Stuff that occurs to me: Phen375

As you may know I've been intrigued by the product Phen375 (see further reading, below) which touts itself as a weight loss supplement / pill although I've not found good quality evidence on any of the websites that sell it to say if it's safe or that it works. Plenty of customer testimonials but of course they're utterly useless as evidence.

I still haven't worked out what's in Phen375 and am not sure if it contains phentermine or not. There are references on the main Phen375 website to both phenTERMine and phenTEMine and I can't make sense of it.

Phentermine

Phentermine is a real prescription medicine for weight loss, however according to the British National Formulary

"Phentermine and diethylpropion are central stimulants; they are not recommended for the treatment of obesity. Phentermine has been associated with a risk of pulmonary hypertension."

so I'm not sure that it's currently prescribed in the UK at least, or perhaps only in the very short term. I couldn't find any reference to phentermine (or phentemine) as a drug product on the electronic Medicines Compendium, the only references are where it's not recommended in combination with another drug.

According to PubMed Health (US based) phentermine "is used for a limited period of time to speed weight loss in overweight people who are exercising and eating a low-calorie diet. Phentermine is in a class of medications called anorectics. It works by decreasing appetite."

PubMed also notes its side effects:

Phentermine may cause side effects. Tell your doctor if any of these symptoms are severe or do not go away:

dry mouth

unpleasant taste

diarrhea

constipation

vomiting

Some side effects can be serious. If you experience any of the following symptoms, call your doctor immediately:

increased blood pressure

heart palpitations

restlessness

dizziness

tremor

insomnia

shortness of breath

chest pain

dizziness

swelling of the legs and ankles

difficulty doing exercise that you have been able to do

Wikipedia says that "Phentermine, a contraction of "phenyl-tertiary-butylamine", is a psychostimulant drug of the phenethylamine class, with pharmacology similar to amphetamine. It is used medically as an appetite suppressant."

Basically phentermine appears to be a not very nice drug that isn't recommended for weight loss in the UK but it is prescribed in the US (see bit on Qsymia below) - I presume this means that people are using it under the care of a doctor, they're not just buying it off the internet.

Phen375

According to the website that sells this product

"Phentemine375 uses a combination of cyclic AMP enzyme boosters such as , 1,3,7-Trimethylxanthine, and a Sympathomimetic Amine, LongJack Tongkate ALI,Capsaicin-1.12, l-carnitine to get the job done. Each of the five main ingredients are highly refined and produced in a pharmaceutical environment. This provides you with the strongest and purist product humanly possible to produce."

I think trimethylxanthine is just caffeine, LongJack Tongkate ALI would appear to be an extract from Eurycoma longifolia, capsaicin's from peppers and carnitine's a standard supplement. I don't know what the 'sympathomimetic amine' is though and it's not clear from this page either http://phen375.com/index.php?dispatch=pages.view&page_id=65 (I'm afraid you'll have to copy and paste into a browser page if you want to visit there).

I don't understand the spelling differences and from what I can gather the terms phentermine and phentemine are used pretty interchangeably on the site (do a Google search for site:phen375.com phentermine or site:phen375.com phentemine - the hits are fairly similar).

Phen375 doesn't appear to contain phentermine (does it?? I really can't tell) which as mentioned above is probably not something you'd want to muck about with unless under medical supervision.

Oddly the affiliates forum where the people who do the affiliate marketing for products such as these are encouraging members to add content to their websites, mentioning a new FDA approved drug (Qsymia) that does contain phentermine. This would seem to be confusing a phentermine-containing pharmaceutical product with a weight loss supplement pill (that doesn't appear to contain phentermine but I could be wrong) in order to increase traffic. All very peculiar.

Is it the same thing or completely unrelated?

