If you had a health problem – we’ll say diabetes – you would visit the doctor. You would expect that the doctor would give you sound advice on how to combat your diabetes and improve your health, right?

If your doctor tells you that they have a magic shot that will make your diabetes just go away, you would believe them because they’re the doctor. They are the one with medical training, and they know what’s best for your health.

Then what if you found out that this doctor has a secret agenda of selling you their product? This magic shot will have absolutely no effect on your health. You’d be pretty irritated, right? Not only is this doctor abusing his or her position to sell you a product, but also they are slowing down your progress of dealing with your disease.

The same can be said for all health professionals. You expect that if you visit a registered dietitian, you can get sound advice about weight loss. That isn’t always the case. Weight loss injection clinics have found registered dietitians who will knowingly back up the clinic’s crappy product. These dietitians abuse their position as an authority on weight loss and use jargon about human metabolism to confuse people. They convince people to spend hundreds of dollars on a product that will be injected into their bodies but won’t do a thing to help them lose weight.

Vitamin B12 is probably the most commonly injected weight loss aid. Advertisements for B12 injections claim they give you a “boost of energy” that will help you feel better and more like exercising. While B12 does play a role in human metabolism, the large doses of B12 found in weight loss injections do not provide people with a giant energy boost.

B12 is involved in the formation of nerve cells, as well as blood cells. Deficiency of B12 leads to pernicious anemia, a disease that causes extreme fatigue, which can be corrected through B12 injections. Because B12 is found in all animal foods, developing a B12 deficiency is very difficult unless you are a strict vegan or you have a genetic defect, which causes you to be unable to absorb it from your diet. Although B12 injections won’t have the effects people wanting to lose weight hope for, it probably won’t hurt you either. B12 is a water-soluble vitamin, so if you get too much of it, your body will just flush it out.

Weight loss injections containing Vitamin B6 are a lot scarier. Unlike Vitamin B12, your body can’t just flush it out without causing harm. Vitamin B6 toxicity leads to irreversible nerve damage. For vitamin B6 to reach toxic levels in the body, a person would have to get more than two grams of it a day for over two months. Vitamin B6 toxicity would be almost impossible to develop from a regular diet. If a person is taking a daily weight loss injection containing the vitamin, however, it’s very possible.

The ingredients of lipotropic injections vary from clinic to clinic. In general, they claim to be combinations of amino acids, minerals and vitamins. Each clinic claims that their lipotropic injections are a combination of (please insert nonsensical medical jargon here) with special fat-melting powers that will cause you to lost 40 pounds in three weeks.

The truth is there is no evidence to support that any of these weight loss injections actually help people lose weight. When people visit a weight loss injection clinic with an on-staff registered dietitian to back up their claims, the injections seem a lot more plausible, especially if the dietitian gives them a spiel about how the injections increase liver metabolism and use phrases like homocysteine metabolism. It’s easy for people to get confused when someone they think they can trust says things they don’t understand.

For the most part, registered dietitians are knowledgeable, trained professionals. They want to help people make improvements in their diets that are in the best interest of their health and life. Bad apples exist in every profession. Dietitians who work in weight loss injection clinics and knowingly spread false information are the bad apples in dietetics.

Obesity has become a serious problem for Americans. As Americans learn more about the health problems that come along with obesity, like heart disease and diabetes, they become more and more desperate to lose the weight. Weight loss isn’t just about vanity anymore. Losing 20 pounds can mean the difference between living another 10 years or dying young for many individuals. Americans have become desperate to lose weight.

Despite the few who are working for a strictly capitalist cause, registered dietitians are a great source of advice for improving your diet and health. In the future, dietitians will play a huge role in ending the obesity epidemic.

JoLee Seaborn is a senior majoring in nutrition.