Another Attemp to Discredit the Dietary Supplements
drt on May 26 2008 at 7:28 pm | Filed under: Health, Human Interest
I was a bit disturbed reading the content of this blog on “Weight Loss Aids Bought On Internet Might Harm Your Heart.” Here we go again. Another attempt to suppress discredit the Dietary Supplements, as you can find from the following paragraph in Kristie Leigh’s posting:
The accusation that some of the ingredients in weight loss supplements present a safety risk is based on searching engine queries (such as Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc.) looking for one single reported “association between the ingredients and cardiac problems.” Conveniently, no further research or testing is done on the validity of the reported issue. Most of these reports are singular occurrences and have not, and most likely will not, occur in any of the millions of customers that use supplements. Another point is that the article was published in conjunction with a pharmaceutical company that is in direct competition with the weight loss supplement industry.
As one of the millions that is taking dietary supplements daily, of course this kind of study would not affect my believe in the benefits of the dietary supplements. I bet all the people that have found the benefits of the dietary supplements that are parts of the Transitions Lifestyle system showing in these Success Stories page would not believe this kind of unfounded story either. Not only that, as Kristie wrore:
As you all know our supplements list possible contraindications directly on the label as well as urge you to consult your physician before use.
At one time when I heard a CD by Paul Zane Pilzer, saying that the majority of private R&D dollars of pharmaceutical industry went to the research on products that merely treat the symptoms of disease rather to cure or prevent disease, I was wonder if that was true. However, recently, two references made me changed my mind in addition to the posting above.
First was Dr. Rima Laibow’s video on Nutricide - Criminalizing Natural Health, Vitamins, and Herbs. It’s a 40 minutes video that full of intriguing facts that puzzled me. Second, I found Paul Zane Pilzer’s explanation as follows in his book on Paul ’s book on The Wellness Revolution
From an economic/business perspective, at least, it is easy to understand, why this is so,….I’ll put the answer if the form of a question: If you were the CEO of a major pharmaceutical firm, would you spend your R&S dollars to make a pill that a consumer would only take once (e.g., a vaccine) or for only for a short period of time (e.g., an antibiotic), or would you spend your R&D dollars on creating products that consumers would take every day, or two or three times a day, for the restt of their lives?
Paul further wrote in p 244 of his book:
Let’s go back and examine more closely the world’s five top-selling prescription drugs — Lipitor, Zocor, Nexium, Prevacid and Zoloft — which account for more than $25 billion in sales int the United States alone. These drugs have the following things in common for most people taking them:
- They do not prevent a disease.
- They treat only the symptoms of a disease.
- They are designed to be taken for the rest of your life.
- They are not narcotic or controlled substances and thus should not be prescription versus over-the-counter medicines.
- They would have less chance of being sold directly to consumers as real products without first coopting trusted physicians as sales agents.
- They are dangerous to your long-term health, because by treating only the symptoms of a deadly disease, they prevent you from modifying your behaviour to cure the disease.
Paul’s book as well as Dr. Raibow’s video contained a lot of information concerning the efforts of the big pharmaceutical industries in surpressing the natural dietary supplements from reaching people that really needs them simply for some economic reasons. While I don’t pretend to know the truth about these stories, I have simply placed the links here so it would be easier for me to come back to find these links. But please, never stop taking your medications without consulting your doctor, no matter what the Internet tells you.
Another interesting link was also provided by Kristie at the end of her posting where she said and I quoted:
Upon discussion of this weight loss ingredient issue with Dr. Mark Lange, he brought up a very good point…Maybe the cardiologists doing this study should exert some effort in their field of expertise, where this month’s Lancet reports 800,000 people died unnecessarily and half a million major strokes were caused by taking beta blockers, the cornerstone treatment for heart disease since the 1970s. In comparison to pharmaceutical drugs, dietary supplements are remarkably safe. Read on for more:
UK Telegraph
Popularity: 41% [?]
