Fenphedra Review
Fenphedra touts itself as a “High Performance Weight Loss Formula”. Its website’s marketing approach is the exact same as Nuphedragen (read my Nuphedragen review). While I believe Nuphedragen came up with the marketing copy first, Fenphedra edges out Nuphedragen as a better supplement. I’ll explain why in a moment.
Who Makes Fenphedra?
Fenphedra Inc. apparently. These types of sites are popping up everywhere. The diet pill industry is rife with mud-slinging (think politics, but everyone’s hyped on caffeine pills). As it has become easier and easier to sling mud at your opponents, one strategy to avoid the mud (as much as possible) is to simply brand and distribute your pill under its own name. So if you created a pill named Fenphedra, you’d create a site named Fenphedra.com and most likely a company named Fenphedra Inc. or Fenphedra LLC. This a defensive maneuver that’s become almost a necessity (unless you’re a company like Muscletech and have tens of millions of dollars to pour into marketing and building a brand — ever heard of Hydroxycut? Exactly).
A Test of Fenphedra’s Customer Service
Simple Product Inquiry. So when a company has a single site to sell a single product, I don’t blame them. I do however make sure they haven’t cut any corners. In the case of Fenphedra, I emailed them and asked about how effective Fenphedra is. No, I wasn’t expecting an unbiased answer in return, I just wanted to make sure that a human’s on the other end. I received an email reply back the same day citing their guarantee if I wasn’t satisfied, and that most people do lose weight. The only thing important to me was that I received a response.
Semi-Rude Customer. However, it’s easy to be responsive when you have a potential sale. How responsive was the Fenphedra customer service team when I emailed them the following?
Here is the fake email I sent Fenphedra:
I ordered my product two weeks ago and still haven’t received it. This is bordering on ridiculous. It shouldn’t have taken this long!
Notice I didn’t threaten with the BBB or a cadre of lawyers. That wouldn’t have been a good test because a prompt response would have been expected. Fenphedra’s customer service rep responded:
I am so sorry that you haven’t received your order! If you would please provide me with your full name, I’ll be happy to check on the status for you. I could not find an order under your ****@******.com email address, so perhaps you used a different email. At any rate, we’ll get to the bottom of this and make sure you receive your product plus a free bottle for your troubles.
I didn’t respond. But guess what? Three days later I received the following from the same rep:
Hello Cal. I’ve forward the email I sent to you a few days ago and just wanted to make sure you received it. I hadn’t heard back from you yet.
I responded that I was mistaken and had ordered from a different company with a similar sounding name. But needless to say I have never seen customer service like this from a diet pill company. Fenphedra’s reps, whoever they are, should probably be paid more. My whole test was to see if I even got a response and to measure, to a degree, how helpful/polite they appeared to be. The Fenphedra reps (this one in particular) passed the test with flying colors.
But great (unbelievable in the diet pill industry) customer service doesn’t necessarily mean you have a great product. So we’ll dive into Fenphedra’s ingredients.
Fenphedra Ingredients
I’m happy to report that Fenphedra doesn’t use a proprietary blend. That’s also an unusual pheonomenon in the diet pill industry. Kudos to them for staying transparent.
Fenphedra contains:
- DiCaffeine Malate is a fancy caffeine. Fancy meaning that it has a Di in front of it and a Malate at the end (DiCaffeine Malate review here). There is no research supporting that it is any more effective than standard caffeine. Caffeine (caffeine review here) has been proven time and again to increase the metabolic rate so another version of caffeine being included in Fenphedra doesn’t surprise me at all. This ingredient passes the sniff test.
- Chocamine is simply a fancy (trademarked) cocoa extra ingredient that also contains some amino acids and essential minerals. I reviewed Chocamine extensively and don’t like that the amounts of these various components aren’t disclosed. While the health benefits of cocoa are largely undisputed, Chocamine doesn’t give us the information we need to truly evaluate it. Neutral.
- Phenylethylamine I’ve reviewed extensively. Research shows it is connected to feelings of well-being (there’s quite a bit of Phenylethylamine in chocolate). It is most likely included in Fenphedra to counteract the jitters that you would most likely feel from the DiCaffeine Malate and Synephrine.
- Synephrine (Synephrine reviewed in depth here) has research to back up that it is, indeed, an effective stimulant. After ephedra was banned by the FDA diet pill makers scrambled to find an equivalent. They thought they had found it with Synephrine and, while Synephrine is effective, there is no research that points to ephedra and Synephrine being equatable.
- Humulus Lupus is well-known in “folklore” medicine as having a calming effect. I found more information on it at Purdue University’s website, and an extensive amount written about it on encyclopedia.com (including references to actual studies — how rare). It is used to treat insomnia so it’s no surprise that it’s included in Fenphedra. Like Phenylethylamine (PEA), it appears to be a counter-agent to the stimulative effects of the caffeine, chocamine, and Synephrine.
I mentioned at the beginning of this review that the Fenphedra and Nuphedragen (my Nuphedragen review) products appear to be exactly the same and that Nuphedragen probably existed first. While I always favor the original (for fairness if nothing else), I can’t overlook Fenphedra’s inclusion of Humulus Lupus. That ingredient gives Fenphedra the edge.
Fenphedra’s Detox Combination
Also, while Fenphedra is about $10 more expensive at the time of this writing, they’re including a product called FEN-72. Unfortunately, they don’t disclose the supplement facts of FEN-72. I imagine it includes the same ingredients that most detox pills include. They’re sometimes effective for the short term but should not be used over any long period of time and should be cycled if you use detox pills at all.
I don’t particularly subscribe to the whole detox idea, but some people swear by it. I’ll let you decide if that’s something you care about or not.
Fenphedra’s Marketing
Fenphedra uses the same hype-it-up-make-claims type of approach that most (all) diet companies make. No points against them, but I’d certainly commend their product if they perhaps cited research validating why they’ve included such ingredients (instead of having me do all the legwork in finding and reading the studies). I do give them kudos for not using a proprietary blend.
Their ingredients are stimulant-heavy, counteracted with some calming ingredients. This approach appears sound. From the anecdotal evidence I gathered on the internet, there were more cases of the jitters being reported by users of Nuphedragen than Fenphedra. This is purely anecdotal and completely unscientific in how I gathered the data, but take that for what it’s worth. It would appear to me that the humulus lupus has an effect toward its intended end.
All in all, and I don’t do this very often, I’d give Fenphedra a thumbs up. And no, I don’t think that’s just because their customer service blew me away. Their ingredient profile is sound.
Try Fenphedra
Fenphedra is one of our recommended diet pills. Try Fenphedra today and then share your story with us!