Further reading

Phen375 weight loss pills "reviewed"

by @JoBrodie, brodiesnotes.blogspot.com

(A) What to do if you have bought similar weight-loss products
(B) Blog post about strategies used in advertising various pills and supplements online

(A) What to do if you have bought similar weight-loss products
1. Try and get your money back
If you bought Phen375 (or any other item) with a debit or credit card then you may be able to get your money back, have a look at the information on Section 75 and Chargeback at Martin Lewis' Money Saving Expert page on Visa, Mastercard & Amex Chargeback: protection for debit card purchases.

2a. Report it to Action Fraud
If you have lost money in buying unevidenced weight loss pills you can report this to Action Fraud, who have this to say on Miracle Health Scams:

"Miracle health scams can include fake ‘miracle’ cures and weight loss products as well as bogus online pharmacies.

It is unlikely that such products have been properly tested or that there is any proof that they are medically effective. Some of these products may even be harmful.

Advertising for miracle health cures often include fake testimonials from apparently satisfied customers, have unproven claims about the product’s effectiveness, make false claims about clinical tests and have worthless ‘money back’ guarantees."

2b. Report it to the Advertising Standards Authority
How to complain - http://asa.org.uk/Consumers/How-to-complain.aspx

Have a look at what the Committee of Advertising Practice (who produce the guidelines that the ASA uses to determine if marketing material on websites or leaflets is OK) has to say about various types of weight loss advertising too.

Weight control: Herbalife and similar weight management products
Weight control: Food and Food Supplements
Weight control: Pills, medicines and patches

(B) Blog post about strategies used in advertising various pills and supplements online

There are a quite a few websites that advertise Phen375 fat burning slimming pills. There are probably quite a few more of the websites that don't. At least not as obviously. Instead those websites review diet and weight loss pills, or tell you 'the truth' about them. Or at least they imply that they do.

If someone has just heard about some new weight loss pills they might not be quite convinced that the pills are the real deal so, when looking on Google, they might be tempted to add words like 'scam' or 'fake' to their search keywords to find wesites that are critical (and perhaps they'll be reassured by not finding any).

However anyone searching for these terms is still likely to be taken to review sites which will help visitors to buy the product.

I can't remember when I first noticed the rather clever use, by pill sellers, of words like scam in blogs (subtly embedded in the text or address) to bring in the punters - it's what people are searching for after all. Genius ;) It also presumably swamps any legitimate sites that are providing genuine information about complaints, forcing them off the front page of Google results.

Phen375 seems to be a popular weight loss pill which is sold, along with tens of others, by the MoreNiche affiliate people. I'm not aware of any good quality evidence (patient testimonials just don't count I'm afraid) that can show if the product is safe or effective.

The briefest of Google searches found a selection of sites, many of which contain the words 'scam' or 'fake' in the website itself or its web address. All the websites in the list below contain a code that ensures that any sale made (when visitors click through to the selling site) will pay a dividend to an affiliate from MoreNiche. Commission varies but might be around 30 per cent.

In all cases remove D3L3TE to make the URL work

Some MoreNiche tracked sites for Phen375; they all point to http://phenD3L3TE375.com/ (1)

http://bestfatburnD3L3TEerguide.com/phen375-reviews
http://buyphen3D3L3TE75.co.uk/
http://buyphentermine375hD3L3TEq.com/phen375/phen375-fake/ (2)
http://dietpillD3L3TEsbest.net/diet-pills-best-phen375
http://www.healthD3L3TEcaffe.com/phen375-reviews/
http://phen375reD3L3TEviewed.net/
http://phD3L3TEen375scam.blog.com/ (3)
http://pheD3L3TEn375scam.info/
http://phenD3L3TE375truth.com/

As far as I can tell there are probably hundreds (thousands?) of these affiliate sites and I assume one affiliate might have more than one site.

(1) ...that website doesn't have a particularly good rating on http://www.mywot.com/en/scorecard/phen375.com (nothing to do with me, I've not actually rated any MoreNiche merchant or affiliate sites but many of the ones I've come across have already been downvoted). Commenters (actually they do cross a line I think, rather racist) on Complaintwire aren't too happy with the company either.

