Why to approach supplements with caution

sapf

The New York Times published an article a few days ago about a soldier who died after taking Jack3d. The article goes on to discuss how the supplement industry is largely unregulated and it is only after tragedies like these that anything gets done. An interesting but long read.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/17/business/a-soldiers-parents-take-aim-at-gnc-and-a-supplement-maker.html?pagewanted=6&_r=0&ref=health&pagewanted=all

Matt_Wild

OMGZ!!!!

240 million DMAA products have been sold in the US and 1 died from it.

Look at food, booze and *kitten*.

But yes, one death is easy to get up in the arms over.

Because its to do with fitness.

sapf

OMGZ!!!!

240 million DMAA products have been sold in the US and 1 died from it.

Look at food, booze and *kitten*.

But yes, one death is easy to get up in the arms over.

Because its to do with fitness.

If you read the article you'll note that they give several anecdotes of healthy and fit people dying from taking supplements that contain DMAA. To imply that people are okay with smoking and drinking but not okay with supplements is pretty ridiculous.

jayche

Pre-workout supps with heavy cardio training is never really a good idea

tomg33

Supplements absolutely should be approached with caution. Most of them do nothing and are a complete waste of your money. That alone should be enough to warrant caution

Matt_Wild

If you read the article you'll note that they give several anecdotes of healthy and fit people dying from taking supplements that contain DMAA. To imply that people are okay with smoking and drinking but not okay with supplements is pretty ridiculous.

Go on, tell me which fit and healthy people. Please do.

I've read articles like that a dozen times over. It gets old very very quick.

People are happy with drinking and booze. How else in the UK do 8000 people die a year from booze, 111,000 from *kitten* otherwise?

It is zoning in on a small sector and demonising it.

I'll remind you of some other facts. 1 in 3 of us will die from heart disease from the food we eat. 1 in 5 of us get diabities from the food we eat.

1 person in the world dies because they misused a supplement against the instruction on the packet and the whole world comes to end, that is what.

I'm personally fed up of the mis-educated labouring on about things they have no concept on and how it effects the human body.

soldier4242

OMGZ!!!!

240 million DMAA products have been sold in the US and 1 died from it.

Look at food, booze and *kitten*.

But yes, one death is easy to get up in the arms over.

Because its to do with fitness.

If you read the article you'll note that they give several anecdotes of healthy and fit people dying from taking supplements that contain DMAA. To imply that people are okay with smoking and drinking but not okay with supplements is pretty ridiculous.

Well to be fair I think he was simply using some hyperbole to demonstrate that smoking and drinking are responsible for far more death and they do not have any of the potential benefit supplements purport to having. I have not done enough homework to know if taking a supplement is a good idea or not. He did imply that only one person died but the article does not provide death statistics for supplements which surprised me you would think that would be one of the pillars their thesis statement would be resting on.

I think it is wise to approach anything that you intend to add to your training regimen with caution but as a rule I am generally not an alarmist when it comes to articles such as these. Sensationalism is what gets people to read. As a result things tend to get blown out of proportion. "Supplement Companies Want to Profit Off of Killing Your Friends and Family" is an article more people are likely to read and talk about then "Isolated Incident Harms Small Group or an Individual."

DojoMaster888

Agree with Matt. This post is idiotic, if your going to start to demonize things that you dont understand then it would benefit you more to go somewhere that the user base wasnt full of people who use preworkouts successfully and with good result and no negative effects. Might as well start a post about energy drinks being the next closest thing to the devil because some idiot with a heart condition chugged 3 of them in a 24 hr period and died....

Matt_Wild

Water is bad too..



I can 100% state categorically that more people have died through water than supplements.

Shall we ban water next?

soldier4242

If you read the article you'll note that they give several anecdotes of healthy and fit people dying from taking supplements that contain DMAA. To imply that people are okay with smoking and drinking but not okay with supplements is pretty ridiculous.

Go on, tell me which fit and healthy people. Please do.

I've read articles like that a dozen times over. It gets old very very quick.

People are happy with drinking and booze. How else in the UK do 8000 people die a year from booze, 111,000 from *kitten* otherwise?

It is zoning in on a small sector and demonising it.

I'll remind you of some other facts. 1 in 3 of us will die from heart disease from the food we eat. 1 in 5 of us get diabities from the food we eat.

1 person in the world dies because they misused a supplement against the instruction on the packet and the whole world comes to end, that is what.

I'm personally fed up of the mis-educated labouring on about things they have no concept on and how it effects the human body.

In general most people are driven by their emotions rather than cold hard science. We try to make our world seem more exciting than it is but in reality common mundane explanations for things while less exciting normally tend to be true.

Fear is a powerful motivator and when it comes to death everyone is going to do it and nobody knows what happens to us afterwards. In the wake of such a heavy emotion it is easy for people to set their critical thinking aside and hop on board with any snake oil salesmen offering to show them who the boogie man is.

soldier4242

Water is bad too..



I can 100% state categorically that more people have died through water than supplements.

Shall we ban water next?

You bet your *kitten* we should. It isn't mentioned in your post but water is also used heavily by the terrorists who hate our freedom!!!

sapf

I didn't realize that this would be such a contentious subject for some users of MFP. If you'd like to spend your money on DMAA go right ahead and do so.

I still think that the supplement industry needs to be more heavily regulated in the USA. DMAA has been outlawed in seven countries. "Health regulators in at least seven countries have effectively banned supplements containing DMAA. Denmark and Sweden, for example, have declared the ingredient “not appropriate for human consumption due to its associated health risks.”"

