What is Digg?50 Comments
- Democritus2, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12Why are you comparing a textile to a supplement/mood altering plant?
You mean marijuana?
The various drug industries have been fighting a war against plants for quite some time. If a beneficial plant or chemical inside a plant is found- that is bad. Unless they can fully patent it. Supplements, and indeed even Marijuana are bad for their business. We are talking the Corporate States of America after all.
If you want to truly get a good look at what the result of this is, take a look at the SWEETENER Stevia. Tastes good (if you get the right kind, the wrong kind sucks), improves dental health, reduces colds and has zero calories. It has been used for over 1500 years, and it accounts for 50% of the Japanese non-sugar sweetener market for the last 30 odd years. It is illegal to sell this product in America as a sweetener.
Now lets compare Aspartame or Saccharin .......
You could argue those chemicals are harmless, but to say there is no doubt those chemicals are harmless is just a lie. Unlike Stevia, there are many who doubt the safety of the products.
However, Monsanto basically owns the FDA and it is legal, and a beneficial plant is illegal (as sweetener).
America (or any other nation that does similar) is a disgusting whore. - scheper, on 10/12/2007, -9/+19Does anyone care? This sounds more like dietary supplement manufacturers trying to get the public behind them than an actual threat to freedom.
- thund3rstruck, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10Folks,
Don't listen to this jackass. There are very few people who do not want this legislation. The only reason it doesn't exist now is because the lobbyists for the multi-billion dollar supplement industry have buried it for years in Washington. Supplements manufacturers are not required to do any testing or get any type of FDA approval for safety. Basically, they can go in their backyard, pull some blades of grass up, package it as a new mega weight loss supplement and send it out to make millions.
Refer to the exceptional report done by Frontline a few years ago for a thorough review of this issue (The Alternative Fix):
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/altmed/
- MoofTheStoof, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8"H.R. 3377 would have amended the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act with respect to dietary supplements by requiring dietary supplement manufacturers to provide FDA with a list of their products and reports of all serious adverse events. These actions would have alerted FDA to problematic dietary supplements and given FDA access to information it needs in order to take action more swiftly."
All I can see is the first step in some much-needed regulation of dietary supplements and so-called "natural" medicines. These things contain chemicals just as any FDA-approved manufactured drug would, but because they're in naturally occurring within plants and herbs, they're not held to the same standards that manufactured drugs are held to. My wife was a Dietician and this was something she felt strongly about. You can kill yourself by misusing or not understanding naturally occurring chemicals just as quickly as manufactured ones. And suppliers of these supplements don't have to abide by the same labeling or warning regulations that pharmaceutical or even food companies do, either. There's no guarantee that what the label on your bottle of supplements accurately conveys the actual contents. - megaloid, on 10/12/2007, -6/+13I care. I like being able to buy vitamins without a prescription.
- bremstrong, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8It would be nice to have supplements that are tested for potency, etc. In fact, I believe there are premium herb makers that do certify the level of certain active ingredients.
However, I'm not sure I buy the agrement that the current system is broken. You can buy expensive brand that you trust, and be sure you are getting what the label says. If you buy some cheap drugstore brand of vitamin, who knows.
The problem is the assumption that just because prescription drugs are dangerous, that supplements are dangerous also, because they all contain "chemicals".
I don't think this is true at all. You see all kinds of stories about pharmaceuticals causing death (28,000 the FDA estimates for Vioxx), birth defects, emergency room visits (700,000 a year according to Federal study), etc.
Not so much on herbs and vitamins. Maybe 10 or 20 people a year died because they took a large amount of purified extract of the Chinese herb Ma Huang, which has since been banned in the US.
There is no comparison of the risks between the two.
I don't think the system needs any government mandated "fixes". - bremstrong, on 10/12/2007, -6/+13The natural supplement industry is under constant threat from the pharmaceutical firms and medical industry. They rightfully view vitamins, herbs, etc., as competition.
Journal of the American Medical Association recently published a study showing 700,000 people a year have a drug reaction that send them to the emergency room.
