I wrote about supplements earlier, and here is some more information from the September 2010 issue of Consumer Reports. It is more wide-ranging than last month’s article, which focused on weight loss supplements.
In 2009. Americans spent $26.7 billion on dietary supplements. The Food and Drug Administration nominally has the job of overseeing the supplement industry, but has little power to do so, and apparently, little will. In addition, China is a major supplier of raw supplement ingredients, and has a well-documented history of exporting contaminated products. In any case, supervision is haphazard, disjointed, and ineffective. The FDA has managed to ban only 1 ingredient, ephedrine alkaloids, and that took 10 years, despite its implication in thousands of adverse events, including a few deaths.
Consumers Reports, working with the Natural Medicines Comprehensive Database, identified the 12 most dangerous ingredients, based on their history of adverse events, their possible effectiveness (if any) for the claimed use, and their availability. The Dirty Dozen are:
- aconite
- bitter orange
- chaparral
- colloidal silver
- coltsfoot
- comfrey
- country mallow
- germanium
- greater celandine
- kava
- lobelia
- yohimbe
If you are determined to take supplements anyway, other than those listed above, here are 6 steps you can take to help ensure that the supplements you take are safe and beneficial:
- Consult your doctor and/or pharmacist. Sometimes it’s the interaction of the things you take that causes a problem, not just the drugs or supplements themselves.
- Be especially wary of supplements for weight loss, bodybuilding , and sexual enhancement – that’s where a lot of problems have surfaced.
- Look for the “USP Verified” mark, which denotes that the manufacturer voluntarily asked for review by US Pharmacopeia, a trusted, non-profit, standards-setting authority.
- Avoid megadoses. It is possible to overdose even on beneficial ingredients.
- Report any bad symptoms to your doctor and have him/her relay any serious problems on to the FDA.
- Research right. Don’t take claims for granted. Check out the National Institutes of Health Office of Dietary Supplements, the FDA and Consumer Reports Health .
This article originally appeared in the August edition of the Healthy Habituator, our monthly e-newsletter filled with “all the fit news to email”. Want to receive your own copy direct to your inbox? Sign up is in the left column!