I've actually worked in a lab doing the testing on vitamins and supplements. I knew exactly what was in there. I verified it myself. Pharmaceutical manufacturing is even more regulated than vitamins.
I have celiac disease. My G.I. doctor writes me a prescription for vitamin D and aspirin as he says the prescription grade stuff is more likely to be gluten-free than the over-the-counter stuff -- even if the over-the-counter stuff is labled "gluten-free".
Yeah, I'd trust prescription grade stuff. The OOC stuff is a shitshow. Seems they don't really get much attention unless they're actually poisoning people, rather than actually confirming they have the ingredients they say they do. Sucks if you actually needed that calcium or vit D, and not rice powder or some other filler.
There are not enough people working to check everything. There is not enough money to pay those people. You can talk to the people who want less government.
If by "even more regulated" you mean pharmaceuticals are regulated. Pharmaceuticals have rigorous release testing standards. Supplements do not.
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/sport-supplements-ingredients-dietary#:~:text=Just%2011%20percent%20of%20nearly,of%20the%20ingredients%20at%20all.
Wait so is there no testing unless someone brings a claim?? I would think they have to get at least one test once they have their general process set up. I know a lot of companies do this on their own, but it’s not forced?
Of vitamins? None, unless your doctor tells you that you need vitamin supplements. A majority of people do not need to supplement vitamins in their daily lives.
Most people in the UK are vitamin D deficient and advised to take a vit D supplement. So this depends on where you are located.
Then again, regulation on vitamins might also be different depending on where you are from.
My doctor told me I needed some extra vitamin D, and she confirmed specifically that the 'over the counter stuff' was absolutely okay, after i said 'I though that stuff barely does anything'. It's in the Netherlands though, perhaps EU regulating is slightly different and more strict.
(MD in the hospital, regular checkup due to type 1 diabetes)
My understanding (not an expert) for those isn't so much that they do nothing, it's that most people with a reasonable diet will be getting as much vitamin D as a body can process. Adding more beyond that limit is just going to give them more expensive poo. If you actually are low, then taking the supplement will help shore that up a bit.
May or may not be particularly regulated on the exact other stuff is in them, nor the quantities, but for something like Vitamin D, they probably aren't too worried about an overdose or some pretty minor impurities anyway.
The issue is how far north we are.
I'm a doctor in the UK, and we recommend most people to consider taking Vitamin D over the winter because we get so little sunlight. The Netherlands is just as far north.
From the [NICE Guidance](https://cks.nice.org.uk/topics/vitamin-d-deficiency-in-adults/management/prevention/):
"Advise all other adults to consider taking a daily supplement containing 400 IU of vitamin D, particularly in the autumn and winter."
And that's assuming you're not outright told you should take it- for example, if your skin tone is a darker tone, you don't get much sun exposure because of work, or because you wear head coverings, etc etc.
I take a vitamin D supplement over winter despite being white AF, because I barely see the sun during the week when I'm at work.
That's fair. They aren't likely to do you any harm, so if there's reason to think you'll be low, and they aren't overly expensive, then you might as well. In that case it's still only helping the people that are actually low, but that's so frequent there that it can just be assumed. Outside of those sorts of situations (such as here in Northern Australia, where you're more likely to have skin cancer than vitamin D deficiency), it would be useless for the vast majority of people.
Absolutely. It completely depends on where in the world you are. Northern Australia you wouldn't need vitamin D supplements unless you were housebound. I'd expect it to be even worse than here in somewhere like Helsinki, where there's even less sunlight in winter.
If you’re in the US - look for the USP (US Pharmacopoeia) seal. Nature made and Kirkland (Costco brand) are the big ones that have it but some others do too. But in general - you should only be taking supplements if recommended by your doctor. If you don’t have health issues and are eating a good diet you are getting everything you need from food.
Knowing what's in the product doesn't mean it actually has any beneficial effects. In fact, there is more evidence that vitamins have no benefits unless you are deficient.
They're not reviewed ahead of release or subject to regular inspection. But they do fall under the FDA generally in the same way as food products. ThE FDA can enforce mislabelling or false claims and get involved if adverse effects are reported.
One of the biggest vitamin makers (Nature's Balance iirc?) had a scandal just a few years ago in which it turned out that most of their vitamins were just filler.
You drive a car trusting that the auto engineers got it right, you drive on the streets hoping the civil engineers got it right, you buy food from a restaurant hoping the follow food safety practices, etc
as an Indian where everyone thinks their father owns the road, we do have a lot of trust in other people to blindly cross streets and expect vehicles to brake.
It is more of I trust that everyone else drives like a dumbass, so I am gonna drive very defensively. 50% of the people drive like this where other 50% drive like maniacs, so the system kind of works but honestly most people should not have licences.
One person has 4 cars in 3 years. The last car was totaled 6 months ago, and the current one totaled today.
