There are two phrases that should compel you to immediately grab an item and throw it in the garbage. If you see them in the store, turn away; warn other people that they are a waste of time.
The two magic phrases: “detox” and “fat burner”. There are others, as well; “cleanse” comes to mind when it’s on a box of something you consume, rather than scrub dirty things with.
I just had to deliver this warning after reading this story about a man who lost his liver due to a reaction with an herbal weight loss supplement. That is a rare reaction, so I don’t consider that cause to reject a medication; well-tested, useful medications also have a degree of risk. A good reason to be suspicious of such “supplements” is that they are not well-tested or useful — “fat burner” or “fat blaster” is meaningless noise suitable for snake oil salesmen like Dr Oz, and “detox” or “cleanse” products don’t actually do either. That’s not how biology works!
Just on general principles, run away from things with lying advertisements splattered all over them. All you’re getting is the risk and none of the benefit.
Jesus. That poor man. Going by the article, deaths from liver failure aren’t rare enough with that stuff.
I note that the pictured product contains 20 cups of green tea. I think I’d rather have the cups of tea. (Not all at once; I’d be wired and have to go to the bathroom every 10 minutes. But in general.)
Becca Stareyes:
I always thought I drank a lot of tea (black, not green), but I’m nowhere near 20 bloody cups a day.
20 cups of green tea in each serve?
WTF?
Have they figured out how to compress water?
I am not sure if green tea is “fat burner” or “cleanser” or anything similar, but it sure as hell does have influence on my metabolism. I had to stop drinking green tea because it made my blood sugar plumet and I got so hungry, that my hands began to shake. 20 cups a day would probably kill me.
That is the problem with herbal remedies. They work, for sure, but their side effects are not well documented with regard to their presence in population and that is a shame.
I think there would be much gained by more clinical studies for simple herbal remedies. I was surprised for example that my favourite herbal remedy – juice from elderberries Sambucus nigra
has had in one study some effect on shortening influenza and activating lymphocytes. But rigorous studies are hard to come by and for some herbs there are none at all. Most of them might be placebo, but some of them definitively are not and no doubt there is still a lot of potential to discover new active ingredients that could be used.
I would like to another buzzwords to warn about: natural and organic. Azbestos is natural and deadly nightshade is organic.
A friend of mine was taking some herbal supplement woo woo stuff that turned out to contain ridiculous amounts of ephedrine and caffeine. I figured out something was going on because she was complaining about being unable to sleep, and getting painful muscle cramps. I had another buddy who used to eat that kava kava stuff. I forget what the deal was with it, but it was pretty bad for you.
This shit’s serious. From the sound of it there are woowoos who decide “I’m gonna make a HEALTH PRODUCT!” and pour stuff from under the kitchen sink in it. It’s pretty much why the FDA was created – the old ‘snake oil’ salespeople were usually pushing some mix of alcohol and opium or coca with licorice flavor or whoever knows what. Some of those recipes were pretty amazing. And they had serious addiction potential. Come to think of it, so does an ephedra/caffeine supplement.
I wonder how carefully the interactions on something like those ‘monster soda’s are studied? Boji berries and taurine and wagga-wagga nuts. Uh. What’s in that shit?
There’s probably a market for betel-nut cola. Homeopathic betel-nut cola. With alcohol in it.
If anyone wants to run with this, cut me in for a slice of the action:
Sell “Heavy Water” energy drink. Now, with added quantum woo.
Just rely on the fact that there’s a good chance there is a molecule of deuterium in a liter of water. So, yeah. Just put a bunch of stuff on the label about deuterium being waterier water than water and how it hydrates extra well and – QUANTUM! If a customer ever checks every molecule and finds no deuterium, you give them a new bottle.
There was an actual “fat burner” on the market, in the sense that the name really meant it increased your metabolism: Dinitrophenol.
Wiki covers the main points. It seems to lead to meaningless ATP / ADP phosphorylation and the energy involved becomes waste heat. It was a fad in the 1930’s, but there was essentially no therapeutic window, 50 mg will kill you in one dose and there are long term effects as well. People died. Importantly the danger comes from “on-target” effects–the burning calories raises body temperature rapidly. So anything that actually does this will also be extremely dangerous.
