Original email for context: My daughter feels that HCG is harmful to my health. I have looked high and low for an unbiased article on the safety of HCG, and I can not find a source. I have asked my Dr. who prescribed HCG to me and she is still looking. Do you know where I can find this information?
Honestly, it would be very challenging to find up to date & unbiased scientific study about hCG for weight loss. What’s difficult about any topic that is controversial is that anyone who looks into it will find themselves feeling swayed one way or the other pretty strongly. No one doesn’t care at all in scenarios like this so unbiased info isn’t really around. People who think it’s extreme and unhealthy are looking for reasons to prove it’s wrong, and people who want to lose a lot of weight are looking for reasons that it’s safe and healthy. For instance, a journalist gal wrote an article, Could the hCG Diet Be Life Threatening? and I’m quoted in that article. The aspect of the “opposing” parties trying to say it’s unhealthy are honestly pretty hollow to me- like someone saying the diet didn’t work because they only maintained their weight loss a couple years and gained it back when they went on a trip to france – well DUH! Everyone gains 15 lbs when they go to Europe. How is this proof the diet is not reliable?
Here are a few things I’ll lay out, but again, I am definitely a biased party as well, so I’m not sure how helpful it will be!
Longevity: Dr. Simeons started administering the hCG diet protocol in prior to 1954, when he published his manuscript Pounds and Inches. That means this diet has been in use, by medical professionals mainly for over 65 years as of 2019. Usually if there is something TRULY amiss with something like this (hello Fen-phen? You had a nice 2 year stint till the FDA requested it to be removed from market) things HAPPEN and it gets taken off the market and it’s very clear to the general public that it’s dangerous. It’s been over 65 years and this hasn’t happened with hCG.
Natural hormone we already make in our bodies: Unlike ALL these other weight loss drugs, the hCG hormone is actually a natural hormone that every human produces in their own body. For men it’s quite small, but for women we produce it every single month on our periods, and once pregnant, HUGE amounts of hCG. It is not dangerous to have hCG hormone running through our systems or we’d all be in grave danger during our menstrual cycles and pregnancy.
Studies against hCG flawed: The “studies” proving that hCG didn’t help with weight loss were flawed. Why? Because the participants did not have their bodyfat tested hydrostatically or by DEXA scan. No one is trying to prove that a person would lose more weight with hCG in their system than without on a 500 calorie diet. And while some are confused on this (as I was too at one point), we are actually in agreement that the hCG hormone is NOT causing the weight loss. The role of hCG is actually to preserve lean body mass when on such a low calorie diet. If the bodyfat percentage had been taken of the hCG users and non-hcg users, this would have told us something – if the hCG users had lost more of their weight as fat and less muscle, that would have proved hCG was doing something special. But they did not test this. So the studies are useless. Additionally, the studies were not done with injectable hCG.
Is fasting attacked with as much fervor as the 500 calorie diet is? I would vote no. Somehow eating nothing is not very controversial, but eating 500 calories is. Which makes you think “biased”.
But the big question is, could having hCG in our system, at a time when our body wouldn’t have naturally produced it (during menstruation and pregnancy), possibly be harmful? And that we do not know. It certainly is plausible. It’s all too easy to isolate things out without realizing that what’s makes something safe is that it occurs in the presence of the other natural things going on in our body at the same time. So I agree, we do not know the answer to this. For instance, elevated hCG levels are one indicator in men for testing for prostate cancer. I’m not sure if hCG hormone promotes the cancer growth that’s already there, or if the cancer growth causes the hCG hormone to be made in higher quantities though- that would obviously make a difference. If the latter, then just taking hCG wouldn’t be the cause of anything negative, but if the former, potentially that would mean that taking hCG when you have cancer could promote it’s growth.
It’s really very loving that your daughter is so concerned about your health. It can be hard to work these things out even within ourselves and even more difficult with family members who are already swayed one way.
I hope this helps a little. Ultimately it’s very important in my mind that we each do what we feel comfortable with on our insides. The stress that we can feel doing something that we aren’t sure is safe is probably more damaging and could probably even create our own reality.
What’s difficult with this type of information is we are looking at it separately from everything else. For instance, what level of danger is a person in when they are 50 lbs overweight, or have certain eating habits that are damaging their bodies, and if it were possible to know this, which would be more dangerous, remaining overweight with those eating habits, or using hCG and the 500 calorie to lose weight? I don’t know. When I had my binge eating disorder, a lab test showed I had elevated liver enzymes, which is really not good. The doctor wasn’t sure why that was, but I was. I knew the amount of sugar I was consuming daily on my binges. How long before that did some type of permanent damage? hCG helped me to overcome my binge eating disorder. I have been binge-free for over 6 years now. It’s not something I will return to again. So for me, with the limited knowledge I currently have, the hCG protocol saved me from a lot of bad things that would have likely happened to me.
I hope this helps!
