, if not more, than prescription weight loss pills.

A study published in the International Journal of Obesity and Related Metabolic Disorders (18(2): 99-103,1994) showed the combination of ephedrine and caffeine to outperform dexfenfluramine in the treatment of obesity.

Very curious is the fact that the active ingredient in ephedra that is responsible for the weight loss is called ephedrine. But ephedrine can be found in many over-the-counter medications. They are commonly used by millions of people to relieve allergy symptoms such as asthma.

Ephedrine is readily available to anyone at his or her local grocery store or neighborhood drug store.

Now, if the chemical ephedrine is considered so extremely dangerous while in the herbal form contained in ephedra, then why is it allowed to be sold in the same concentrations in medications? Why is it suddenly acceptable and less dangerous?

Somehow the fact that a very few deaths that were associated with ephedra over the period of many years was blown greatly out of proportion. Millions of people used it on a regular basis, lost a lot of weight and did not experience health issues.

The people that did not like how they felt when taking ephedra products simply stopped using them. Problem solved.

Companies are being sued over ephedra, some have gone bankrupt and the FDA is close to getting ephedra products banned a second time.

Yes, the debate still rages over ephedra products, their effectiveness and safety, but ask the millions of people that could not lose weight until they started taking ephedra. Ask them if they would rather be fat or take a controversial herb in which they personally experienced no adverse reaction.