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Before you begin your HCG Diet First and foremost, you’ll want to find a good HCG product, whether it be prescribed from a physician or the non-prescription homeopathic drops. I work with both in my practice and both are effective under the right circumstances. If you’re new to HCG weight loss, the gauntlet of information on the internet can be a challenge to navigate, but, over the next few pages, I’ll do my best to answer all of your questions regarding the type of HCG product that is right for you. As a general rule, I typically have patients start with the non-prescription drops. They’re affordable and effective. If you have a significant amount of weigh to lose and you plan on doing multiple rounds of the diet, you may want to try a mix of the homeopathic and the prescription, not at the same time, but alternating between the two from one round of the diet to the next. This limits the tolerance you can develop for one product or the other and maintains consistent weight loss. This has been very successful for my patients that are 300 to 400 pounds and up. Some of these patients have been gracious enough to journal about their weight loss and post their entries to my blog. See for yourself, it can be very inspirational. What you need to know... What you need to know is that there are two main variations on HCG products; prescription and non-prescription, which is also known as homeopathic. This alone is simple enough, but the confusion is in the delivery mechanism or the process in which you consume the HCG. Hormones are very large molecules. Because of their size, they’re not readily absorbed through the GI like other medications that you simply swallow, so hormones are typically injected subcutaneously, the same way a diabetic would inject insulin. However, hormones can also be absorbed through the oral cavity. As a result, many pharmacies have been quick to make dissolvable products that are taken orally, like sublingual tablets and lozenges that are more patient-friendly. Both products are compared below. Homeopathic HCG Diet Drops Before discussing the drops, let’s briefly define homeopathy. This alternative medical system was developed in Germany at the end of the 18th century. It is based on the “law of minimal dose” — with the focus being that exposure alone to a particular compound provides the greatest effect. The Homeopathic HCG that you’ll find from an FDA approved manufacturer uses the intact HCG molecule, in combination with a magnification process, to increase its potency. You’ll find this on the label under drug facts. The Homeopathic HCG used in my practice is labeled (3X, 6X, 12X, 30X, 60X), which is an indication of its potency. This may raise eyebrows, and I was skeptical at first too. In fact, it was only recently that I introduce the drops into my practice; prior to that I was working only with the prescription HCG. I did so as a result of overwhelming patient demand. I had so many requests for the drops because they’d had a friend or family member do so well with the product that they wanted to use it themselves. I spent months, wasting my breath, arguing with patients as to why the prescription product was better before I finally broke down and did some investigating. I soon found a FDA approved, homeopathic manufacturer that assured me his product would get equal, if not better results than the prescription HCG that I’d been using. I began recommending it as a more affordable alternative to the prescription HCG and was so impressed with the results that I now use it almost exclusively. It’s been my experience that there is little difference in weight loss when comparing the homeopathic drops to prescription HCG. This is echoed by Linda Prinster, author of The HCG Weight Loss Cure Guide, which is used by many MDs as the patient education piece to accompany the diet. Prinster says that with committed patients both prescription and homeopathic HCG products will yield weight loss of 20-30 lbs. in 30-40 diet days. I included a graph from her book that compares and contrasts the Homeopathic, the injections and the sublingual, or what she refers to as mixed HCG, because of the mixing agent used to facilitate absorptions through the oral cavity. There are some exceptions, usually when a patient gets closer to their goal weight, when the prescription product will be more effective. This usually occurs with patients that are struggling to lose that last 10 to 15 pounds. This pertains to dieters that have lost a considerable amount of weight and just can’t shake that last 10 to 15, rather than those men or woman who put on a few pounds over the winter and are trying to get back into swimsuit shape. The non-prescription drops will work fine for the latter, but that last 10-15 can be difficult to shake for many. The reason is because the closer you get to your goal weight, the stingier your body will be with releasing its fat reserves, especially if you’ve been overweight for a long time. This is when a more concentrated HCG, like that of the prescription product, may be more effective. The downside here is the expense involved. The prescription product is often 3 to 4 times the cost; the reason being that it is usually compounded at a boutique type pharmacy and individualized to each patient. My only warning regarding the non-prescription drops is that the quality can vary significantly. There are many internet retailers out there trying to make a quick buck on a hot industry. In December 2011, the US Federal Drug Association, and the Federal Trade Commission, issued warning letters to seven online retailers of homeopathic HCG. The letters warned that selling drugs unapproved by the FDA was illegal, in addition to making unsupported and exaggerated claims regarding HCG and its effects on weight loss. My advice here is to be careful with what you purchase via the Internet. I don't feel that there's any danger with purchasing a product online, but the quality could be suspect. If you're purchasing online, at the very least make a phone call to find out if the retailer has a medical professional on staff. Also, stay away from any HCG retailer that offers a guarantee. Medical professionals don't offer guarantees. **You may have noticed the appearance of HCG on store shelves of supplement stores and even your local pharmacy. Most of the over-the-counter products are labeled “hormone free.” Considering that HCG is in fact, a hormone, this is quite a paradox. Again, I don’t feel that there is anything dangerous about these products, but in the same breath I cannot recommend and HCG product if it is labeled hormone free. Prescription HCG Injections - Injections were the method used by Dr. Simeons in his clinic. His dosages ranged from 125 IUs to 200 IUs. He warned that increasing dosages beyond those ranges could, in fact, be counter-productive, which may account for why the homeopathic version is equally as effective. During the time Dr. Simeon was practicing, prior to bio-identical hormones therapy, the HCG hormone was harvested from the urine of pregnant women, usually in underdeveloped countries, which made for an unsterile product. Many have concluded that this is why the diet disappeared for nearly 50 years, as a result of a Foot and Mouth epidemic that broke out in the UK from unsterile HCG. I can’t say this with complete certainty, but I felt it worth mentioning. It seems logical that this could be the reason the diet lost popularity so quickly. Now days, with the advances in bio-identical hormone therapy, HCG is compounded in a pharmacy and mixed with bacteriostatic water. Bio-identical Hormone therapy uses a protein from a yam or soy bean and alters it to become the exact replica of that which is produced in the human body, creating a safe and sterile product. As I said earlier, it’s typically made at compounding pharmacies that specialize in individualized medicine, but there are also brand name products such as Pregnyl and Organon. What you have to remember, is that a bio-identical hormone is the same regardless of where it’s compounded. The reason I say this is to help you find the most affordable product. It’s kind of like buying aspirin or ibuprofen; the molecular makeup is the same, regardless of the name brand, so save yourself a couple of bucks and buy generic. Sublingual - As I stated above, when I began working with HCG, injections were the only available option. As the diet gained in popularity, pharmacies were quick to develop more patient-friendly HCG products that don’t involve syringes. The sublingual tablet w/B12 is the most common, but there are also trans-dermal creams, lozenges and nasal sprays. The sublingual tablet is now the product of choice. Given the widespread availability of alternatives to the injections, and the recent fungal meningitis outbreak at the New England Compounding Center; I no longer work with injections, as they are unnecessarily invasive, especially for home use. Some patients are of the belief that by injecting themselves with a needle, the procedure is more therapeutic, and thus will lead to greater weight loss, but this is not true. The sublingual tablets are equally as effective. If you’re still determined to do the injections, there are still plenty of practitioners prescribing them, but first see the advantages to the sublingual tablets below. For more information, you can visit the the HCG Diet protocol free information page here. >
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