What’s in Those Pills? : ‘Herbal’ Diet Capsules Are All the Rage Among the Chic Crowd, but FDA Says They Contain Drugs

The recorded voice of Dr. Marcel Diennet crackled over the line from Paris as he explained, en francais, that his office was ferme until Sept. 5, please call then, merci beaucoup.

On this side of the Atlantic, where the Food and Drug Administration last week warned it had found potentially dangerous prescription drugs in a batch of Diennet’s mail order “herbal” diet pills, the telephone at the Diennet Institute in Century City went unanswered for days.

And in Beverly Hills, Renee Perez and Doris Levy--proprietors of the Lollipop Shop and Footloose, a children’s boutique--waited eagerly for their first shipment of capsules.

Yes, they knew the FDA had advised consumers to stop taking the pills. Never mind. “We wait every day for the mail to come, for our little brown envelopes to get here,” said Perez, who wants to lose 20 pounds.

She explained: “At least 20 of our clients have been on these pills. We keep watching them walk through the door, 20, 40 pounds they’ve lost. And their skin is so tight, not hanging or saggy. It looks like they’ve had face-lifts. . . .”

Wherever the beautiful people gather, from Jessica’s (the nail place) to Jose’s (the hair place), the Diennet diet is the rage.

‘An Incredible Fad’

It has been “an incredible fad” among his Beverly Hills clients, said celebrity hair stylist Jose Eber, who noted Diennet’s name “came up 10 times a day.”

His clients--some of whom have only recently begun to question the diet and are recalling that they had rashes when they started on it--”were coming in with fabulous bodies and real thin and saying ‘Look, I got my bones back,’ ” Eber said.

Jessica Vitti, manager of the Aida Grey skin salon in Beverly Hills, said of the diet, “I know about 10 customers who are on it and they have all lost weight.”

She said those she knows to be using the pills are unalarmed by the FDA disclosures.

A three-month supply of capsules costs $430, but Vitti, who said she lost 22 pounds in three months on the program, doesn’t begrudge Diennet one franc.

The FDA may disapprove of his diet plan “but it works. So if he’s basking on a beach somewhere, it’s OK.”

Diennet has kept a low profile since the FDA, alerted by a customer who complained he became sleepy after taking the capsules, confirmed its analysis showed some of the pills contained diethylpropion hydrochloride, an appetite suppressant; and diazepam and chlorodiazepoxide hydrochloride, both of which have sedative and anti-anxiety properties.

Inquiries to Sandra Gottlieb, Diennet’s Beverly Hills attorney, were handled by a secretary, who said Gottlieb was “not speaking to anybody” about this matter and suggested callers try the institute’s Century City office.

There--in a 14th-floor mauve-and-gray aerie the institute shares with a lawyer, a development firm and others--a visitor presenting a business card to Annalisa Castaneda, office manager for the complex, was told the doctor is in Paris but will fly to Los Angeles soon “to make public comment.”

Even with a staff of 10, she explained, the institute has been swamped since the FDA story broke: “Since this whole thing started, orders have doubled, tripled. They’re getting 2,000 calls a day,” mostly from customers who want to stock up in case the institute is shut down.

Others, she said, want refunds; the doctor plans to review their cases.

Castaneda worked for the institute and proselytizes for the program, on which she says she lost 45 pounds in five months.

Although the institute does not advertise, its business has escalated and it has 4,000 customers in the United States, mostly on the East Coast, and “tons of people in Europe,” she said.

The program’s popularity also is bolstered by an incentive plan, under which customers, for each newcomer they bring in, get $50 in cash or credits toward their next capsule purchase.

The program is mostly a mail-order business, beginning with a call to the Century City office for a questionnaire, based on which, clients are told, a computer picks individualized capsule formulas.

Diennet keeps in daily contact with Century City by phone and sees a few clients on his monthly or bimonthly visits to Los Angeles. But, Castaneda said, “The doctor doesn’t examine anybody here. He’s not licensed to do so in the United States. Maybe 2% of his clientele have met the doctor.”

An institute biography tells of Diennet’s work in the ‘60s among the malnourished in Biafra and other Third World countries, with orphans at a Vietnamese hospital, of his later rejection by Paris’ medical establishment.

Opening a clinic in Paris “to prove his credibility,” Diennet decided to use his knowledge of the part hormonal imbalance plays in malnutrition to treat obesity, the biography says. Now, after 13 years, it notes, his international clientele includes princesses and politicians.

If there is something wrong with Diennet’s capsules, Castaneda asked, why did the FDA wait until five years after the institute began its U.S. operation to do something? “Why haven’t they walked in here and closed the doors?”

Some angry clients are asking the same question. The FDA answers that it does not routinely approve products marketed as food supplements such as the Diennet pills; it only gets involved if a product becomes a health hazard or makes a medical claim.

Ongoing Investigation

Last week’s action, a spokesman said, stemmed from evidence turned up by the FDA in an ongoing investigation of the institute; the agency decided to publicize the hazard to protect the public.

