Understanding The Benefits And Risks Of Dietary Supplements – Dietary supplements can help people improve or maintain their overall health. But they can also come with health risks. Whether you are a supplement user or your job is to inform and educate, it is important to know the facts before deciding to take any nutritional supplement.
Below you will find a wide range of downloadable educational resources about dietary supplements, including information about their benefits and risks, how they are regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and much more.
Understanding The Benefits And Risks Of Dietary Supplements
In collaboration with the American Medical Association (AMA), videos and related materials were created to educate health care professionals and provide them with strategies for counseling patients about dietary supplements. Topics include how supplements are defined, regulated, and labeled; Possible interactions with other supplements, medications, and laboratory tests; and adverse events and how to report them.
Everything You Need To Know About Supplementation: Benefits, Risks And
The Science of Food and Our Food Supply: Investigating Dietary Supplements is an interactive supplement curriculum for use in high school science classrooms. It is designed to pique curiosity and enable students to evaluate the accuracy and reliability of information they see and hear about nutritional supplements.
Initiative. The social media toolkit includes sample newsletter and website content, social media posts, images, videos, and other educational resources. When you shop at a drugstore or health food store, you probably find a variety of supplements – over-the-counter or over-the-counter pills, gums, powders, and other non-food items that come in a variety of Let’s claim. About the alleged health benefits. While some supplements have scientifically proven benefits, others come with unfounded promises. In addition, some supplements can be harmful to your health if taken in improper doses or mixed with certain prescriptions or other medications, and even do not contain what is written on the label. Here’s a closer look at the potential health benefits, known risks, and everything you need to know about dietary supplements.
According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), dietary supplements are products designed to supplement or improve your diet. These products may contain vitamins, minerals, herbs, amino acids, enzymes, plants, and other ingredients. It is important to note that dietary supplements are not regulated by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) like food.
A supplement is a product designed to supplement or improve the diet, containing vitamins, minerals, herbs, amino acids, enzymes, plants, and other ingredients.
The Risks And Benefits Of Supplements: Who Needs To Take Them And When
Vitamin is a trace element that the body needs to perform various life-sustaining functions. Many vitamins are available in supplement form, but they are only one type of supplement. Other forms include minerals, enzymes, amino acids, and herbs.
Whether a supplement may be helpful or harmful will depend on several factors, including your diet, overall health, whether you have certain medical conditions, and any prescription medications or other supplements you take. Always talk to your doctor before starting any new supplements.
Multivitamins usually contain several supplements in one, which can make it difficult to avoid drug interactions if you take additional supplements for a specific reason or take multiple prescription medications. If you are trying to address a specific vitamin or mineral deficiency or health condition, it is usually better to take individual vitamins, but discuss your specific needs with your doctor to create the right supplement regimen for you. Make sure.
Many common supplements usually have no side effects when taken in short-term doses. Some short-term and long-term side effects, especially if supplements are taken in very high doses, may include nausea, vomiting, stomach pain, diarrhea, constipation, headache, fatigue, decreased bone strength, and even organ damage. Can. Yet they are specific to each individual supplement.
The Truth About Supplements: 5 Things You Should Know
According to the Institute of Medicine and National Research Council Committee on the Framework for the Safety Evaluation of Dietary Supplements, supplement use of vitamins and minerals has been an increasing trend in the United States since the 1970s.
Since then, the industry has grown tremendously, with thousands of supplements currently available on the market. According to the Journal of Ethics of the American Medical Association (AMA), there were approximately 4,000 dietary supplements available in 1994. According to the AMA, that number reached 90,000 in 2017 and the economic value of the supplement industry in the United States is expected to grow to approximately $60 billion by 2025.
According to a National Health Statistics report released in April 2023 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, survey data from 2017 to March 2020 showed that 1 in 3 youth (ages 0 to 19) and nearly 3 in 5 adults (ages 20 and older) took nutritional supplements regularly.