(2) Most affiliate sites seem to hide or obscure the tracking code (it doesn't always show up in the page's source code but I might be missing something) but the website listed at (2) points to a TinyURL address and, if you've got preview switched on, you can see that it's clearly redirecting to http://track.moreD3L3TEniche.com/hit.php?w=137484&s=157 which then redirects to the Phen375 website.

(3) The link in this one is http://track.moreD3L3TEniche.com/hit.php?w=149938&s=157

Noticing the s=157 (I presume this is a MoreNiche code for the product) I wondered if I could find any more. I may be quite wrong about some of these, they may not actually be the code for a product (they might just be found on the same website as the product's name).

s=24 appears to be Size Genetics (some sort of 'male enhancement')

s=156 might be Acai berry

s=157 is presumably Phen375

s=174 might be Tava Tea
s=178 might be Capsiplex

Searching for a few of these also brings up a lot of links to spam-tracking websites.

Goodness knows what phentemine actually is though. The main selling website spells it that way and also references phenteRmine which is definitely not recommended for weight loss according to the British National Formulary (BNF, the guidance that doctors and nurses use when prescribing legal medicines) as it has interactions with all sorts of other prescription medications and shouldn't be used by a whole bunch of poeple with various other conditions. If someone's going to buy unlicensed pills on the internet these aren't the ones I'd be recommending.

However according to the company's website the product doesn't contain phentermine at all - there's a list of ingredients and we're told what each does but (again, typically) no evidence is provided that the pills actually achieve any of this miraculous weight loss. There's reference to 'sympathomimetic amine' which is also named as norepinephrine (noradrenaline). Assuming this survives digestion that would presumably increase the heart rate... doesn't sound that much fun.

Yesterday I actually received email spam from someone selling Phen375. Unusually for spam this pleased me (I've been drafting this post on and off in spare moments for a couple of days so this is a nice finish for the post) and I've included a screenshot of it at the end. I think this might be the tracking code, but it's difficult to tell really, as I say they seem to be hidden and you have to 'triangulate' them a bit http://track.morenicD3L3TEhe.com/hit.php?w=227379&s=157

Unless I'm mistaken this affiliate code w=227379 also appears to be involved in selling something called IntiVar Renewal gel... the green and red circles to the right of the green tick relate to the Web of Trust rating system which I have installed on Chrome:

Edit: 3 April 2013

Rose Silk has left a couple of comments (too long to fit once I'd annotated them) that are peppered with active links (redacted) to various websites that seem to be selling a rival product to do with ketones. The intention behind this is to gather up Google brownie points by having other sites linking to their sites. Because I have redacted them that doesn't happen.

Here's the first.

"Raspberries acquire treatments make-up policy from a specifically items present and further improve the very quickly

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The websites listed are (in call cases remove D3L3TE to get the correct URL:
1. http://doesraD3L3TEspberryketonework.blogspot.com/ - this appears to be web filler. It doesn't sell anything but contributes to the overall bulk of online information about the product, with relevant keywords. There seems to be only one article and it is very badly spun (google article spinning for more).
2. http://doraspberrykeD3L3TEtoneswork.blogspot.com/ - very similar to site above
3. http://howdoesrasD3L3TEpberryketonework.webs.com/ - appears to be more web filler
4. http://raspberrykeD3L3TEtonedoesitwork.webs.com/ - yet more web filler
5. http://whatdoraspberD3L3TEryketonesdo.webs.com/ - filler
6. http://www.raspberryketD3L3TEone.webs.com/ - aha. This is the one that links to the merchant's site and all the other five links are just padding to make it less obvious. Maria Wilson, the owner of the page, has the appropriate affiliate disclaimer badge on her site and clicking on any link on the page will take you to the 'Evolution Slimming' website http://www.evolution-sliD3L3TEmming.com/store/raspberry-ketone-advanced-cat_189.html, which is a MoreNiche merchant http://www.twD3L3TEistdirectory.com/directory/Health_and_Beauty/Weight_Loss/Slimming_Store/evolution_slimming_1479.html.

No evidence at all that it works of course...

Stuff that occurs to me