Principles & Practice of Health Evangelism
Chapter 21
The Use of Health Supplements
Textbook pages 243-249
Health evangelism is intended to promote and preserve good health in humans whose lifestyle has resulted in risk factors likely to result in disease. A common question has to do with the role of dietary supplements in preserving health.
Supplements are often recommended because they claim to contain elements that are said to be missing in the diet. However, the claim that the natural fresh, frozen, and canned foods generally available no longer possess all the life preserving properties they once contained is actually false.
Supplements are forbidden by law to claim the ability to cure specific diseases. On the other hand, supplements are allowed to make a variety of vague claims. For example, some claim to support digestion, assist the immune system, or help promote brain health.
A false contrast is drawn between supplements and prescription medication. Claims are made that supplements are for “health” and drugs are for “disease.” It is true that prescription medications are designed to treat specific diseases, but it is not established that supplements contribute anything to a person’s health. The successful promotion of supplements has created a 36 billion dollar a year industry.
Many conscientious church members, who believe the health message of the church, mistakenly feel it necessary to add one or more vitamin or herb supplements to their daily routine. Because most supplements claim to be “simple remedies,” “natural,” and promote “health” they mistakenly presume supplements are consistent with counsel the church received more than a century ago.
Supplements are often recommended because they claim to contain elements that are said to be missing in the diet. However, the claim that the natural fresh, frozen, and canned foods generally available no longer possess all the life preserving properties they once contained is actually false.
Supplements are forbidden by law to claim the ability to cure specific diseases. On the other hand, supplements are allowed to make a variety of vague claims. For example, some claim to support digestion, assist the immune system, or help promote brain health.
A false contrast is drawn between supplements and prescription medication. Claims are made that supplements are for “health” and drugs are for “disease.” It is true that prescription medications are designed to treat specific diseases, but it is not established that supplements contribute anything to a person’s health. The successful promotion of supplements has created a 36 billion dollar a year industry.
Many conscientious church members, who believe the health message of the church, mistakenly feel it necessary to add one or more vitamin or herb supplements to their daily routine. Because most supplements claim to be “simple remedies,” “natural,” and promote “health” they mistakenly presume supplements are consistent with counsel the church received more than a century ago.
What is in a Supplement?
A dietary supplement is a tablet, capsule, powder, gel, or liquid product that contains one or more of the following: a vitamin, a mineral, an herb or plant, amino acids, plant or animal enzymes, organ tissue from animal sources, illegally obtained prescription medication, unregulated chemical compounds, or a concentrate, metabolite, constituent, or extract of any of the above singly or in combination.
How are Supplements Regulated?
The U.S. Federal law that regulates supplements is the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA) passed by congress in 1994. Products that are labeled and intended for sale as food supplements have great freedom. They are considered the same as food.
Food supplements are not regulated by anyone. No testing of any kind is required. The manufacturer does not have to prove that they work. No evidence of any kind is required to establish that they perform the way they are claimed in advertisements.
Supplements manufacturers are not required to prove that they are safe to take. Many supplements are in fact not safe to take. I have seen dozens of people experiencing liver damage from taking supplements. Fortunately, the liver damage was reversed in the patients once they stopped taking the offending supplement.
Supplement manufacturers are not required to recommend any specific dosage of their products. The supplement bottle may recommend one capsule a day, or one with each meal, or two or three with each meal. The optimum dosage for supplements has not been determined. Dosage recommendations are not required by the government. Take what you want. Take as much or as little as you want.
Legal prescription medications have very exact dosing guidelines. Sometimes drug levels are monitored to make sure that you are taking just the right dose to be effective and to minimize possible side effects.
Supplements are not required to have any purity standards. They often contain contaminants., Many supplement makers claim to have high purity standards. This would be good if in fact the product was useful for health. Purity of something that has no health benefit is of no value and little comfort.
Supplements are sold without supervision by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). For this reason, there are no studies required to be conducted to establish or disprove the effectiveness of the product being sold. No publishing of data in peer reviewed journals is required.
