ROFL, I used to say the same thing to my ex-fiancee, almost word for word. Just kind of funny.
I plan on doing some research on this later, when I have access to Scifinder at work, but I thought I’d throw my off-the-cuff thoughts into the ring now. I just got done talking to my roommate (M.S. in Food Science) about herbal supplements. I’d heard before that, unlike food, the Food and Drug Administration doesn’t strongly regulate herbs, supplements, etc. She confirmed this, and filled in some specifics. According to her, there are some stipulations about what you can market, and what you can claim about your product.
(1) I asked her if I could bottle mercury and sell it. She said that since mercury is known to be toxic, this is forbidden. Interesting side note, in the first half of the first millenium CE, Chinese rulers used to take elixirs made primarily from cinnabar, which is mercury sulfide. Let’s hear it for Ancient Chinese secrets! smirk
(2) I asked her if I could make a pill of sugar with a pinch of salt and sell it, claiming it has the typical herbal powers (e.g., improves your memory, increases your immune system, etc.) She said that since both sugar and salt have been extensively studied, to say the least, and have not shown these effects, I could not market this product.
(3) She said that the FDA does have some guidelines about what a pill maker can claim. She said she didn’t remember all the terms that a manufacturer can’t use, but, in essence, you can’t claim that a supplement WILL do something. I can’t say, “This extract of bat wing will cure your acne,” but I could legally say, “This extract of bat wing may help reduce acne.” I could make this statement without any evidence whatsoever.
(4) I asked her about pharmaceuticals, and she said that EXTENSIVE clinical testing is required. Ten year studies are not uncommon. For herbal supplements, she said that the FDA does the most basic studies to find out if a supplement is dangerous, although she couldn’t recall the exact standards of dangerous. She did say that something like loose stool or impotence is not considered dangerous.
(5) Finally, I asked her if the FDA is trying to muscle into the supplement market. She said that the FDA is overworked as it is, with pharmaceutical approval, and it has drawn a clear line in the sand. The current battle area is adding supplements to foods, e.g., making a breakfast cereal with echinacea in it. The FDA pounces voraciously on such cases.
Based on all that she said, I’ve come to the conclusion that the reason that various companies bottle up crazy, random shit and make fantastic claims about it is that they can! Pharmaceuticals are subjected to standards that no herbal supplement has even coming close to approaching. I’d wager (WAG) that 95% of these supplements would fail within the first stage of tests, and 4% of the rest would fail in later stages.
It just boggles me that people are so forgiving just because something has a label of “natural.” The only explanation I can come up with is this. Suppose you have Propecia next to RandomHerbalSupplement (RHS). Both are claiming that they can help you grow hair. Propecia says, because they have to say, that they can have some sexual side effects on men, such as less desire, lower sperm count, difficulty in maintaining an erection, etc. RHS says nothing of the sort, because they don’t have the foggiest idea! Even more, if they did do studies and found that RHS causes the same side effects, just more severe, they wouldn’t have to let the general public know. I’m sure RHS is going to cost less than Propecia… which do you suppose John Q. Baldy is going to choose? Does this explanation hold water, or is it too simple-minded?
In addition to nasty lists of mandated side-effects, synthetic drugs have a history that natural supplements don’t have. Thalidamide, anyone? (FTR, scientists now KNOW why Thalidamide went wrong… for the chemically curious, one enantiomer of Thalidamide causes the dreaded side effects, and the other entantiomer causes the desired result). If some Incans who used Echinacea 400 years ago experienced severe diarrhea, how the hell is the general public supposed to know?
I guess here are my specific questions:
A) I can understand consulting your physician before taking Propecia, Viagra, etc. The side effects are known, and they’re not entirely pleasant. But why the hell is this reluctance suddenly gone when the same man goes to buy Extract of Valerian?
B) If the FDA isn’t going to take up the flack on regulating this industry, who will?
C) I saw in GNC the other day “RNA/DNA pills.” Looking on the label, each pill contained something like 100 mg of DNA and 100 mg of RNA extracted from yeast. Ummm… how the hell am I going to eat bread, fruit, and about a million other things without getting nucleotides??
Quix