Matt_Wild

I didn't realize that this would be such a contentious subject for some users of MFP. If you'd like to spend your money on DMAA go right ahead and do so.

I still think that the supplement industry needs to be more heavily regulated in the USA. DMAA has been outlawed in seven countries. "Health regulators in at least seven countries have effectively banned supplements containing DMAA. Denmark and Sweden, for example, have declared the ingredient “not appropriate for human consumption due to its associated health risks.”"

Based on what?

Food kills millions. McDonalds, KFC and Burger Kings are killing the nation with their foods (indirectly, of course we all have choices of what to eat) yet you feel the need to regulate the industry that is ALREADY regulated because?

193 countries exist, 7 banned something - so what? In some of those countries high caffeine drinks are banned too. Ban them next as well?

We don't need a nanny state, people need to be more accountable for their actions.

sapf

I didn't realize that this would be such a contentious subject for some users of MFP. If you'd like to spend your money on DMAA go right ahead and do so.

I still think that the supplement industry needs to be more heavily regulated in the USA. DMAA has been outlawed in seven countries. "Health regulators in at least seven countries have effectively banned supplements containing DMAA. Denmark and Sweden, for example, have declared the ingredient “not appropriate for human consumption due to its associated health risks.”"

Based on what?

Food kills millions. McDonalds, KFC and Burger Kings are killing the nation with their foods (indirectly, of course we all have choices of what to eat) yet you feel the need to regulate the industry that is ALREADY regulated because?

193 countries exist, 7 banned something - so what? In some of those countries high caffeine drinks are banned too. Ban them next as well?

We don't need a nanny state, people need to be more accountable for their actions.

"Under a 1994 federal law, supplement makers must submit some kind of safety data to the F.D.A. if they plan to introduce new ingredients to the market. And manufacturing-practice rules require them to make sure their products contain only the ingredients listed on the labels, with no hidden substances. But, unlike drug makers, supplement makers are not required to prove that their products are safe and effective on humans. Nor do they have to get federal approval before selling their products. That means it is up to the F.D.A. to identify any risky supplements from among the estimated 85,000 on the market, and to prove that they are adulterated or present health hazards.

A result is that untested and potentially harmful ingredient combinations can easily end up on store shelves, says Amy Eichner, special adviser on drugs and supplements at the United States Anti-Doping Agency, the anti-doping association for American Olympic athletes.

“No consumer can ever know what’s inside a bottle,” Dr. Eichner says. “We advise our athletes that all supplement use is at their own risk.”"

It is largely under regulated. I think that supplements should go through a much more rigorous approval process akin to prescription drug approval.

RobynC79

Well this had certainly brought the supplement-defenders out in force....

I think proving a definitive link between this substance and sudden death is going to be almost impossible. Unfortunately there are a small number of people out there with undiagnosed conditions such as heart defects whose first symptom is sudden death. It happens, although it is very rare.

The problem with humans trying to rationalise rare, random events is that proximity makes it seem like a link exists when the overwhelming probability is that two events are unrelated - 'post hoc ergo propter hoc', in logical terms.

Personally I think supplements such as these have minimal utility for average people. That means that even a very slight risk of increasing illness associated with latent medical issues swings the risk/benefit into negative territory. However, this needs to be demonstrated carefully before we know this for sure.

Unfortunately I think what this case exemplifies is not the existence of a risky additive hidden in a freely-available supplement, but the desperate need of grieving people to assign causation to a random event.

Matt_Wild

]"Under a 1994 federal law, supplement makers must submit some kind of safety data to the F.D.A. if they plan to introduce new ingredients to the market. And manufacturing-practice rules require them to make sure their products contain only the ingredients listed on the labels, with no hidden substances. But, unlike drug makers, supplement makers are not required to prove that their products are safe and effective on humans. Nor do they have to get federal approval before selling their products. That means it is up to the F.D.A. to identify any risky supplements from among the estimated 85,000 on the market, and to prove that they are adulterated or present health hazards.

A result is that untested and potentially harmful ingredient combinations can easily end up on store shelves, says Amy Eichner, special adviser on drugs and supplements at the United States Anti-Doping Agency, the anti-doping association for American Olympic athletes.

“No consumer can ever know what’s inside a bottle,” Dr. Eichner says. “We advise our athletes that all supplement use is at their own risk.”"

It is largely under regulated. I think that supplements should go through a much more rigorous approval process akin to prescription drug approval.

I can find the same about food. So what?

Think about what you are saying. Do you know know what fertilizers, chemicals etc went on to your food. Do you know what hormones etc went into your meat?

Why are supplements that people are using that have very very low mortality rates have to regulated if at all? Equating and discussing WADA rules alongside suppements make it even worse as now you are equating them to doping.

Is that really your argument, a copy and paste? Can you not think for yourself?

DojoMaster888

Interesting how she thinks that the government needs to stick their fingers into this as well. I would rather see the industry left alone if it is found out that these companies were killing people with their products then I would guess that people would quit taking them and thus the industry wouldn't be around much longer. Then again tobacco companies are still around, but this doesnt give anyone the right to say what an individual can do with his or her own body.

now_or_never13

Just because someone died from consuming something doens't mean everyone shouldn't eat it.

People die everyday from eating peanuts.. yet they are part of a healthy diet. People die from water... water is good. People die from a lot of things. A lot of things cause medical issues.