Food supplements are not regulated by anyone. No testing of any kind is required. The manufacturer does not have to prove that they work. No evidence of any kind is required to establish that they perform the way they are claimed in advertisements.
Supplements manufacturers are not required to prove that they are safe to take. Many supplements are in fact not safe to take. I have seen dozens of people experiencing liver damage from taking supplements. Fortunately, the liver damage was reversed in the patients once they stopped taking the offending supplement.
Supplement manufacturers are not required to recommend any specific dosage of their products. The supplement bottle may recommend one capsule a day, or one with each meal, or two or three with each meal. The optimum dosage for supplements has not been determined. Dosage recommendations are not required by the government. Take what you want. Take as much or as little as you want.
Legal prescription medications have very exact dosing guidelines. Sometimes drug levels are monitored to make sure that you are taking just the right dose to be effective and to minimize possible side effects.
Supplements are not required to have any purity standards. They often contain contaminants., Many supplement makers claim to have high purity standards. This would be good if in fact the product was useful for health. Purity of something that has no health benefit is of no value and little comfort.
Supplements are sold without supervision by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). For this reason, there are no studies required to be conducted to establish or disprove the effectiveness of the product being sold. No publishing of data in peer reviewed journals is required.
Supplements Provide False Security
Claims are made that supplements contain beneficial nutrients no longer found in food, which as noted above is false. So, a pill may contain beta-carotene, but there are over 1000 carotene compounds in food. Why limit your carotene intake to just one in a pill when carrots and other orange vegetables contain the full symphony of carotene compounds?
Not all the beneficial nutrients or biologically active factors in food have been identified. For this reason, it is better for your health to depend on food to adequately nourish you rather than trust the contents of a capsule.
Many people will mistakenly depend on supplements for good health and won’t worry about eating right or getting adequate exercise. They may be satisfied with a narrow nutrient diet erroneously depending on their supplement to make up for their nutritional carelessness.
It is possible that reliance on supplements may cause people to ignore important messages regarding the importance of physical activity, weight control, stopping smoking etc. People may come to think that the supplement they take will supply all their health needs.
The food supply in the United States is so rich and diverse that it is important for those involved in health evangelism to emphasize a whole-food, plant-predominant diet to fulfill nutrient requirements and promote optimal health and to totally avoid any recommendation of dietary supplementation.
Not all the beneficial nutrients or biologically active factors in food have been identified. For this reason, it is better for your health to depend on food to adequately nourish you rather than trust the contents of a capsule.
Many people will mistakenly depend on supplements for good health and won’t worry about eating right or getting adequate exercise. They may be satisfied with a narrow nutrient diet erroneously depending on their supplement to make up for their nutritional carelessness.
It is possible that reliance on supplements may cause people to ignore important messages regarding the importance of physical activity, weight control, stopping smoking etc. People may come to think that the supplement they take will supply all their health needs.
The food supply in the United States is so rich and diverse that it is important for those involved in health evangelism to emphasize a whole-food, plant-predominant diet to fulfill nutrient requirements and promote optimal health and to totally avoid any recommendation of dietary supplementation.
Do Prescription Pills Work?
The scientific method has been highly developed to study this question. The pharmaceutical industry is regulated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Rigorous requirements are imposed on any company that seeks official approval for a new drug. It can cost one billion dollars to bring a new drug to market. The expense is due to the rigorous scientific processes that must be applied to the study of new drugs.
If you wanted to prove that a certain chemical compound can cure or prevent some disease it would first be tested in an animal model. You would look for a species of animal that has a disease similar to that found in humans. If the medication is shown to benefit diseased animals and did not injure or kill them from toxic side effects, then human trials may be done.
The first tests of a new drug in humans are done on a small group of healthy individuals to determine the optimum dose of a medication to achieve adequate blood and tissue levels. In the next phase of testing the drug is administered to a small group of sick individuals with the specific disease targeted by the drug.
