Liberty, TXWhen Yvonne A. started taking Hydroxycut supplements her goal was to lose weight. She had tried Hydroxycut diet supplements before and had felt strange while taking them, but tried the weight loss pills again.
"The [Hydroxycut] pills made me really jittery all the time," Yvonne says. "I was sick to my stomach. I took the pills for about 2 months and then I quit. I was sick and I had some abdominal pain, but I wasn't sure what that pain was from.
I started going to the doctor because I was so sick all the time. The doctor did a liver test and said that my enzyme levels were up and were staying up. The doctors said I have Hepatits C, but I was never exposed to it and it's not conclusive on the blood work."
Yvonne says she took Hydroxycut approximately a year ago but after 2 months she was so sick she simply could not take the supplement any more. She assumed the problem was that there was too much caffeine in the pills, which was making her hyper. She did not think it could be anything as serious as liver damage.
"I started seeing the doctor about 6 months ago," Yvonne says. "I still have some problems. I still shake and my enzymes are still too high. The doctors keep focusing on Hepatitis C, but the tests don't conclusively say I have it—they just say that my enzyme levels are high. The doctors want to give me interferon (a treatment for Hepatitis C) but I don't think I have Hepatitis C and I don't want them giving me stuff I don't need. When I try to tell the doctors about Hydroxycut, they say that jitteriness is just what happens when you take diet pills. That's all they ever tell me.
My enzyme levels go down and then back up, that's why I don't think it's Hepatitis C. If it is Hepatitis C, my levels should just stay up. My enzymes are always high and above normal—they never drop to normal or below normal—but they don't stay at the same level all the time. They go up and down."
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Iovate Health Sciences, announced a recall of numerous Hydroxycut products after the agency learned about a potential link between the diet supplement and liver failure. Because Hydroxycut is considered a dietary supplement, it is not bound to the same regulations as pharmaceutical products, meaning the diet supplement did not require FDA approval before it was marketed.
According to a report in The Philadelphia Inquirer, it might not take long for liver damage to occur after a patient is exposed to Hydroxycut. The article cites Joseph Lim, a liver specialist at Yale, who saw a patient with liver inflammation who had been taking Hydroxycut for only 2 weeks. After she stopped taking the pills, her health improved.
Although the reports of liver failure received by the FDA make the risk of liver failure seem relatively rare, the Inquirer report says adverse events are usually vastly underreported to the FDA. This is partially because doctors and patients may not link the health problem to the supplement in the first place and partially because patients may not even report the supplement use to their doctor.
That means that there could be many people out there who have experienced adverse reactions to dietary supplements, including Hydroxycut, who have no idea that supplement might have caused their health problems.
"I think it [Hydroxycut] is addictive because of the way it speeds you up," Yvonne says. "I wouldn't take it again simply because of the after effects. I still shake so bad, I can hardly write. I have a hard time eating. I just think people should not take Hydroxycut."