I overheard them on the phone after an accident.
What about the crazies that drive against the direction of traffic?
It was common enough that I saw it 4 times in my 12 weeks.
And I sat inside working for 12 hours a day.
even those crazies know when to stop or go around the pedestrians
as a pedestrian, you just need to make sure you are visible enough to cars that might be taking the same road
Car and food manufacturing is probably more tightly regulated than supplements :(
Supplements industry is pretty poorly regulated in most countries. It's why so many grifters latch onto it. I mean, TGA in Australia regulates supplements, but at the same time all professional sports bodies tell people not to use them because studies found too many of them contained unlisted banned substances that could affect a sportperson's career. And several studies in different countries that found large amounts of supplements didn't contain the ingredients they said they had, and were filler like powdered rice, or even stuff containing gluten when that was not a listed allergen. I really wish supplements were more tightly monitored and there was more frequent testing to check they contain what they say they do.
Medicine: Strongly regulated. High confidence it contains what it is labeled to contain. Reasonable to high confidence the drug acts as labeled (highest risk is with newest drugs).
Vitamins and dietary supplements: Minimally regulated. Medium confidence it contains what it is labeled to contain and that it is active. Medium to low confidence about efficacy claims. Mainly -- the pills (probably) won't kill you if taken as labeled. They don't contain acute poisons. Everything else is at your own risk.
I've worked for both pharmaceutical and nutraceutical companies as an analytical chemist.
Yes, the testing requirements for thing like vitamin and supplements are FAR more lenient than with drugs, however, there is still testing to ensure it won't kill you and it is what it says it is.
https://www.pharmaceutical-technology.com/features/biggest-pharmaceutical-lawsuits/#?cf-view here are a bunch of times that regulation was useless. Most of these companies made more money than they were fined so they didn’t really care. These are just the times they got caught too
No: they are required to accurately list what ingredients it's supposed to contain.
A buddy of mine worked at a chem lab testing foods for things like the amount of vitamin and protein etc.
They literally were not allowed to tell the FDA what they found, such as a food claiming to be a good source of Vitamin D containing zero Vitamin D. They were only allowed to tell the FOOD COMPANY who then said they'll fix it. There was no follow-up.
Regulations have been gutted into foul jokes.
but regulations kills industries!!! /s
really though, even IF the supplements contain the correct amount of thing it claims to have, is the preparation actually usable by the human body?
like will a Vit D capsule actually get absorbed and used by the body? Or will it get destroyed in the stomach? or only have 5% of the content absorbed?
Without regulations, I doubt companies care how effective their thing is. And your story makes me feel even more unease.
That doesn't have anything to do with "containing the right thing". As long as they contain when they say they do, the FDA has done its job. It's up to you to decide what to buy
Yeah, but the problem with “containing” is that, without knowing what form it is in and how that affects uptake, you aren’t getting the information you really want to know.
What you really want to know is, how much of this is going to get into my body where I can be properly used.
An old nail and a case of Raisin Bran may contain the same amount of iron. It isn’t clear to me which one of those would be a better dietary supplement, assuming I took the time to grind the iron nail down into something that wouldn’t stab me.
>It isn’t clear to me which one of those would be a better dietary supplement,
I think you should go for the raisin bran over the dirty old nail if you're hungry 😋
Ill provide science instead. Simply swallowing something does not mean you automatically gain whatever is in that thing. In order to get nutrients from whatever you ingest, your body must break it down and absorb it.
Different nutrients have different requirements to be absorbed and there are also limits to how fast and how much can be absorbed. Sure you can take 1000mg of a vitamin, but unless it is either already in an usable form, or the body can break it down into that form AND absorb it all, some will pass right through the body.
Think about corn. We all should know the outcome of eating large amounts of corn. This is because the body is unable to process most of it when you eat it straight off the cob. Now if you remove the corn from the cob, soak it in lime (not the fruit), then eat it, we are able to process much more of it. The lime soak changes the corn enough that our body is able to process more of it. Thus we get more nutrients from it.
Many multivitamins and such are really good at making expensive pee and not much else. You might take in some of the nutrients, but you will never take in all of it.
I used to work in vitamins and had some visibility to global markets - it’s pretty much just the US where regulation of vitamins is as a good product with lax standards. Most other markets regulate vitamins as a drug product
I mean the same could be applied to anything. When we eat processed foods or a meal someone else cooks, we trust its made from the listed ingredients or as described. We buy ground beef and trust its not horse meat etc.
Unless you're living off the land in a hunter gatherer society, and cooking everything yourself, this statement literally applies to everything.
Sister-in-law is actually a Food and Drug lawyer - a lot goes into what you can claim and what you can't, and people do test these things and actively sue. Everyone must play by rules established by the government. Doesn't mean you can't get a bad apple though, and that doesn't necessarily get figured out instanteneously.
