about science and supplements
Warning! Possibly boring content. Summary: Supplements are not bad, not at all. But they are not necessarily good. My stand is as long as you don’t let it interfere with your normal medical treatment and you have some spare cash in the bank, then take as many of supplement as you can.
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I guess the title says it all. Recently, my father has been telling me about a new company that sells supplements. And as my dad is a natural salesman, he always tell me about the product that he intends to sell with enthusiasm. I’ve learned a lot in this process actually, and the enthusiasm in me when trying to describe things definitely comes from him.
As I grow up though, I learn to discern things as well. With it comes our discussions, with topics ranging from stock market, to gold, to well, supplements. Those discussions can sometimes be pretty intense, but well, that’s just part of the fun, isn’t it?
Anticipating that I would have to talk about this for some months to come with my dad, I better lay down some of my fundamental arguments.
Supplements are not bad at all, and I doubt any company would actually produce bad, body-harming supplements. But supplements are not necessary good as well. Some are useful, while some are not more useful than just a sugar pill, placebo, that is. As the name suggests, it is supposed to supplement our daily diet. Maybe I will take one step further, that it is also supposed to supplement the methods of the modern medicine.
The problem comes when people try to take it to the next level, instead of a complementary thing, it becomes a cure-all pills. Instead of being the side kick (to modern medicine), it wants to take the throne and medicine suddenly becomes the evil conspiracy of the government to kill you life or the money-minded pharma companies to suck money from you. And so on and so forth.
Why can’t it be considered to be mainstream. When Panadol can be, why can’t anti-oxidant pills be? Well, I’m x levels below a qualified person to talk about this. But I’ll try anyway.
1. Pseudo-science
Pseudo means ’seems to be but not’. It means the supplement industry tries to portray it to be a well researched area, with vigorous testing and experiments (as in the medical field). But is it? As far as I know, it’s far far far from there. Almost none of the pills in the market are subjected to vigorous testing. And any research touted by the promoters is usually lacking in professionalism. Compare this to the pharma world, any drug to be marketed is usually subjected to many thorough testing. Terms like statistical significant analysis, control group, placebo, false positive/negative, regression analysis are common, but not so common/ almost unheard of in the supplement world.
To be sure, why should they? After all, it’s also almost unheard of that supplements kill, unlike some of the drugs that are marketed. However, since it does not go through the same process, it should not be held at such a high position as well. It is NOT science, or at least not yet.
But this is not portrayed so in the nutritionist world. For every vitamins or supplements, there is a profound theory behind it, including graphical illustration how the enzymes work and how the toxin of your body is being extracted out of your body. I would really like to see a complete fact-check done and see how many of these statements actually bear any elements of truth.
Any common method is trying to slip in some unproven statements to some oh-so-logical statements. Experienced speakers use that all the name, and its psychological effect is well documented. Consider the following statement
To live healthily
a) Sleep adequately
b) Eat healthily
c) Exercise moderately
d) Take supplements
Now, do you agree? Although many people would struggle to follow it, I think few would dispute with the first three statements. It’s common sense, isn’t it? My mom has been telling me that since I could understand any words. And thanks, Mom. I do try my very best to follow them.
But what about the fourth statements? Because the first three statements are so logical, we tend to take in the rest as truth as well.
2. Monetary motivation
Pharma companies are evil. They just want your money. They twist the results to fool the health regulator. All they talk about the whole day is just stockholder value, profits and new blockbuster drug every year.
I don’t necessary disagree to the above statement. With a little thought though, isn’t it the same for every big company? Isn’t it the same for you? Don’t you try to earn as much as you can?
For that matter, isn’t it the same for supplement companies? Don’t they also try their best to convince you to buy their products? What about the pyramid marketing schemes?
This point doesn’t need to be elaborated, everyone knows about it. Lesson: Everyone is greedy, not just the pharma company. We need Jesus to deliver us from our sins.
I’ve typed quite a lot now, let’s see how my dad responds, it’ll be fun. =) As my dad says, I’m still young and healthy, I don’t need these. But the moment I feel old and unhealthy, I’d be scrambling to gulp in as many supplements as I can.
