Though dietary supplements have labels, experts say students
shouldn’t trust everything they read.
Dietary supplements are a loosely regulated group of products
that may not be thoroughly researched. Among the studied products,
some have been shown to be beneficial in assisting the treatment of
certain conditions while others have been proven harmful.
The supplements are categorized as food by the Food and Drug
Administration. They include vitamins, minerals, herbs, amino acids
and metabolites.
But some supplements are derived from plants in the same manner
as medications.
“The division between medications and dietary supplements
is artificial,” said Dr. Shannon Miller, a drug specialist at
the Veterans Affairs hospital in Brentwood.
With the passage of the Dietary Supplement Health and Education
Act in 1994, dietary supplements were no longer subject to the same
regulations as drugs and food additives.
While drugs must be substantially researched ““ extensive
studies must be conducted over a span of nearly two decades ““
dietary supplements can be placed on the market by manufacturers
without registering the supplement or the manufacturer with the
FDA.
“We have looked at supplements to verify the content claim
on the package, and a lot of times there is less content in the
product than what the content claim is on the package, so when you
buy a supplement you don’t always know if you’re buying
what was advertised,” said Susanne Henning, director of the
UCLA NCI-Clinical Nutrition Research Unit Nutritional Biomarker
Laboratory.
“I think you need to rely on consumer advocate groups who
screen and who really look at the scientific research,” she
added.
According to FDA reports, though a dietary supplement may be
marketed as “natural,” this does not signify that the
product is safe. Ephedrine alkaloids, chemical stimulants found in
the dietary supplement ephedra, were banned by the FDA after
adverse effects such as heart attack occurred among consumers.
“One of the major problems with ephedra before it was
taken off the market was the lack of regulation of the
manufacturing or marketing,” Miller said. “Studies
found that the dose ranged anywhere from no ephedra to very large
amounts of ephedra in the products.”
Moreover, in some products, other substances were found that
were not written in the product’s label. These included
controlled substances that require prescriptions, he added.
The variance of herbal supplement product content was not unique
to ephedra products. In March the FDA warned manufacturers and
distributors of unapproved drugs containing steroids that continued
distribution and sale of these products without FDA approval could
result in legal regulatory action including seizure and
injunction.
According to the press release, the FDA was concerned that the
use of these products, marketed as dietary supplements and promoted
for building muscle and increasing strength, may cause serious
long-term adverse health consequences in consumers. Complications
that could arise from the use of these steroids include liver
toxicity, male infertility and increased risk of heart attack and
stroke.
But for those seeking to improve their health, components of
nutrition, rather than pills, can be used as an alternative.
The current research being conducted by Henning and members of
the UCLA Center for Human Nutrition include the study of prostate
and breast cancer prevention by green and black teas, pomegranate,
and Chinese red yeast rice.
“With our tea specifically and also with the pomegranate
we determined that it reaches the prostate, so that’s the
first step to look into (whether) these natural compounds can reach
the target tissue,” Henning said.
“And then we’re looking at anti-oxidant activity,
anti-inflammatory activity, anti-angiogenic (formation of new blood
vessels) activity,” she added.
A study published at the beginning of the year showed that green
tea extract given to Italian men in the pre-stage of prostate
cancer during the span of one year significantly lowered their
cancer rates as compared to the control group, Henning said.
She added that there are important health options other than
dietary supplement pills.
“I personally think that drinking the teas or eating
fruits and vegetables is better. Healthy nutrition and a healthy
lifestyle are very important, and taking a supplement can’t
compensate for that,” Henning said.