Because some types of supplements can look like drugs, they are generally believed to be regulated, safe, and accurately labeled. But it’s important to know that they are largely unregulated. According to the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994, the FDA does not
Listing Of Vitamins
It has the authority to approve dietary supplements for safety and effectiveness or to approve the labeling of those products before they can be sold.
This means that supplement manufacturers may make marketing claims that may not be supported by research evidence. Manufacturing companies also have to ensure that their products are not adulterated or contaminated.
“Consumers should know that the supplements they purchase have been tested by the manufacturer and do not undergo FDA safety reviews or protocols,” says sports medicine physician Kathy Nguyen, MD, of Memorial Hermann Medical Group in Sugar Land, Texas. ” ,
The National Hygiene Foundation (NSF) says the FDA has the authority to take action against any adulterated or mislabeled supplements, but only after the products reach consumers and problems are reported.
Supplements: Purpose, Types, Benefits, Risks
It should be noted that some politicians are taking action to change this. The proposed Dietary Supplement Listing Act of 2022, a bipartisan initiative introduced in the U.S. Senate in April 2022, aims to improve the safety of dietary supplements by requiring manufacturers to register their products with the FDA before selling them, according to a . Press release. The law has not yet been passed or signed.
“Patients should discuss with their primary care physician before taking supplements,” says Dr. Nguyen. “Clinical nutritionists or nutritionists are another great resource for advice and education about nutritional supplements.”
Additionally, a medical professional specifically trained in integrative medicine, such as one with a fellowship and board certification, can discuss supplements with you.
Your pharmacist can also provide information about proper dosage and potential interactions with medications or other supplements, says Jody Pepin, PharmD, director of the clinical pharmacy program at Harbor Health and clinical assistant professor of pharmacy at the University of Texas at Austin.
Supplement Savvy: What Every Woman Needs To Know
By definition, supplements are meant to improve your overall diet. If you are not getting enough nutrients from the foods you eat, these products can help you get enough nutrients.
“In an ideal world, we could get all of our nutritional needs from our diet,” says Lara Zakaria, PharmD, a New York-based registered pharmacist and board-certified nutritionist. “However, there are a number of reasons why this may not always be possible. Sometimes this happens in life and our diet can be inconsistent. “It can be difficult to eat a complete meal every day.”
She explains that people following diets such as vegetarian, vegan, paleo or ketogenic may have difficulty getting enough of the right nutrients or the right nutrients in the right balance.
Zakaria says that certain health conditions can also make it difficult to get enough nutrients, and genetic and physical differences may mean that some people need more or less of certain nutrients than others.
Dha: Benefits, Side Effects, Dosage, And Interactions
Although dietary supplements are not legally allowed to be sold to treat or prevent any disease, some research suggests that supplements may be helpful as an adjunctive approach for specific conditions (more on this below. is given).
According to the National Health Foundation (NSF), some examples of how potential health benefits may be written on supplement labels include:
It’s also wise to know how NSF categorizes other types of claims that have no medical or regulatory merit:
There are thousands of studies looking at the various potential health benefits of dozens of nutritional supplements. Below are some of the most commonly used supplements and what some current research says about them. Be sure to check with your doctor before starting a new supplement.
Folic Acid: Benefits, Side Effects, Dosage, And Interactions
Vitamin D is produced naturally in the body when exposed to sunlight and is a building block of healthy bones. Foods such as milk can be enriched with vitamin D, but it is difficult to obtain adequate levels through diet alone. Additionally, there may be times when our body is unable to produce enough, especially in the dark, winter months, so supplements can help compensate.
Some research suggests that vitamin D and calcium supplements together may help prevent osteoporosis, an age-related disease that weakens bones, making them more likely to fracture or break. For example, one meta-analysis concluded that both dietary and supplemental forms of calcium and vitamin D increased bone mineral density in postmenopausal women, possibly reducing the risk of hip fracture. But the research is mixed. A study published in July 2022 in The New England Journal of Medicine found that taking vitamin D supplements was not helpful in reducing