|
|
|
|
HerbalEGram: Volume 7, Number 8, August 2010
Consumer Reports Publishes Cover Story on Dietary Supplement Safety
|
The September 2010 issue of Consumer Reports has been released with a cover story on dietary supplement safety. The cover of the Consumer Reports issue reads “The 12 Most Dangerous Supplements: Which Ones to Avoid; Why They’re on the Market; Plus, What’s Worth Trying Instead.” The story, titled “Dangerous Supplements: What You Don’t Know About These 12 Ingredients Could Hurt You,” can be accessed at the Consumer Reports website.
The article states that there has been inadequate regulation of the quality and safety of dietary supplements: “The Food and Drug Administration has not made full use of even the meager authority granted it by the industry-friendly 1994 Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA).”
One of the tables is titled “Eleven Supplements to Consider.” This table refers to herbs and other supplements that are considered safe and for which clinical trial data suggest possible or probable efficacy. It includes the following herbs: cranberry, psyllium, pygeum, and St. John’s wort. The non-herbal supplements on this list are calcium, fish oil, glucosamine sulfate, lactase, lactobacillus, SAM-e, and vitamin D.
Another table in the article is titled “Twelve Supplements You Should Avoid.” These supplements are being referred to in the media as the “dirty dozen,” and they include the following herbs: aconite, bitter orange, chaparral, coltsfoot, comfrey, country mallow (sida), greater celandine, kava, lobelia, and yohimbe. This table also includes the non-herbal ingredients colloidal silver and germanium.
Though this article is flawed and incorporates inadequate information on the safety of many of the herbs, it is in numerous ways an improvement over the cover story Consumer Reports ran in May 2004. The previous cover story contained so much erroneous information on herbs that it was readily apparent that the editors had not run the article by anyone with any real experience or expertise in herbal or dietary supplement research. This time, Consumer Reports relied heavily on the Natural Medicines Comprehensive Database as a primary source for much of its information on the safety, and to some extent, some of the potential benefits of some herbs and other dietary supplements.
The American Botanical Council’s Founder and Executive Director Mark Blumenthal was interviewed August 2, 2010 for a WebMD article on the Consumer Reports story.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|