How many emergency room visits are caused by nutritional supplements? Maybe 10.
The medical industry often complains that non-drug treatment regimes are "unproven remedies".
They hope people will assume unproven means "ineffective" rather than the more accurate "untested".
If they had their way, they would remain untested.
They have no interest in treatments that bring them no revenue, and use their substantial lobbying dollars to make sure these non-drug treatment regimes are not tested.
When the pharmaceutical firms test their own drugs and get a result doesn't seem to be going their way, they halt the study and refrain from publishing the results.
This is not science. It may have the appearance of science, but it's not. - onwardknave, on 10/12/2007, -4/+10I care. I like being able to get herbal remedies. They're not all snake oil. You just need to read medical journals, double-blind studies, and nutritional guides to know which are legitimate -- and then check the active ingredients and concentrations in the products.
The pharmaceutical industry does some great work, but they're throwing money at congress, and congress is taking it like some kind of (if you'll pardon the irony) drug. America needs a Socialist Revolution. The true left is gone when the right can get away with labelling Hillary Clinton a crazy liberal.
I worked for Pfizer doing drug development for a short time. The fact that they can't do more research on a drug after it's released to market for fear of lawsuits is insane. They're boxed into a distribution model which doesn't allow greater efficacy to be achieved if a marketable and profitable result can be achieved first. People need to take their medical health more seriously and ask their doctors for other options (including herbal!), and the consequences, rather than letting doctors' prescription filling habits be taken over by the pharmaceutical industry. - doctorberen, on 10/12/2007, -3/+9I'm a physician and I can't tell you how relieved I am to see this. Politicians are finally doing something to protect people from themselves.
First and foremost, multiple studies have shown that very few dietary supplements actually do any good. (Don't take my word for this and find out for yourself at the US Prevetative services task force website: http://www.ahrq.gov/clinic/uspstfix.htm). Worse, a lot of the supplements have been shown to cause harm. For example, everyone thought that anti-oxidants are the greatest but studies have actually shown that beta-caroteine can cause "higher incidence of lung cancer and higher all-cause mortality" in some groups.
It may suprise you but most of my teachers in pharmacology taught me that all that mutivitamins do is give us expensive urine. Why? They said that this is so because if we are eating enough (and most Americans are), then most of the vitamins that we need are acquired from food. And if our body gets excess vitamins from supplements, we pee them out.
And diet pills? I even shudder to think about them. Some of them do make you lose weight but through means unhealthy for the body. Remember Fen-Phen? And even the new GNC ones are not good for people. But people buy them anyway.
To be fair, some supplements are useful. But you can count these with your fingers:
- Calcium supplement for women
- High dose Vitamin B2 for migraine prevention
- St. Johns Wort for mild depression
- Black Cohosh for some menopausal symptoms
That's it, I think.
I'm really all for legislation. I don't think there will be much use in educating people about these because companies like GNC or One-A-Day are so aggressive with their advertising that you would think their products are magic pills when they are just "snake oil". But people are so bombarded with advertising and with false guru's like Dr. Ornish that it's almost hopeless for the simple unadulterated truth to come out.
And what is this truth?
Keep your money in your wallets. You don't need most supplements. Just eat well and that's enough. - alexcurpas, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7If kava should be OK, then why not hemp?
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6@bremstrong
I have developed severe bruising, and a sensitivity to cuts from 1g a day Fish Oil Supplement. I did, however, understand that this was a possible side effect simply by looking fish oils up on wikipedia. Supplements are not as safe as most people make them out to be and anyone who thinks supplements are "better" or "safer" than the real thing should do a little research. But I would not accuse the supplement industry of anything like what comes out of the pharmaceutical companies. - doctorberen, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Voltagensis, first of all, I never said that black cohosh did not have any adverse reactions. I only mentioned that it worked.
Secondly, you said that "The verdict on herbs is simply that they haven't been well-researched. But that doesn't mean they're ineffective, dangerous, worthless, or any of these other claims." You are right, in some respect. But this doesn't mean that they are also effective. Case in point: Omega-3 Fatty Acids. Everyone thought they are great and they are currenlty FDA approved to treat high triglyceride levels. But new studies have shown that they do not affect mortality nor do they decrease incidence of heart attacks.
