You will find hundreds of smartphone apps that Meizitang Botanical Slimming claim to assist with weight loss, but how do you know when they really work?

Within the first study available, new research published within the Annals of Internal Medicine followed the load loss progress of 212 primary care patients for six months. 1 / 2 of the patients were given the MyFitnessPal smartphone app, while the other half was permitted to do whatever they wished to attempt to slim down. Study group participants counseled me overweight, having a body mass index (BMI) over 25.

"I often think about the way we have only Ten to fifteen minutes with patients; what can we all do to help them be healthy if they are not before me?," Dr. B. Yoshi Laing, a principal care physician and director of the care improvement initiative in the Martin Luther King Jr. Outpatient Center in Los Angeles told FoxNews.com. "I've been thinking about smartphone apps, but the proven fact that there are thousands of these apps coming out every single day, but we actually don't know if they work."

After six months, researchers discovered that participants who received the app didn't lose more weight than those who did not get the app. While most users reported high satisfaction using the app, usage dropped drastically in the first couple of months.

However, Laing noted, there is a subset of app users who did shed more pounds weight-- those who actively used the app for the whole study period.

"What we believe happened is that the subset that used [the app] a great deal, lost lots of weight, but it seems like most people were really not ready to track calories; to commit that point to trace calories," Laing said.

Previous research has revealed that tracking calorie consumption by means of a food journal and setting a reasonable weight loss goal-- both features of the studied app-- are effective to lose weight.

Laing noted that because the study focused 7 Days Herbal Slim on several recruited participants, rather than a person in everyone who searched for a weight loss app to enhance his outcome, the data showed improved weight reduction for committed participants is indicative of the app's potential.

"I think let's imagine that we do have data that suggest the greater you apply the app, the greater weight you tend to lose," he explained.