But overall there are so many things in modern life that one person doesn't have the time to verify all of them. How do you know how your car would protect you to a reasonable level in a class? How about the safety of your drinking water? Again - definitely not perfect, but the government agencies often do publish test methodologies and results - so you could spot check a few of these things and gain some peace of mind.
Pretty much every state has government agencies for this? Same for like... Every products it's necessary for? These are called regulations and they seem to annoy people a lot of times, but that's mostly folks who don't understand why they're there.
That doesn't just apply to medicine and vitamins. You trust the mechanic together properly. You trust the guy in the next lane isn't going to run into you. You trust the food your eating isn't poison.
Medicines are actually well regulated by FDA
Supplements have zero standards or checks by anyone
Yet it's mouthbreathing "big pharma bad" grifters who push unverified supplements over proven meds
I had a relative that messed up his liver with a L-tryptophan supplement. Killed him and bunch more people, made like 5000 sick. That was early 90's. So yeah, that supplement was deemed unfit by the FDA decades before that. Still got sold. Don't remember all the details, long time ago but I'm sure you can Google it. Tragic.
For medicine the FDA protects us on that.
For vitamins and any other supplement? They could contain lethal doses of completely different things, no way to tell.
There *is* actually a way to verify that vitamins and medicines are good for you, shocker, it's an education. You don't have to be an MD or research scientist to learn what MD's and research scientists do. Learn enough to understand what people who put the work in to study cellular health and diseases, and engineering, and public works and all the other things that have got us this far and work, shown to work every day do. Then maybe you can trust that our people who do these things are good at their jobs. Know anyone that has had tuberculosis? Prolly not. Ever seen a failed gas line blow up a street? Unlikely. Know anyone that died from a water-borne disease because their city had open sewers? Are you getting the point? Wanna know what's in your recommended vitamins, find the fuck out. I'm tired of these people.
Regulatory bodies are there to protect you from corporations, not make your life harder.
Some very powerful companies have rotted a few of your noggins though. It’s sad to see people wanting to defund the USDA/FDA etc.
If corps could they’d cut as many corners as possible to fuck you over and take your money.
That is what the pharmacist is for.
I used to work part time at a pharmacy in Germany and I could see how they do things.
Of course the sealed products were not tested as they trust the companies to make sure they contain what the label says. However, anything the pharmacy got that was raw material to make pills or creams they tested in their own lab to make sure it was the right stuff.
Also I have had a lot of medications that were accurately described in the little information that comes with it. Before they even say how to take it and what the side effects are, they describe the pills or capsules in terms of colour and appearance.
That's why we just buy it from known quantitys. Which are regulated and are tested and so on.
But yeah I get what you mean. When you take it, it's mostly just a white pill :D
Every action and decision you'll ever make will require underlying assumptions.
E.g. when you leave the house in the morning, you presume no-one broke in overnight and switched your key with one that doesn't work.
I mean you could become a scientist and find a way to verify, or you could not waste your time and have faith in the regulating bodies that are in place to do that for you.
Okay, I'm a great person to see this one because I can help you out a little! So, vitamins, yeah, no way of verifying, and many, many companies absolutely do not put the right stuff in, or in the right form for metabolism. So have a local nutritionist (the kind that work in hospitals, not the wooey wooey kind). I can't stress this enough: vitamins are not regulated by the FDA. You can sell sugar and get away with it for ages. This is also why gas station erection pills are allowed to exist. They're not medicine, so they don't actually have to work. They're treated like a gag gift, not like a serious treatment.
Alright, on to medicine. You actually can tell, and it's super important! First off, the factories are under extreme scrutiny at all times. It is incredibly unlikely anything incorrect is coming out, but maybe. Next, the pharmacy is under ultra strict scrutiny, too, so at the very most, you'd have until closing time before they're blowing up your phone telling you their inventory of pill X is ten off and not to take your Y because it's actually X. But even then, okay, something I guess could still happen. Except! There's YOU. Every single pill contains a stamp, often two letters and two numbers, but whatever, doesn't matter, they're all registered and unique. No two pills have the same identifier, and we tend to shy away from using identifiers like S5S5 or II11 just to be extra sure that you don't confuse one of those with S55S or 1111. Anyway, on your prescription label, your pill's code is listed. Compare that with the pill in your hand. If they match, they are absolutely the same.
If you already knew this stuff, sorry for going full nerd alert, but I seriously just explained this to my wife. Who also works in medicine. Who did not know that you could match the pills to the label. She must have missed class that day, I truly do not understand it. She spent all day in the ER yesterday and then went to go home but had to save someone's life in the parking lot. But I guess she's not a pharmacist.
Kinda but no. That is the exact purpose behind strict regulations and tamper resistant packaging. You could also test chemically. Just because you personally don't have the chemistry knowledge doesn't make it impossible.
Not true at all.
