Alvidar™ Fat Burner / Thyroid Booster Review
Alvidar™ is Selmedica Healthcare’s “thyroid-boosting” fat burner offering (Selmedica also manufactures and markets the weight loss product ZetaCap, claiming it to be a “gastric bypass in a bottle.” In reality, it’s little more than a fiber supplement).
If you review the Alvidar™ web site, you’ll read plenty of hype about both the dangers and the prevalence of underactive thyroid hormones in the North American population. You’ll also find a huge list of “symptoms” attributable to a low-functioning thyroid gland. If you take this list at face value, there’s no doubt you’ll find yourself picking out more than a few symptoms that apply to you.
Does this mean that you have a poorly functioning thyroid gland?
Hardly!
Many of the symptoms on this list can also be attributed to fatigue, stress, nutritional deficiencies, poor eating habits, sedentary lifestyle and so on. The problem is that the list is very general, designed to draw in as large a prospective target audience as possible.
There’s nothing wrong with good marketing, of course, but keep in mind that displaying such symptoms are not necessarily the signs of a poorly functioning thyroid.
While the Alvidar™ web site downplays this importance of this, some simple blood work performed by your doctor will quickly tell you the real state of your T3 and T4 thyroid hormones.
In fact, this is what I recommend to anyone who is considering any type of natural thyroid booster — prior to using the product.
To be quite frank, some natural thyroid boosting products may actually prove detrimental to your health should you not need the nutrients contained therein.
Messing around with iodine rich ingredients, should you have a properly functioning thyroid hormone, may actually cause hypothyroidism or hyperthyroidism.
That aside, many of you may wonder if the Alvidar™ fat burner has any merit. Well, despite what the Web site says, there are no peer-reviewed, double-blind clinical studies that validate any of the claims made on the web site. While their own in-house studies claim a 93% success rate, they are meaningless, since neither the methodology nor the results can or have been reviewed by unbiased, critical professionals.
The ingredient list appears impressive, but in fact only contains a few elements that have any demonstrable effect on thyroid function — kelp and bladderwrack. Both of these are rich in iodine, a vital substrate for many thyroid hormones. Keep in mind that both these ingredients tend to concentrate heavy metals, and can be toxic for that reason.
Other ingredients (all labeled in Latin) include: saw palmetto, garlic, gentian, meadowsweet, valerian, St. John’s Wort, ginger, cayenne, echinacea, Gingko biloba, and ginseng (full reviews of many of these ingredients can be viewed here!). While many of these ingredients have healthful benefits, consultation with the Natural Database did not show any of them to have any effect at all upon thyroid function. Nor did I find any conclusive proof that this specific blend of ingredients has some significant positive effect upon thyroid levels.
In other words, other than the kelp and bladderwrack, the Alvidar™ compilation looks mostly like a “health tonic” than a viable thyroid booster. In my opinion, there are simply better, more complete products available for this purpose.
That said, the Alvidar™ web site does offer an impressive guarantee. I’d be curious to hear from those of you who have used the product… what were your results? If you tried to return the product, did they honor the guarantee?
Bottom line?
If you think you have a thyroid problem, see your doctor first. Do not mess around with iodine-containing supplements like Alvidar™ until you know the true state of your thyroid hormone levels, and have been evaluated by a professional.
