Fwd: Supplement Industry is Not Sick

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Supplement Industry is Not Sick

Mon, 17 Mar 2003 16:26:14 -0800

 

Sunday, March 16, 2003

 

Dear Newsletter rs,

 

Thanks for your interest in Cforyourself. I hope you find this occasional

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This is an article I wrote in response to the recent controversy over regulating

the supplement industry. Thought you might like it.

 

 

The Dietary Supplement Industry is Not Sick

 

In the March 11, 2003 issue of The Wall Street Journal there were two articles,

the Health Journal by Tara Parker-Pope and an Op-Ed piece Herbal Overdose by

Jerome Groopman that dealt with the new rules for the dietary supplement

industry. The FDA has said that the product in the bottles we buy must match the

list of ingredients on the label, without any contaminants. I believe this rule

is a reasonable expression of government regulation of industry in the public

interest. Both of the WSJ articles felt the FDA should have gone farther.

 

Tara Parker-Pope says that the industry “…still won’t provide answers to

such basic questions as; is a supplement safe? Does it work? Is it backed by

scientific study? Will it interfere with prescription medicines or other

treatments?†Now these sound like basic questions, but in reality are quite

complex and, due to our amazingly individual chemistry, are definitely not the

same for every person. And, is it really necessary that the government do this?

Tara answers that question for us by stating “ut with a little effort,

consumers can find resources for objective and credible answers to these

questions.†I’ll take that as a “noâ€.

Our elected representatives are all in a lather over the “crisis†in the

prescription drug business. Do we really want or need the costs and regulations

of the supplement business to follow this lead? Jerome Groopman thinks so. He

says that the government needs to “classify herbs and dietary supplements as

medicines.†That’s absurd. Leaving herbs out the discussion for a moment,

dietary supplements are nothing more than elements of food that have been

separated, or synthesized, and concentrated. This is not to say that they should

not be taken without some care and understanding, but it also means that overall

they pose a small fraction of the risks of drugs. Aspirin is immeasurably more

dangerous than vitamin C. While we hear of the occasional tragedy involving

supplements as we have recently with the death of Orioles pitcher Steve Bechler,

in April of 1998 the Journal of the American Medical Association reported that

adverse drug reactions may be the fourth-ranking cause of death in the United

States, right after heart disease, cancer, and stroke!

I for one do not want the government telling me that I need to see my doctor to

get a prescription for vitamins. Doctors generally have little interest in

nutrition anyway. Amazingly, they get only a few hours, if any, class work in

nutrition in medical school, and there is little extra time in a busy doctor’s

day for investigating an area that most see as tangential, at best, to their

primary work. This pervasive lack of knowledge about nutrition leads to a

dismissal of how vital nutrition is to general health and the ability to fight

disease. Supplementing your diet is tossed off with the old saw “eat a

balanced diet.†While eating a healthy diet is, of course, important, it is

almost impossible to get all the nutrients at the quantities required to support

optimum health from a modern diet. Food in the industrialized world is often

highly processed and almost always subject to considerable transportation with a

consequent reduction in nutritive value. Supplementation, especially in this

environment, only makes good sense. The public understands this as evidenced by

the multi-billion dollar supplement market. Most of us don’t want the medical

profession to act as gatekeepers for access to the nutrients we understand

contribute to our wellbeing.

If prescription vitamins seem far-fetched, how long do you think it would take

before the maximum dose an individual pill could contain was the RDA for that

vitamin? For vitamin C, that would mean that the largest tablet available would

be 90 mg. You would have to take eleven of these to come close to the 1000 mg of

today’s most popular supplement!

What impact would this increased regulatory burden have on the supplement

industry? That doesn’t appear to be a question worth the asking. I believe it

would destroy it because the many millions of dollars spent by the

pharmaceutical industry to satisfy the government regulations for drugs to be

“safe and effective†are recouped from the gross profits of new, patented

medicines. This cannot happen in an industry that is almost 100% “genericâ€.

But this doesn’t seem to bother Dr. Groopman. In his article, he tips his hand

and tells us why he doesn’t devote even a sentence of concern for the industry

or the freedom of the consumer. When discussing the late president Theodore

Roosevelt, Dr. Groopman states that “[h]is solution to his medical problems

was to pursue a robust life of good diet and ample exercise, in essence,

exerting his considerable willpower to try to overcome his maladies and rebuild

himself.†Well, doctor, there are those of us that believe “good diet and

ample exercise†can, in fact, produce positive health benefits on their own

and not just simply as an expression of willpower. For us, let’s please not

let the government make a mess of, or worse, destroy the supplement industry.

Rusty Hoge

Publisher

Cforyourself: Vitamin C for Optimum Health

www.cforyourself.com

rusty

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Your comments are always encouraged and appreciated.

Here's to your health from Cforyourself,

Rusty

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