Supplements

[Beckey]

Hi all, anyone see a Frontline documentary called "Supplements and Safety" on PBS? It had to do with a lack of oversight. I would be interested to know what you think. It was a little scary. Those of you outside the U.S., do nutritional supplements have to be analyzed before they can be put on the shelf?

[Beckey]

Here's a link if you're interested in tuning in:

pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film...

[faridaro in reply to Beckey]

Great information! I have a friend in Russia who has a lot of health issues and lives on a small pension, so I offered her to send some supplements which I take and she declined saying that in US there is no quality control...

[sasnak123]

That show was very informative.

[stevie3]

Interesting, Beckey. I'm in the uk. It's quite complex: there is no testing, but some regulation around labelling and marketing. This is a quite useful publication: nhs.uk/news/2011/05May/Docu...

'In the UK certain supplements are considered to be foods and will therefore be regulated under general food laws. Others will be regulated as a medicine by the Medicines and Healthcare Regulatory Agency (MHRA).. There is also EU legislation that dictates which vitamins and minerals can be included in supplements. Dietary supplements should

only be made with vitamins or minerals that appear on an approved ingredient list'.

So there's no analysis, it's about labelling and marketing.. A good illustration is melatonin. In the uk it's considered a medicine and isn't licensed so you can't get it over here. However, it's not illegal to import for personal use. I buy it over the Internet, along with Inosine which I also take and which I can't get here.

I take a lot of supplements. I do research them first and buy from reputable suppliers. I'm not sure I'd want to see it too much regulated in the uk because we do have a tendency to ban things rather than explore them.

[ruthgt in reply to stevie3]

What supplemets are you taking.I know that antioxidants and B6 are good tor PD . What alse?

[stevie3]

Inosine, NAC, Acetyl L-Carnitine & Alpha Lipoic Acid, high dose vitamin B1, melatonin, Theanine. Also emergen c for stiffness.

[sagewoman22 in reply to stevie3]

Please remember glutathione is a good supplement .

[Autumn56]

Becky , there is a downside to supplements being regulated too much. They would get too expensive, you might need a prescription which is what the drug companies would probably like to happen to happen. I like the freedom in the US better than the restrictions in Europe. Why not just buy from reputable good companies?

[Beckey]

Excellent point!

[park_bear]

A $5 billion advertising budget buys both a lot of false positive articles for prescription meds and a lot of defamation of supplements. Here is one fabricated assault on supplements: tinyurl.com/y9spnzk4

The kind of thing Pharma wishes to not be known: tinyurl.com/ydhysook

"Increasing your vitamin K [K1 & K2], you get a 44% reduction in all-cause mortality risk (HR 0.56) versus 10% with statins (RR .90). Likewise, with vitamin K, you get a 48% reduction in cardiovascular mortality risk (HR .52) versus 13% with statins (RR .87). All without the risking death of muscle fibers, or diabetes. Plus with K you get the reduction in hip fracture risk as well [that is better than what you get from Fosamax]"

[Hikoi in reply to park_bear]

PB i cant make sense of these references, i dont understand what they are saying, especially the first one. It seems to be opinion more than verified fact.

This is a 30 billion plus industry. I cannot believe it is squeaky clean. I suspect that any criticism that is levelled at the pharmaceutical industry applies equally to this multinational business.

[park_bear in reply to Hikoi]

Those references were written by me and every single assertion is referenced to medical journals or other authoritative sources. These two pieces received over 250 comments and not a single one said anything like not being able to make sense of my writing. There were some objections made to the Schneiderman piece, which I answered, but that is different from not understanding.

I never said or implied the supplement industry was squeaky clean. However, any compliance failures that do come to light are immediately descended upon with full vigor by the FDA. The independent subscriber funded Consumerlab routinely tests whether supplements have what they say they have. For example, re CoQ-10 they tested 43 products and found: "In an addition, our tests revealed that one product contained less CoQ10 than claimed -- just 78% of the amount listed on the label.

consumerlab.com/reviews/CoQ...

