Don't fall for fat melters

There may be nothing more relaxing than an afternoon at the spa... but if you sign up for a couple of so-called fat-melting injections while you're there, you might return home with some unwanted mementos.

These injections, which are often sold as "lipodissolve" at spas around the nation, have been known to cause infections, dark spots, knots under the skin, permanent scars, open sores, allergic reactions and--at a few thousand dollars a treatment--lighter wallets.

The treatments can also lead to necrosis, better known as tissue death. And yes, it's pretty much what it sounds like--the tissue dies, leading to an ugly open sore and creating a risk for infection and gangrene.

You can find images of this online... but don't look for them if you have a weak stomach.

Where's the FDA on this? Until recently, they've been too busy cracking down on normal vitamins and minerals, like selenium, to worry about this one.

But now, they're finally doing something, even if it's still pretty close to doing nothing. They've engaged in their favorite pastime: writing letters. They're asking spas to stop making claims about lipodissolve. Not the treatments, just the claims--like the notion that they can erase everything from a little extra meat in the seat to male breasts, a.k.a. "man boobs."

Your safety is coming down to a linguistics game.

But it shouldn't take governmental grammar police to keep you away from these treatments, just a little common sense.

These injections aren't just expensive, they're painful--sometimes excruciatingly so. It often takes multiple treatments, sometimes spread out over weeks, to get results... and that's assuming you get any results at all.

After all, there are no guarantees with these procedures--and in many cases, they're not even performed by doctors or nurses, just spa employees who might know less about medicine than you do.

There's also one other problem with this procedure: No matter what the brochures say, no one's quite sure what happens to the "melted" fat inside the body. Does it go into the kidneys? The liver? Blood cells?

Look, I know shortcuts like this one are tempting... but they're just not worth the risk.

The real answer is a common-sense approach to life and your health. I hate to sound simplistic, but all the gimmicks in the world still can't top a balanced healthy diet and steady exercise.

And that's true whether you need to lose 100 pounds, 10 pounds--or just those man boobs.