A new attack on dietary supplements doesn't hold much water

Supplement Madness

Insanity! Promiscuity! Murder! Suicide!

Parents, warn your children before they fall prey to the evil scourge of dietary supplements!

Yes, that’s a little over the top. But like the lurid 1936 exploitation film Reefer Madness, it’s a little over the top to compare the use of dietary supplements with “substance abuse.”

No kidding – that’s the opinion of Jane E. Brody, a New York Times health columnist who recently wrote: “A form of substance abuse rampant in this country is rarely discussed publicly or privately. It involves abusing legally sold dietary supplements – vitamins, minerals, herbals and homeopathic remedies – all of which can be sold over the counter without prior approval for safety and effectiveness.”

Oh, the disgrace! Yes, we have to hide our shameful secret behind closed doors! We take “legally sold” multivitamins. We take vitamin C. We take ginkgo biloba. And yes, we even take sublingual B12. There’s no stopping us!

Actually, that’s true – there is no stopping us. And that, apparently, is what has Jane so upset.

All systems go

Jane pretends that supplement “substance abuse” is some sort of taboo topic that’s out of bounds in polite company in order to fire up a false urgency in the tired old complaint that there isn’t enough government regulation of the supplement industry.

To make her point, Jane shares two cases in which dietary supplements played an adverse role. She admits that one of these cases “may represent an extreme” (actually, they both do), and then complains: “No one knows how many such adverse effects befall supplement users, because there has been no reliable reporting system.”

Reliable? I guess that’s open to debate. But there IS a reporting system. And it works just like the FDA system that receives and compiles adverse events from drugs. You can go to the FDA web site to report a problem online, or call a toll-free number, or you can tell your doctor and he’ll report your problem. In addition, supplement companies are now required to log all adverse events and report serious ones to the FDA. So you can just call the company listed on the supplement bottle. Easy!

On the FDA web site you’ll also find warnings concerning specific supplements and how they may interact poorly with certain drugs.

So what’s the problem? Jane and other dietary supplement critics like to make it sound as if there’s no regulatory oversight of supplements, but that’s obviously not true.

Let the reader beware

Jane has been writing for the Times for more than 20 years, and she can be relied on to offer occasional columns with titles like this: “Potential for Harm in Dietary Supplements.” That’s the title of her latest supplement slam (published last month) in which she portrays antioxidant supplements as ticking time bombs.

“Well-designed clinical trials” she tells us, have found increased death rates among people who take antioxidants as supplements. Coincidentally, this claim was backed up the very same week with the publication of a meta-analysis of 67 studies that showed a link between the use of three types of antioxidant supplements (vitamin A, beta-carotene, and vitamin E) and a slight risk of early death. Impressive, as long as you ignore the more than 400 antioxidant supplement studies in which no deaths were recorded. And these studies WERE ignored – every one of them conveniently excluded from the meta- analysis.

Jane also singles out vitamin C supplements: “And while low vitamin C doses can suppress harmful free radicals, very high doses promote their formation.”

And that’s true. In a test tube. In actual humans? No.

Here’s what HSI Panelist Allan Spreen, M.D., had to say about Jane’s vitamin C comment: “Her ‘high-dose’ C and increased free radicals’ bit is old, totally in vitro (test tube only), and has no relationship to human biochemistry whatsoever (which is why the actual dose a human can take to ’cause’ confirmed free radical formation is never given). Linus Pauling (double Nobel Prize winner – fairly small group, that) took 17 grams of vitamin C per day in his later decades. He somehow managed to live to the age of 93.”

I expect that Jane was probably delighted by the meta-analysis mentioned above. Although she must have been dismayed that the researchers found no evidence that vitamin C caused any harm at all, much less any deaths.

Jane admits that the FDA is too under budgeted and understaffed to reasonably take on any further regulatory responsibilities. So she ends her piece with this: “Caveat emptor.” Let the buyer beware. And that’s good advice, no matter what you’re buying. But Jane makes it seem like, tough luck – you’re on your own, kid. And of course, you’re not. As I mentioned above, there’s the FDA web site (fda.gov) with plenty of useful supplement information. And then there are organizations like The Health Sciences Institute – always here to help keep you abreast of what’s going on in the world of alternative health care.

The supplement buyer should always be on guard, but he’s never alone.

Sources:
“Potential for Harm in Dietary Supplements” Jane E. Brody, The New York Times, 4/8/08, nytimes.com
“Vitamin Supplements Don’t Help You Live Longer, Study” Catharine Paddock, Ph.D., Medical News Today, 4/16/08, medicalnewstoday.com