Are ephedra containing products in health food stores safe?

One of the major problems with ephedra was that the product sold in health food stores was unregulated. Each store sold a different formulation with an unknown dose. The quality and the quantity in most cases was not known. In addition, many of the herbal medications came from the Orient. Moreover, there have been many reports of fake and counterfeit products. In fact, Chinese and Indian manufacturers are known to spike herbs with real pharmaceutical drugs. Coupled with contamination and lack of quality, the FDA finally banned the drug from sale. There have been many studies, which have shown that the dose of ephedrine from one store to another frequently varied by 10 fold- and this was in the same brand. No wonder why side effects developed!

The health supplement, Metabolite, had ephedra as its constituent and there were thousands of complaints of adverse reactions with this product, including death. It was the death of Steve Belcher (Orioles pitcher) which led the FDA to finally clamp down on ephedra sales. Despite legal challenges by many weight loss firms who sold, ephedra, the drug is only now available on the black market.