Doctor Reviews: Prima weight loss pills

Index of Contents →

Share this article

Listen to this article on Spotify, or watch it on YouTube.

Supplements for weight loss are not just popular in North America. A patient of mine brought back a supplement from the UK called Prima.

I’d never heard of it but I’d promised to look into it and forgot about it until now. So here I am now ready to take a look at these Prima weight loss pills.

Let’s analyze it to see if it’s worth your money, see if we can replicate it with a cheaper alternative, and give it an overall rating.

Ingredients of Prima Weight Loss Pills

Let’s first take a look at the ingredients. Here are the doses per capsule. They say that taking one per day is enough to help you to “lose fat”, so one a day it is.

Prima-pills-review-ingredients — Ingredients of Prima weight loss supplement.

Whenever supplements add any ingredients into their product, there are three very common issues:

The doses they use are way too small to be effective
They aren’t using the active compounds
The ingredient itself has not reliably shown any beneficial effect in humans.

When we analyze these ingredients, we’re going to see which of these issues they have.

L-carnitine

L-Carnitine is an amino acid used for fat metabolism, and there is some evidence that it can help people to exercise more intensely, particularly in people with cardiovascular issues who cannot exercise with very high intensity.

It might also help those who are exercising, to lose a little bit of additional weight, around 2-3 more pounds every few months, so yeah not very impressive.

However the doses used in studies are at least 2000 mg per day. The 100 mg that Prima provides is not going to do anything.

L-arginine

L-arginine is another amino acid, however there is no real evidence to suggest that it can help people lose weight.

Rather, some people use L-arginine to slightly enhance athletic performance, presumably so that you can exercise with greater intensity and burn more calories as a result.

Unfortunately, the research for L-arginine being an athletic performance enhancer is quite weak, and studies are using 3000 mg or more per day. Again, the 100 mg Prima is providing is not going to do anything whatsoever.

Garcinia Cambogia

Garcinia cambogia is a herb that research suggests might have some hunger management qualities, and help some people to eat less.

In my experience, this doesn’t really help people to lose weight, and most people taking it are mostly using it to help maintain their weight, rather than actively trying to lose any.

But there are two problems with the Garcinia Cambogia in the Prima supplement:

They aren’t using the active extract, which is hydroxycitric acid, also known as HCA. Real Garcinia Cambogia supplements will standardize it to around 50% HCA for it to have any effects.
The dose. Studies used at least 1000 mg per day. 50 mg is not going to do anything.

Prima pills Side Effects and Concerns

Now with all the doses being so low, it’s not as likely that the ingredients in Prima will cause issues or interfere with medication.

For example, L-carnitine has the potential to interfere with thyroid medication, but only at really high doses. The 100 mg of L-carnitine in Prima is tiny and not likely to cause any real issues, although you should still ask your doctor about it if you’re unsure.

Another example is that L-arginine supplements are known to cause a drop in blood pressure, especially in those taking blood pressure medication. Again, however, the doses used in Prima are likely too small to have any noticeable effect on blood pressure.

So although some of the ingredients have potential concerns, the doses are likely too low to cause any real harm.

Are Prima weight loss pills effective?

Overall, taking Prima is not going to do anything for you. They seem to be trying to create a supplement that might help you to exercise with greater intensity, and claim that it can help you to burn fat, but these supplements do not burn fat, that’s just not how they work.

Prima-pills-review-ingredient-analysis — Prima weight loss supplement ingredient analysis.

Also, the three ingredients they use are dosed way too low to do anything anyways, and only two of them are using the correct extracts.

Let’s say for the sake of experimentation you really wanted to try getting a useful dose from Prima, how many pills would you need to take?

Well according to the research, you would need to take around 30 pills per day for it to provide you with a good dose of all three ingredients, so basically the whole package every day.

If you were crazy and did that, it would cost you around £1080 per month.

Overall rating: Prima pills

Prima-pills-review-overall-summary-rating — Overall Prima weight loss review rating.

Reviewing Prima weight loss pills by effectiveness for weight loss, I’m giving it an F. The doses are so low it’s not going to do much of anything.

Reviewing Prima weight loss pills by cost, I’m giving it an F. Getting the ingredients separately allows you to get a cost per dose about 15 times less than getting it from Prima.

