It goes bad when people, from a genuine desire to help themselves and take responsibility for their own health, are taken in by wonderfully marketed products which are inevitably wrapped in very attractive packaging and which contain? CRAP!! Crap! crap! crap!
I've just spent almost an hour checking and rechecking the products a patient of mine has been taking (obviously if she's just become a patient of mine, she hasn't had much result from them) and my mind has been boggling and my blood has been boiling. Good thing I take the right nutrients.
For instance: a supplement which is meant to be full of antioxidants contains a piddly 500 micrograms of Lycopene. Now if you get one medium size tomato, you will absorb 2000 more time Lycopene. Even tomato sauce out of a bottle has hundreds of times more Lycopene per teaspoon!
Her calcium supplement (and we all know how calcium supplements are important to us who are no longer 30); well, that calcium supplement was made of calcium citrate and calcium carbonate. Both really cheap and calcium carbonate practically impossible to absorb by the human digestive tract; calcium carbonate is only good as a buffer for other supplements. What's good about them? They are cheap! Oh, no! Not cheap to you silly! Cheap to the manufacturer. Here it is: I buy calcium carbonate for my chickens (i would not give it to my horses or dogs or humans) and it costs me $13/ 5 kilos. But if you are a manufacturer and you buy it by the ton, it will only cost a few cents per kilo. Cheap indeed, but for whom? Of course someone has to pay for all the marketing and the shiny labels. Silly me!
So what to do?
First of all, avoid what i call: "kitchen sink formulae" all these 'nutrients' packed in a little pill are usually in amounts too small to be effective. Also a lot of them are antagonistic to each other; for instance if a supplement contains iron and vitamin E, then you won't get either, because iron and E make an insoluble compound that your body cannot absorb. Zinc should be taken on its own because most nutrients are antagonist to zinc.
I could go on but i won't. Just remember that when you take supplements 'simple' is the best and get the opinion of a qualified naturopath and if the naturopath gives you a 'kitchen sink' supplement, find another naturopath.
And now i'll go and take some anti-high blood pressure supplement in the form of a cup of lemon verbena tea. (although i would prefer a gin and tonic ;o) and i'm going to have a large dose of anti-oxidants in the shape of a punnet of bluberries.
