hCG Diet Dangers: Mad Cow Disease??

The popularity of the "HCG Diet" has exploded in the past couple of years, especially in the United States and parts of Europe. It basically involves injecting or consuming Human Chorionic Gonadotropin, a female pregnancy hormone, in order to lose weight with little to no effort (theoretically). But now a new study shows that there may be a pretty big risk to taking the stuff: you could get freaking MAD COW DISEASE!!

Researchers found that liquid hCG doses can contain prions, the strange, malformed proteins that cause mad cow disease and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, the human form of the brain-destroying illness. That's because the hormone is extracted from the urine of pregnant women and, according to the research, some of them are infected with the prions.

Scary stuff.

hGC has been used as a weight loss aid since the 1950's. But it's really taken off in just the past few years, mainly due to the marketing efforts of various weight loss clinics. Unfortunately there's not a whole lot of scientific evidence that the stuff really works. No one has actually contracted "mad human" disease from hCG injections yet but here's how we look at it: why in the hell would you risk it??

Learn some mo': Popular Weight Loss Gimmick May Give You Mad Cow Disease