I just wish that you did not post to this digg at all because your IGNORANT comments are poison. Your ignorance showed its ugly head when you made a comment about Prozac and cholesterol drugs. I can show you hundreds of randomized controlled trials (although you probably don't know what RCTs are) that show that yes, they do in fact save lives.
I'm not saying that all prescription drugs are safe. All of them have side effects, even Tylenol. That's why doctors discuss risks and benefits of drugs when they start people on new drugs.
But that doesn't mean that prescription drugs are junk. Yes, Lipitor can cause liver damage. But it also prevents people from getting heart attacks and stroke. So we prescribe them to people and monitor their liver through a blood test. If the liver shows any sign of damage (which is very rare), we stop the medication. That's all there is to it.
I do agree with you that the FDAs priority is in the wrong place. I sometimes think their in cahoots with Pharmaceuticals. I also believe pharmaceuticals are greedy and all they care for is money. I also believe that medications are expensive because Pharmaceutical reps have to buy physicians $100 prime ribs. But even so, it doesn't prove that supplements are our savior and that Prozac and Lipitor are evil.
"A little knowledge is a dangerous thing." - Alexander Pope - bremstrong, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Ephedra is the extract of the Chinese herb Ma Huang I mentioned.
- zouden, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3"There is no comparison of the risks between the two."
What about ephedra? That dangerous drug was in many "supplements" until the FDA started cracking down on it. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5Does anyone wonder how much $$$ the sponsoring members of Congress received from the Big Pharma lobbyists to introduce this legislation?
- akatsuki, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I would have no problem with this if they would redirect the money to trials of the now-controlled substances. Also, there are a lot of shady producers out there who include inert forms of the vitamin/nutrient or lie about the ingredients and bypass the regular distribution routes.
I like being able to buy supplements. What I hate is the thought of people taking unsafe herbal remedies with varying side-effects and filler chemicals and expecting them to work like magic because they are "all-natural" - b0rg, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Dietary "supplements" are a cynical scam which thrive on the ignorance and neuroses of a scared customer base. About the only "good" thing the industry can say is that they haven't killed a lot of people lately. True, and this is only because their products are, with very very few exceptions, totally worthless and indistinguishable from air.
The exceptions have been notable, and not for the good they do. Instead, they cause interactions with useful medications such as surgical anesthetics, thyroid treatments, blood pressure and asthma medications just to name the first few to come to mind. The very best "supplements" are simply useless wastes of money. The worst are very dangerous and often only cause real problems long after the scam artist has cashed out and ran for the hills.
Granted, it's difficult not to laugh at otherwise sane people who actually believe that a pill is going to make their penis bigger, or that eating is going to make then thinner, or that someone with an average build is going to turn into a Schwarzenegger overnight, without killing their kidneys, liver, and severe brain damage.
Leave aside the financial and psychological damage done to the poor fools who blow half their paycheck at GNC, you also have the problem of parents "curing" their kids with substances that cause a host of actual health problems, and the general issue of making people think that they need some "fix" for something that's simply not a disease - like being shorter than average, losing hair in the 40's, or not having a physique like Lance Armstrong.
Personally, I wouldn't mind having a head of hair like I did when I was 17, but the actual treatments for alopecia involve even more risks (and a lot more expense) than the fake treatments offered by supplements - I'm not going to blow my health and my bankroll to treat a purely cosmetic issue which I share with approximately 40% of the male population. - SirFoxx, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4If you let the FDA in to regulate the supplement industry, you will end up having to go to the Dr. to get a script for vitamin C(and the like) and it will cost $70 for a bottle that used to cost you $4. This is all about Big Pharma getting paid and nothing about safety. I can make the determination on whatever product is out there on whether it is safe or not, not the gov't.
- onwardknave, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4@AstroPHX:
----------------------------
To address your points:
1 - Prescription pharmaceuticals can cause allergic reactions, too. If you have a bad reaction, don't take it. If you have a bad enough reaction, see a doctor. You'll probably get an epinephrine shot be told to find an alternative.
