10:51 AM CDT on Monday, May 17, 2004

MEG FARRIS / WWL-TV Medical Reporter

If you've seen her recently, you know Anna Nicole Smith has lost a lot of weight. According to a national ad campaign her secret is a pill called Trimspa that's loaded with ingredients. But is it safe? Meg Farris runs down all its pros and cons in this Weight Loss Wednesday report.

Anna Nicole Smith has been a centerfold pinup, a model, and the wife of an 89-year-old billionaire – a union that led to a public feud with his family for her share of the estate after he died.

AP According to the site, Anna Nicole lost nearly 70 poiunds

But even with a recent hit reality show, she's more in the limelight for a dramatic weight loss program called Trimspa. The Trimspa website says it was a 69 pound weight loss, to be exact, that made smith the official spokesperson for the diet pills.

LSU Health Sciences Center's chief of integrative medicine, Dr. Henri Roca, is an expert in supplements and herbs. He said Trimspa is actually three different products.

The first product is a fat blocker.

“The fat blockers are based on a very common principle and that is if you increase fiber in your diet it actually adheres to the fat and takes it out of your system,” said Roca.

He said in theory that could help you lose weight, but fiber in apples, oats and whole grains can do the same thing. He also warned that fat blockers could also block the healing effect of your medications.

The second product is a carb blocker.

The ingredients come from white kidney beans, which may block much of the starch you eat. Dr. Roca said they might work.

“Individual studies on phaseolus - sold as "Phase 2" - do indicate that you can block the absorption of carbohydrates and thereby lose weight,” said Roca.

WWL-TV Smith and the supplement have seen heavy rotation in advertisements

But Dr. Roca cautioned the studies were very small and there is no way of knowing if the natural toxins in beans have been processed out like they are when beans are cooked.

The third product is the actual diet pill.

These are loaded with many familiar herbal type ingredients, ingredients with potentially harmful side effects identified on Trimspa’s website.

Dr. Roca said each ingredient on its own could work to speed up weight loss, but what concerns him is the question about what happens when they are combined.

According to Dr. Roca, while he was able to find studies on the ingredients of Trimspa, he could not find any studies on whether or not Trimspa is any more effective than the individual ingredients.

There was also another aspect of the program he was concerned with, the fact some ingredients speed up your heart rate to increase your metabolism.

“Anything you do to increase your metabolism on a regular basis could have bad effects,” said Roca. “We’re not designed to stay in emergency state action all the time.”

There was one ingredient in Trimspa that Dr. Roca said was good: green tea extract.

“It's actually a very good supplement, very high in antioxidants,” said Roca. “So it does a lot of things to strengthen the health of arteries and veins, to reduce inflammation and in fairly good studies you actually can see up to a six pound weight loss just using green tea extract.”

One important difference to note is the cost of green tea extract versus the cost of Trimspa. Green tea supplements cost about $27 a year, while the Trimspa diet pills cost around $1500.

So in theory, Dr. Roca said Trimspa could help speed up weight loss, but there are no studies on how it will work on you, how it will interact with your medicine and your individual health problems.

He said unless you change your diet and exercise, you're in for big trouble with the “quick fix.”

“We know that when you take quick fixes and don't do the hard work that you will rebound in your weight to even higher weight than you had before,” said Roca.

Dr. Roca also stressed that you should check with your doctor before taking any weight loss pill or supplement.