There are many biases that can creep into studies that must be carefully controlled. One way to do this is with a control group. A new drug is compared with the effectiveness of a placebo or another drug already approved for treatment of the same disease you are wanting to treat. In this later case, you determine if your drug is less effective, as effective, or more effective than current standard therapy.
To be fair and balanced the placebo or standard therapy and the test drug need to be presented to test patients in the same shape, size, and color. Both the control group and the test group need to get the same number and same color of pills every day.
Another bias could result from doctors who know the difference between the test drug and the placebo. They could record favorable results for the test drug in their reports. For this reason, the doctors doing research need to be ignorant of what they are dispensing. If patients do not know what they are getting the study is said to be blinded. If the doctors also do not know which test subjects are getting which pill (the new drug or the placebo), then the study is double blinded.
Another way to control for bias is to repeat the test, but reverse the test groups (switch between the test drug and the standard therapy or placebo). When this element is added to a study, it is called a cross over study.
The best kind of study to prove the effectiveness of a new product is a double-blinded cross-over study. These kinds of studies take time, cost a lot of money, and have ethical implications. They are conducted under the continuously watchful eye of an Institutional Review Board (IRB) that has ultimate authority over whether a researcher can initiate, continue, or needs to terminate a study.
If you wanted to prove that a certain chemical compound can cure or prevent some disease it would first be tested in an animal model. You would look for a species of animal that has a disease similar to that found in humans. If the medication is shown to benefit diseased animals and did not injure or kill them from toxic side effects, then human trials may be done.
The first tests of a new drug in humans are done on a small group of healthy individuals to determine the optimum dose of a medication to achieve adequate blood and tissue levels. In the next phase of testing the drug is administered to a small group of sick individuals with the specific disease targeted by the drug.
There are many biases that can creep into studies that must be carefully controlled. One way to do this is with a control group. A new drug is compared with the effectiveness of a placebo or another drug already approved for treatment of the same disease you are wanting to treat. In this later case, you determine if your drug is less effective, as effective, or more effective than current standard therapy.
To be fair and balanced the placebo or standard therapy and the test drug need to be presented to test patients in the same shape, size, and color. Both the control group and the test group need to get the same number and same color of pills every day.
Another bias could result from doctors who know the difference between the test drug and the placebo. They could record favorable results for the test drug in their reports. For this reason, the doctors doing research need to be ignorant of what they are dispensing. If patients do not know what they are getting the study is said to be blinded. If the doctors also do not know which test subjects are getting which pill (the new drug or the placebo), then the study is double blinded.
Another way to control for bias is to repeat the test, but reverse the test groups (switch between the test drug and the standard therapy or placebo). When this element is added to a study, it is called a cross over study.
The best kind of study to prove the effectiveness of a new product is a double-blinded cross-over study. These kinds of studies take time, cost a lot of money, and have ethical implications. They are conducted under the continuously watchful eye of an Institutional Review Board (IRB) that has ultimate authority over whether a researcher can initiate, continue, or needs to terminate a study.
Side Effects
Side effects can be temporary or long-term adverse outcomes produced by the ingestion or application of a product. Side effects may be mild, severe, or even fatal in some cases. Knowing the frequency and severity of adverse effects of a drug is important. Common side effects of a drug may include nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, skin rash, or itching. More severe side effects might include liver or kidney damage. The most extreme adverse effect is death.
When a drug is being studied, patients receiving the placebo and the test drug are given long questionnaires to complete at repeat intervals throughout the study. Symptoms that could be adverse effects are carefully documented.
In any human experimentation it is important to monitor symptoms the test medication produces and to measure possible adverse effects on various organ systems. For this reason, in drug trials, frequent blood tests are required to document any changes in liver, kidney or any other organ system. Most drugs will have side effects, and it is important to establish that the benefit from the medication outweighs the risks.
When a drug is being studied, patients receiving the placebo and the test drug are given long questionnaires to complete at repeat intervals throughout the study. Symptoms that could be adverse effects are carefully documented.
