Whenever I offer a cup of coffee to a friend of mine, he always replies, “I don’t do drugs.”
He’s right that coffee is a drug, but even he does drugs. Everybody does some drugs.
Maybe like him, you don’t take a mild “recreational drug” like coffee and tea (which will give you a little dose of caffeine) or one of the more intense recreational drugs that can have serious side effects (like giving you a prison term). But drugs are everywhere in our modern society.
If we don’t take drugs recreationally, we take them when our doctors recommend them. When our physicians prescribe them, we call them pharmaceuticals.
Over-the-counter medicines are also drugs. The big difference between prescriptions and OTC products is that your health insurance won’t cover the cost of the latter.
When we take supplements, we are also taking something that we have to pay out of pocket. And supplements are actually every bit as much a drug as coffee or a pill from the pharmacy.
People with diabetes write me all the time to ask about different supplements that they take or are considering in lieu of diabetes medicine like insulin, a sulfonylurea, or metformin. These people have some concern about prescriptions – with some justification. Any drug can be dangerous. Any drug has a both a therapeutic and a toxic dose. Sometimes these levels can be awfully close together, and the toxic dose can have side effects as serious as those of recreational drug use.
So these well-intentioned people turn to supplements – but it is often a turn in the wrong direction. Some supplements, particularly multivitamin and mineral pills, are probably good for us. But few are well tested. Still, more than half of all Americans regularly take supplements, which include vitamins, minerals, amino acids, enzymes, and herbs and other botanicals.
Excluding coffee or tea drinkers, that means more of us probably take supplements than we do recreational drugs. And in one sense supplements are more like recreational drugs than prescriptions or OTC medicine. That’s because at least in the United States the government doesn’t regulate them.
Supplements have a huge legal loophole. Its name is the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994. In a nutshell the law says that the government can’t approve supplements either for safety or for effectiveness.
The Food and Drug Administration has the authority to ban really dangerous supplements, but only after the fact. A case in point is ephedra, which the FDA took off the market three years ago. But that was too late for a lot of people.
Safety is one thing. Effectiveness is another. And here the government can’t ever help us when it comes to figuring out whether a supplement does anything for us or not.
The supplement industry, like the pharmaceutical companies, is big business. We spent $22 billion for supplements last year, according to a May 11 article in The Wall Street Journal, quoting the Nutrition Business Journal.
Of this amount we gave $4.4 billion to multilevel marketers, which now usually call themselves “network marketing associate programs.” That’s the new term of art, because the old term “multilevel marketing” leaves a bad taste in the mouths of many of us.
He’s right that coffee is a drug, but even he does drugs. Everybody does some drugs.
Maybe like him, you don’t take a mild “recreational drug” like coffee and tea (which will give you a little dose of caffeine) or one of the more intense recreational drugs that can have serious side effects (like giving you a prison term). But drugs are everywhere in our modern society.
If we don’t take drugs recreationally, we take them when our doctors recommend them. When our physicians prescribe them, we call them pharmaceuticals.
Over-the-counter medicines are also drugs. The big difference between prescriptions and OTC products is that your health insurance won’t cover the cost of the latter.
When we take supplements, we are also taking something that we have to pay out of pocket. And supplements are actually every bit as much a drug as coffee or a pill from the pharmacy.
People with diabetes write me all the time to ask about different supplements that they take or are considering in lieu of diabetes medicine like insulin, a sulfonylurea, or metformin. These people have some concern about prescriptions – with some justification. Any drug can be dangerous. Any drug has a both a therapeutic and a toxic dose. Sometimes these levels can be awfully close together, and the toxic dose can have side effects as serious as those of recreational drug use.
So these well-intentioned people turn to supplements – but it is often a turn in the wrong direction. Some supplements, particularly multivitamin and mineral pills, are probably good for us. But few are well tested. Still, more than half of all Americans regularly take supplements, which include vitamins, minerals, amino acids, enzymes, and herbs and other botanicals.
Excluding coffee or tea drinkers, that means more of us probably take supplements than we do recreational drugs. And in one sense supplements are more like recreational drugs than prescriptions or OTC medicine. That’s because at least in the United States the government doesn’t regulate them.
Supplements have a huge legal loophole. Its name is the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994. In a nutshell the law says that the government can’t approve supplements either for safety or for effectiveness.
The Food and Drug Administration has the authority to ban really dangerous supplements, but only after the fact. A case in point is ephedra, which the FDA took off the market three years ago. But that was too late for a lot of people.
Safety is one thing. Effectiveness is another. And here the government can’t ever help us when it comes to figuring out whether a supplement does anything for us or not.
The supplement industry, like the pharmaceutical companies, is big business. We spent $22 billion for supplements last year, according to a May 11 article in The Wall Street Journal, quoting the Nutrition Business Journal.
Of this amount we gave $4.4 billion to multilevel marketers, which now usually call themselves “network marketing associate programs.” That’s the new term of art, because the old term “multilevel marketing” leaves a bad taste in the mouths of many of us.
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jauvia does it work
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i just started januvia and i was wondering how other...
