Contents

Page 1
Chitosan versus Xenical.
Chitosan patents.
The synergistic effect of vitamin C.
Page 2
Sprague-Dawley rats and human rats.
Page 3
What they don't tell you about Xenical.
Page 4
My chitosan experiment and price comparison.
Page 5
Possible long-term side effects.
Possible long-term benefits.
Discussion.

What They Don't Tell You About Xenical

Xenical blocks about 1/3 of dietary fat from being digested. It is recommended for use three times daily with a mildly reduced calorie diet that contains no more than 30% of calories from fat. The most generous diet listed in the patient information from Hoffmann-La Roche contains 2000 calories and 67 grams of fat. Xenical would block about 22 grams of that fat.

The amount of fat that you can eat while taking Xenical is limited -- if you eat too much fat you will get some very unpleasant diarrhea because the fat is eliminated from the bowel in its oily undigested form. I have not tried it, but I have seen a number of posts in newsgroups where Xenical was referred to as a form of aversion therapy. (In other words, the nasty side effects prevent or strongly discourage one from eating a high fat diet.) The patient information from Hoffmann-La Roche contains a good description of the side effects of Xenical:

"These changes may include oily spotting, gas with discharge, urgent need to go to the bathroom, oily or fatty stools, an oily discharge, increased number of bowel movements, and inability to control bowel movements . . . These bowel changes are a natural effect of blocking the fat from being absorbed and indicate that XENICAL is working . . . If you are concerned about these or any other side effects you experience while taking XENICAL, talk to your doctor or pharmacist."

Quality chitosan & vitamin C is available at very competitive prices at WebVitamins:

Natrol Chitosan: 360 capsules (500 mg).

Twinlab C-1000: 250 capsules (1000 mg).

"If there is no black and white, there can be no gray -- since gray is merely a mixture of the two. Before one can identify anything as "gray," one has to know what is black and what is white. In the field of morality, this means that one must first identify what is good and what is evil. And when a man has ascertained that one alternative is good and the other is evil, he has no justification for choosing a mixture." -- Ayn Rand.
Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism

Written
Sep 2001
Last Update
Sep 2001

As we learned on page 1 of this post, Hoffmann-La Roche has a patent on chitosan because they know it can dramatically reduce the side effects of Xenical. However, they do not even mention chitosan in their patient information from Hoffmann-La Roche. Instead of telling us the truth about chitosan, they give us a bunch of crap about the side effects being a "natural effect" of Xenical that lets us know it's working. (Yeah right, and you got the chitosan patent so people wouldn't know Xenical was working, huh?)

So "if you are concerned" about the nasty side effects of Xenical, but your "doctor or pharmacist" doesn't keep up with the latest patent filings, I guess you are just tough out of luck. Meanwhile, as we learned on page 1, Hoffmann-La Roche is busy funding bogus research designed to make chitosan look bad. Together these actions paint a scandalously ugly picture.

But I have no doubt the mainstream media will use the Hoffmann-La Roche "research" to slam supplements instead of doing any real journalistic investigation. Depending on your point of view, our watchdogs are either pathetically lame or they have been bought and paid for.

By the way, speaking of "watchdogs," the Xenical Consumer Information from the FDA also does not bother to tell us that chitosan can greatly reduce the side effects of Xenical. Given the FDA's bias against supplements this is not too surprising. However, to be fair, I must admit that the FDA is improving -- they have gone from outright lying about thermogenic supplements to merely lying by omission about chitosan.

At any rate, 22 grams per day should serve as a pretty good estimate of the amount of fat blocked by Xenical. This costs about $110 a month ($3.66 a day). Of course, there is also the expense of obtaining a prescription, but for the sake of simplicity, I'm not going to try to figure that into the total cost. Suffice it to say, that is a LOT of money to block 22 grams of fat a day. Let's see how it compares to the chitosan/vitamin C combination.

  
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