2 - People who have cancer, and expect to find their cure in unknown suppliments are not doing what I said they should be doing; i.e. seeing a doctor, and doing their own research. Checking Wikipedia (and I love Wikipedia for some things, don't get me wrong) for one's own health, especially when cancer is involved, is simply foolhardy.
I think we can all agree that suppliments can't be expected to perform miracles; but that they are not worthless (some are utter rubbish, of course... again, research and ask your doctor), they will not address every medical issue, and that pharmaceuticals have a rightful place in many medicine cabinets. We can't throw prudence out the window and blame suppliments when they don't address the problem as we expect. - Voltagensis, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2This is the reason that people should do research before purchasing something. Yes, they can pull up some blades of grass and sell it, but the informed public wouldn't buy such a thing. There are plenty of books out there with tons of credibility that even the most corrupt manufacturer wouldn't dare cross in the community.
So, a fool might buy grass in gelatin capsules. A well-informed consumer would look into it more closely. - wadetv, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Dietary supplements should be regulated to ensure that their claims are accurate and any dangers are warned on the package. It's just common sense.
- there, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4Threat to freedom? What a joke.
The dietary supplement industry is jammed pack full of snakeoil salesman. It's obviously they cannot regulate themselves and they continue to make all sorts of outrageous fraudulent claims with no accountability. Worse yet there are indications they may actually be killing people (like cigarette companies there is no economic incentive to check the safety of their products)
This is how it works.
1. Invent a "miracle" supplement. (unverified since there is no scientific testing)
2. Advertise it as a cure for weightloss with pictures of fat dude that became skinny. (make sure to put in microscopic writing some sort of disclaimer that basically says your product doesn't work)
3. Rake in cash until you get sued or people catch on.
4. Go bankrupt, rinse and repeat.
Beautiful demonstration of unaccountable "lassaiz-faire" style capitalism at work. Inefficiency and fraud at it's finest. Gives good ol fashioned honest capitalism a bad name.
It's about time government started looking into the effects of these various snake oils. This will only help out legitimate companies sales and eliminate all the charlatans peddling crap poisoning people. - mewainwr, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2A lot of these dietary supplements are pretty strong nowadays. Many of the weight loss products and products designed to give you energy before a workout deliver massive amounts of caffeine at seemingly unsafe levels. Each product seems to want to outdo each generation and be more "hardcore" than the next, so I agree that there needs to be some legislation to watch over them.
- alexshultz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"Dietary supplements are concentrated foods, just as table salt is concentrated sodium. Will physicians be required to report strokes induced by patients who ingest excessive amounts of salt?"
I believe that table salt is "sodium chloride", not "concentrated sodium".
Gone to chemistry or biology class much? It's pretty important to remember which is which. I don't think your eggs will be as tasty if you get the wrong one.
I find that the people around me who use dietary supplements seem to chase after the latest thing, like a fad. They (the people around me) usually don't really understand things like double-blind studies and peer-review journals work. They rely on anecdotal evidence and statements like "sharks don't get cancer" to make sense of the health claims for dietary supplements.
Maybe I need to hang around with a different group of people. Maybe our education system in the US needs to do a better job of teaching science and how to interpret science reporting. Maybe people don't learn how to make wise choices as consumers. Maybe people just don't have enough information about dietary supplements. Maybe people are too desperate to be healthy. - CrazyWolf, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Dietary supplements do not have some sort of "mystical energy" that makes you healthier. They generally act by either effecting the way proteins work, or making the body produce more of certain proteins (or they can be direct antioxidants or do nothing at all). This happens to be the same way most drugs and poisons work. Some times this is a positive change, and you get useful dietary supplements and drugs.
However, just because something is important to have in small quantities doesn't mean it is good to have a ton of it. The body has a balancing act going, and it might not want that particular protein to be very active at this moment.
