Posted 03 February 2006 - 12:44 PM
I'll try to dig up the studies I've read on it and post them later. It can actually be very beneficial under very specific circumstances.
First of all, you should note the serving size on the bag of chips (it's typically in "fat free" chips, especially Fat Free Pringles, Fat Free Doritos, Fat Free Pringles, etc.). You should never eat more than a full serving at any one time, unless you like diarrhea, cramps, gas, etc. You should figure out what your body can tolerate: mine seems to be able to tolerate more than others, but not much more.
So start small, a half a serving, once a day, and make sure nothing changes in your, uh, regularity. Then try a full serving, once a day. At most, you might consider moving up to a full serving, twice a day. If you have bowels of steel, you could try a full serving three times a day, but my body can't tolerate that level.
As for the specific circumstances: rapid weight (fat) loss. When you lose fat rapidly, all the fat-soluble chemicals that had been stored in the fat are released into the bloodstream. Most of those chemicals find their way to other high-fat locations in the body, e.g., other fat cells, the pancreas, the brain. Examples of such chemicals are good things like fat-soluble vitamins, and very bad things like pesticides and other toxins!
Now, your liver makes its best effort to strip the fat-soluble toxins out of your bloodstream, much like the kidneys strip excess chemicals out of the blood. The difference is, the kidneys can put those toxins on an express ride out of the body in urine. The liver doesn't have such an avenue, so it flushes the toxins into the stomach or intestines, with the help of the gall bladder (I think, I'm a little fuzzy on this step).
Those fat soluble toxins are flushed into your stomach, but it's a long way from the stomach to the, uh, output. Now, if you eat a high fiber, very low fat diet, then those fat-soluble toxins will exit the body in an orderly fashion. But most people don't properly eat a high-fiber, very low-fat diet. And actually, a very low fat diet can have problems in its own right, but that's a discussion for another day.
Anyway, this is where Olestra comes in. Olestra is basically fat, so the fat-soluble toxins dissolve in the Olestra. However, your body can't absorb Olestra, so you basically poop it out, along with the toxins.
The two main drawbacks to Olestra are that it causes bowel problems, and it flushes good fat-soluble chemicals with the bad, i.e. vitamins A, D, E, K, etc. This latter problem can be avoided by spacing your fat free chips at least 2-3 hours away from any nutrient-dense meals, especially ones high in these vitamins. And of course, if you take supplements for these vitamins, space those a good 4 hours or more from a serving of Olestra.
But the benefits might be worth it. Studies have shown that during rapid weight loss, levels of certain pesticides in the bloodstream rose by a very large factor, but with Olestra added to the weight-loss program, the levels either stayed normal or even dropped a little.
Keep in mind, the faster you lose weight, the faster you'll be dumping a lifetime of stored toxins (and they're fairly harmless while stored safely in fat cells) into your bloodstream, some of which will make their way into the brain and the fatty organs such as the pancreas. So if you're losing weight slowly, Olestra probably isn't as important, but if you're on a crash diet, Olestra could help alleviate some of the fatigue of the diet, which might be caused in part by the high toxin levels.
Anyway, food for thought. Well, calorie-free not-quite-food for thought.
