Pills bought on web?

A new study has found that many weight-loss supplements offered for sale online actually contain ingredients that could be harmful to your heart, but the product labels do not warn buyers about them.

The study was conducted by researchers at the Texas Heart Institute in Houston, and the findings were presented Thursday during the annual meeting of the Heart Rhythm Society in San Francisco.

The research team searched the Internet using common search keywords like “diet pills” and “weight-loss supplements” and found 12 brands. They then listed the ingredients found on the labels of each brand. They found 60 various ingredients, consisting mostly of herbal extracts and some vitamins and minerals.

Because the objective was find out if any of the ingredients had life-threatening side effects on the heart, the researchers checked them out thoroughly on medical databases.

For 11 of the ingredients, the team found at least one report pointing to life-threatening cardiac side effects. In addition, 75 percent (8 brands) of the 12 products easily available online contained at least one of these potentially harmful ingredients.

The researchers also discovered that one particular brand contained ma huang, which has been banned since 2004 by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Ma huang also goes by the name Chinese ephedra.

The other ingredients that could be very harmful to your heart are: green tea, bitter orange, Korean ginseng, buckwheat, licorice root, guarana, Camellia sinensis (the scientific name for tea), synphrine hydrochloride, caffeine anhydrous, and Citrus aurantium.

For protocol reasons, the team will not release the names of the products that were included in the study. The team also believes that the 12 products may be only the proverbial tip of a much bigger iceberg, and giving out only the 12 names might mislead people into thinking they are the only ones that contain the hazardous ingredients.

The added danger is that people often use these products along with caffeine-containing beverages like coffee, which can increases the effects on the heart.

There has been a significant trend towards reliance on the Internet to cure health problems. For instance, many medical Web sites, like WebMD, have emerged along with individual blogs (from experts and non-experts) offering information or dispensing health advice on subjects ranging from pregnancy to weight loss. There is a lot of risk involved in this, since individuals could easily be following advice from a non-expert.

Most people searching for health information on the Internet are looking for weight-loss solutions. They should be wary of sites selling products or guaranteeing fast results. They may not only lighten your pocket, but they could also pose a danger to your health.

Safety Tips:

* Verify all web-based information. It is good practice to verify all health-related information from the Internet with a health professional or organization.

* Don’t buy weight-loss products over the Internet.