Craig Pepin-Donat
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 Manufacturers neither need to register their products with the FDA, nor are they required to get FDA approval before producing or selling a dietary supplement unless it contains a new dietary ingredient not marketed or present in the food supply before October 15, 1994. For new dietary ingredients, manufacturers must notify the FDA with a letter at least 75 days before marketing the product providing information concluding the ingredient "will reasonably be expected to be safe."3
That does not inspire confidence in the process of protecting the best interests of the public. |
Leslie Taylor, ND
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 The FDA, in one of its more politically incorrect debacles, has ruled that
Traditional Preparation stevia is presumed safe as a dietary supplement but is considered unsafe as a food additive. This incongruity openly protects the profit margins of the "sweetener giants." In the words of Rob McCaleb, president of the Herb Research Foundation and member of the President's Commission on Dietary Supplements, "The FDA may have painted itself into a corner on this one. Its policy simply makes no sense."34
In the United States stevia is mostly employed as a sugar substitute. |
Craig Pepin-Donat
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| The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) regulates dietary supplement advertising.4 By law, only a drug can "diagnose, mitigate, cure, prevent or treat a disease." This means that supplement manufacturers are forbidden to make these specific claims. This has done little to protect the public and more to protect the sales and profits of the pharmaceutical industry. Instead, supplement manufacturers have learned how to sidestep the law with cleverly worded product names and descriptions. |
Jonny Bowden, Ph.D., C.N.S.
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 Zinc carnosine is fairly new in the dietary supplement category. It's showing great promise in the treatment of ulcers. And that's good news for the twenty million ulcer sufferers in the United States, most of them over the age of sixty and female. Zinc carnosine may not necessarily be for everyone, but if you suffer from stomach or intestinal ulcers, it may be for you.
Ulcers start as an irritation in the lining of the stomach wall, which if left untreated, can cause perforations and the all-too-familiar symptoms of heartburn, stomach pain, nausea, or even vomiting. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 Minneapolis, MN, an independently-owned fine-quality dietary supplement company since 1985, he has personally developed 75 unique nutraceutical-grade nutritional formulas. www.wellnessresources.com
FREE Subscription to Byron's Health Newsletter, click here. |
David Winston, RH(AHG), and Steven Maimes
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 In 2005, the USP contained 95 dietary supplement monographs, both botanical and nonbotanical.
Why Were so Many Botanicals Dropped from the USP? Botanical medicine began to be replaced by pharmaceutical drugs beginning around 1880. In part, this was a result of the rise of the modern pharmaceutical industry and the discovery of powerful synthetic coal tar dye compounds by German researchers. With the new century, herbs were seen as old-fashioned and relics of the past. The future of health care was now firmly linked to the laboratory and science. |
Hyla Cass
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 A USP-certified supplement will have a Verified dietary supplement Mark on its label. This shows that the USP has tested the supplement to make sure that it:
?Contains all the listed ingredients, in the declared amounts.
?Does not contain harmful levels of contaminants.
?Will break down properly and release its ingredients in the body, instead of passing through your digestive system without dissolving.
?Has been made according to good manufacturing practices (GMP).
The USP is independent and non-profit, and its standards can be enforced by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). |
David W. Grotto, RD, LDN
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 Bottom line—no dietary supplement on the market today comes close to providing the life-saving properties of the 101 foods. Proper supplementation can play an important role in maintaining or improving health but it doesn't compare to the healing-power capacity of food! Each food group serves an important function in the body, keeping you healthy and strong.
Carbo the magnificent: Carbohydrates give us energy. They're the fuel on which the human body runs. |
Hyla Cass
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| Labeling information is strictly limited by the dietary supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA), which the FDA passed in 1994. DSHEA created new guidelines for supplement makers about how they could market package, and label their products—and put strong limits on any claims made about the medicinal use of those products.
A supplement label can make "structure and function claims," which describe only the ways in which the nutrients affect the body's structure or function. But it can't state that the supplement prevents or treats any disease. |
David W. Grotto, RD, LDN
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| ARTHRITIS: A dietary supplement made from a combination of soybean and avocado oil may relieve symptoms of osteoarthritis. Four well-controlled studies have verified the effectiveness of this oil combination.
PROSTATE CANCER: Dr. David Heber, director of the UCLA Center for Human Nutrition, showed that when avocado extract was added to prostate cancer cells, cell growth was inhibited by up to sixty percent.
Tips on Using Avocados
SELECTION AND STORAGE:
• Choose avocados that are soft to the touch but not too soft.