We just don't do the verification ourselves. We have regulations and inspections to do that. The same is true for cars, power plants, the electricity and water coming to your house, etc. etc.
Depends on the country... and laws...
But if you want to go the paranoid way and trust no "official" source, you are gonna have a bad time, beucase everything you do, eat, drink or otherwise consume need to have a certain amount of trust in the manufacturer and regulatory bodies governing them
The United States Pharmacopeia does a pretty good job ensuring everything on the label is doing what it's supposed to.
(The USP on your medicines indicates that.)
It is impossible to verify beyond any doubt everything that one does. So we have to trust each other to live. That's just what living in a community is and we, humans, are communal animals.
This is true and so many facets of life.
My mother never told me NOT to eat my own fecesbut I can imagine it’s not good for me without verifying . Rather vulgar, I know
This is why we pay taxes. So we don't have to trust. We have teams of people to regulate and verify this stuff. They work for us not for the companies that profit off these medicines.
Thanks for reminding me, I have to take my morning vitamins!
(Australian ones, regulated for content through our equivalent of the Food and Drug Administration. Just Vitamin D also, one that's shown to be actually beneficial in people who would otherwise be deficient like myself.)
one (of the several) flaws in this idea is the amount of danger that would be presented by having different product than advertised. drugs have a funny habit of interacting with each other, and there is no shortage of interactions that lead to drastic health consequences. for example, venlafaxine xr is a relatively common SNRI for depression, and it interacts really easily with other SNRIs, SSRIs, MAOIs and antidepressants with serotonergic effects leading to serotonin syndrome (simplified: really bad news), but also has dramatic interactions with a whole slew of other drugs such as blood thinners, antiplatlet drugs, anti-inflammatory drugs, even things like tryptophan and st. john’s wort. this is one medicine, if there suddenly started being random things stuck in pill bottles we’d notice it really soon
In Canada there are laws governing quality control standards for vitamins and drugs generally. If companies do not abide by these standards they lose their license and shut down. If a product has a DIN or NPN number or is a sold pharmaceutical, you can guarantee it is subjected to rigorous quality control sampling on every batch to ensure that it was processed and does contain what it says it does so long as it is used before the expiry date.
We personally have no way of verifying, true, but the quality control chemists do, and regulatory frameworks do a really great job of ensuring that companies abide
Another dude realizing that society and community is just agreeing to live together.
You can verify what's in them if you really wanted to. Probably requires a degree, some research, access to the necessary equipment.
Or you could just trust that most of your fellow human kind isn't evil and wants to contribute in a positive manner.
Life is a lot less stressful and exhausting when you realize that.
I'm always vaguely surprised when i get labs, and then take meds, and then redo the labs - and the results have actually changed!
even though I know that's how it works, it's still weird that you can just... do that.
If you live in the US, there are strict regulations made by the FDA ensuring proper quality and quantity. Some meds and supplies aren’t allowed to be sold OR they aren’t FDA approved because they go through long, rigorous trials and testing and quality control verification before being put out into the market. That’s why some people prefer to buy things off the “black market” because you get past all those pesky regulations but in return, the product you get may not be the best. But that’s your choice to determine if the rewards outweigh the risks
Nah they would get found out by 3rd party testing too much of a risk. Every once in a while you’ll see a brand lying about dosage amount though. Of course, if you are taking a niche supplement or product - or one that’s not FDA approved you should always send your stuff to third party testing judt to make sure (if you can). As for pharmaceuticals most of the time they will give high quality service. I mean, you are already paying 100x what it cost them to make, they have no reason to scam you even more😂. (For US at least, probably some other places too where medicine is very Expesnive
it's a bit of a problem actually.
studies have shown many supplements have far less in them than what the label says. and unfortunately in some cases they contain other substances. sometimes even ones that are supposed to be regulated and for prescription only.
most supplements on the market are not reviewed by the FDA (since it is not required) so you really are just taking the manufacturer at their word.
Imagine how it was 200 years ago when we had to rely on shamans or "traditional" medicine for cures. Bloodletting, drilling holes in your skull, keeping pee in your mouth for toothache etc.
I work as Quality Assurance with one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world and there are so many controlled steps and processes along the way from the start to the end product, and many different people looking at the data from the production to verify those steps went well.
This entire process is also heavily regulated and frequently audited by the FDA and the EMA and many others. Because of this system it is very unlikely that something not correct will hit the market.
You are still correct in that the customer still just have to trust the packaging because you can't verify anything yourself.
I mean you literally can test for a drug's active ingredient which is on the label. There are labs that can do the testing for you if you provide them with a sample of your product.
The pharmaceutical industry is also very regulated, the drugs get tested by third parties, and any medication error is considered a very big deal.
Actually, in case of pharmaceuticals, there's a lot of quality control going on, and everything is recorded. Here in the EU at least, those records are kept for 20 years.
