Are Oral Weight Loss Sprays Effective?

Oral sprays that help you to lose weight sound a great idea. A simple mouth spray that can reduce your appetite or magically cut your calorie intake without the need for diet pills sounds like the best thing since low calorie sliced bread.

For people with busy or erratic lifestyles an oral spray promises convenience. After all, even if you stay using it forever in order to maintain your weight loss, it doesn’t seem like a difficult thing to do.

Why Use an Oral Spray for Weight Loss?

An oral spray can have advantages over conventional tablets or pills. The ingredients enter your blood stream instantly without having to go through the digestive system so you can feel the effects practically instantaneously without having to plan in advance for symptoms. There is ongoing research into the use of oral and nasal sprays for medical conditions and this technology is already proving to be effective for giving up smoking and nicotine withdrawal.

Oral sprays are already used to treat insomnia and a new oral spray that promises to protect the user from respiratory diseases such as flu, whooping cough and similar is being trialled as a preventative to picking up diseases in public places. Similar research into oral sprays that help reduce pain and symptoms associated with multiple sclerosis are also in development and may become available later this year.

The advantage of using an oral spray is that it delivers such a fast working effect. This makes it especially suitable for pain management and for conditions that need an instant effect without having to commit to ongoing medication.

Oral Spray Weight Loss Products

There are a range of dieting products that can be administered by oral spray and these will vary in effectiveness depending on the ingredients used in the spray.

Many oral weight loss sprays are sold under the appetite suppressant description and according to users, some of these are quite effective because they provide a way of dealing with hunger pangs as they arise.

Although Hoodia Gordonii has largely now been discredited, some users have found that using a Hoodia oral spray has helped them to combat hunger pangs.

A more popular oral weight loss spray is Full Fast which contains Guarana, a natural form of caffeine and seaweed extract Klamath algae. According to some users, this spray which tastes like cherries has helped reduce appetite and hunger pangs and although there is no medical proof that these type of oral weight loss sprays work, there does not appear to be anything in these type of over the counter (OTC) slimming aids to do you any particular harm. They may not have any substantial evidence to prove that they work, but some people appear to find them useful when combined with a sensible calorie controlled diet.

In a multi million industry like weight loss, there is a strong need for manufacturers to constantly come up with new and novel products in order to make sales. Many products are launched but few will stand the test of time. Oral weight loss sprays appear to fall firmly into this novelty product category.

The Dangers of the Latest US Diet Spray Trend

Not all oral weight loss sprays are safe and a disturbing trend hitting the USA is the HCG oral spray, which despite being banned by the FDA is still freely available over the internet.

The idea is that HCG products are used in combination with an extreme diet. HGC programs are being touted all over the USA as a miracle cure to obesity and there are probably hundreds of US products said to contain a version of this ingredient.

Does Using an HCG Oral Spray Make You Lose Weight?

There are some impressive stories of weight loss and when you look at the results, it is easier to understand why people want to use this diet and product.

The HCG diet limits calorie intake to around 500 calories per day. One woman Nathalie Wawers hit the national news displaying the proof of its effects. She lost 40lbs of weight in 2 months using “Spray Your Fat Away” an oral spray containing trace elements of HCG and other homeopathic ingredients in combination with sticking to this low calorie diet for two months.

Although it seems common sense that the weight loss effects are down to the starvation diet that accompanies the spray, both diet and spray have rapidly become extremely popular.

Who first came up with the link between human urine and weight loss?

HCG was first associated with weight loss back in the 50s, following the work of British scientist Albert Simeons a specialist in hormones. He proposed that taking supplements of HCG in combination with an extreme calorie controlled diet of around 500 calories daily intake would bring about drastic weight loss.

He found that when combined with a low calorie diet, patients lost fatty deposits rather than muscle and reasoned that the hormone signalled a message to the hypothalamus preventing adipose tissue from being added to the body. He first found this while working with pregnant women in India and used his findings to successfully treat men suffering from Frolich’s disorder, a condition that results in extreme fatness because of problems with the piturity gland.

