Dietary supplements. (Photo : Getty Images)
Government and privately funded studies are showing that some popular dietary supplements, including those marketed as organic or herbal, are potentially dangerous and life-threatening.
This because dietary supplements aren't regulated as strictly as pharmaceutical drugs by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). An in-depth study by respected consumer advocacy magazine Consumer Reports said this lack of oversight of dietary supplement has led to the hospitalization of 23,000 people every year due to supplement intake and its side effects.
Consumer Reports cited a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report from 2013 saying the FDA received over 6,300 reports of health problems from dietary supplements from 2008 to 2011. These included 92 deaths, "hundreds" of life-threatening conditions and more than a thousand "serious injuries or illnesses."
GAO, however, believes that underreporting may make the actual count "far greater" than what it is on the official records.
This laxity in regulation also makes it easy for makers of dietary supplements to get away with knowingly or unknowingly marketing products with harmful ingredients that trigger dangerous side effects causing users to fall ill.
Under FDA rules, dietary supplements are classified as food and as such don't undergo the very tough tests that prescription drugs do.
"Supplements have labels that don't necessarily tell you what they are good for, how they are going to work, whether they will work," said Consumer Reports health editor Ellen Kunes. "You can't trust that they're going to work or that they will be safe just by looking at the label."
Consumer Reports chief medical adviser Dr. Marvin Lipman suggested consumers look for the U.S. Pharmacopeia label on dietary supplements since this means they can expect to get what they see on the label when using the supplements.
Consumer Reports noted that dietary supplements (vitamins, minerals, herbs, botanicals and a growing list of other "natural" substances) "have migrated from the vitamin aisle into the mainstream medical establishment." Doctors are also prescribing dietary supplements more frequently.
Consumer Reports also revealed a Gallup survey of 200 physicians that showed 94 percent recommend vitamins or minerals to some of their patients while 45 percent have recommended herbal supplements. Astonishingly, seven percent of the respondents didn't only recommend supplements but sold them, as well.
"Not only are the advertised ingredients of some supplements potentially dangerous," said Pieter Cohen, M.D., an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School who has studied supplements extensively and written many papers on the issue, "but because of the way they're regulated, you often have no idea what you're actually ingesting."