In any human experimentation it is important to monitor symptoms the test medication produces and to measure possible adverse effects on various organ systems. For this reason, in drug trials, frequent blood tests are required to document any changes in liver, kidney or any other organ system. Most drugs will have side effects, and it is important to establish that the benefit from the medication outweighs the risks.
All Natural
Nutritional supplement packages do not usually list any side effects on the label or in promotional materials. This is because most supplements have never been tested for side effects. The usual claim is that because a product is “all natural” that there will be no side effects.
Tobacco is “all natural,” and it prematurely kills over 450,000 U.S. citizens every year. Arsenic is natural, and it will kill you too. Mercury is natural, and it causes serious toxic effects. Salt is natural, but can lead to high blood pressure. All food supplements cause some side effects in some people. The public does not know what the side effects are because the manufacturers of food supplements are not required to study or publish the side effects caused by their products.
(Also, the lack of side effects with "all natural" products is often true, because the product is completely inert (biologically inactive). It can not induce a physiological effect, but therefore it has no potential of any therapeutic benefit.) It may be safe, but it is not effective.)
Tobacco is “all natural,” and it prematurely kills over 450,000 U.S. citizens every year. Arsenic is natural, and it will kill you too. Mercury is natural, and it causes serious toxic effects. Salt is natural, but can lead to high blood pressure. All food supplements cause some side effects in some people. The public does not know what the side effects are because the manufacturers of food supplements are not required to study or publish the side effects caused by their products.
(Also, the lack of side effects with "all natural" products is often true, because the product is completely inert (biologically inactive). It can not induce a physiological effect, but therefore it has no potential of any therapeutic benefit.) It may be safe, but it is not effective.)
Safety
Safety is related to side effects. Side effects may disappear when a drug or supplement is stopped. Some drugs and supplements may cause more serious or even permanent damage to a person’s health. Side effects of medications are discovered during the testing process before they are approved by the FDA for doctors to prescribe. But supplements are not tested, and so not until wide public experience demonstrates that they cause sickness or death can the FDA step in and remove the supplement from the marketplace.
Ephedra was a component of several popular weight loss supplements that were sold over the counter. After several cardiac deaths with the use of Ephedra, the FDA stepped in and banned the use of this substance in supplements of all kinds.
On the other hand, many licensed drugs have safety issues. These are outweighed by the benefits that occur in critical situations. For example, the drugs that are used to cure lymphoma will cause a drop in your white blood cells, putting you at a risk of developing a variety of infections. Your hair will fall out and other serious problems can develop.
These are serious safety problems but are usually temporary and disappear after your cancer treatment is complete. On the other hand, you will die of lymphoma if it isn’t treated. The serious safety problems associated with cancer drugs can be acceptable when your life is at stake.
As health evangelists, leave the recommendation of prescription medications to licensed practitioners. Also, do not recommend nutritional supplements. Focus on lifestyle changes, good food, exercise, avoiding toxic substances, and trusting God for the restoration and preservation of health.
Ephedra was a component of several popular weight loss supplements that were sold over the counter. After several cardiac deaths with the use of Ephedra, the FDA stepped in and banned the use of this substance in supplements of all kinds.
On the other hand, many licensed drugs have safety issues. These are outweighed by the benefits that occur in critical situations. For example, the drugs that are used to cure lymphoma will cause a drop in your white blood cells, putting you at a risk of developing a variety of infections. Your hair will fall out and other serious problems can develop.
These are serious safety problems but are usually temporary and disappear after your cancer treatment is complete. On the other hand, you will die of lymphoma if it isn’t treated. The serious safety problems associated with cancer drugs can be acceptable when your life is at stake.
As health evangelists, leave the recommendation of prescription medications to licensed practitioners. Also, do not recommend nutritional supplements. Focus on lifestyle changes, good food, exercise, avoiding toxic substances, and trusting God for the restoration and preservation of health.