Dietary supplements don't 'do' nearly as much in the body as most drugs. They are usually acting indirectly on biochemical pathways rather than directly. But they are also much more general in their effects, and if a person has a particularly weak pathway, a lot of dietary supplements can throw it out of whack.
The body is complicated enough that we can't figure out who is going to be in the most danger from drugs or supplements. We can only look at how often people get sick from taking them. But we have to actually look for the people that get sick, we can't just assume that a biologically active substance is harmless because "it's natural" or "we already eat it in food." - zouden, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4Well said thunderstruck. People need to realise that the supplement industry is not being "held down by the drug companies" - it is a HUGE industry with a lot of power and very little accountability.
- Wiltster, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Hidden in plain sight!
...no, I don't wonder, but I'm pretty sure the amount of cash was rather full-figured. - Voltagensis, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Moreover, what would be the purpose of that? Vitamin C is nothing but beneficial. Linus Pauling recommended several grams of Vitamin C and even more during a cold or flu episode. Although the medical evidence behind this is not convincing (megadosing), it's not particularly dangerous.
- doctorberen, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Stalinvlad. So this is how you operate. When you don't have anything intelligent to say, you revert to cussing. Very nice.
- glmory, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4The dietary supplement industry is making a fortune, there is no excuse for them not using controlled testing in the same manner of the big pharma people. Right now the law would let you put dog ***** in a pill, and put in on the shelf as a dietary supplement. There needs to at least be some control over this rogue industry.
- glmory, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Here is a long list of toxic agents in plants http://www.ansci.cornell.edu/plants/toxicagents/index.html . They are far from guaranteed to be safe. At the very least simple testing needs to be done to protect the public health
- JohnLennon99, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2When FDA-approved drugs kill 100,000+ per year and put 700,000 in the hospital, while vitamin pills kill ZERO Americans in a typical year and cause fewer adverse reactions than food, it seems clear that government Power is being used to benefit the medical and big-pharma cartels. (You mean . . . government power can be BOUGHT?)
One example: the FDA has recently threatened to raid CHERRY GROWERS for publishing truthful information about the benefits of cherries. Far better, apparently, that people should eat junk food. See the Life Extension Foundation for this and much other information that Big Media doesn't find newsworthy.
Anyone who believes the FDA is protecting our health, as opposed to protecting the monopoly privilege and power of the medical and pharma industries, just hasn't been paying attention.
What do "Regulated" supplements cost (in Europe, for instance)? You'll be stunned; check around to see the costs for vitamin C or any other OTC supplement in areas where the CODEX assault on health freedom has already been partially implemented.
I've been reading studies and articles about vitamins and other supplements for 40 years. There are thousands of studies showing the positive effects of supplements, while even the poorly-done, "designed to fail" studies that allegedly show dangers or ineffectiveness rarely show any such thing. Real-world experience with millions of users over many decades proves that vitamins and other supplements are the very definition of SAFE and EFFECTIVE.
You can't say that about doctor-prescribed, FDA-approved drugs. - AstroPHX, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2@onwardknave
"They're not all snake oil. You just need to read medical journals, double-blind studies, and nutritional guides to know which are legitimate -- and then check the active ingredients and concentrations in the products."
You're serious? Look, I know there are many people with above-average-intellect that will do just this before taking any new medication. However, where in Wikipedia does it tell you that milk will or will not react badly to what you're taking? Where in wiki does it tell you that you should/not take it given XYZ conditions?
Anecdote 1:
My wife got a cold. I gave her echenacia, as it helps me. Turns out, she's allergic to it and had a pretty bad reaction.
Anecdote 2:
I used to work in a small "executive office" complex. Across from my company was another that sold supplements to patients suffering from cancer. Now, I'm not saying that what they were selling was sugar pills, but I saw the people rolling in to buy these "supplements." These folks did not need supplements. They needed a doctor.
Maybe this schiester would have thought twice to get rich off of cancer patients if he had to jump through a few hoops to get his products OK'd. - Voltagensis, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3The fact of the matter is that drug companies will have no success in patenting such things. Why? Because I can grow most of these herbs in my garden. And I do. They have myriad benefits and have been used for thousands of years. They're great for maintaining health (not curing disease).
