CLIPS

Beauty: Searching for a Quick Fix; Pills Are Sold to Make You Look Great, But Doctors See No Evidence They Work
By LORETTA CHAO
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
October 11, 2005; Page D6

College student Linda Lockwood calls herself an unofficial expert on "natural" breast enlargement. After four years of experimentation, the 20-year-old has spent almost $1,000 and countless hours on a quest to increase her bust size.

But rather than exploring surgical options, Ms. Lockwood takes several pills daily that she buys at health-food stores.

So far she has failed, but her current effort involves pills made with fenugreek seeds, said to have been used by harem women to enhance bust size, along with saw palmetto, which is primarily used to treat enlargement of the prostate, and two herbs rumored to be effective. Experts say it is doubtful any of these are useful.

"There is no published evidence that these products work. There is certainly no evidence that long-term use is safe," says Adriane Fugh-Berman, who teaches Complementary and Alternative Medicine at Georgetown University in Washington, and who has done research on bust-enhancing products.

Ingestible beauty supplements are being marketed for everything from hair strengthening to skin lightening. And while doctors almost universally are skeptical of the effectiveness of these pills and cautious of their risks, some beauty-industry experts say people will continue looking for quick, painless answers to their cosmetic needs.

"Patients have a problem, and medically, there's not a good answer," says Hoa Kim Vo, an internist in Houston, referring to cosmetic pills. She encourages patients to discuss products with her and goes over the ingredients for safety and compatibility with other medications the patients may be taking. To be sure, she has yet to find evidence to support any claims made by companies that produce these products.

"We're such a beauty-obsessed society. People are interested, and more will try [these products]," says Nadine Haobsh, formerly a beauty editor, who has attracted an onslaught of media attention for "Jolie in NYC," her blog on the beauty industry. She says people are always searching for "quick fix" alternatives to cosmetic surgery.

According to market-research company Euromonitor International, ingestible beauty supplements have more than doubled in sales over five years. One company, Body Mint USA, makes pills that claim to fight bad breath, and to reduce underarm and foot odors. And in January, Sephora stores began selling Borba, a line of beverages that claim to prevent pimples and slow the natural aging of skin.

Recently, a company called Purelogicol, based in Scotland, created antiwrinkle collagen pills. Eliot F. Battle Jr., a dermatologist at Howard University in Washington, said such claims are usually 90% marketing and 10% effective. "Your systemic ingestion of a compound to create a localized effect is not the safe approach that [experts] would recommend," he said.

While Purelogicol executives acknowledge that results would be difficult to measure clinically, they argue that the pills worked in their own tests and are still more appealing than surgery or injections.

Scott Spear, president of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, says these supplements simply aren't as effective as cosmetic surgery. Objective research about their safety is nonexistent, he says, and as with all dietary supplements, they aren't regulated by the Food and Drug Administration.

Ms. Haobsh, who hasn't tried ingestible beauty supplements, recommends focusing on each product's bioavailability, or the amount that isn't broken down or excreted before reaching the desired part of the body. Doctors caution about risks. "Why take any risk for an unproven cosmetic benefit?" Dr. Fugh-Berman says.

Ms. Lockwood, who swaps notes with other women interested in natural breast enlargement, said some doctors just don't understand. "A lot of people say their doctors wouldn't even talk to them about it," she says. Her own doctors have also advised her to just accept her body the way it is.

That's why she thinks consumers visit sites like the BE (Breast Enlargement) Board and Tantalk.com, where people swap any information they can get. "Please," one Tantalk poster wrote last summer, "Are these [tanning] pills a miracle for a fair-skinned person like me?"

Tanning pills, which contain a color additive called canthaxanthin, have been associated with an eye disorder called canthaxanthin retinopathy, or the formation of yellow deposits on the eye's retina, according to the FDA. The additive has also been reported by the American Academy of Dermatology to cause liver damage and severe skin itching.

Another forum poster, Jan Yu, is obsessed with something entirely different: skin whitening. Ms. Yu gave up on bleaching powder and hydrogen peroxide, and she bought a bottle of high-dosage glutathione pills on eBay. Dermatologists say glutathione is a combination of amino acids important to healthy cell function. Though the product is sometimes used in skin-bleaching pills, doctors have little reason to believe it affects skin color.

Dr. Battle says patients should be cautious of ingestible supplements. "There are no miracles in a bottle. If any of these products worked as effectively as they are being advertised, every doctor would be prescribing them themselves."