I heard about it because there was some professor who was proposing applications for some serious disease or condition (I forget which one). Pretty horrified when I googled it to find that it has very recently had a comeback . . . I wonder how many people will die this time?
The amazing thing is that we don’t even know if taking vitamin/mineral supplements is healthy or not. Studies contradict each other about how much to take (if any) and what effects they’ll have. Of course massive doses can be harmful, but what about small doses over a long period of time? It’s not surprising that there are few studies out on new “health” supplements.
briquet @ 8:
Societally, if we weren’t so damn busy shaming anyone with a spare ounce on them, perhaps people wouldn’t be willing to die in order to be thin.
Marcus Ranum @7: “Just rely on the fact that there’s a good chance there is a molecule of deuterium in a liter of water.”
So, not yet suitable for honest homeopathy.
Surely ‘metabolic booster’ is another?
I suspect there’s a psychological link between alt med’s excessive concern with cleansing out the “toxins” and a religious focus on purging oneself of “sin.” Neither one ultimately makes any sense from a rational, scientific, humanist view. To alties, everything which isn’t seen as “natural” (ie good) is harmful and spiritually speaking the concept of “sin” isn’t necessarily connected to having unnecessarily harmed anyone. The image in both is of horrible, disgusting pollutants befouling what ought to be pure. Seems to me that cleansing yourself isn’t just about being sanitary, there’s morality involved — for both alternative medicine and religion. And anything connected to “modern life” is often the Bad Guy.
Perhaps a perfectly reasonable evolved human tendency towards avoiding excrement and poisons is being co-opted and then enhanced by socially-reinforced contamination phobias.
I checked the bottle of vin I just opened. Doesn’t say “tox” on it anyplace. Disappointing. Actively avoiding is such hard work…
Holms @ 12: “Surely ‘metabolic booster’ is another?”
Also “immune booster”.
Remember also that some supplements contain something very different from what it says on the tin, including actual pharmaceuticals (linky). Apparently, when you allow an industry to make completely unsubstantiated claims with no oversight whatsoever, quacks and scam artists run rampant. Who would have guessed?
@LykeX #16
Libertarians would not have guessed, I guess. In my opinion the proliferration of quacks and scams wherever and whenever oversight and regulations are absent or not enforced is the best falsification of the core of libertarian philosophy (about the regulationar powers of free market) there is.
There is one meaning used for ‘cleanse’ that doesn’t mean ‘toss this scam’: It is sometimes used to describe things that have some mix of laxative effects. Those can be fine so long as you understand you are just using it because it’s a less extreme, (and possibly better tasting), way of… getting things moving.
Dietary supplements are essentially unregulated in the US. If you want to know what that means, I suggest reading The Jungle, which is about the food industry before regulation. (Actually, it’s about the problems of being an immigrant in the 19th century US with exploitation occurring at every turn, but it was the gory descriptions of the meat packing industry that got people’s attention.) No group can be counted on to police itself. Certainly not the pharmaceutical industry and don’t kid yourself, that’s all the supplement industry is: pharma under another name.
ugh, I’m starting to nudge into “herbalism” given recent findings (scientific no less) about a spice often used in curry, known as tumeric. There is a chemical within the tumeric leaf that has medicinal therapeutic effects on neuronal tissues. Easy to injest,, just sprinkle a little tumeric powder in you tea/coffee/etc Provides a little spice flavor withoout overwhelming the fluid’s unadulterated flavor. I’ve started, occasionally, spicing my coffee, to see if I notice any effect.
.
re OP:
any “supplement” that is plastered with glowing review quotes in single line form, is worth avoiding, skeptically.
Dianne @ 19:
But, but…it’s not BIG pharma!!!1!!
slithey tove:
It’s turmeric, and it’s been used by cooks for fucking forever. Have egg salad? Turmeric. And yes, it has various effects, and yes, those effects can be bad if it’s used improperly. It’s widely touted by modern snake oil salespeople.
The word “supports” [liver, prostate, brain, etc.] on a label is another clue that the product being described is worthless, if not actually harmful.