• Hass avocados turn black when they are ripe. |
Peter h. Fraser and Harry Massey
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 NES Case Overview: Cass
Cass is an author and the mother of two active children whose normal, hectic routine came crashing to a halt when she was felled by a contaminated dietary supplement. In the late 1980s, she had taken a supplement containing L-tryptophan, touted as a natural sleep aid. However, the Japanese manufacturer had cut corners in production, resulting in contaminated capsules, and also had inserted genetically modified bacteria to enhance its effectiveness. |
David Steinman
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 The pharmaceutical COX-2 drugs from mega pharmaceutical corporations Pfizer and Merck once were hyped (just like any dietary supplement) for their wondrous ability to knock out the COX-2 enzyme cascade that causes inflammation and leads to many disorders, including arthritis, heart disease, and cancer. The trouble is that for users, it is like playing Russian roulette. Vioxx and other COX-2-inhibiting drugs have been alleged in articles in The New England Journal of Medicine and other mainstream medical journals to increase a user's risk of a heart attack. |
| For the dietary supplement industry, however, that amount represents an enormous investment.
Because the funds are relatively small by institutional and pharmaceutical standards, Newmark and Schulick have chosen to carefully allocate their dollars to highly focused outcome-oriented studies. Much of the research has focused on prostate (and, to a lesser extent, breast) cancer. You certainly can't fault their choice of institutions where research is being funded: Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center and M. D. Anderson Cancer Center are tops in the nation. |
J. Douglas Bremner
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 Congressional passage of the dietary supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA), which was sponsored by Senator Hatch in 1994, removed regulatory authority that the FDA previously had over vitamins and supplements by providing manufacturers with a very large loophole. As long as they don't claim that their products cure a specific disease without showing evidence, they can make general health claims without providing backup. For instance, a manufacturer can say its product "promotes liver health" and advise someone with a liver problem to take it. |
David Steinman
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| As a publisher entrusted with the public good, I expect our reporting to go beyond superficial hype (and there's a lot of that kind of marketing fertilizer spread throughout the dietary supplement industry by irresponsible manufacturers and publishers). That is why when our writers and medical experts make a product recommendation, it had better be for an outstanding degree of proven health benefit and be safe. |
Ron Garner
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 Codex dietary supplement rules are in effect in Norway and Germany. For example, in Norway, the sale of vitamin E is restricted to no more than 45 International Units, the maximum for vitamin C is 200 mg per tablet, and coenzyme qio is now classified as a drug and is dramatically higher in price. In Canada, when the 'sleep booster' tryptophan was reclassified as a drug, the price escalated by 500%. Eventually, the cartel wants to make even home-grown herbs illegal and require all natural supplements to have a Drug Identification Number (din). |
Jack Challem
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 Taken as a dietary supplement, melatonin can help with sleep disorders and can speed recovery from jet lag, but the timing of supplementation is crucial.
Quick Tip
If You're Taking Meds for Your Moods, Check with Your Doctor
If you take prescription drugs for depression, anxiety, or another mood issue, work with your doctor before trying natural neuronutrients. Neuronutrients may amplify the drug's effects, and your doctor may need to reduce your medication dosage. Please do not attempt to do this by yourself.
Type of neurotransmitter. Calming.
Nutritional building blocks. |
Ann M. Coulston and Carol J. Boushey
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 Prevalence of vitamin D insufficiency in Canada and the United States: Importance to health status and efficacy of current food fortification and dietary supplement use. Nutr. Rev. 61, 107-113.
3. Institute of Medicine. (1997). "Dietary Reference Intakes for calcium phosphorus, magnesium, vitamin D and fluoride" National Academies Press, Washington DC.
4. Holick, M. F. (2006). Resurrection of vitamin D deficiency and rickets. J. Clin. Invest. 116, 2062-2072.
5. Norman, A. (1998). |
| Controversy surrounds the equivalency of efficacy of the two precursors to 25(OH)D, and this has been interpreted by some to reflect the inadequacy of vitamin D2 as a dietary supplement or food for-tificant [16]. When a single dose of either vitamin D2 or vitamin D3 was administered, 25(OH)D2 was shown to remain in blood for a much shorter time than the 25(OH)D3, declining after 1 week [17]. Further research is needed to determine the relative contribution of ergocalciferol to vitamin D status. |
| Dietary supplement of neosugar alters the fecal flora and decreases activities of some reductive enzymes in human subjects. Am. J. Clin. Nutr. 63, 709-716.
214. Moro, G., Minoli, I., Mosca, M., Fanaro, S., Jelinek, L, Stahl, B., and Boehm, G. (2002). Dosage-related bifido-genic effects of galacto- and fructooligosaccharides in formula-fed term infants. J. Pediatr. Gastroenterol. Nutr. 34, 291-295.
215. Boehm, G., Lidestri, M., Casetta, P., Jelinek, J., Negretti, F., Stahl, B., and Marini, A. (2002). |
| Swanson, C, and Picciano, M. F. dietary supplement use by US adults: data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, 1999-2000. Am. J. Epidemiol. 160(4) 339-349.
