Everyone knows there is no research required to show they work - but the scary part is that you don't even have to prove they're safe.
You have no idea if what is in them is good, bad, safe, dangerous, passed to a baby in-utero through the placenta, secreted in breast milk, cleared through the kidneys or the liver. You don't know if it thins the blood, reacts with medications, or anything else.
The part that drives me insane is what every single one says when it comes to safety: "Ask your physician"
HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO KNOW?!?! There is NO data. I can search pubmed and google scholar and cochrane and every other database - and find nothing.
Don't get me wrong - there are GREAT natural medicines out there. I posted about seven that help mental illness at this link a few years ago.
The problem is that until a supplement causes enough deaths, it never gets researched. Or if it is researched, the results don't have to be reported.
Ephedra was a great natural supplement... till it killed people. Then the FDA found out Metabolife had been doing research and already had reports of over 15,000 ephedra-related adverse events, ranging from insomnia to death. Yes. A Supplement Company was hiding research, letting people die so they could make more money.
But I thought Big Pharma was the bad guy?
There are plenty of demons in the pharmaceutical industry. There are plenty of demons in EVERY industry.
But at least Big Pharma has to work really really hard to hide it because of all the oversight laws. "Big Natura" doesn't have to work hard at all - because no one is looking. The FDA can't look into them - Congress made sure of that.
So you have to ask yourself:
Who should you fear more - Big Pharma or Big Natura?
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