Herbs have ENORMOUS tolerance levels for most people. There's almost no way you'll OD on this stuff, and if you do, it's doubtful that you'll die from it. Some fat-soluble vitamins on the other hand can be dangerous. On the other hand, if take one too many Tylenols, it will send me to the hospital.
Frankly, I think people should inform themselves before putting anything in their bodies. Unfortunately, that's not the case. So change that! Educate don't legislate, *****! Tell people about the safety of herbs and vitamins and food and water and so forth! If you're so ***** confident in your own system, then show it. You'd be god damn surprised at the side effects and deaths caused by conventional pharmaceutical drugs. They don't seem to think of that as a pressing issue until it gets *really* bad and they can't ignore it due to public outrage! - luft, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"herbal supplements" are drugs. Period. They do interact with other drugs, and they do have adverse side effects. This is not just vitamins, but a whole range of products. Some of them are beneficial, some of them have risks involved with taking them and a lot of them do diddly squat. What the bill is trying to do is make a way for these products to be policed. Why the "herbal supplement" companies are so up in arms about this is because A GOOD NUMBER OF THEIR PRODUCTS DON'T DO ANYTHING. They are snake oil. Then the products that do do something are have wildly varying concentrations of the active ingredients. The way these supplements are policed now is that they are regulated after they start hurting, and in some cases even killing people. This is NOT the way this should be done! Now come on people, don't be a bunch of sheep that jump on the bandwagon just because it is the popular thing to do! Do some research here!
- rfidguy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Bremstrong says "How many emergency room visits are caused by nutritional supplements? Maybe 10. "
He then goes on to give us a lesson on science.
Since adverse effects from herbal remedies are not reported to the FDA we don't know. Hundreds of people have suffered ill effects from trading in Zoloft and other anti depressants for St. Johns Wart (Johns Hopkins Study reported in JMA June 2001) L-tryptophan (a naturally occuring amino acid) that was widely abused a few years ago and pulled from the shelves due to its direct cause of the syndrome Eosinophilia-myalgia, which resulted in several deaths. This came about because of no oversight of the Japanese manufacturer at the time because it does not fall under the watchfull eye of the FDA.
If you are inclined to use Herbal remedies you should first do so careflully, realizing that dosages and purity vary from manufacturer to manufacturer. Purchase it if possible through a compound chemist or pharmacist which can vouch for its strength. Share the information with your physician even if he/she does not agree with your approach and be mindful of changes in your well being. Don't forget that companies that sell herbal remedies are motivated by the same shade of green that motivates the pharmaceutical industry. They are not, as some may surmise, above the fray or motivated by some elevated sense of morality. - CrazyWolf, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I think this is a step in the right direction. While it's true that most herbal remedies aren't as biologically active as pharmaceuticals (drugs are designed to be biologically active in humans, after all), they can still be dangerous. And while having doctors report side effects isn't going to replace double blind studies, it will at least tell us which dietary supplements need to be studied further, and which ones are at least harmless, if not useful.
With drugs we can at least look at the information and say, "well, this drug killed 200 people, but saves 10,000 lives, we should probably let them keep selling it." But with dietary supplements we can't do any such thing right now. For all we know, the 50 people that die from a particular supplement are more than it ever would have saved. It takes studies to justify risks like that.
But as many people have mentioned, there is no financial incentive for companies to do studies like that, both because they cannot patent the supplement once they have found out it's more helpful than harmful, and because they can sell it without doing studies like that, and not worry about whether it is harmful. And the government obviously does not have the money to do independent testing of every dietary supplement available.
So this bill will allow the FDA to pick out the supplements that seem to be causing harm to the people that are taking them. Then they could perform studies to see if it really is harmful. They could also easily find out how helpful the supplement is at the same time (something I'm sure everyone would appreciate). So a good supplement would get proof that it is helpful and harmless, while a bad supplement could be taken off the market.
