basically, xenical binds with the fat you eat so that it can't get into your body. while this sounds like a nice idea, scooby and sam-and-rosies-grandma have noted the reality. the fat has to go SOMEWHERE, and the only choice it has is to go OUT and sometimes dramatically, if you get the drift here.
and here's the blurb from the xenical website. the weightlosses were NOT very good after a year, although a couple of people lost a lot of weight.
Roche has been losing a lot of money on this drug. who wants to live with the side effects????
from
www.xenical.com:
If you eat an excessive amount of fat or calories, the excess is stored as fat by the body, resulting in weight gain. When you eat fat, your body breaks it down into its simplest components so that it can be digested.
Enzymes in your digestive system, called lipases, help digest (or break down) fat. As shown to the right, when taken with meals, XENICAL attaches to the lipases and blocks them from breaking down some of the fat you have eaten.
The undigested fat cannot be absorbed and is eliminated in your bowel movements. By working this way, XENICAL helps block about one-third of the fat in the foods you eat from being absorbed by your body.
Following 1 year of treatment, XENICAL in combination with diet was shown to be more effective in reducing weight than diet alone. In most cases, weight loss was gradual. Patients treated with XENICAL and a reduced-calorie diet for 1 year lost an average of 13.4 lbs, while those on a reduced-calorie diet alone lost 5.8 lbs. And XENICAL helped more people lose weight. In fact, over twice as many XENICAL patients lost 10% of their body weight, and among those who did, the average weight loss was 31 lbs and the range of weight loss was between 16 and 74 lbs.