What does it mean in that context? Nothing…intentionally.
The Redhead likes to watch old comedy shows, and one channel has Jerry Mathers (the Beaver, of Leave it Beaver), touting a “cure” for type 2 diabetes. Besides science recommended diet and exercise, it has the magic ingredient cinnamon. The active ingredient is cinnamon aldehyde.
Comments from the MSDS for cinnamaldehyde:
The FDA should have authority to stop these claims.
But it doesn’t. Thank you Senators Hatch and Harkin. If I had the power to repeal just one US law, I’d go with DSHEA. This case, among others, amply demonstrates why “dietary supplements” should be treated as drugs for the purposes of having their claims to safety and efficacy evaluated by the FDA.
briquet @8 – unfortunately it has already killed people here in the UK. One tragic story here.
“Immune boosting”. We’ve got real drugs that really do that. You only want to take them if you’re seriously at risk of dying of cancer because some of the side effects are just gross. Not as gross as dying of metastatic melanoma, but not something you want to risk just to get over a cold faster. Autoimmune diseases of the intestines are not pretty but they are a normal side effect of boosting the immune system. Which, fortunately, the average “supplement” doesn’t do in the least.
I just wish I could find a pomegranate juice that didn’t promise to cure what ails me. Pomegranates are yummy, but the packaging is usually just irritating.
There’s a chain here in Canada called Herbal Magic that my mother got roped into once. They sold her a few hundred dollars worth of herbal ‘medicine’ (actually very strong laxatives) and gave her a (really stupid!) diet plan to follow. My mom is diabetic & she could have faced some very serious medical problems (or worse) if she kept following it.
Anisopteran:
Jesus Fuck. 21 years old. Whoever sold her that shit should be held responsible.
Well, the liver IS the heaviest internal organ…
Seems like it might be worth studying low doses for the benefit of people who complain about FREEZING TO DEATH when it’s 72 degrees Fahrenheit.
…or, rather, for application in such people, for the benefit of homeotherms who have to live around them. >.>
This is why I avoid dietary supplements which make vague, unproven, or exaggerated health claims, and select only the ones that help restore balance to my chakras.
@#24, Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
Hmmm. Sounds a little like the Daniel Pinkwater (I think?) article about some French group — either governmental or corporate, I forget which — using corpses for crash testing. (Which is actually a pretty good idea, if you have a bunch of fresh corpses around which can’t be used for medical purposes, but anyway…) I am paraphrasing from memory, but:
I mean, imagine the testing for this “cure”:
@#31, Azkyroth, B*Cos[F(u)]==Y
72?! I start wearing t-shirts at 70, and I “feel the cold” more than most people around here! Where do these people live, Venus?
If I recall correctly, the possibly therapeutic/medicinally useful dose of turmeric is about half a cup a day. That’s not a plausible dietary amount: it isn’t “half a cup of curry,” or a total of a half cup of the spices that could go into a curry, it’s half a cup of just turmeric. Every day.
Green tea extract is known to cause liver problems and have caused more than one death and caused others to need transplants. Or at least if you believe that qualified, experienced liver specialists know what they’re talking about. I mean just because they’ve had actual medical training, and patients of their own that have been harmed, and the doctors aren’t making a bunch of money from selling it, does that mean they should be relied upon? I think you should believe the people that are trying to make a bunch of money selling something that hasn’t been tested.
(It is known to hepatologists that green tea extract, and other supplements, are toxic to the liver and can lead to liver failure. But then they’re telling people to eat better and exercise and that isn’t as easy as taking magic pills.)
It’s probably fortunate that the majority of alt med products don’t actually contain what is on the label but cheaper filler. People have been killed by green tea extract, but fewer die of cheap wheat or corn residue. Unless, of course, they’re allergic and being exposed to undocumented allergens.
Slightly OT but:
People would just weigh your bottle, and ask for a refund for all the normal water in there. Although … if you were serious about fleecing the gullible, your packaging would be designed to sneak in an extra 100g to make it feel serious. You’d probably also have to tell them that its woo-qualities are tremulously delicate and will be broken down in the presence of a sceptical sciency person.