Vitamins are supposed to be good for you. But if recent research is any indication, the pricey pills and powders may offer more of a health risk than a nutritional boost.
The FDA aims to quickly alert the public to avoid buying products that may contain supplements with unlawful or potentially dangerous ingredients.
The agency rolls out part of its plan Monday by sending warning letters to 17 companies for "illegally selling" products that claim to treat Alzheimer's disease.
It's also creating the Botanical Safety Consortium, a partnership between the public and private sectors, to evaluate the safety of botanical ingredients and mixtures in supplements.
I have mixed feelings about this. Yes, we sometimes read that multivitamins supposedly don't help very much. Yes, there can be shills and quackery; companies can pedal stuff with false claims.
On the other hand, there can be real evidence that certain compounds can be very helpful to PwP. It's good to have the compounds available.
The FDA has a very important job. Sometimes they do it well. Other times the go too far in representing large corporations' interests over small companies selling healthier products.
I remember reading about the FDA's extreme treatment of Stevia companies some years ago. Stevia is a natural plant-based sweetener. The FDA had approved it for sale as a food supplement, but NOT to be marketed as a sweetener. The FDA conducted raids, and as I recall, they confiscated and destroyed both the product and also cookbooks which had recipes with stevia as a sweetener.
All of this while allowing the sale of aspartame, a product which has a sketchy health record and an even sketchier approval history.
Efficacy and potential for harm really depend on the supplement, the individual taking the supplement, and the dose. Contaminants are a separate issue.
For example, a report on vitamin E (alpha tocopherol) supplementation in women came out recently. Women taking vitamin E who have the COMT met/met genotype have a much lower risk of cancer (all types). In contrast, women who are val/val for COMT have an increased risk when on vitamin E.
"The vast majority of supplements and vitamins have little to no strong science behind them, the review found."
It is so preposterous, one doesn't even know where to begin.
This is nothing more than the same, old, Traditional big Pharma attack on their nemesis, the supplement industry.
Supplements are also enzymes, precursors, co-factors, hormones, metabolites, substrates, inhibitors, transporters, proteins, etc. so to say they have little or no science behind them is baffling - not to mention that most vitamins and nutrients must be ingested and PD causes a number of other illnesses and deficiencies.
IMHO, if we took two 50-year-old, identical twins both of whom have Parkinson's disease 5 years after diagnosis and limited one's therapy to pharmaceuticals and the other's therapy was devoid of pharmaceuticals, but robust in supplements, most of the time the supplemented person would have progressed less and be healthier.
The truthfulness Of this is in the pharmaceutical manufacturer's own written claims that their pharmaceuticals have zero effect on the underlining disease.
Is it a fact that there are, for example, a lot of PWP who have benefited from vitamin B1?
I just reviewed many of the 17 letters sent, and it's scary to those of us who have read the evidence supporting simple things like cur cumin, and green tea. The FDA has overstepped itself here. The article said it's a 40 billion dollar industry.
Gee, I wonder what lobby is trying to do away with otc supplements ?
iqbaliqbal, You put up more science-based links than anybody And have written Numerous descriptions of Complex, emerging research, Much of it about natural substances, so can we assume you put this up for our amusement, I.e., I know you don't believe this??
Yes , I don't. For example there have been proofs that PWP have deficiency of certain vitamins, vitamin D is one of them. Some Herbs have also been proven to help in anxiety and other symptoms. There is some effectiveness which helped to grow the supplements industry
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