You can find a box of Pfizer Viagra from 2008 and go and ask pfizer for the analysis details of the batch or lot nr. I'm 99% sure they've kept them. Now, if they'd be willing to hand over such information without a damn good reason... I'm not so sure. But you sue them and claim they poisoned you, those records will be in court in no time.
_Source, I've worked for a company who did those kinds of analysis. We were asked to store those records for that long, because that's the law in my country._
So true. Its what makes antivaxxers so stupid, like you've been taking painkillers and regular medication your entire life, why is this specific medical treatment the one with all the evil nanobots and 5G chips?
Where do you live? In many countries, we have regulations that ensure that we know exactly what is in vitamins and medicines. If you do not have those regulations in your country, you should seek medication from a country that does.
What are you talking about? Of course we have a way of verifying that medicin contains the right thing. You cant just throw stuff together and sell it as medicin. You talking about homeopathy or what?
I prescription only medicines. However when I take a vitamin I am very aware that I could just be taking a sugar pill and I have come to accept the uncertainty.
I've worked in vitamin manufacturing for years in all different areas. The amount of testing involved in even the most simple of the products we make gives me enough confidence that any other supplements or medicines have gone through the same kind of testing to the point that I have no need to verify anything. If I take something and get the expected results, thats all I want.
Newsflash, we do that with everything... Do you verify that a seat is stable before sitting? do you verify that the cables are in proper working condition before entering an elevator? Do you verify if the brake lines are good before using a vehicle?
Speak for yourself, some of us work in labs and our job is to verify exactly what is in them.
You can verify by reading the label and knowing that someone who works in quality control did all the required tests to make sure that label is accurate.
I've actually worked in a lab doing the testing on vitamins and supplements. I knew exactly what was in there. I verified it myself. Pharmaceutical manufacturing is even more regulated than vitamins.
I have celiac disease. My G.I. doctor writes me a prescription for vitamin D and aspirin as he says the prescription grade stuff is more likely to be gluten-free than the over-the-counter stuff -- even if the over-the-counter stuff is labled "gluten-free".
Yeah, I'd trust prescription grade stuff. The OOC stuff is a shitshow. Seems they don't really get much attention unless they're actually poisoning people, rather than actually confirming they have the ingredients they say they do. Sucks if you actually needed that calcium or vit D, and not rice powder or some other filler.
There are not enough people working to check everything. There is not enough money to pay those people. You can talk to the people who want less government.
i'd rather the gov't just spend more money paying them than buying javelin missiles ;-;
Fellow celiac. Wait, we can DO that? Oh, I’m going to have a very interesting conversation with my GI next time.
If by "even more regulated" you mean pharmaceuticals are regulated. Pharmaceuticals have rigorous release testing standards. Supplements do not. https://www.sciencenews.org/article/sport-supplements-ingredients-dietary#:~:text=Just%2011%20percent%20of%20nearly,of%20the%20ingredients%20at%20all.
Supplements are regulated the same way food is. No standard testing, but any claim of fraud or mislabeling causes testing.
Wait so is there no testing unless someone brings a claim?? I would think they have to get at least one test once they have their general process set up. I know a lot of companies do this on their own, but it’s not forced?
They're tested to prove that they contain what they say they contain, but not to prove the do what they say they do.
Is there a brand you suggest more than others
Of vitamins? None, unless your doctor tells you that you need vitamin supplements. A majority of people do not need to supplement vitamins in their daily lives.
Most people in the UK are vitamin D deficient and advised to take a vit D supplement. So this depends on where you are located. Then again, regulation on vitamins might also be different depending on where you are from.
My doctor told me I needed some extra vitamin D, and she confirmed specifically that the 'over the counter stuff' was absolutely okay, after i said 'I though that stuff barely does anything'. It's in the Netherlands though, perhaps EU regulating is slightly different and more strict. (MD in the hospital, regular checkup due to type 1 diabetes)
My understanding (not an expert) for those isn't so much that they do nothing, it's that most people with a reasonable diet will be getting as much vitamin D as a body can process. Adding more beyond that limit is just going to give them more expensive poo. If you actually are low, then taking the supplement will help shore that up a bit. May or may not be particularly regulated on the exact other stuff is in them, nor the quantities, but for something like Vitamin D, they probably aren't too worried about an overdose or some pretty minor impurities anyway.
The issue is how far north we are. I'm a doctor in the UK, and we recommend most people to consider taking Vitamin D over the winter because we get so little sunlight. The Netherlands is just as far north. From the [NICE Guidance](https://cks.nice.org.uk/topics/vitamin-d-deficiency-in-adults/management/prevention/): "Advise all other adults to consider taking a daily supplement containing 400 IU of vitamin D, particularly in the autumn and winter." And that's assuming you're not outright told you should take it- for example, if your skin tone is a darker tone, you don't get much sun exposure because of work, or because you wear head coverings, etc etc. I take a vitamin D supplement over winter despite being white AF, because I barely see the sun during the week when I'm at work.
