The HCG Diet dangers that you may have never heard of are real and can really pose a significant risk to your health.

The HCG diet is for people who want to lose weight at a fast pace. It promises that you will lose up to a pound a day. The healthy rate for weight-loss is typically measured at two pounds a week by most health practitioners.

With the HCG diet, a pregnancy hormone is either injected into the body or taken orally by placing the supplement under your tongue.

To be on the HCG diet, one has to mix the injections or the oral drops with a diet containing a very minimal 500 calories per day.

The US government and mainstream medical practitioners say it is a dangerous diet that carries way too many dangers to our bodies. Doctors also don't think it is ideal for long-term weight loss since crash dieting lowers one's metabolism, leading your body to gain the weight faster.

Joy Dubost, PhD, RD, Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics spokesperson has this to say about the HCG diet dangers, "Science to support recommending this diet is lacking. Weight loss results from its extremely restrictive nature and low caloric intake."

An assistant professor of medicine at the Harvard Medical School called Pieter Cohen had this to say about the HCG diet dangers in an interview with health reporter, "It's reckless, irresponsible, and completely irrational. Can you lose weight on it? Of course, but that's mainly because you're hardly consuming any calories. And any benefit is not going to last."

According to the University of Southern California, limiting your calories to such an extreme level can cause heart failures, malnutrition, decreased bone density, shot immune system and decreased muscle strength.

While HCG is approved by the FDA to treat male and female patients with infertility problems, its history as a weight-loss alternative dates back to the the 1950s.

A British endocrinologist by the name A.T.W. Simeons noticed that when he gave very overweight patients small and regular doses of the HCG hormone, they were able to lose weight. It only worked however when the patients limited their calorie intake to the point of starvation at 500 calories a day.