Criticism Of Dietary Supplements

Dietary supplements are often criticized. Yes, the criticism often ends with the advice to avoid food supplements on a large scale. Because dietary supplements are harmful, even dangerous. You could do more harm than good – that’s what you often read. We looked at the critics’ articles and always found the same pattern: All dietary supplements on the market are lumped together and it is also assumed that people generally take their dietary supplements in a completely uncontrolled manner and in dangerous overdoses.

Dietary supplements are often caught in the crossfire of critics

Many people use dietary supplements and feel much more comfortable with them than before. Because many people nowadays suffer from a latent lack of vital substances – and such a deficiency can be remedied very well with high-quality food supplements in combination with a healthy diet.

However, there are many articles circulating online that criticize dietary supplements and advise against taking them unless a doctor prescribes them. Correspondingly critical documentaries are also currently being broadcast on TV or radio – with the result that people become very insecure, stop taking their dietary supplements for fear of side effects, and prefer to live with the deficiency symptoms that are almost common today.

However, if you read through those articles that warn about food supplements and advise against taking them, you will notice that the same pattern is always followed and the warnings neither refer to holistic food supplements nor to the responsible use of food supplements:

Everyone who takes supplements overdoses on them

Almost every anti-supplement article begins by pointing out the danger of overdose. Critics of dietary supplements apparently assume that every consumer generally ignores the recommended intake amounts, exceeds the maximum amounts, and will ultimately poison themselves with an overdose.

However, there is hardly anything that cannot be overdosed on. Even foods like salt or water can be harmful, even fatal, in overdoses. And of course overdoses of dietary supplements should also be avoided.

The fact that there could be people who simply take the dose that is right for them personally is not even considered and of course, nothing is done to advise people accordingly. The enlightenment is limited to the tip to always consult the doctor. However, this person in particular has little idea in the field of dietary supplements, unless they have additional training in orthomolecular medicine, which is unfortunately rarely the case in general – and even then they will usually only recommend individual synthetic substances.

Apart from that, one always assumes the dosages that are officially (!) considered correct. It is known that the officially recommended amounts of vital substances are in some cases set too low. Consequently, it is not difficult to achieve a dose that is far too high in the eyes of consumer protection associations.

Example 1: Vitamin C

If someone takes more than 225 mg of vitamin C in the form of a dietary supplement, this amount is officially considered an overdose, e.g. B. 2 grams of acerola cherry powder, because 1 g contains 134 mg of vitamin C.

With a natural diet of lots of fruit and vegetables, however, a person would already get 500 mg or more of vitamin C per day. Since only a small proportion of the population practices such a diet, while many people suffer from a latent vitamin C deficiency, a restriction to 225 mg should be seen as a bad joke – just like the specification of the daily requirement of 95 to 110 mg vitamin C.

Now it could of course be that the warning only refers to synthetic forms of vitamin C, i.e. pure ascorbic acid, but not to holistic vitamin C food supplements such as the acerola cherry powder mentioned. If this is the case, it is not mentioned. Instead, blanket warnings are preferred over everything and everyone.

Example 2: Vitamin B12

In the case of vitamin B12, intake via dietary supplements is officially limited to 3 to 9 µg. However, those suffering from a B12 deficiency will find it difficult to correct it with these minimal amounts. High doses of 1,000 µg and more, on the other hand, ensure an improvement in absorption via the so-called passive absorption mechanisms and in this way increase the probability of finally being well supplied with the vitamin.

If you obediently followed the official recommendations, you would never get out of your deficiency, and sooner or later you might suffer from the serious consequences of a vitamin B12 deficiency.

Dietary supplements may be contaminated

In articles that are critical of dietary supplements, “the greatest dangers of dietary supplements” include not only overdose but also contamination. A Chinese tea made from Schisandra fruits is mentioned as an example.

In 2014, the biathlete Evi Dingebacher-Stehle was convicted of doping because of this tea. The tea was contaminated with methylhexanamine, a stimulant that is on the doping list. How the substance got into the tea remains a mystery.

Athletes: Play it safe with the Cologne list

Sports preparations that promise an improvement in performance, an increase in muscle building, or rapid fat loss could actually contain questionable substances that are not declared but could be responsible for the promised effects. To be on the safe side, athletes should therefore stick to products from the Cologne list, which have been tested and are considered safe and which ensure that doping tests do not come as an unpleasant surprise.

However, for high-quality holistic nutritional supplements that do not carry any inappropriate claims of efficacy or healing on the label, the likelihood of illegal contamination is less than slim.

