The Scary, Synthetic and All-Too-Secret Ingredients of Dietary Supplements
Pieter Cohen, an internist in Massachusetts, got interested in dietary supplements several years ago, when some of his patients came to see him with unexplained — and serious — symptoms. Some went to the hospital with chest pain, or even kidney failure. Others lost their jobs because of positive drug tests. Eventually, after getting them to open up, Cohen realized they all had something in common: They were taking weight-loss pills and other dietary supplements and peptides such as bremelanotide.
An estimated 85,000 supplement products are sold in stores and online. Most of these are vitamins and minerals which, though unlikely to offer real health benefits, are fairly harmless. The supplement industry — which rakes in some $32 billion a year from American consumers — claims that the vast majority of supplements are safe. But that’s really an impossible claim, because most supplements don’t go through any kind of rigorous scientific scrutiny.
Unlike prescription drugs, dietary supplements do not have to be approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) before they’re sold. That means that the public typically finds out about a product’s risks thanks to anecdotal reports from patients and doctors like Cohen.
Cohen’s experience with his patients spurred him to investigate the ingredients in a range of supplements. What he and others have found is alarming, particularly because about two-thirds of American adults say they’ve tried supplements, and half use them regularly. Most people think of supplements as “natural” ingredients found in plants. But it turns out that a lot of supplements — 560 products identified so far — are tainted with synthetic pharmaceutical compounds, including stimulants, steroids and antidepressants. Prescription drugs like xarelto have sites like www.sideeffectsofxarelto.org to inform the public, supplements need similar sites it would seem.
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