Beating the Dark Side of Diet Pills

July 31 -- When Karen Ruiz read about a popular herbal dietary supplement that claimed to be a natural way to lose weight and gain energy, the busy homemaker and mother of two eagerly snapped it up.

"By day five or six, it was like I had gone from first to fourth gear," Ruiz said on ABCNEWS' Good Morning America.

After a few days of taking the supplements and marveling at her own efficiency, Ruiz was literally running through the house, getting her cleaning and other tasks done faster than ever. But then, things took a strange turn.

Ruiz started hearing voices, and came to believe that she was being called away from her family to warn people that the end of the world was approaching.Her husband worried about leaving her alone with the children because she believed her son was the reincarnation of Jesus Christ.

Ruiz ended up in a psychiatric ward for 10 days, where a doctor told her that the combination of ephedra and guarana herbs in her dietary supplement produced an amphetamine effect that could lead to psychosis.

Now, Ruiz is speaking out against the herbal dietary supplement that she says caused the episodes. Senators will hear from Ruiz on the issue today in a Senate Governmental Affairs subcommittee hearing on consumer safety and weight loss supplements.

Ephedra, like all herbal dietary supplements, is not regulated by the Food and Drug Administration. The FDA has commissioned the National Academy of Sciences to come up with a framework to evaluate the safety of dietary supplements, now estimated to be a $17 to $20 billion industry.

Sen. Dick Durban, D-Ill., who is chairing today's hearing, says the regulation of herbal supplements is long overdue. "The Food and Drug Administration has little, if any, authority to police these products," Durban said. "We have to come up with a standard that's reasonable when it comes to dietary supplements."

A ‘Backwards’ Approach

Ephedrine, the active ingredient in ephedra, (which is also called Ma Huang) is classified as a stimulant. It is often combined with ingredients such as guarana (herbal caffeine) to create dietary supplements. Ephedrine can cause blood pressure and heart rate to rise, and is also linked to anxiety and insomnia.