Treatment with dietary supplements

2024 Author: James Gerald | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 14:00

My aunt Lena, a middle-aged woman, not of the strongest, but also not of the poorest health, has not parted with multi-colored jars, boxes and sachets for ten years now, which look like medicines, but in fact are dietary supplements - biologically active additives. For my aunt, it’s like a hobby: she will watch an advertisement, talk to a neighbor, go to a pharmacy and buy something new.

And she also agitates all relatives to also overlap with these things and take 3-5 times a day during or after meals. You complain to her about fatigue after a hard day - she immediately strongly recommends some dietary supplements with vitamins and minerals, tell about your upcoming speech at the conference - offers pills with iodine "for enlightening the brain", complain about the extra kilogram - advises to buy some capsules with brown extract algae, from which the appetite allegedly disappears. It is useless to enter into arguments with a fanatical aunt Lena, so I decided to collect information about dietary supplements myself in order to finally make a decision: are they useful or harmful to the body, and is it worth spending money on them at all?

What are dietary supplements and what are they eaten with?

Dietary supplements are not medicines, but nutritional supplements. They are "eaten with a bite" with the main food in order to add missing components to the body, in particular vitamins and minerals, and to maintain health at the proper level. Depending on the area in which the body begins to behave inadequately, certain dietary supplements are taken. Nails are peeling, teeth are crumbling - help yourself with calcium supplements, problems have piled up, crushed stress - take soothing herbal infusions for a while, spring vitamin deficiency happened - maintain health with a whole complex of vitamins. Supplements are also taken against the background of the treatment of various diseases, so that the assimilation of drugs and recovery are more organic.

In general, everything would be just wonderful, and the article on dietary supplements could be finished at this point, giving praise to the creators of dietary supplements in the end. If not for a few "buts".

Take dietary supplements, and you will be happy

Print and electronic media attack us with a huge number of unpretentious and often repeated advertisements about miraculous dietary supplements, which can be ordered immediately over the phone without leaving the couch. Here slender aunts show pictures in which they were fat women just a couple of months ago, and now the modeling business is crying for them and the husband has returned. Here are the guys talking about how they quit drinking and returned to their wives (probably to those who have lost weight). But grandmothers and grandfathers are dancing with joy after taking "Powder for Old Age", almost throwing the crutches with which they have been walking all their lives. In short, a general idyll. After that, a phone for orders appears on the screen, and something like: "Capsules of youth and beauty" there is nothing left, order quickly, otherwise the scarce goods will be disassembled. "And so on from year to year. On the Internet, a bearded man selling dietary supplements posted a whole list of his own sayings under the title “Why happiness is impossible without dietary supplements.” The most surprising thing is that millions of people believe such statements. …

Where is the government looking?

We are all sometimes ready to believe in a miracle, especially when we are sick or when we want to lose weight by eating only cakes. But why does no one "above" "filter the bazaar", remove outright lies from screens and pages? And the thing is that treatment with dietary supplements, unlike drugs, is not subject to strict state pharmaceutical control, the rules for their registration and certification are simplified, they can be sold anywhere without a prescription. And this provides many loopholes for charlatans, including the ability to promise customers anything without incurring any responsibility for it, while drug advertising is heavily regulated by law.

A third of the dietary supplements sold in our country do not bring any benefit, or rather, they are not dietary supplements at all, but "dummies" whipped up in a hurry in some unknown LLC or CJSC. There are those that are completely harmful. For example, about half of the "diet pills" sold on the Russian market contain psychotropic and potent substances. According to experts from the Narcotics Control Board, such pills should not be dispensed without special prescriptions. In addition, in some types of dietary supplements, substances prohibited for use were found, since they belong to the category of drugs. Those "addicted" to such "diet pills" get used to the "fat burner", and the fat men have a choice: either stop swallowing the pills and immediately get fat with renewed vigor, or increase the dose.

You can't lose weight with dietary supplements

Most dietary supplements for body shaping have a hygienic certificate from the Institute of Nutrition of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, but this does not mean that a reputable institute recommends their use. The certificate only testifies to the safety of the drug for health. Doctors of the Clinic for Nutritional Medicine of the Institute of Physics of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences believe that dietary supplements for body shaping can only be an auxiliary tool (along with a diet) and they should be used in consultation with a nutritionist after the necessary tests. If you only take pills and do not follow a diet, at best you will be able to lose 2-3 percent of your weight, and you can even add kilograms.

Are dietary supplements life-threatening?

The main danger of dietary supplements is in their relative youth (they appeared in the 60s of the 20th century), and, as a result, in the poorly understood effect of their effect on the human body. Who knows what consequences the dietary supplement taken now will cause in 10-20 years, if it was invented quite recently? An increased dosage of even the most useful components can negatively affect the body. There are cases when such microelements as selenium, chromium and cobalt in case of an overdose negatively affected the functioning of the kidneys, caused nausea, diarrhea, dry skin and other consequences. The pyrrolizidine alkaloids found in some herbs are toxic to many organs, especially the liver. Therefore, in some countries, coltsfoot, henna, medicinal bullock, butterbur, cross, and field sage have been withdrawn from use. The road to the pharmacies of the USA, Belgium, Great Britain, Malaysia is closed for Chinese herbs. The reason is the same - complications from the kidneys.

Therefore, if you decide to start "treatment" with dietary supplements, you should still consult your doctor. But not with the one who advertises and sells supplements himself, but with an independent and not interested in making a profit.

How to protect yourself from fakes?

1. Buy dietary supplements only at pharmacies. Although there are also forgeries there, but the "peddlers" the probability of deception is still many times higher.

2. Remember that a hygiene certificate is not yet an indicator of the effectiveness of a dietary supplement. He only says that this drug does not contain harmful substances.

3. Read on the label who designed and manufactured the product. Trust a medical institution, a pharmaceutical company, a research institute more than an unknown JSC, LLC or CJSC.

4. Pay attention to how many types of dietary supplements are available from this manufacturer. If a whole bunch is a bad signal. Serious clinical trials of one drug take at least 5-8 years, and if we consider that dietary supplements appeared in our country only in the 90s, it means that the manufacturer may have no more than 1-3 names of drugs that have a positive effect on organism.

5. Carefully study everything that is written on the package. According to the legislation of the European Union, it must indicate: the manufacturer, the list of ingredients that make up the dietary supplement, calorie content, weight, storage conditions. The label should contain data on nutrients (proteins, fats, carbohydrates), vitamins (in milligrams) in percentage and on the daily diet. The manufacturer is obliged to convey to the consumer clear information about the way of using the supplement and its dosage.

6. Among dietary supplements of equal composition, but different in form, give preference to more "watery" ones. Solutions work faster and better than, for example, tablets or powders.

I made my conclusions regarding the treatment with dietary supplements, but I will not voice and impose them. In the end, each of us must make a decision for himself, comparing all the facts known about biological supplements and listening to our body, which is always missing something. Just what?