Once the FDA completes an investigation, it may file charges and ask the appropriate federal, state or local law enforcement agencies to act.

The FDA is asking consumers who have suffered ill-effects from the capsules to contact the agency (it has a Los Angeles office) to arrange for collection of a sample for analysis.

“Right before this story broke, we had sent in the check for $430,” said writer Marcia Seligson, whose husband, management consultant Tom Drucker, had decided to try the program at the urging of friends. The couple immediately put a stop on their July 25 check but it had cleared. They have not received the capsules.

Seligson said she called the Century City office seeking a refund but was referred by staff there to attorney Gottlieb, whose office referred her back to Century City.

Seligson, frustrated, called the district attorney’s office, which, she said, referred her to a city consumer protection office where “the woman knew about (the diet) only because her daughter was going to do it.”

The six-page questionnaire new clients fill out asks about life style, sexual problems, drinking and smoking habits, medical history and dieting ups and downs. Applicants are asked to certify the information’s accuracy. Stamped at the bottom of the form in red: “No replacements. No refund.”

“We tell everybody you must have a physical,” Castaneda said, noting the patient’s word is taken on that. The staff at Century City will answer questions as they arise but she said, “Nobody is a certified LVN.”

The Diennet diet does not have a rigid eating plan or exercise regimen. Clients take six capsules daily, three at 11 a.m. (after which no bread is to be eaten that day) and three at 5 p.m. Alcohol and sweets are forbidden.

“Anyone giving up sweets and giving up alcohol would lose weight,” said Maureen Eyerman, outpatient dietitian at St. John’s Hospital in Santa Monica, who added she saw “nothing” nutritionally significant about an 11 a.m. cutoff for bread.

She said she knew of people on the program who generally had experienced dramatic early weight loss, largely a water loss they tended to regain. One patient, she said, had her pills analyzed and “there wasn’t anything (dangerous) in that particular pill . . . nothing of the amphetamine category.”

A typical formula of Diennet’s capsules lists as ingredients: fumitory herb, betacarotene, sea salt, extract of seaweed, goldenrod and magnesium salts suspended in milk sugar. While none of that appears harmful, Eyerman said, it also “sounds like nothing in there could suppress the appetite or serve to speed up the metabolism.”

She tends to dismiss it as “the latest rage,” noting, “People want a magical pill” that will make them shed weight. “They don’t want to work at it.”

Tracy Krivis, a 25-year-old director of development for a producer, started on the Diennet capsules in July, 1986, after hearing about them from her mother, who heard about them from a friend.

Krivis lost 20 pounds the first month, partly because she dieted rigorously. “I did feel pretty wired,” she remembers. “I don’t want to say speedy but I totally had no appetite.” In February, 1987, she embarked on a second three-month program and again lost rapidly.

But about mid-March, she “started getting pains” and was diagnosed as having a kidney infection, requiring a week’s hospital stay. She did not mention the Diennet program to her doctor, she said, because “it didn’t click. What I was taking, I understood to be herbal pills.”

In June, Krivis, after a forced sedentary period, resumed taking the capsules, having put back some of the 40 pounds she had lost. Soon she was diagnosed as having an ovarian abscess.

Never Been Sick Before

“I’d never been sick a day in my life” until then, she said. After a second week of hospitalization, she had put back almost all the 40 pounds.

Early this year, she ordered more pills but noticed “when I took the pills my side started acting up. I can’t say for sure if the pills had something to do with it.”

She was still a “gung-ho” Diennet advocate and persuaded her male boss to try the diet. But when the news broke about the FDA findings, she stopped cold turkey.

“Maybe my pills are all herbal. I can’t say for sure until I take them to a lab,” she said, “but I’ve never gotten as sick. . . .”

In updating her questionnaire for a reorder, Krivis said she listed her kidney-infection medication; no questions were asked. Nor, she said, was she questioned about her reply that she was sleepy at inappropriate times.

“I don’t want to find out that there were drugs in these pills and I didn’t know about it,” Krivis said. “If I choose to take drugs, let me make that choice.”

Warning by FDA

The FDA has cautioned that all three drugs it found in the analyzed sample can be dangerous in unsupervised use; they are controlled substances with potential for abuse.

At particular risk are people on medication for epilepsy or diabetes, the elderly, pregnant women, those with high blood pressure or heart arrhythmias and those already taking sedatives or tranquilizers, the FDA said.

Perez and Levy aren’t losing any sleep over that. “We saw what they said,” explained Perez, who has a heart problem. “But if it works and people are feeling good, what are you supposed to do? It’s like a miracle answer to our problems. . . .”

“Obviously, I don’t want to die trying to lost 20 pounds,” she said, adding, “(But) we’ve tried everything. We’ve done the shots, Weight Watchers, Pritikin, the fruit diet. Years ago it was the papaya grapefruit pills. . . .”