Supplements are a $30B racket
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
I'm broadly in favor of the FDA and other regulatory agencies, if for no other reason than they have the power to require that you're really selling what you claim you are, and enormous power to punish you if you don't.
That this is not the case for supplements is largely the fault of Orrin Hatch.
no. But for makers of actual pharmaceuticals, etc., the FDA can appear at your plant and they have the legal authority to close the site and halt manufacture until they're done auditing you. That particular power is not granted to them for supplement makers. I think it ought to be.
It's sure supposed to be!
> Woudn't testing product samples to ensure that they are what they claim to ve (and nothing else) be enough?
Experience has shown otherwise. Though random product QA testing is absolutely the first and normal line of defense, you need the fist, too. Actual plant shutdowns are rare, very costly, and normally get people's attention.
The bigger issue is that most do nothing and are actively promoted as doing things they don't do.
The FDA's mandates are safety and efficacy, in that order. It's still bad, but I'm way more OK with people taking sham pills that contain exactly binder and nothing else, instead of taking sham pills that contain lead and mold.
The actual guide is more informative than the original link as well in my opinion: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2672264
But this guide isn't comprehensive at all, and doesn't go into the evidence for the multitude of vitamins, whereas other researchers have tried to synthesize more of that data. [1]
[1] https://informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/snake-oil-...
(I wouldn't say it is exhaustive by any means, but this is the correct framing of the debate)
It's taken me a lifetime to figure out the combination of vitamins, enzymes, amino acids and other compounds that I need to compensate for what I lack in a diet. If I followed any one websites advise, I would have serious health problems. I have also learned over time that doctors actually learn very little about this in school. They know even less about the gut. I believe that each person needs to review and study what they eat vs. what they need and use trial and error. You will find side effects to different combinations of supplements. Some supplements also affect medication you may be taking, so study that as well. Don't stop when you find some wordpress site. Look for multiple government studies that explain testing methods, numbers of participants, human vs. animal testing, etc. I found several studies that directly conflicted with each other on some compounds.
Further, scientific studies are very often flawed. I trust how I feel at least as much as I trust a study.
Similarly, we can safely conclude that vaccines cause autism, ghosts are real, and the moon landings didn't happen.
Medical science has brought both cures and devastating harms and lies. Just like other forms of knowledge, it must be taken with scepticism. Human knowledge has so much more to offer.
and the stuff that worked has became .. medicine.
The entire holistic method? Definitely not.
Bits and pieces of Chinese medicine have been appropriated by Western medicine in piecemeal ways that often miss the point. There are large universities to teach this stuff. To believe that Western medicine has studied and adopted all that works is colonial arrogance.
My favorite example is body builders. There is still a lot of quackery, but I wouldn't throw everything they say out the window. These dudes are competitive and the sport is decades old, they have a good idea of what works, and that includes supplements.
Hey, you know, if supplements make you feel better and there's no evidence that a particular one does any harm, then go for it!
But you have to acknowledge that "feeling better" in the absence of any evidence that a particular supplement has a detectible impact is more likely to be some complex placebo effect than anything else. Which is still valuable, but important to think about.
"Totes in your mind dude. Feeling better could not possibly be evidence of improved physical health."
This line of thinking makes me crazy and I don't understand why it is considered acceptable in any environment that remotely considers itself to be a space that values logic and science and the like.
Supplements are frequently studied. Some have scientific evidence of efficacy. Others don't, and it's reasonable to point out that claims of their efficacy that can't be successfully shown via studies may be the placebo effect at work.
1. I get dismissed a whole lot as my experiences being placebo effect or hallucination or whatever. My kids and I mockingly say "If just believing I will get well will cure us, I will take that. That must mean we have some of the most powerful minds on the planet."
2. When they do studies, they often use sugar pills as a placebo. I find this questionable. Sugar is an actual chemical. I use it at times for things like pain reduction. It doesn't work the same as a pain killer, but it does a good job of taking the edge off. Presuming that sugar is inert and has no impact on the body is a flawed mental model.
To crib a bit from The Simpsons: I am currently not being attacked by tigers, but that doesn't mean my anti-tiger rock works, and it would be potentially dangerous to believe it does.
Oh -- you don't tell me the entire Western system of medicine evolved isn't based on shared experience and knowledge!
The difference is the Western system has a systematic way of filtering noises from anecdotal experiences. It's called science: One of the most important pillars is reproducibility. You need to know what the chances that something will work, how statistically significant the result of the method you propose is. Any of the ideas such as "eating roots and leaves," "expose it to X-rays," "pray to the Gods," "spit on it," "take supplements," "open it up and cut it with a sterile knife," "drinking rhino horn powder," method, at the beginning, can equally seem like great ideas -- and we should test them all.
But so far, some of the "take supplements" routes, as pointed out by the article, don't work way too well. The Eastern system, in general, doesn't work too well either. If it did, Eastern people with cancer wouldn't have to go through chemo.
EDIT: That being said - almost all of the advice from the Japanese doctors is allopathic.
Also thousands of years of knowledge and experience has yielded a lot fruit. Some of it is wrong for sure. Much of it too subtle and long term to fit into western trials.
I suspect the error rate is comparable. Science is not the only path to knowledge and medical science is deeply flawed.
Then...
"One large, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled US trial in men found that some who took multivitamins had a slight reduction in total cancer risk (particularly those with previous nutritional deficiencies and cancer diagnoses). But the trial needs to be repeated with women and more baseline data of nutrition status."
This is some really confusing writing but it sure sounds like there's some evidence that the multivitamin is helpful.
It helped with my cholesterol I know.
Most supplements don't pass muster with the basic premise that they do what people claim they do.
Unlike food (or fast food) most supplements are not fulfilling any biologically useful function when consumed by otherwise healthy people - unless we consider placebo effects as biologically useful. They are unnecessary for the functioning of the human body, unregulated, untested and driven by often unscientific claims that don't have to be proven clinically.
When the majority or large portion of the sales are related to deceptive marketing of useless products, it's fair to say a market is a "racket" as a way to alarm the public, notwithstanding the many honest producers and effective products.
EDIT: I love this line -- "lack of awareness of how to use food is the problem."