Category: Herbs & Supplements
Coconut Oil
Is coconut oil a miracle food, or a health hazard? Likely neither.
A closer look at vitamin injections
Vitamins are magic. Especially when they’re injected. Roll up the sleeve, find a vein, insert a needle and watch that colourful concoction flow directly into the bloodstream. It may sound somewhat illicit, but that person infusing it is wearing a white coat, and you’re sitting in a chic clinic. There must be something to it, right? Intravenous vitamin injections are popular with...
FDA v. Jack3d: Round 2
Jack3d is a dietary supplement manufactured by USPlabs and promoted by the giant supplement retailer GNC as producing “ultra-intense muscle-gorging strength, energy, power and endurance.” A key ingredient is DMAA, which the FDA doesn’t think is a proper dietary supplement ingredient at all and wants Jack3d and other products containing it removed from the shelves and the web. The FDA also questions its...
What’s in your supplement?
It could be the ingredients on the bottle. It could be drugs. It could be ground-up snails!
The Quack Full Employment Act
Quacks, charlatans and snake oil salesmen are closely watching “The Colorado Natural Health Consumer Protection Act,” Senate Bill 13-215 (SB 215) as it wends its way through the Colorado Legislature. I imagine a few felons about to be released from prison are keeping tabs on the bill too, for reasons we’ll get to in a minute. SB 215 passed the Senate on...
Cranberry, the alt-med zombie
If there’s a characteristic that’s common among proponents of alternative medicine, it’s tenacity. The willingness to stick with an idea, no matter the evidence, must give one a certain clarity. The naturalistic fallacy is often the foundation. Natural is good, synthetic is bad, no matter the evidence. In some cases, in spite of the evidence. How one deals with contradictory evidence is...
At Your Own Risk
In 2011, Americans spent some $30 billion on dietary supplements. Yet, except for the industry itself and a few politicians and “health freedom” advocates, you’d be hard pressed to find anyone (who’s given it some thought) of the opinion that dietary supplement regulation is adequate. Three recent reports, two from the government and one from a newspaper, demonstrate why this near-universal conclusion...
Calcium supplements and heart attacks: More data, more questions
Why take a drug, herb or any other supplement? It’s usually because we believe the substance will do something desirable, and that we’re doing more good than harm. To be truly rational we’d carefully evaluate the expected risks and benefits, estimate the overall odds of a good outcome, and then make a decision that would weigh these factors against any costs (if...
Legislative Alchemy: Chiropractic 2013
Via the magic of legislative alchemy, chiropractors are already licensed health care providers in all 50 states. Thus their legislative efforts tend to focus on expanding their scope of practice and forcing public and private insurers to cover their services, in some cases at the same rate as medical doctors. Those efforts continue in 2013 with 65 bills impacting chiropractors introduced so...
Who takes dietary supplements, and why?
If you’re a regular reader of this blog, I’ll bet you’re not a regular consumer of vitamins or supplements. I’m in that group. Aside from sporadic vitamin D in winter, I don’t take any vitamins or supplements routinely, nor do I give any to my children. Your reasons may be close to mine: There is little to no evidence suggesting that dietary deficiencies...