Now let's compare that to Fosamax which barely squeaked by its phase 3 testing, which a large epidemiological study found:

"[S]ubtrochanteric and diaphyseal fractures occurred at a rate of 13 per 10,000 patient-years in untreated women and 31 per 10,000 patient-years in women receiving alendronate [Fosamax]"

IOW it *more than doubled* the rate of fractures among its unfortunate adherents. Why is this drug still on the market?

[Hikoi in reply to park_bear]

I have noticed time and time again Manipulation of information in the suplements industry literature such as this..

I followed up just one reference in the second link PB gave above , the article quotes

"In view of evidence that statin therapy increases risk of diabetes, the balance of benefit and risk of these drugs in primary prevention has become controversial…."

one would think this was the study finding. It is in fact the background statement explaining why the study was undertaken. The next sentence which is left out is

"We undertook an analysis of participants from the JUPITER trial to address the balance of vascular benefits and diabetes hazard of statin use."

And the actual study finding:

In the JUPITER primary prevention trial, the cardiovascular and mortality benefits of statin therapy exceed the diabetes hazard, including in participants at high risk of developing diabetes.

So this study supports statin use

[park_bear in reply to Hikoi]

What YOU left out of your above comment was that the context of my citing this passage was that there IS a diabetes risk in addition to the risk of life-threatening rhabdomyolysis. You also left out the following well documented conclusion:

"Increasing your vitamin K, you get a 44% reduction in all-cause mortality risk (HR 0.56) versus 10% with statins (RR .90). Likewise, with vitamin K, you get a 48% reduction in cardiovascular mortality risk (HR .52) versus 13% with statins (RR .87). All without the risking death of muscle fibers, or diabetes. Plus with K you get the reduction in hip fracture risk as well."

[Hikoi in reply to park_bear]

Well I am bamboozled with numbers so i rely on reading the purpose and conclusion of studies. The conclusion i read is

"Overall, our results suggest that the dietary intake of both active forms of vitamin K has a potential protective role in cardiovascular mortality, cancer mortality, and all-cause mortality in a cohort of Mediterranean individuals at high cardiovascular disease risk with a relatively high consumption of this vitamin."

It is one study and does not involve supplements but diet and points to potentially hopeful outcomes with some types of Vit K. I missed its reference to hip fractures.

While we need to be questioning of medications and supplements nothing is risk free. There is a risk from anything we injest, even water can kill you!

mirror.co.uk/news/technolog...

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articl...

In the end it is a risk/ benefit assessment. I guess much of the discussion on here has this at the centre of differing opinions

[park_bear in reply to Hikoi]

Vitamin K is necessary for the body to be able to move calcium from the bloodstream to the bones. I wrote about that here tinyurl.com/yd9l4j3q and here: tinyurl.com/hya5dwd. Without it one suffers the double whammy of osteoporosis and atherosclerosis - hardening of the arteries. Since I have been taking it I no longer get calcium deposits on my teeth for the dental hygienist to scrape off. My ex who is now 70 reports that her bone density *increased* as of the most recent dex scan. My fingernails are back to normal instead of falling apart.

In addition, hardened arteries contribute to OH because they no longer provide a stretch for the body's baroreceptors that are part of the blood pressure regulation loop.

In contrast, Fosamax and other bisphosphonates set up an abnormal condition where normal bone resorption is inhibited, thereby causing an increase in bone density without doing anything for bone *strength*. So it is no wonder that vitamin K (K1&K2) give superior results. Co-factors vitamin D, boron, and silica are also needed.

[silvestrov in reply to park_bear]

Vitamin K2: New hope for Parkinson's patients?

sciencedaily.com/releases/2...

[Beckey in reply to park_bear]

How much do you take, and how often?

[park_bear]

I take everything twice a day. I use this version of vitamin K vitacost.com/vitacost-ultra...

which has both varieties of K2, plus K1. Also 5000 IU vitamin D, this version of boron: swansonvitamins.com/swanson...

and horsetail (the plant) for the silica: swansonvitamins.com/swanson...