That’s probably true.
i have another postulation: because people cannot follow 1), 2) and 3) (eat+sleep+exercise) completely, to the dot, they believe that 4)supplements will make up for the lack of it.
just like sin. all the difficult pride, judging, unforgiveness, self-righteousness can seemingly be masked by showing love to your neighbours.
interesting.
and thankfully, “man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.” so, don’t forget that today is Day 1 of the project?
Well, I’ve posted a long comment earlier, but somehow it’s not registered here. So, here I am, giving it a second shot.
I’ve read the book that Dad introduced — and after that, my views for supplements change.
A few important things to note:
1) We need to know what is ‘oxidative stress’ and its effects on us. Normal nutritional intake (through food) is insufficient to repair our body.
2) Our body is capable of self-healing — however, we are damaging it too fast, through our lifestyle, environment, stress, food intake, etc. — leading to a deficiency of natural anti-oxidants. Because of that, our cells are unable to repair themselves well — leading to all kinds of disease, including cancer, heart attack, diabetes, body fatigue, eye problems, etc. — almost all kinds of diseases are caused by ‘oxidative stress’.
3) Not all supplements are the same. Some have higher potency and more holistic. ‘Potency guaranteed’ is uncommon among supplements — and USANA has it. It came out as No. 1 among 500 supplements that have been independently compared.
Some references can be found here:
- http://www.metacafe.com/watch/1365265/comparative_guide_to_nutritional_supplements/
- http://www.nutritioninfoonline.com/Essentials5StarRating.pdf
Note: It’s possible that the author made up the research to make USANA products look good. There is a rebuttal posted by another company: http://content.melaleuca.com/wc/pdf/comparativeguide.pdf but of course, the author has put up his response too: http://www.comparativeguide.com/melaleuca.html
In short, be wise and read more. The literature is wide in this area. Knowing more will help us to make a more informed choice.
OK, that’s my reply so far. Go to do more research and help us to understand. Don’t just take dad’s word or my word. Do continue to be skeptical and wear your analytical hat.
Well, as I said, supplements can indeed be good for you, just that no one can be sure at point of time. Thus claimed the medical world, but not the nutitional world.
Notice the usage of the word “world”, because this is another example of our society, that it consists of many mini worlds.
It was the medical world who found out about “oxidative effect”, that the free radicals in our body are doing some damage to our body, like aging and so on. Anti-oxidant, which is actually just a general term for many many things, does neutralize them.
Of course the doctors then went to flirt with the idea whether additional, artificially made anti-oxidants will help accelerate the effect, clearing away all free radicals. The answer, as far I know, is that it shows no statistical significant effect – meaning its effect is no better than a sugar pill.
But then it seems that the nutritional world has jumped a step ahead is assuming that it works. Moreover, the term “potency guaranteed” is then created. This is a term only used in the supplement world, a quick Google search would reveal just that. It’s a term to fight out BETWEEN the supplement companies to see who is the top dog.
Even though it might sound logical, more concentrated means MORE GOOD! (or better, grammatically speaking) is a little unconfirmed as well. Just take vitamin C and you know that more potency means MORE YELLOW pee.
But my fundamental doubt is that anti-oxidant pills, in whatever potency, actually works. This is simply taken as a fact. This “potency guranteed” thing seems like something to confuse the public from the main argument.
Pharma is a $150 billion industry. Bad bad pharma, as the nutritionist call them. We’re however filtered from them by the Health Administration and doctors, who are trained to spot nonsense. Food supplement industry is A $30 BILLION industry as well. Know what? They are not tightly regulated. They are DIRECTLY marketed to the normal customers. They can almost claim whatever they want because they are not considered drugs and therefore not regulated.
And the word nutritionist? It’s not protected (yet), at least in the UK. Meaning unlike words like Engineer, Dietrician, Doctor, Dentist which require formal qualifications, anyone can call themselves nutritionist. You don’t need a degree of nutritional science, as some believe.
One last nice fact, as long as you believe that it works, it does! More than 30%, as estimated, of medical cures are due to the placebo effect. So if I stop being sceptical, I’d benifit from all these pills!