Oral supplements to assist in loosing weight are nothing new; the entire concept behind it is as old as the practice of herbal medicine itself. Diet patches promise to make weight loss even easier than swallowing a pill; slap the patch on a clear spot of skin and go about your business. Do what you like, eat what you like, and the busy little patch will be doing the weight-loss work for you. The question is, as it should always be; are they too good to be true?
How does a diet patch work?
A diet patch approaches fat fighting in two ways. First, a cocktail of diet supplements are offered as the “magic bullet,” with claims of either increasing your metabolism, blocking the absorption of fat, or modulating your insulin levels, and often all three. Second, a unique delivery method is used; the absorption of the ingredients into your bloodstream via your skin via the patch itself. There are many different kinds of patches on the market (differences are mainly in the ingredients of the patch; the delivery methods remain pretty much universal) and it seems every last one has been the target of claims of fraud, which begs the question:
Do they work at all?
While no clinical trials have been able to prove conclusively that diet patches do, indeed, perform as they claim, (and recall that their claims are not middle-of-the-road, but swear by fairly intense results) some of the typical patch’s ingredients are known diet supplement stand-bys. Setting aside the question of whether or not the actual delivery method is valid, let’s take a look at the most common diet patch ingredients.
Guarana
Often used as a substitute for caffeine, gaurana has been in use in diet supplementation from nearly the beginning. Caffeine and its ilk is known for its thermogenic properties, or its ability to increase the metabolism to a fat-burning state.
Chromium
Chromium is used to level out blood sugar levels, a method of weight control made popular by the Atkin’s Diet.