7. Mishra, V. (2007). Oxidative stress and role of antioxidant supplementation in critical illness. Clin. Lab. 53, 199-209.
8. Seifried, H. E., Anderson, D. E., Fisher, E. I., and Milner, J. A. (2007). A review of the interaction among dietary antioxidants and reactive oxygen species. J. Nutr. Biochem., Mar. 13 [Epub ahead of print].
9. Prior, R. L., Wu, X., and Schaich, K. (2005). |
Joerg Gruenwald, Ph.D.
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 Also available as a dietary supplement. The drug is used to treat hyperactivity in children, lessen high cholesterol levels and ease premenstrual syndrome.
PRECAUTIONS AND ADVERSE REACTIONS
No health hazards or side effects are known in conjunction with the proper administration of designated therapeutic dosages.
DOSAGE
Mode of Administration: Available as a medicinal/pharmaceutical preparation (with gammon acid standardized proportion of evening primrose oil) in capsule form (0.5 gm).
Daily Dosage: Capsules, with a standardized percentage of 0.5 gamma acids. |
The Editors of FC&A
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| Pharmacopeia dietary supplement Verification Program on the internet at .
NSF International. This non-profit organization certifies everything from food and water to dietary supplements. Like USP, NSF tests the products in a lab and inspects the plants where they are packaged. The NSF seal means the supplement:
• clearly labels all of its ingredients.
• contains the ingredients in the amounts listed on its label.
• is free of dangerous contaminants.
• was packaged in a safe, clean environment. |
Elaine Magee
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 Taking a dietary supplement simply does not provide the same benefit. I know it's easier to pop a pill than to choose whole grain bread or whole grain-blend pasta, or to remember to add ground flaxseed to your fruit smoothie, or to make a point each day to eat a bunch of fruits and vegetables. It's easier to grab chips or cookies than to choose yogurt and nuts for a snack. But there is magic in the packaging! Just remember that.
WHY WHOLE FOODS ARE THE ANSWER
The more we know about nutrition and health, the more it seems we need to eat the way we did a hundred years ago. |
Stephen T. Sinatra, M.D.
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 Richard Bloomer (Bloomer, et al, 2006, 2007, and 2008) have utilized the most humanly invasive measurements (including muscle biopsies) undertaken in the dietary investigation for the performance of any L-carnitine (or any other dietary supplement for that matter) to date. Here are some of the details of the double-blind measurements undertaken within this study as well as some of the results of the most important clinical findings:
"The study was conducted as a randomized double-blind placebo controlled trial. A total of 42 subjects were enrolled. |
J. Douglas Bremner
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| Or, lured by the promise of near-magical weight loss, they pick up some ma huang or another dietary supplement at the drugstore.
It's not surprising that the diet-drug indusrry is robust; not only is the idea of easy weight loss appealing, but the National Institutes of Health recommend that most obese Americans should undergo drug treatment, which means that 100 million Americans could be on drugs for obesity.
However, diet drugs generally have not been shown to help people reach or sustain their weight-loss goal. |
| Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA) of 1994, which I describe in more detail in Chapter 18 (Vitamins and Supplements). Because of the very real risk of liver failure and possible death I do not recommend kava for the treatment of mood disorders. Kava is potentially lethal and should not be used.
OMEGA-3 FATTY ACIDS
There is one study I know of that has examined the effects of omega-3 fatty acids on symptoms of bipolar disorder.7 Thirty patients with bipolar disorder were randomized to receive four months of omega-3 fatty acids in the form of fish-oil capsules or placebo. |
Gary Null and Amy McDonald
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 If it weren't for the 1994 dietary supplement law that allowed a lot of these natural hormones and nutrients to be marketed, pregnenolone would have still been ignored. It's a shame because there is so much potential in this hormone. I was familiar with some of the studies done on mice and rats concluding that pregnenolone was one of the most potent memory enhancers. So when pregnenolone came on the market, I called up a lot of my colleagues and asked them, 'Have you ever tried this?' None of the health professionals I called had tried it. |
J. Douglas Bremner
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| Because of the dietary supplement and Health Education Act (DSHEA) passed by Congress in 1994, weight-loss and other supplements are not regulated by the FDA, are not required to demonstrate efficacy for the conditions for which they are promoted, and are not even required to prove that they contain what they claim to contain. |
Lester A. Mitscher and Victoria Toews
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 Clearly, green tea is a powerful agent for fighting free radicals,2 and it can be added to your daily antioxident arsenal in beverage or dietary supplement form.
FLAVONOIDS: A SPECIAL CLASS OF ANTIOXIDANTS
An interesting phenomenon that can shed light on the potent antioxidant activity of polyphenols is the so-called "French Paradox." As early as 1933, researchers noticed that people living in the wine-producing regions of France lived longer than the average French citizen. |
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