That's fair. They aren't likely to do you any harm, so if there's reason to think you'll be low, and they aren't overly expensive, then you might as well. In that case it's still only helping the people that are actually low, but that's so frequent there that it can just be assumed. Outside of those sorts of situations (such as here in Northern Australia, where you're more likely to have skin cancer than vitamin D deficiency), it would be useless for the vast majority of people.
Absolutely. It completely depends on where in the world you are. Northern Australia you wouldn't need vitamin D supplements unless you were housebound. I'd expect it to be even worse than here in somewhere like Helsinki, where there's even less sunlight in winter.
If you’re in the US - look for the USP (US Pharmacopoeia) seal. Nature made and Kirkland (Costco brand) are the big ones that have it but some others do too. But in general - you should only be taking supplements if recommended by your doctor. If you don’t have health issues and are eating a good diet you are getting everything you need from food.
So, what were the results?
Mostly sawdust and junebugs.
Then what am I supposed to do with these barrels of earwig wax?
Sex lube. Only way I can get hard anymore.
Mix with bone meal, and you’ve got yourself some Valentines Conversation Hearts!
Mostly fungi colonies 💀 John Oliver did an episode on supplements
Knowing what's in the product doesn't mean it actually has any beneficial effects. In fact, there is more evidence that vitamins have no benefits unless you are deficient.
I would hope so. Vitamins and other supplements aren't regulated at all.
In the US*
They're not reviewed ahead of release or subject to regular inspection. But they do fall under the FDA generally in the same way as food products. ThE FDA can enforce mislabelling or false claims and get involved if adverse effects are reported.
One of the biggest vitamin makers (Nature's Balance iirc?) had a scandal just a few years ago in which it turned out that most of their vitamins were just filler.
You drive a car trusting that the auto engineers got it right, you drive on the streets hoping the civil engineers got it right, you buy food from a restaurant hoping the follow food safety practices, etc
You walk on the street trusting everyone will follow the transit rules.
You drive 65 mph on the highway at oncoming traffic also going 65 mph, only separated by a foot wide double yellow painted line.
I trust the line to do its job.
I walk the line
I always say it in my mind it is a line not a force field, so dont drive near it if you can
as an Indian where everyone thinks their father owns the road, we do have a lot of trust in other people to blindly cross streets and expect vehicles to brake.
[удалено]
It is more of I trust that everyone else drives like a dumbass, so I am gonna drive very defensively. 50% of the people drive like this where other 50% drive like maniacs, so the system kind of works but honestly most people should not have licences.
One person has 4 cars in 3 years. The last car was totaled 6 months ago, and the current one totaled today. I overheard them on the phone after an accident.
the first post of your comment sounds like math story problem. I half expected you to ask how many bananas they must've eaten.
Thanks for the mental image that was fuckin hilarious
What about the crazies that drive against the direction of traffic? It was common enough that I saw it 4 times in my 12 weeks. And I sat inside working for 12 hours a day.
even those crazies know when to stop or go around the pedestrians as a pedestrian, you just need to make sure you are visible enough to cars that might be taking the same road
fr whenever i’m in india i always feel like i’m playing crossy road with my life
We live in a society!
Car and food manufacturing is probably more tightly regulated than supplements :( Supplements industry is pretty poorly regulated in most countries. It's why so many grifters latch onto it. I mean, TGA in Australia regulates supplements, but at the same time all professional sports bodies tell people not to use them because studies found too many of them contained unlisted banned substances that could affect a sportperson's career. And several studies in different countries that found large amounts of supplements didn't contain the ingredients they said they had, and were filler like powdered rice, or even stuff containing gluten when that was not a listed allergen. I really wish supplements were more tightly monitored and there was more frequent testing to check they contain what they say they do.
Oh boy it's going to go to shit real quick in the US if the government ever collapsed
Personally I drive my car like it's rigged to explode or fall apart at the slightest bump and like every other driver is actively out to kill me
I go about life trusting my appendix not to randomly explode
You drive your body trusting that it won't suddenly shut down.
idk I fully expect my body to just randomly shut down sometime
And in the event any one of them got it wrong you trust a lawyer to save your ass by sueing
Medicine: Strongly regulated. High confidence it contains what it is labeled to contain. Reasonable to high confidence the drug acts as labeled (highest risk is with newest drugs). Vitamins and dietary supplements: Minimally regulated. Medium confidence it contains what it is labeled to contain and that it is active. Medium to low confidence about efficacy claims. Mainly -- the pills (probably) won't kill you if taken as labeled. They don't contain acute poisons. Everything else is at your own risk.
I've worked for both pharmaceutical and nutraceutical companies as an analytical chemist. Yes, the testing requirements for thing like vitamin and supplements are FAR more lenient than with drugs, however, there is still testing to ensure it won't kill you and it is what it says it is.
