Miracle tablet for fasting people?

The other day, I happened to be browsing the Internet for lack of something to take my mind off my growling stomach as the end of the first fast of Ramadan drew near.

Imagine my surprise when I spotted an advertisement by an American company, who claim to have created a tablet, dubbed the Ramadan Tablet, that suppresses the feeling of hunger. It contains many vitamins (B1, B2, B6 and B12) as well as other more exotic-sounding ingredients such as bee pollen and green tea extract.

This got me thinking along the lines of a previous blog of mine entitled "Can hiccups be cured?". Without the traits we have that make us human, we wouldn't BE human. Although I'm struggling to think of the benefits that hiccups may provide, feelings such as hunger and pain are necessary for the human body to function properly.

Take hunger. Without feeling hungry, we wouldn't be prompted to eat. Okay, suppressing hunger may seem lucrative to some when it comes to weight loss, but, without nourishment, the body can deteriorate over time. The suppression of hunger can also lead to hunger tolerance, which can be a cause of mental illnesses such as anorexia nervosa, an ailment very common amongst teenagers and adults in this day in age. In 1983, the late Karen Carpenter, of sibling duo The Carpenters, died at the age of 32 from heart failure; this was later attributed to complications with her anorexia, an illness that people knew little about at the time.

And pain? Well, if it weren't for the informative lectures on pain that formed part of the examinable content of Physiology during second year, I wouldn't have thought there were many benefits either. But thinking about it, if one happens to step on a pin, without pain they could incur possibly severe tissue damage as they wouldn't be aware of it happening due to no pain stimuli being released. They wouldn't know (how) to avoid similar situations in future and feeling pain also encourages the recovery of the area that was in pain.

In conclusion, there's not much to say about this tablet. There are pros and cons, and in my opinion the tablet leaves something to be desired, especially with the price tag of $36.99 for a bottle of 60 (approximately equivalent to £23 on 14/08/10). My reasons for this are because there are many other weight loss medications on the market at the moment, including ones that already supposedly suppress hunger; some medications, it could be argued, are marginally safer than ones that suppress hunger, for example Orlistat which works by inhibiting pancreatic lipase and therefore preventing some fat being digested and absorbed into the bloodstream. Such medication obviously have other downsides and consequently, the "Ramadan Tablet" will benefit some and not others. As for helping to cope with the fast, some may argue that it defeats the purpose of fasting.