So there’s these pills, right? They block the fat in what you eat from being absorbed by the body. Instead, it just all gets flushed out in your poo!
“Sounds great!”
“Sign me up.”
“Where do I get some?”
Well, hold on a minute because there are possible consequences and you might not like them.
Fat Blockers: Orlistat, Xenical and Alli
Orlistat is the drug used in the doctor prescribed Xenical or the over-the-counter pill, Alli. It works by blocking those enzymes in your gut which are responsible for absorbing fat and can reduce fat absorption by nearly 30%.
When Orlistat is used as directed and in combination with a controlled diet and increased exercise, studies show that it causes an increase in weight loss as compared to those who use diet control and exercise alone
So far, so fabulous! What’s the catch?
When the fat from the food you eat is not absorbed it travels through the gut, combines with other waste material and is ejected in the faeces. Unfortunately if there is too much fat to be absorbed in the stool, it can be ejected anyway as an oily orange secretion (which is described on the Alli website rather charmingly as “…something that looks like the oil on top of a pizza.”). This orange oil is foul-smelling and easily seeps through clothes and underwear creating embarrassing marks on your butt.
Although some people seem to be more susceptible to these kinds of mishaps than others, there is enough anecdotal evidence on the internet to indicate that this side-effect of Oristat based drugs is not particularly rare; in fact it has its own nickname – alli-oops!
Another name for this unpleasant side effect is anal leakage or more formally, steatorrhoea. This is described as the presence of excess fats in the faeces and it can be caused by eating oily fish like escolar or oilfish. It is also a side-effect of some medications including fat blockers like Alli and Xenical.
Alli Side Effects
Credit should be given to the Alli website for not being coy about the possible side effects of taking Alli. They say:
Treatment effects are bowel movement changes that are most commonly caused by eating meals with too much fat while using alli capsules. Such effects may include oily spotting, loose stools, and more frequent stools that may be hard to control.
Alli capsules should be taken three times a day with meals – but only those meals which are fatty to begin with. At the same time, no meal should include more than 15 grams of fat. Stray over this limit and your likelihood of suffering a ‘treatment effect’ (what was wrong with calling it a side-effect?) shoots up. I guess it wouldn’t take too many Alli-oops events before you learned to keep a tight rein on your desire for chicken wings and pizza, huh?
In an excellent example of positive spin, the site goes on to say:
…many users have told us that treatment effects served as a signal that helped them adopt healthier eating patterns.
Personally I think I’d rather resort to a nutritional chart to know when I am eating too much fat than have foul orange pizza oil spraying from my butt every time I sneeze but hey, call me strange.
Really, look at it this way. If you are going to spend the money on Alli (not to mention however much it is going to cost you for a new wardrobe because that anal leaking orange oil does not wash out easy), just so’s you get a nasty wake-up call every time you’ve overdone your fat intake then why not put it into stocking up on healthy super foods and lean proteins instead?
Funnily enough, even UK drug giant GlaxoSmithKline are trying to wash their hands of Alli; announcing earlier this year that it was one of several products that they wish to shed before year end. Although when it was launched in 2009, boxes of Alli leapt off the shelves, sales have declined ever since and were further hit by reports of possible liver damage by a small number of people taking it.
Personally I think it is a toss-up whether buyers were turned off by the rumours of liver damage or whether they simply came to their senses and decided that there had to be a better way to diet than suffering diarrhoea, foul-smelling flatulence and the social embarrasment of alli-oops and anal leakage.