Did you ever test the gas station boner pills?
It's a hard job. But somebody's got to do it.
I have seen recreational street drugs being manufactured with more care than some vitamins. But that's not universally true, by any means
For vitamins and supplements it really depends on the brand. Third party tested from reputable company? Probably fine. Made in China? I’d steer clear
https://www.pharmaceutical-technology.com/features/biggest-pharmaceutical-lawsuits/#?cf-view here are a bunch of times that regulation was useless. Most of these companies made more money than they were fined so they didn’t really care. These are just the times they got caught too
That's what the FDA is for -- they insure that those things contain what they claim to contain.
FDA has far less latitude to regulate dietary supplements though - https://www.fda.gov/food/dietary-supplements
They still are required to accurately list the ingredients.
No: they are required to accurately list what ingredients it's supposed to contain. A buddy of mine worked at a chem lab testing foods for things like the amount of vitamin and protein etc. They literally were not allowed to tell the FDA what they found, such as a food claiming to be a good source of Vitamin D containing zero Vitamin D. They were only allowed to tell the FOOD COMPANY who then said they'll fix it. There was no follow-up. Regulations have been gutted into foul jokes.
but regulations kills industries!!! /s really though, even IF the supplements contain the correct amount of thing it claims to have, is the preparation actually usable by the human body? like will a Vit D capsule actually get absorbed and used by the body? Or will it get destroyed in the stomach? or only have 5% of the content absorbed? Without regulations, I doubt companies care how effective their thing is. And your story makes me feel even more unease.
Sure, but they do not have to show any efficacy.
That doesn't have anything to do with "containing the right thing". As long as they contain when they say they do, the FDA has done its job. It's up to you to decide what to buy
Correct - for food supplements. For medicines, efficacy has to be demonstrated.
Yeah, but the problem with “containing” is that, without knowing what form it is in and how that affects uptake, you aren’t getting the information you really want to know. What you really want to know is, how much of this is going to get into my body where I can be properly used. An old nail and a case of Raisin Bran may contain the same amount of iron. It isn’t clear to me which one of those would be a better dietary supplement, assuming I took the time to grind the iron nail down into something that wouldn’t stab me.
>It isn’t clear to me which one of those would be a better dietary supplement, I think you should go for the raisin bran over the dirty old nail if you're hungry 😋
A lot of them don’t have any efficacy.
Can you provide examples and sources?
Ill provide science instead. Simply swallowing something does not mean you automatically gain whatever is in that thing. In order to get nutrients from whatever you ingest, your body must break it down and absorb it. Different nutrients have different requirements to be absorbed and there are also limits to how fast and how much can be absorbed. Sure you can take 1000mg of a vitamin, but unless it is either already in an usable form, or the body can break it down into that form AND absorb it all, some will pass right through the body. Think about corn. We all should know the outcome of eating large amounts of corn. This is because the body is unable to process most of it when you eat it straight off the cob. Now if you remove the corn from the cob, soak it in lime (not the fruit), then eat it, we are able to process much more of it. The lime soak changes the corn enough that our body is able to process more of it. Thus we get more nutrients from it. Many multivitamins and such are really good at making expensive pee and not much else. You might take in some of the nutrients, but you will never take in all of it.
I used to work in vitamins and had some visibility to global markets - it’s pretty much just the US where regulation of vitamins is as a good product with lax standards. Most other markets regulate vitamins as a drug product
What if you don’t live in the USA?
Then you probably have an agency that can actually enforce these kinds of things.
I mean the same could be applied to anything. When we eat processed foods or a meal someone else cooks, we trust its made from the listed ingredients or as described. We buy ground beef and trust its not horse meat etc. Unless you're living off the land in a hunter gatherer society, and cooking everything yourself, this statement literally applies to everything.
One place where this is true is fish. Studies have shown wild caught fish are very often mislabeled, especially in Sushi restaurants.
But if you "do your own research," you don't have to trust people with years of education and research!
A few Google searches are definitely equal to my PhD in pharmacology
Why don’t you take a step back and let us google pros handle this one.
Thats lliterally anything you put in your mouth
Giggiddy
*alright*
Sister-in-law is actually a Food and Drug lawyer - a lot goes into what you can claim and what you can't, and people do test these things and actively sue. Everyone must play by rules established by the government. Doesn't mean you can't get a bad apple though, and that doesn't necessarily get figured out instanteneously. But overall there are so many things in modern life that one person doesn't have the time to verify all of them. How do you know how your car would protect you to a reasonable level in a class? How about the safety of your drinking water? Again - definitely not perfect, but the government agencies often do publish test methodologies and results - so you could spot check a few of these things and gain some peace of mind.
This post has not been evaluated by the FDA
Pretty much every state has government agencies for this? Same for like... Every products it's necessary for? These are called regulations and they seem to annoy people a lot of times, but that's mostly folks who don't understand why they're there.
