Water Pills Side Effects: Dehydration, Blurred Vision, Cramps. Ever heard of water pills for weight loss? Apparently, some people are using diuretics to shed some pounds. If you are planning to do so, you should know that using diuretics to loss weight is not advisable. Why, you ask? Because it has dangerous side effects to your health.
Some water pills side effects are as follows:
- Dehydration
- Frequent urination
- Dark-colored urine
- Abnormal rhythm of the heart or arrhythmia
- Nausea
- Muscle cramps
- Abnormal electrolyte levels
- Tiredness or weakness
- Dizziness or lightheadedness or confusion
- Blurred vision
- Headache
- Excessive perspiration (sweating)
- Extreme thirst
- Constipation
- Sore throat
- Vomiting
- Fever
- Ringing in the ears
- Skin rash
It is important to note that diuretics are meant to treat medical conditions — such as high blood pressure, heart problems, glaucoma, and kidney and liver problems — where our own body is unable to regulate the amount of water coursing through our system. For instance, water pills help the kidneys remove salt from our body the effect of which is that blood vessels don’t have to hold too much fluid resulting in a lower blood pressure.
Unfortunately, because of the water-excreting qualities of diuretics, some enterprising people and stores are selling them as an easy path to weight loss. This is an unhealthy way of losing weight and you could be endangering yourself if you take this easy route.
Here are some videos which, we hope, could shed light on the dangers of water pills.
Here’s a transcript for those who can’t watch the video:
Woman in Audience: Water pills? I know, I took them. And what happened was I did lose weight rapidly. But after a couple of months I gained 7-8 pounds back again. And what’s the difference between water weight and fat loss?
Jillian Michaels: Water weight is excess fluid that you’re holding on in your body. Weight loss, the kind of weight loss that we want, is fat reduction and that simply means that you are creating a calorie deficit in your diet and fat is energy. And your body needs energy so it dips into your fat stores and we burn fat. And we do this with a healthy diet, counting calories, and exercise.
When you play games with things like water pills, you’re creating a real potential danger with your health.
Dr. Travis Stork: Water pills, just say “No, no, no”. Water pills are known as diuretics in medicine. So water follows electrolytes, you can create major life-threatening electrolyte imbalances with these pills because, number one, I guarantee you most people don’t know what’s in it.
And there’s also stimulants in most of these so they call themselves water pills but the reality is there’s tons of stimulants in them as well. These can be very dangerous. And losing water weight, all of these is a quick temporary fix anyway while it throws other things in your body out of whack so let’s do it the right way.
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Here’s another video discussing water pills side effects:
Of course we made another transcription for those of you who can’t watch the video:
Question: I was wondering whether water pills were healthy for you to try to lose weight or whether they are healthy for you at all.
Answer: So definitely by taking extra water out of your body, you are going to lose weight — but only water weight. You’re not gonna lose fat which is really the big concern and which we want to be doing. So its not a healthful way of achieving weight loss.
The problem with water pills is that they work by pushing out nutrients through the kidneys and having water follow that. So its okay to lose a little bit of water but the problem is you’re losing those nutrients and other nutrients follow along with that — sodium, potassium, magnesium. And this can really create some health problems. So I definitely caution against using them for any reason specific to weight loss.
You really reserve those medications for people who have problems with their heart pumping enough blood and they’re getting swelling in their ankles and that’s creating problems. That’s where we use the water pills for. It can also be an effective way to lower blood pressure. Again, you gotta be monitoring kidney function. You gotta be monitoring electrolyte levels. So if its optional, to me its not an option in regards to using them for weight loss.
Water Pills Side Effects: Dehydration, Blurred Vision, Cramps posted 25 February 2015. Last update on 25 February 2015.