However, the problem of unwanted contamination is not only an issue in the field of dietary supplements. Corresponding scandals also occur again and again in the case of medicinal products.

Drugs can also be contaminated

For example, pharmaceutical manufacturers with sales worth billions produced drugs in the presence of bacteria and flies that should have been manufactured in sterile rooms, as was shown in 2014.

In 2008, 19 people died in the US from taking blood thinners (heparin) contaminated with chondroitin sulfate. Hundreds of other patients experienced shortness of breath, nausea, and a massive drop in blood pressure after being prescribed these drugs. And almost ten years later, in the spring of 2017, there was another heparin scandal: This time the drug suddenly stopped working, which of course can also be life-threatening for many patients. This time there was talk of stretching and falsification.

In the summer of 2018, it was antihypertensive drugs with the active ingredient valsartan, some of which were highly contaminated with a carcinogenic substance. The blood pressure medications of numerous well-known pharmaceutical manufacturers were affected because they had all obtained the necessary active ingredient from one and the same Chinese supplier. Of course, the recall was not official, but initially only went to doctors and pharmacists – while the tens of thousands of people affected (14,000 in Switzerland alone, in Germany – according to the medical journal – even 900,000) continued to swallow their contaminated blood pressure tablets every day. Drug regulators (e.g. Swissmedic in Switzerland) wanted to prevent patients from stopping their medication without consulting their doctor.

It is interesting here that inspectors from the FDA (American Agency for Drug and Food Safety) had already sharply criticized the Chinese supplier for insufficient quality assurance in 2016 and 2017 – and yet apparently nothing was done to better control the quality of the active pharmaceutical ingredients.

The risk of contamination can therefore exist with every product – regardless of whether it is food, medicine, or food supplements.

Dietary supplements are taken uncontrolled

Another common accusation from critics is that dietary supplements are not subject to government control. This may be a disadvantage in some respects, but it can certainly also be seen as an advantage. Because as soon as a product is under state control, it may e.g. B. are only sold in certain doses and for specific purposes.

This is already the case with vitamin D. This means that products containing more than 1000 IU of vitamin D3 can no longer be sold in many countries. So if you want z. B. correct a vitamin D deficiency in Germany, for which you need a higher-dose product (since 1000 IU would not be of much use in this case), you have to ask the doctor for a prescription or order the product abroad.

But the keyword “lack of control” is not only about the fact that the manufacture and distribution of food supplements are not subject to state controls, but also about the fact that people take food supplements completely uncontrolled.

When it comes to dietary supplements, quality and needs matter

It is told of people who indiscriminately take, for example, 17 different preparations, which is risky, of course, especially for athletes, because the more preparations you take – according to the radio broadcast by SWR2 on July 12th, 2017 – the higher the risk that there was one that could be contaminated with a doping substance (see 2.) as if this were the order of the day in the area of ​​food supplements.

However, since there are extreme differences in the type and quality of dietary supplements, 17 supplements can actually be problematic or very healthy. It always depends on what exactly is taken in what quality and quantity.

So it can be that someone swallows inferior food supplements, which in some cases also contain plenty of unnecessary additives (sweeteners, sugar, artificial colors, flavors, emulsifiers, acidifiers, and much more), which would actually not be recommended, such as. B. some protein isolates or multivitamin-effervescent tablets.

High doses of vitamin A, vitamin E, beta-carotene, zinc, or even calcium, without there being a need, would also not exactly be described as healthy. Caffeine-rich energy capsules for getting in shape or dehydration pills for losing weight also do not belong in the category of high-quality dietary supplements.

On the other hand, if you use chlorella and, depending on your needs(!), for example, maca, spinach powder, beetroot powder, probiotics, rice protein, vitamin D, iron, a vitamin B complex, acerola cherry powder, barley grass powder, rhodiola, omega-3 Fatty acids, magnesium, astaxanthin, and a silicon preparation can have an extremely positive effect on your well-being.

Dietary supplements are harmful and have side effects

Dietary supplements are – according to critics – possibly also harmful because they could have serious side effects. Magnesium, for example, can cause diarrhea and headaches. And Selen let the hair fall out. Please guess in which cases this is the case. Yes, if you overdose.

In the usual dose of approx. 200 mg, magnesium eliminates constipation, does not impair digestion in any way, and is considered by experts to be an urgently needed mineral to prevent headaches including migraines.

It is similar to selenium. The trace mineral reduced hair loss at a dose of 200 mcg in a 2004 study in ovarian cancer patients receiving chemotherapy.

