What Happens If You Take Fat Burners for Too Long?
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Addiction
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Fat burners, diet pills that stimulate the body to burn fat, work by increasing your body's metabolism or blocking its ability to absorb fat. According to Body Building For You, many fat burners have no FDA testing requirements. Therefore, they can contain addictive compounds such as caffeine or ephedrine. Caffeine, an addictive drug found in coffee and tea, increases the body's metabolism so it burns fat more quickly. Phentermine, another popular diet aid, works by reducing your appetite. You can only receive a phentermine prescription for clinical obesity due to its addictive properties. In the long term, diet pills have other harmful side effects such as decreased metabolism.
Decreased Metabolism
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The caffeine in fat burning pills increases your metabolism and suppresses your appetite in the short term, but over time, your body will learn that you're not eating as much as you normally would. When you enter a period of starvation, your body adjusts its metabolism to compensate. According to Women Fitness, a starved body holds on to as much substance from food as possible--storing it in the form of fat. You will gain weight more easily if you come off diet pills without using a healthy diet and exercise regimen. Also, your body will burn muscle to create energy if you don't absorb fat when taking diet pills. Muscle yields more energy than fat, but the body will only resort to this measure in an emergency such as perceived starvation. When you gain weight back, you won't have as much muscle and therefore cannot exercise and prevent excess fat formation. Coupled with heart problems caused by caffeine in diet pills, you risk cardiac arrest and other cardiovascular problems.
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Cardiovascular Diseases
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Caffeine affects the body by stimulating the production of adrenaline. When your body produces adrenaline, heart rate and blood pressure increase as a response to a stressful situation, and triggers the fight-or-flight response that enables you to act. According to the website Overcaffeinated, your body becomes accustomed to caffeine over time. In the case of fat burners, taking them as a quick aid for weight loss introduces caffeine into your body. To feel the energy boost from caffeine, you need more and more of it. If you keep your body in a constant state of increased adrenaline, you place unnecessary stress on the heart and blood vessels, making your cardiovascular system prone to failure from overwork.
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