Some of the claims the article makes seem rather sensationalist. The idea that people taking supplements would be scared away from them simply by being asked to report any side effects to their doctor seems suspect. People are already asked to do so for pharmaceuticals, and that doesn't seem to scare too many people away from taking them.
And it also suggests that supplements would automatically get blamed for everything that happens to people taking them. I doubt anyone would fall for the FDA suddenly declaring every single dietary supplement a contributor to heart disease. They will certainly compare the incidence of side effects to the general incidence of those symptoms in the US population, and look at the supplements that seem to cause significantly more side effects than the rest. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -4/+4i'm just waiting for the magic pill to come out
- Waterrat, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3 I sure don't..I've been waiting for years for these snake-oil pushers to get put out of business.
While not a diet sup', I remember when Rescue Remedy was all the rave for pet owners...They calmed it could cure all sorts of things.
It was even sold at Pet smart...Until people realized the only thing this stuff rescued were the scam artists who made it. - FAT_PIGGY, on 10/12/2007, -4/+4***** THE FDA THERE IN IT FOR THE PHARM COMPANIES
- vikingcoder, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0@Voltagensis
That's where you're wrong. We can't be doing any that tedious thinking stuff. We need the Government to protect us from the chore of thinking for ourselves.
Why do the herbal supplement makers hate freedom?
(If you can't tell that this was sarcasm, call your representative today and tell him to vote for this bill.) - gottatufa, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0OK, I guess we will have to just go to the doctors for a $95.00 visit just to get a prescription for my Fred Flintstone Vitamins that will now cost $50.00 because of all the research that went into showing how safe and effective they are. No wait, maybe I will take the bus to Canada...oh, now I need a passport.. shoot!
- gottatufa, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0A lot of regulated drugs are derived from herbs in the first place. The pharm industry would just love to have control over the herbal market. You think the government and drug industry cares about you so much that they want to protect you from spending money on a so called useless product, (snake oil) or from harming yourself with "toxic" herbs? Well think again. It is all for control and money! You guys sound all brainwashed.
Our decisions over our own bodies are being taken away. Most people who use herbs are intelligent people and do research. I can see them raiding your gardens now and throwing you in prison for a weed you never noticed. (damn that chickweed) Don't let them take away another freedom. You will lose your "Sleepy Time" tea, your Cold-Eze and any herbal teas. And what will be next? Fats and sugar? Wake up America! - glmory, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2This is well known as Linus Pauling's pet theory that didn't have evidence for it. While you can get sick from too little vitamin C, if you don't have scurvy you almost certainly get far more than you need.
- Voltagensis, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2Black Cohosh has caused liver complications in women. Vitamins and minerals deplete one another when taken in excessive quantities. Everything has a down-side.
The verdict on herbs is simply that they haven't been well-researched. But that doesn't mean they're ineffective, dangerous, worthless, or any of these other claims. It simply means that no company finds it lucrative to study these herbs for possible health benefits. There is an "industry aspect" to this, doctor.
Here's the issue: Most people don't have a good diet. People need multivitamins these days. They simply don't eat enough nutrient dense foods, and when they do, they're covered in harmful pesticides.
What are your feelings on pharmaceutical drugs? They are well-researched, but the research seems to uncover some rather negative things. Some of them are EXTREMELY dubious. A good example of this is the almost ubiquitous antidepressant Prozac or the heaps of cholesterol/hypertensive medications that doctors hand out. They're dangerous, they're everywhere, they kill people, and they're COMPLETELY FINE! It just seems like the FDA's priorities are in the wrong place (morally). - mianos, on 10/12/2007, -4/+3They are drugs so they need to be regulated.
What's with so many of the same people digging all this user's stories? - DASK, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0The bit about having to report the use of any supplements from the hospital side is a bit weird; it can't result in any scientifically useful information without a controlled study.
Other than that; I agree fully that levels of ingredients should be tested and certified. - stalinvlad, on 10/12/2007, -5/+2A doctor telling me something?
Hey go ***** your self Doctor - onwardknave, on 10/12/2007, -4/+1please bury - firefox crashed and the restore session didn't remember I was replying to an above comment.
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