What to Do When Your Doctor Doesn’t Recommend Dietary Supplements

I’m going to let you in on a little secret: Doctors don’t know everything.

 

Shocking right?

 

The word doctor itself originated as an agentive noun of the Latin verb docēre, meaning ‘to teach’.  That  ‘teaching’ part is something that a lot of modern doctors have forgotten.  In our haste to get patients in and out of the office in as little time as possible, many of us have bypassed the teaching part all together in order to go directly to that little white prescription pad.

• Argument 1:     Dietary supplements are not regulated by the FDA, therefore they are unsafe.  This is the same FDA that brought you Raxar, Tequin, Duract, Vioxx, Bextra, sibutramine, dexfenfluramine, Rezulin, Avandia — all drugs they deemed      ‘safe’ but had to pull off the market because of overwhelming adverse reactions, including death.  The same FDA that approved all of those artificial joints, repair mesh, and surgical hardware that you see mentioned in attorney commercials (and now subject to mass recall and class-action lawsuits) every time you turn on your TV.  The same FDA that routinely extorts nutritional supplement companies.² The same FDA that routinely hires all of its upper level and leadership positions directly from drug companies (or drug companies hire directly out of the ranks of the FDA in a well known, ‘I’ll scratch your back if you will scratch mine’ system).  I think I made my point.  The fact that the FDA declares something to be safe is more indicative of a multimillion dollar payout than bonafied, objective science.   But I digress, the FDA does not regulate dietary supplements  per se  but they do heavily regulate the manufacturing facilities that dietary supplements are made in  and strictly regulate what companies say about dietary supplements.  That is why it is illegal for a cherry farmer to post on his website that cherry juice is known to reduce the uric acid crystals associated with gout, but Pfizer can spend millions of dollars a year advertising how Viagra can give you enough wood to build an ark.

• Argument 2:     I’ve treated dozens of patients that have _______ [insert health horror story: liver failure, kidney damage, brain cancer, tennis elbow, died, etc.] from taking ‘natural’ supplements.  I will be the first to agree that not all supplements are safe. Furthermore, just because something is natural, does not mean that it is without risk, but I will also be the first to point out that 20,500 people died in a given year from FDA approved medicines and zero people died from ‘unapproved by the FDA’ supplements.³ If you look at Adverse Drug Reactions (ADRs) in general, the FDA reports that there are over 2 million ADRs yearly resulting in ~100,000 deaths, making it the 4th leading cause of death ahead of pulmonary disease, diabetes, AIDS, pneumonia, accidents, and automobile deaths.⁴ Yet according to the Governments own Government Accountability Office (GAO) , between 2008 and 2011, the FDA received 6,307 Adverse Event Reports (AERs) for dietary supplements, this averages just over 1500 per year yet, according to the GAO’s own report, over half of the US population takes dietary supplements. This means that nearly 200 million people are taking dietary supplements in a given year, yet only 1500 people report an adverse reaction. Of those 6307 AERs, only one death was reported and it was “vaguely and probably irrelevantly concurrent with an “unknown dietary supplement or homeopathic agent”—with no deaths reported before 2009. By way of contrast, the same report shows that FDA-approved drugs caused 80% of Poison Control fatalities. More than 100,000 calls to Poison Control Centers, 56,000 emergency room visits, 2,600 hospitalizations, and nearly 500 deaths each year are attributed to Acetaminophen (Tylenol) alone.”⁵  So, forgive me if I call ‘BS’ on your doctor personally treating dozens of people that had organ damage from the supplements they bought at the health food store.  It is statistically impossible.

• Argument 3 :    Supplements don’t do anything but give you expensive urine and the manufacturers just want you to spend more and more money with them. Cough, cough, pot calling the kettle black! Hmmm, and big pharma has your best interests at heart? What about those hospitals that bill you $20 for that single aspirin or ibuprofen tablet? No matter how you break it down, supplements do not compete on any level with the drug companies. The top 50 pharmaceutical companies are responsible for $610 billion of annual revenue.⁶ Compare that to the nutritional industry which had revenues that topped $32 billion for dietary supplements during the same year.⁷ The simple fact is that most supplements cost a mere fraction of their drug counterparts, and no one makes a lot from individual dietary supplements because they are natural substances and therefore cannot be patented. That is the exact reason why you don’t find dozens of double-blind, placebo-controlled trials on supplements – there is no money in it. A company isn’t going to hire  a team of researchers and spend tens of thousands (if not more) to do a trial proving the efficacy of green tea extract, when a) they legally can’t promote any results that prove the supplement did something, b) the margins or mark-up on supplements and raw materials is comparatively very low, and c) all of the other manufacturers that sell green tea extract could use the same data to sell their product (why help your competition?). There is no practical advantage for them to pay for studies. Furthermore, most supplement manufacturers would be required to identify or disclose the exact ratios of ingredients in their proprietary formulas in published data otherwise it would not be reproducible by third parties. Given the low margins and lack of patents, you can see why supplement manufacturers would be reluctant to disclose the only information that protects their trade secrets. Personally, I am more suspect of the doctor writing prescriptions for that expensive new statin drug that just so happens to sponsor their annual continuing education Caribbean cruise.

• Argument 4:   Supplement companies pay big money to Google to cover up negative stories about adverse reactions. Please!!! Let.me.repeat: 610 Billion vs. 32 Billion, and 50 big players (companies) vs. tens of thousands. The doctors that would make this asinine statement are the same ones that deny that vaccine manufacturers aren’t in it for the money. The same doctors that figure you must have been born with a metformin deficiency but taking chromium to regulate your insulin levels is ‘crazy’. There isn’t a supplement manufacturer out there that has enough disposable funds to pay off Google or any other search engine. Remember, the mainstream media covers up pharmaceutical negligence all of the time, after all, who is their #1 advertising group? The next time you watch television, grab a pen and a piece of paper and keep a running tally of every supplement commercial for every drug commercial. That alone ought to tell you who controls the media.

• Argument 5:  Supplements don’t ‘cure’ you. They are right on that. It is against the law for a supplement manufacturer to ever report or claim that their supplements ‘did’ anything. That is why every supplement advertisement or piece of literature that you will ever see contains the disclaimer :This statement has not been evaluated by the FDA. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.  It is also why supplements rely on anecdotal testimonials of patients to promote them.    But I would also hazard to say that the vast majority of drugs don’t cure anything either.  They simply address one set of symptoms, often resulting in another set of symptoms, which results in the need to take ever-increasing amounts of medications. This is the real reason why the average American takes 10 prescriptions per year.  You are given one medication for one symptom, which results in a drug-induced nutrient depletion, which causes your blood pressure to rise, so you are given a medication for that, which affects your kidneys, so you are given a new medication for that, which constipates you and gives you headaches, so you are given two more medications for that, and before you know it you are taking 10 drugs per day and no one has ever checked for any drug interactions, you end up with liver damage from your 10 medications, but your doctor is more concerned about that weight loss supplement that might help you lose 50 lbs and therefore not need any of those aforementioned medications.