Home » Health & Wellness » Patient Education » Don't Be Fooled

Don't Be Fooled

© Janine Fowlds

Don't be fooled. Be informed. Dietary supplements are blinding consumers with their half-truths and multi-level marketing. Do the homework, ask lots of questions, and consult your physician before taking any over-the-counter supplements. Many of the new supplemental aids are pairing the words, "natural" and "safe". Just because something is natural doesn't constitute safety, by any means. E-coli is natural, and it's surely not safe. Neither are many of the herbs and ingredients found in these supplements if dosage and mixture ignorance is aloof.

Extreme cases of ignorance can lead to permanent physical damage or even death. A case out of Manhattan resulted in the death of a 37-year-old wife and mother of two. She wanted to lose some weight after her second child's birth, so she joined a gym, where she collapsed during a workout. She was rushed to the hospital where she died later that night. The cause of her death was a stroke, but what prompted the stroke was a lethal mixture of her blood pressure medication and a supplement called Ephedra, also known as Ma-huang. She didn't know.

To understand the full effects of the ingredients requires much more than just taking the word of the distributors and manufacturers. They're the ones that want to make money. There's a lot of chemistry involved. Any Chinese doctor practicing eastern medicine can explain how a "natural" poison can be mixed with an herb or essence of herbs and produce an effective medicine. The medicine void of the poison may lose its effectiveness. Poison is "naturally" occurring in many varieties, (venom of snakes, spiders, and plant toxins...), but the bottom line is that poison is still poison, even if it's "natural". Though, with proper knowledge and understanding, we can actually discover truly safe medicines and aids.

Our society has the right idea in striving for a healthier lifestyle, but we're going about it in the wrong way. In looking for the quick fix, we are allowing supplement manufacturers to produce and distribute pills, powders, and liquids without sufficient testing and supportive data. They don't even have to conform to any FDA regulations. Even the warnings against some supplements are going unrecognized and consumers are still flocking to their local nutrition stores. If people are so bent on being unsatisfied with their own "natural" physiques, then they should at least learn everything they can about any herb or supplement that they are considering, before they put it into their bodies. After all, what's the use of vanity when you don't have a body to be vain about?

The copyright of the article Don't Be Fooled in Patient Education is owned by . Permission to republish Don't Be Fooled in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.