Supplements...Health Saviour or Scam?

Question

Symptoms of excessive intake,few to be aware of. . . Vitamin A: increased skull pressure,dry skin,hair loss,blurred vision...Vitamin B3: itching,skin flushing and abdominal discomfort...Iron: abdominal pain,diarrhoea or constipation...Zinc: abdominal discomfort and impaired immune function. . . ect...ect...

Answer 1

To John C

I agree: follow the money.

The vitamin and supplement industry in the US is a $20 billion business. And the beauty of supplements is that, unlike pharmaceutical drugs, you don't have to prove that your product is safe or effective to legally sell it.

Ain't capitalism great: think up a supplement, do no research, fake some testimonials, make some unproven claims, get an infomercial or set up a multi marketing scheme and watch the dollars roll in. Ah, the life of Kevin Trudeau.

Answer 2

I read a book a year ago that was about all the "miracle vitamins/supplements" existing, and whether or not they were worth using. I liked the book because the author seemed incredibly unbiased, and tried to accurately present all the data currently available from various studies done with the vitamins and supplements (including their negative side effects).

He found that there weren't really any amazing miracles supplements you could take to always fix everything. Rather, his observation was that supplements could produce tremendous health effects on the people using them, if the people were deficient with the vitamin is begin with (as opposed to getting benefits from having twice what they normally need). For instance, one village in China was found to have extremely high levels of stomach cancer, and the soil was deficent in a metal, leading to the villagers receiving supplemtation for it and having the stomach cancer go away. Yet at the same time, the authoer found supplementing that metal for people who were not defficent was basically pointless.

The conclusion reached by many people in the natural health community is that the current diet we eat is lacking in a lot of stuff people nornally eat which is necessary for health. This is partly due to the fact everyon eats processed junk, partly due to the fact synthetic vitamin supplementations are given in forms the body cannot absorb, and partly due to the fact all the minerals have been leached out of the soils.
Here's a link that explains that http://www.gotwater.net/senate_doc_264.htm
I know some biodynamic farmers that follow it and have amazing farming results from it.

However, discounting that, I do feel vitamins and supplements are overused in the US, and there is often very poor quality control on it. A great example would be that nearly all vitamin C in the US (which is actually a good one to use excessively regardless) is made in China, where there is virtually no quality control, and a lot of toxic contaminents get into it.

Answer 3

If you are a Christian, then they are one in the same. You see, Jehovah's Witnesses believe Jesus was actually a separate entity (as their beliefs are based off Arianism) than God. Most of Christian orthodoxy would reject this and would label something like JW as a cult as it deviates from church (most protestant and Catholic) teachings. Now, why do we believe this? A few reasons. There are references in John where Jesus refers to himself as "I am" in John 8 - literally using the old testament name for God as himself. He accepts worship from the blind man in John 9 where angels would not accept worship in other passages. There's a lot to be said here but safely to say, Jesus did claim to be divine and did claim to have dominion over nature (ex. calming of the storms), demons (Jesus exorcising the demoniac), and even the power to forgive sins (see Luke 5 - which only God alone had the power to do). Secondly, there are discrepancies between the JW translation and what are the canonical gospels. The canon we can trace back to original sources (I think the Sinaiticus is the oldest that I know of). There have been hundred of translations and copies, to the point where you can follow the work of a translator about why they chose the words they used to translate the script. In JW copies, you won't find the names of the translators within their pages. This is from a prohibition of citing sources from the Watchtower. If I think a canonical translation to be inaccurate, I can find the translator and see where he could be wrong. This is the possibility of verification where as the JW Bible (The New World Translation) doesn't have equal verification. Also, there are some translations which make no grammatical sense in the original Greek. John 1 in the NWT, for example, is one of these passages. So, in Christian orthodoxy, the person of Jesus and God the father are both parts of the same divinity (i.e. heads of the trinity). I believe, and many other Christians believe, the canonical gospels to be a more accurate and more faithful representation of the truth than texts who state that Jesus is not God. It is the same savior. So, asking this question to most Christians would a false choice.

Answer 4

If there is a frank, clinically significant deficiency then they're OK. If they are being used pharmacologically then also they make sense, so for example B3 to lower cholesterol. However, in general, the closer something is to its living, non-genetically modified state the better. Nutrients have relationships to each other and purified nutrients are unbalanced, and there's a lot we don't know about food. For instance, all the information about fatty acids is new, and who knows what else there is? Most of the time they are just a way of giving you urine rich in vitamins.

Answer 5

The greatest threat and danger to the health of the people is conventional mainstream medicine and the toxic drug pharmaceutical companies. Pharmaceutical drugs kill over 200,000 (two hundred thousand) people each year in the U.S,A.Pharmaceutical companies and conventional medicine fund many bogus studies every year attempting to discredit alternative medicine , vitamins, and herbal supplements. Conventional mainstream medicine is the greatest fraud ever perpetrated against the American people. Millions of people in this country and around the world have cured their illinesses directly because of supplements and alternative medicine. Conventional medicine and the pharmaceutical companies do not, repeat, do not want you to be healthy, because if everyone is healthy, there is no big,greedy profit. Follow the money. Its all about money!

Answer 6

I am in my 30's and I started supplements about 3 mths ago. I take peppermint, schizandra, adrenal support and st johns sort. My mood about everything is soo much better plus my hair has grown more than I ever knew ot could. My skin is alot heathier mentally and physically I would never polute myself with meds again and I will stay with my supplements. Plus its been a long long time since I've been sick or had a cold.

Answer 7

Well I take a good multivitamin every day and that makes me feel better. My skin is clear and soft now, and I feel more awake.
I wouldn't take any other vitamin on top of this.
I can't see how normal one- a-days can really make you ill unless you take more than what it says to on the packet, or you take a multivitamin as wel as other individual pills.

Answer 8

Scientists at Columbia University Medical Center report that higher folate intake decreases Alzheimer's,

higher intake of folate, B6, and B12 lower homosteine levels, a known risk factor in cardiovascular disease and stroke