Seeing HCG as the answer to obesity, he published a book in 1954 called “Pounds and Inches” where he advocated the use of the hormone in combination with an ultra low calorie diet.

According to later scientific research, there is no link with HCG and weight loss and the diet proposed by Simeons is so extremely low calorie it is likely to cause malnutrition and serious health problems. A Meta test was carried out in the USA in 1995 advised that physicians advocating this diet should be restrained.

The Resurrection of HCG

This extreme weight loss method, became all but forgotten until it was resurrected by an American TV personality Kevin Trudeau who promoted it via the media under the title “The Weight-Loss Cure “They” Don’t Want You to Know About”. A well-known controversial character, with no medical training, Trudeau has been exposed as a quack by the medical establishment and has spent time in prison for credit card fraud and larceny.

Owing to publicity generated by Trudeau, a man with his own company marketing the HCG spray, the diet became popular.

The modern day version delivers the HCG in an oral spray and is a vital component of this regime. It is extremely hard to understand but as fast as the diet and the oral weight loss spray are discredited by medical authorities, it seems the more that successful dieters are showing extreme weight loss results.

How the HCG Diet Works

A typical HCG diet lasts for around a month. You will be encouraged to eat as much as you can on the first day, spraying HCG under your tongue three times a day and drinking between 1/2 – 1 gallon of water daily.

The diet will then start in earnest and you will continue with the spray and water intake, limiting your calorie intake to 500 per day.

Over course of the month, you will be allowed to eat slightly more, avoiding sugar, starch, and continuing to use the spray. The reasoning is that HCG trains the brain – to “reset” the hypothalamus as outlined by Albert Simeons, and the result is permanent weight loss.

Do HCG Sprays Really Contain Human Urine?

According to most manufacturers, HCG sprays contains only trace elements of urine and the bulk of the ingredients made up from herbal products and vitamins. However the FDA does not recognise HCG products as homeopathic drugs and because they are unapproved, these drugs are illegal.

Clinical trials evaluated by the Federal Trade Commission have proved that the claims made by companies marketing the weight loss sprays cannot be substantiated and that the weight loss is caused by the severe calorie controlled diet and not the hormonal spray.

The Side Effects of the HCG Diet

Despite the success stories and the need to address the obesity problem in the USA, medical opinion is appalled by this diet and the spray is seen as almost irrelevant. Consuming only 500 calories a day can cause a range of health problems, including dizziness, blood clots and rapid weight gain once the diet is over. Cutting calorie intake by over 50% puts your body into starvation mode, which slows the metabolism and causes the body to raid muscle and protein for energy.

Side effects to starvation include menstrual abnormalities in women – usually stopping monthly periods and it can cause damage to hair, brittle bones, gallstones and heart problems.

So is There Any Reason to Use an HCG Weight Loss Spray?

We think not. Using the oral spray without maintaining the 500 calories a day diet will not help with weight loss. It seems highly likely, according to the FDA that these sprays do not contain anything beyond a few vitamins and filler products anyway.

Although it is possible that Dr Albert Simeons may have found a link with HCG and the hypothalamus and weight loss, and that later medical research which disproved his theories was wrong, HGC sprays do not really contain any of the so-called vital hormones – even in tiny amounts. After all, an extreme diet has to have a novelty product or how else would unscrupulous manufacturers ever make any money?

Sadly, we have yet to see an oral spray on the market that is truly effective and will really help you lose weight.

About the author: Rachel Butler

Rachel has been with us since we launched back in 2012.

Rachel has reviewed countless products over the years, and has written many articles offering sound advice. Her professional opinions are widely respected.

Rachel graduated a BSc in Clinical Science from the University of Leicester, U.K.

She lives in York with her husband and young daughter and their dog, a little terrier named Betsy.