Selenium caused hair loss in only one study (from 2010). It reports on an accident in which some people took a liquid dietary supplement that was accidentally overdosed the people swallowed almost 42,000 mcg of selenium a day and of course suffered poisoning from this more than 200-fold overdose, which did not clear up after two weeks only expressed in nausea and vomiting, but also in hair loss.

Extreme exceptions are usually listed in connection with side effects from dietary supplements, such as the controversial red rice yeast. It’s offered as a natural cholesterol-lowering supplement, but it warns that taking it can cause muscle and kidney damage.

It is not mentioned anywhere that red rice yeast preparations can have these side effects because the active ingredient is identical to conventional statins. Also note that red rice yeast preparations still have a lower risk of side effects, since they are usually dosed lower than statins.

But if side effects occur as a result of doctor’s orders, then that’s perfectly fine and you have to accept them tacitly. After all, the motto of conventional medicine is: Only where there is an effect, there will also be a side effect!

Of course, we do not recommend red rice yeast products, as we believe that lipid metabolism disorders cannot be remedied with a quick-fix product, but only with a holistic approach, as we have described here: Lower cholesterol naturally

However, if a relevant preparation is already advised against, why aren’t alternatives mentioned that can be used to tackle the problem in a healthy way and become healthier? Instead, reference is made again and again to the doctor as if he were guarding the secret of eternal health. If that were the case, no one would ever try supplements in search of well-being.

Less than 3 calls per hour to the poison control center

In July 2017, researchers in the Journal of Medical Toxicology wrote that poison control centers in the United States received a call about dietary supplements every 24 minutes. The scientists at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Ohio believe that the government is not exercising enough control here.

70 percent of callers were concerned because a child had accidentally found and swallowed nutritional supplements and they were unsure how these would affect children. Actually, serious complaints could only be observed in 4.5 percent of the calls. Here, too, in almost all cases it was children who found food supplements in the household and took them.

If you look at the reasons people call poison centers, nobody calls them for barley grass capsules, chlorella pills, or nettle powder.

Caffeine and herbal sexual enhancers destroy the reputation.

Instead, it is actually harmful food supplements, namely energy preparations or special “medicinal” plants, such as. B. Preparations made from yohimbe, a tree whose bark is processed into sexual enhancers in traditional African folk medicine. Almost 30 percent of the time it was yohimbe preparations that led to serious symptoms in children after accidental swallowing.

Yohimbe can also lead to cardiac arrhythmias, cramps, horror visions, anxiety, etc. in adults, so we wouldn’t exactly call yohimbe a dietary supplement, but rather a drug.

The situation is similar with energy products. These also contain a drug, namely caffeine. Especially in children, the sometimes very high caffeine content in these products can cause heart and breathing problems, cramps, and other problems, so researchers for energy products u. require child-resistant packaging.

A call to the poison control center about drugs every 21 seconds

Incidentally, the same research group had published a study just a few weeks earlier stating: Every 21 seconds someone in the US calls the poison control center about serious problems related to taking a drug.

So while poison centers get three calls a minute about drugs, it’s not even three calls an hour about a dietary supplement – “dietary supplement” being the wrong term here, as it’s more about drugs that are misclassified as dietary supplements and thus bring the entire product group into disrepute.

While in the case of dietary supplements it was, in particular, the accidental ingestion of caffeine-containing products or sexual enhancers by children because the parents were unable to store them safely in front of their children, in the area of ​​pharmaceuticals damage occurred directly in the respective patient group, for example, because the dose was wrong, drugs were mixed up or drugs were accidentally taken twice.

Even these mistakes would not be detrimental in most holistic nutritional supplements. Because whether you take 4 or 8 or 12 chlorella tablets, whether you take 1 scoop of rice protein or 2, whether you take 1 or 3 capsules of probiotics – you won’t experience any ill effects, at least none that scare you enough to call the poison control center would call.

Moreover, when it comes to drugs, it wasn’t just ailments that made people pick up the phone. A third of reported medication errors resulted in hospital admission, and the use of cardiac and pain medications in particular was responsible for 66 percent of drug-related deaths.

Drug side effects: 1.6 million hospital admissions and 30,000 deaths per year in Germany alone

In plus minus – the ARD business magazine – it was reported on August 2nd, 2017 that thousands of people are admitted to German clinics every day due to side effects of medication. That would be 1.6 million people a year. 30,000 of them die as a result of these side effects – every year in Germany alone! The hospital costs for treating these side effects are around 2.5 billion euros. In view of this situation, it is almost bizarre to claim that dietary supplements are harmful.

What can be done now to avoid overdoses, double doses, or other medication errors? Make a daily intake log (or ask the doctor to do this for you) and in the morning sort all the preparations that need to be taken that day into a medication dispenser. The same can also be done with dietary supplements so that the problem of an overdose that many feared so much could be solved here as well.

