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There’s no doubt that medical advances have improved our lives. Before 1921, when Frederick Banting and Charles Best figured out how to remove insulin from a dog’s pancreas, diabetes was a fatal diagnosis. There was no way to help the body make more insulin and, while some people survived a short while by severely limiting carbohydrate (sugar) intake, they couldn’t live for long.
Other medical miracles included the discovery of antibiotics, chemotherapy for cancer, anesthesia for surgery, and so much more. But sometimes, do we depend too heavily on medical answers when there might not really be a question or problem?
“…about one-third of all adults in the U.S. and a quarter of children take some sort of multi-vitamin or multivitamin/mineral.”
I already addressed the Ozempic issue and I’m still not sure where I stand on whether it’s a good idea to use medications like this for weight loss. But last week, there was an article in the New York Times that reviewed five wellness trends (including Ozempic) and the one that caught my eye was the increasing availability and use of supplements. Are they the next best big thing?
Supplements aren’t new
People surely used natural supplements earlier, but the first commercial supplements became available in the U.S. in the 1940s. Since then, the supplement market has exploded. Just take a look at any drug store’s aisles and you’ll see at least one dedicated to vitamins, minerals, and more. My own local pharmacy has an area with three walls and a double-sided shelf unit as high as my shoulders with nothing but supplements.
According to the National Institutes of Health; Office of Dietary Supplements, about one-third of all adults in the U.S. and a quarter of children take some sort of multi-vitamin or multivitamin/mineral. Almost one-third of adults 65 or older take four or more. And yet multivitamins, with or without minerals, make up only 14% of all supplements sold in the country. Which means there are many more types out there.
What are these other supplements? They include products that are supposed to improve or enhance things like:
Energy
Athletic performance
Sexual performance
Weight control
Immune function
Eye health
Cognitive function
Sleep
But should we be taking all these supplements?
There is no simple answer to the question of whether healthy adults should be taking supplements. That said, many health professionals believe that healthy adults don’t need to be spending their money on supplements. Harvard Health Publishing addressed the issue in February. In one article, the author quoted Dr. JoAnn Manson, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and of epidemiology at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health as saying: "Supplements are never a substitute for a balanced, healthful diet [a]nd they can be a distraction from healthy lifestyle practices that confer much greater benefits."
“The biggest risks lie in whether they are safe for you.”
Manson goes on to say that people may feel more confident if they take supplements, believing that if a little of something is good, more of it must be better. That isn’t necessarily true though, because it is possible to take too high levels of supplements, resulting in other problems.
Supplement dangers
On the whole, the supplements you buy from the drugstore are probably safe but the risk lies in whether you should be taking them at all. Do you have any medical issues that could be worsened by the supplements? Are you taking any medications that would react badly with specific supplements? Are you taking too many supplements?
Here are a few examples:
Vitamin K, which is given to newborns to help their blood clot, can interfere with your blood’s ability to clot if you take an anticoagulant (a blood thinner).
People who take antidepressants should avoid taking St. John’s wort, which itself is supposed to help with depression. St. John’s wort can also diminish the efficacy of other drugs, such as birth control pills and transplant drugs.
Vitamin B6 (important for brain development and keeping the nervous and immune systems healthy) and B12 (needed for keeping blood and nerve cells healthy) are vital for good health. But the results of a study of nearly 76,000 post-menopausal women found that those who took high doses of both vitamins had a 50% higher risk of breaking a hip than women who took lower doses or none at all.
There is also a concern about how the supplements are manufactured and how much of the compound you want is actually in the product. Dietary supplements are considered food by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA), not drugs. So while they are controlled, they are not controlled as a bottle of ibuprofen or allergy medications would be. According to the FDA, “Products containing hidden drugs are also sometimes falsely marketed as dietary supplements, putting consumers at even greater risk.”
The agency lists some consumer updates for issues such as fraudulent flu products, body-building products, and nitrate “poppers,” to name a few.
And finally, there is the matter of where you get the products. When you buy the products online, or from other sources like local gyms or some person who has started up a business, you really have no idea what’s in them. They can make any claims and put anything they want on the labels.
But sometimes supplements are needed
These examples of potential harm do not mean that no one should take supplements. For example, it’s long been recommended that folic acid supplementation be started as soon as pregnancy is concerned. In fact, experts recommend that women take folic acid supplements at least a month before pregnancy if it’s planned or consistently for the period before possible pregnancy. This recommendation is because most women don’t know they’re pregnant until several weeks after conception, when the neural tube (spine) is formed. Too little folic acid increases the risk of babies born with neural tube defects, like spina bifida. Prenatal vitamins are also recommended.
Later in life, people who are diagnosed with osteoporosis (thinning of the bones) are often told to take calcium and vitamin D to help strengthen their bones as much as possible.
So there are reasons to take supplements, but it’s likely best to do so with your healthcare professional’s knowledge. And if there may be something that we can do to help ourselves without supplements, might that not be a better option?
What do you think? Leave your comments below. Let’s get a conversation going.
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