Reviewing Prima weight loss pills for safety, I’m giving it a B. It’s probably mostly safe to take, since the doses in one pill is far too low to realistically have issues or interfere with medication.

Overall review, I’m giving Prima weight loss pills an F. I would recommend you stay away from it.

Top alternatives to Prima

If you’re looking to achieve similar effects, but better than those of Prima, I would combine a quality garcinia cambogia extract + L-arginine + L-carnitine.

Garcinia Cambogia – 1 to 5 caps / day
L-Arginine (caps) – 2 to 6 caps / day
L-Arginine (powder) – 1 scoop / day
L-Carnitine (caps) – 2 to 4 caps / day
L-Carnitine (powder) – 2 to 4 scoops / day

Learn more about

Alvares TS, Conte CA, Paschoalin VM, et al. Acute l-arginine supplementation increases muscle blood volume but not strength performance. Appl Physiol Nutr Metab. 2012 Feb;37(1):115-26.

Daraei A, Ahmadizad S, Rahmani H, et al. L-Arginine Improves Endurance to High-Intensity Interval Exercises in Overweight Men. Int J Sport Nutr Exerc Metab. 2020:1-9.

Faria, C. C., Mota, J. F., Paula Ravagnani, F. C., and Burini, R. C. [The supplementation of L-carnitine does not promote alterations in the resting metabolic rate and in the use of energetic substrates in physically active individuals]. Arq Bras.Endocrinol.Metabol. 2010;54(1):37-44.

Golzarand M, Omidian M, Toolabi K. Effect of Garcinia cambogia supplement on obesity indices: A systematic review and dose-response meta-analysis. Complement Ther Med. 2020;52:102451.

Heymsfield SB, Allison DB, Vasselli JR, et al. Garcinia cambogia (hydroxycitric acid) as a potential antiobesity agent: a randomized controlled trial. JAMA 1998;280:1596-600.

Hurt RT, Ebbert JO, Schroeder DR, et al. L-arginine for the treatment of centrally obese subjects: a pilot study. J Diet Suppl. 2014 Mar;11(1):40-52.

Leonhardt M, Balkan B, Langhans W. Effect of hydroxycitrate on respiratory quotient, energy expenditure, and glucose tolerance in male rats after a period of restrictive feeding. Nutrition 2004;20(10):911-915.

Mattes RD, Bormann L. Effects of (-)-hydroxycitric acid on appetitive variables. Physiol Behav 2000;71:87-94.

Meirelles CM, Matsuura C. Acute supplementation of L-arginine affects neither strength performance nor nitric oxide production. J Sports Med Phys Fitness. 2018 Mar;58(3):216-220. doi: 10.23736/S0022-4707.16.06680-9.

Pooyandjoo M, Nouhi M, Shab-Bidar S, Djafarian K, Olyaeemanesh A. The effect of (L-)carnitine on weight loss in adults: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. Obes Rev. 2016;17(10):970-6.

Rezaei S, Gholamalizadeh M, Tabrizi R, Nowrouzi-Sohrabi P, Rastgoo S, Doaei S. The effect of L-arginine supplementation on maximal oxygen uptake: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Physiol Rep. 2021;9(3):e14739.

Talenezhad N, Mohammadi M, Ramezani-Jolfaie N, Mozaffari-Khosravi H, Salehi-Abargouei A. Effects of l-carnitine supplementation on weight loss and body composition: A systematic review and meta-analysis of 37 randomized controlled clinical trials with dose-response analysis. Clin Nutr ESPEN. 2020;37:9-23.

Villani, R. G., Gannon, J., Self, M., and Rich, P. A. L-Carnitine supplementation combined with aerobic training does not promote weight loss in moderately obese women. Int J Sport Nutr Exerc.Metab 2000;10(2):199-207.

Westerterp-Plantenga MS, Kovacs EMR. The effect of (-)-hydroxycitrate on energy intake and satiety in overweight humans. Int J Obesity 2002;26:870-2.

Zhao, J. L., Gao, D. Z., Liu, D., He, H. H., She, Q., and Yin, Y. H. Improvement of exercise tolerance by L-carnitine in patients with cardiac syndrome X. Chin.Hosp.Pharm.J. 2010;30(17):1460-1463.