Dietary supplements increase the risk of cancer

When criticizing dietary supplements, it is often claimed that dietary supplements are so harmful that they could increase the risk of cancer. Here, too, it is always the isolated, synthetic substances that are taken in excessive doses, such as e.g. B. vitamin E, vitamin A, and selenium that are listed.

However, nowhere is it written that these vital substances lead to cancer in the individually required doses. Instead, one reads about the “dangers of uncontrolled intake”.

Food supplements are useless

Critics also often state that dietary supplements cannot compensate for the consequences of malnutrition, since fruit and vegetables not only contain vitamins but hundreds of other substances that interact with the vitamins. This creates a synergistic effect that cannot exist with isolated, synthetic substances. This is another reason why dietary supplements are harmful. That’s true to a certain extent!

However, it is assumed here that people only take isolated and synthetic vital substances. These authors and experts have not heard of holistic dietary supplements. This contains almost the entire vital substance repertoire of the raw material (e.g. barley grass powder, chlorella, nettle powder, spinach powder, etc.). In addition, of course, individual substances can also be utilized by the body – otherwise these (e.g. iron, B complex, vitamin D, vitamin C, etc.) would not develop their specific effect, which they do, however, demonstrably.

Food supplements are made from waste

Some authors try to discourage their readers from taking dietary supplements in a rather manipulative way. They just cause a good portion of disgust. That’s enough – and nobody wants to know anything about dietary supplements anymore.

For example, it is said that vitamin E is made from waste. Of course, everyone now sees a foul-smelling dump in their minds, where vitamin E manufacturers regularly pick up a few bags of household waste to make vitamin E capsules.

However, “waste” can also mean the waste from the food industry. So are e.g. B. Fruit peel Waste from juicing, from which pectin can be obtained for jam production. Avocado seeds are left over as waste from avocado oil production. Huge quantities of walnut shells are also generated every year as waste because walnuts are mostly sold in the form of cracked kernels. Researchers are always looking for possible uses for all this “waste”, which is ultimately not a bad thing.

For example, research is currently being carried out into whether avocado seeds could even be used to produce medicines since they have been discovered to contain anti-cancer and anti-viral substances.

Vitamin E now is found in vegetable oils, in particular, so you make it from the leftovers of vegetable oil production, which we think is a good thing, as that way those leftovers/waste can still be put to good use.

Supplements are unnecessary when eating healthily

Critics often write that dietary supplements are completely unnecessary if you eat healthily. At the Federal Institute for Risk Assessment, for example, one reads this exciting sentence:

“In Germany, undersupply of vitamins and minerals is very rare in healthy people who eat a varied diet.”
A study published in The Lancet in 2013 is interesting in this context. It says that only one in 20 people on earth can be considered healthy. Everyone else suffers from some kind of health problem, mostly of a chronic nature. More than a third even have five or more complaints at the same time. And the number of those suffering from more than 10 diseases rose by 52 percent.

Apart from that, between 86.9 and 99.4 percent of the population do not practice a varied diet, if the BfR means the diet recommended by the DGE, which we assume since the DGE is considered THE authority on nutrition issues in Germany.

So if only every 20th person is healthy and only 0.6 to 13.1 percent of the population eats reasonably healthy, then an undersupply of vitamins and minerals is anything but rare – to come back to the above sentence from the BfR.

Dietary supplements: What critics forget to mention

Most articles critical of dietary supplements rarely mention under what circumstances dietary supplements can be useful. As an interested person who would like to know how to recognize high-quality dietary supplements, how to find out what you need, and in which doses dietary supplements can support your health very well, articles with the message “Everything after dietary supplements looks is harmful and dangerous” neither taken seriously nor informed.

Disinformed people are left behind who are afraid of food supplements, avoid them immediately, and – in the worst case – may sooner or later experience the consequences of a chronic lack of vital substances. Because hardly anyone implements the diet recommended by the nutrition societies anyway, as we explained in the link mentioned at the beginning.

Conclusion: Criticism of dietary supplements is unfounded

All in all, it can be stated that the criticism of food supplements is not well-founded, since the different forms of food supplements are not addressed in any way.

Because dietary supplements can be good, but they can also – like any substance – be harmful under certain circumstances. They are good if you carefully select high-quality dietary supplements and take them in the dosage that suits your personal needs.

They are harmful if you overdose on them. While one is less likely to overdose on holistic nutritional supplements, this is more likely to be the case with isolated substances, which are usually available cheaply at any drugstore or supermarket.