Regulators and Physicians Raise Alarms About Dangerous Ingredients in Many Herbal Remedies

The Wall Street Journal, Tuesday, September, 8, 2009

Extreme cases of supplement contamination are emphasized—Dan Gerkey tried a supplement that advertised that it would build strength.  The supplement included steroids, which caused Dan to experience liver damage, itchy skin and considerable weight loss. Chuck Haugh from Lincoln, Nebraska, noticed his son got quite irritable after being on dietary supplements as part of his new workout regimen. His liver enzymes also increased, and decreased when the supplement was discontinued. Safety concerns from ephedra, pulled from the market in 2004 because of heart problems and stroke, are brought up in this article. Twenty-five percent of weight-loss and athletic supplements by a British lab were found to have at least trace amounts of steroids in the 52 samples analyzed. This class of products is much less scrutinized than drugs, which need FDA approval prior to going on the market. There have been new FDA manufacturing standards for supplements, and there is required reporting back to the FDA if supplement takers experience serious side effects.

Dr. Gardner’s comments: I find it interesting that this article in the Wall Street Journal takes up 8 ½ feet of column inches about the ‘scary’ things that can happen with the ‘less scrutinized’ intake of supplements.

Let’s compare the stats on supplements to the stats on prescribed medications:  The death rate for medications, taken as prescribed by the physicians, is greater than 100,000 people per year, making it the 4^th leading cause of death in the US.  What about press coverage?  The last several times I have seen the death rate of medication use written up in national news or in the Wall Street Journal, it occupied about 4 column inches.

It is important that we are aware of everything we take into our bodies, including supplements. It is possible to take in contaminants with supplements, just as it is possible to take in contaminants through medications or drugs or vaccines.

Many of the abuses cited in this article are associated with athletic building programs, or weight loss programs. The vast majority of supplement intake is with basic multivitamins, minerals, and essential fatty oils. I find it interesting how much emphasis is placed on contaminants in over-the-counter supplements that have caused liver damage, while very little is ever written on the liver damage from over-the-counter fever-reducing agents or pain or sinus medications. This article and others like it–focused on displaced fears and bias–may be setting the stage for greater government supervision and regulations, which may increase the cost and decrease availability of supplements that will genuinely help our population’s health.