Bern warns public against harmful fitness products

More people begin fitness and weight-control programmes in January than at any other time of the year. And while a vast majority have given up by the end of the month, this still gives them time to have made a difference to their health – either positively or negatively.

With Internet ads effectively targeting your searches into how best to lose weight and regain fitness and muscle tone or mass, some punters will be tempted into purchasing one of many impressive-sounding yet ultimately bogus aids or supplements, hoping to accelerate results and reduce the pain of exercise.

Bodybuilding and fat-burning supplements provide a minefield of options, attracting the attention of the Swiss government agency for therapeutic products (Swissmedic), which is ringing the alarm bell over substances sold on the Internet.

The group has been testing samples of many of these products and says that “pharmaceuticals for muscle growth that are illegally imported into Switzerland increasingly contain dangerous, undeclared steroid hormones (testosterone and related substances).”

According to the agency results show that many contain substances that have not been investigated and are related to testosterone and “fraudulently contain harmful steroid hormones that have not been tested or licensed, either in Switzerland or elsewhere in the world, by a medicines control authority”.

Men risk organ damage and impotence; women face “masculinisation”, and while a sexy baritone might be attractive to some of the latter, symptoms such as a moustache and sideburns, familiar to say, a number of female East German athletes in the past, would probably be less welcome.

Products identified by Swissmedic include: TREN-Xtreme, MASS Xtreme, ESTRO Xtreme, AH-89-Xtreme, HMG Xtreme, MMA-3 Xtreme, VNS-9 Xtreme, TT-40-Xtreme, Hyperdrol, Bromodrol, Dual Action Grow Tabs, Grow Tabs, Mass Tabs and Ripped Tabs TR.

Worse health threats are also being freely advertised on the Internet. Fat-burning products containing dinitrophenol (DNP), have “already caused many deaths”, says the agency which urges consumers not to take it “under any circumstances”.

DNP was used as a dietary supplement in the 1930s due to its ability to boost the body’s metabolic rate.

That was before it was discovered that an overdose leads to fatal hyperthermia (body’s failure to control elevated internal temperature).

In summer 2008, Selena Walrond died of a DNP overdose in London. The 26-year-old purchased the drug over the Internet to lose weight.

Wikipedia describes DNP as a “cellular metabolic poison” – adequate dissuasion for most one would surmise, though the quantity of chat rooms calmly discussing its use suggests that ignorance is widespread.

Current medical studies have set the fatal DNP dose at between one and three grams but deaths have been recorded at lower doses.

Products containing DNP have been recently seized by police during a house search in Switzerland and the importer faces criminal charges.

Swissmedic advises the public to buy fitness supplements from authorized dealers, such as pharmacists.