Vitamin Junkie

[Aaron Gustaveson]

Ok. I admit I’m naturally a serious person. Sometimes it’s hard for me to tell when people are joking even in person.

[Kyle Spalla]

Coach Zog is a teddy bear...that kneebars and leg locks you. I say this purely because he lives and New York and his hand get reach my throat from there lol. Ease up Buzzkillington it's all in good fun

[James III]

Of course more people die from taking fda approved drugs. Think of the number of people who take fda approved drugs compared to non fda approved. Also those people are far more likely to be correctly diagnosed as dying from a drug which was known to be prescribed to them than someone taking a drug with no record. Many of the drugs approved for use by the FDA are known to be dangerous and have risk associated with taking them but in the right case they can save lives. When they don’t the number of people killed by FDA approved drugs sometimes increases. If you are trying to say that it is not confirmed that ephedra has killed many people then you didn’t read Wikipedia. I never worte that taking vitamin C, D or spirilina or probiotics has killed lots and lots of people. People are just going to belive what feels right usally. Maybe science is wrong, it has been before.

That dosen't quite add up because according to a study sponsored by the CDC found that more than 40 percent of Americans used supplements from 1988 to 1994, and more than one half took vitamins from 2003 to 2006. Multivitamins were found to be the most commonly used supplement. Yet we did not hear of numbers of 100,000 people a year dying from taking non FDA approved supplements did we?

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/vitamin...4#.UGfJ4VFdPrc

I did read that Wikipedia page and from what I remember when I looked into that years ago was that the issue was far more complex then what is written on that wikipedia page. I cannot be bothered to get into that at that the moment it's not worth the hassle.

You specifically wrote that and I quote 'Many have died taking non-fda supplements'. That is quite a statement and one which you have failed to back up. You didn't write Ephedra has killed alot of people you said non-fda supplements so that covers quite alot of things including vitamin C, D, probiotics etc.

Science is political and motivated by money. There are countless examples of profit over health. What was that famous saying by that guy from Glaxo-kline-smith? 'A patient cured is a customer lost?' I believe the more people take good supplements the healthier they will be and that will affect profit margins.

The video on this link is really good I believe at explaining just how safe FDA approved things really are for peoples health.

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/ar...h-century.aspx

Anyway there is nothing more to be said from my side. We see things differently for now but perhaps in the future your views may change.

I wish you well

[Aaron Gustaveson]

Not all types of dietary supplement are considered dangerous. I think that what I wrote in my original post. Multivitamins are probably the safest group. I picked ephedra because it so well known. There are more but come on how much time am I going to spend on this?

http://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/Newsro.../ucm316469.htm

One of the greatest redeeming qualities of science is that it doesn’t arrive at beliefs but conclusions and theories which are subject to change when more/different information is available. One day both of our thoughts on the subject are sure to be different at least in some degree.

[Kurzy]

I personally take Vita-Freak from PharmaFreak, but I don't know how happy I am with it.

[Jem Havok]

Awesome thread! Thanks Coach Herzog for your knowledge, there is lots of great info here!

[Gray]

All the research funded by pharmaceutical companies per chance?

Just because a lot of the prevailing research is done by people you view to have a bias, doesn't mean you should discount all research and instead choose unresearched paths. Thats just plain silly. And if you want to get into biased sources of information, your wife sells supplements, doesn't that make you biased? And the supplement industry is rife with snake oil salesman, primarily because they can make unsubstantiated claims and use proprietary blends.

And what is your basis for your RDA of Vitamin C? Most athletic research I've read shows a decrease from excessively high vitamin C levels.

[Chris Herzog]

Just because a lot of the prevailing research is done by people you view to have a bias, doesn't mean you should discount all research and instead choose unresearched paths. Thats just plain silly. And if you want to get into biased sources of information, your wife sells supplements, doesn't that make you biased? And the supplement industry is rife with snake oil salesman, primarily because they can make unsubstantiated claims and use proprietary blends.

And what is your basis for your RDA of Vitamin C? Most athletic research I've read shows a decrease from excessively high vitamin C levels.

My wife sells those supplements NOW, becasue she had serious issue for years that doctors and pharmaceuticals fucked up and made worse, which in turn "required" surgeries. She was about to give up until a friend suggested a holisitic doctor. We were both very skeptical until we saw the results. Now about 8 years later she sell the products and invests all her time (when not at her regular job) into further educating herself and others in the natural health field. It is not her source of income, and she actually looses money every year because she cares more about others health than her own gain. What unresearched paths? There are plenty of studies showing the benefits on natural health.

Vit C is water soluble and is constatnly being depleted from your body hense the need for great quantity, especially for athletes. I'll have my wife find me the data and I'll post it.

Pharm are big money opperated and are motivated by profit, of course their data will be biased in their favor.

[Gray]

The main issue with holistic IMO is there is very few peer reviewed research on it. There's just as much monetary bias going on, the few studies done are usually done by companies with a stake in holistic healing. So it has the same baggage as the FDA, but with less easily verifiable study results. A lot of it is based upon tradition and folk medicine. Don't get me wrong, I think there is a lot of folk medicine out there that is truly reliable, hell take a look at aspirin. But just because your mother's mother did it, doesn't mean its actually effective. A lot of products have studies that look like they were run by MuscleTech.

Also in the field of nutrition I think there is more bias created by special interest groups that sell products than by Pharma. The dairy council is a great example of this, they greatly use their funds to change public perception on dairy, its affect on health and use political lobbying to ensure that it remains a cornerstone in federally mandated diet guidelines.

I take supplements, but I also take a look into peer reviewed research on the supplements before I do. I think Aaron, while being hyper sensitive, did have a good point. I will agree that federal mandates on healthy lifestyles are extremely unreliable due to political pressuring from special interest groups. There are a lot of vitamins/minerals I feel have RDA's that are completely off, its just hard to give a good parabola on RDA's for such a diverse population. I feel that over the next several decades we are going to see adverse effects from over supplementing of vitamins through fortification, but it might be lost/misinterpreted with the current obesity crisis.

Overall, if you and your wife are experiencing a high quality of life on your current regiment I doubt we will ever agree on the subject of holistic medicine.

[Aaron Gustaveson]

Hypersensitive? now I'm gonna have to kill myself.

Hindsights gold, I'm new to the system, the forum and forums in general. Dude it's easy to see how you think it was a matter of being hyper sensitive, but really I'm not used to even thinking about talking back to brown belts, and since in most systems "respect" is such a big deal, I'm not used to them talking to me in a real person to person manner without the air of "professionalism" or whatever. I thought about how to respond and honestly I would normally rather but heads but I thought It was just a better idea to supplicate myself, since i'd rather look like a bitch and stay in the system then maybe win an argument and be shunned by the community.
I have a better feel for how things work here now, thanks to Herzog.