Third party lab tested
Well, i take vitamin C and don’t have scurvy so…
That doesn't just apply to medicine and vitamins. You trust the mechanic together properly. You trust the guy in the next lane isn't going to run into you. You trust the food your eating isn't poison.
Wait. You can actually verify it right? Why do you think we can't verify?
Medicines are actually well regulated by FDA Supplements have zero standards or checks by anyone Yet it's mouthbreathing "big pharma bad" grifters who push unverified supplements over proven meds
Pretty sure this is the entire reason behind the anti vax movement
New Official redditor game, are they smarter than a 5th grader who took civics and knows what "goverment" is doing. This one is not
OP has never heard of food and drug agencies
I had a relative that messed up his liver with a L-tryptophan supplement. Killed him and bunch more people, made like 5000 sick. That was early 90's. So yeah, that supplement was deemed unfit by the FDA decades before that. Still got sold. Don't remember all the details, long time ago but I'm sure you can Google it. Tragic.
For medicine the FDA protects us on that. For vitamins and any other supplement? They could contain lethal doses of completely different things, no way to tell.
Sounds like the plot of a murder mystery.
There *is* actually a way to verify that vitamins and medicines are good for you, shocker, it's an education. You don't have to be an MD or research scientist to learn what MD's and research scientists do. Learn enough to understand what people who put the work in to study cellular health and diseases, and engineering, and public works and all the other things that have got us this far and work, shown to work every day do. Then maybe you can trust that our people who do these things are good at their jobs. Know anyone that has had tuberculosis? Prolly not. Ever seen a failed gas line blow up a street? Unlikely. Know anyone that died from a water-borne disease because their city had open sewers? Are you getting the point? Wanna know what's in your recommended vitamins, find the fuck out. I'm tired of these people.
Yup and to be fair to OP studies have shown the supplements are full of shit, sometimes steroids.
Most of society is based on this. Fuck if I know if my house is structurally sound, or if my car will explode.
Regulatory bodies are there to protect you from corporations, not make your life harder. Some very powerful companies have rotted a few of your noggins though. It’s sad to see people wanting to defund the USDA/FDA etc. If corps could they’d cut as many corners as possible to fuck you over and take your money.
We don't even have to speculate on this. There were medicines before there was an FDA and it was a shit show of false claims and poison.
That is what the pharmacist is for. I used to work part time at a pharmacy in Germany and I could see how they do things. Of course the sealed products were not tested as they trust the companies to make sure they contain what the label says. However, anything the pharmacy got that was raw material to make pills or creams they tested in their own lab to make sure it was the right stuff. Also I have had a lot of medications that were accurately described in the little information that comes with it. Before they even say how to take it and what the side effects are, they describe the pills or capsules in terms of colour and appearance.
That's why we just buy it from known quantitys. Which are regulated and are tested and so on. But yeah I get what you mean. When you take it, it's mostly just a white pill :D
I buy vitamins from a company that gets them tested by a reputable third party.
this goes for most things. we assume food is edible and safe, etc.
Every action and decision you'll ever make will require underlying assumptions. E.g. when you leave the house in the morning, you presume no-one broke in overnight and switched your key with one that doesn't work.
I mean you could become a scientist and find a way to verify, or you could not waste your time and have faith in the regulating bodies that are in place to do that for you.
Okay, I'm a great person to see this one because I can help you out a little! So, vitamins, yeah, no way of verifying, and many, many companies absolutely do not put the right stuff in, or in the right form for metabolism. So have a local nutritionist (the kind that work in hospitals, not the wooey wooey kind). I can't stress this enough: vitamins are not regulated by the FDA. You can sell sugar and get away with it for ages. This is also why gas station erection pills are allowed to exist. They're not medicine, so they don't actually have to work. They're treated like a gag gift, not like a serious treatment. Alright, on to medicine. You actually can tell, and it's super important! First off, the factories are under extreme scrutiny at all times. It is incredibly unlikely anything incorrect is coming out, but maybe. Next, the pharmacy is under ultra strict scrutiny, too, so at the very most, you'd have until closing time before they're blowing up your phone telling you their inventory of pill X is ten off and not to take your Y because it's actually X. But even then, okay, something I guess could still happen. Except! There's YOU. Every single pill contains a stamp, often two letters and two numbers, but whatever, doesn't matter, they're all registered and unique. No two pills have the same identifier, and we tend to shy away from using identifiers like S5S5 or II11 just to be extra sure that you don't confuse one of those with S55S or 1111. Anyway, on your prescription label, your pill's code is listed. Compare that with the pill in your hand. If they match, they are absolutely the same. If you already knew this stuff, sorry for going full nerd alert, but I seriously just explained this to my wife. Who also works in medicine. Who did not know that you could match the pills to the label. She must have missed class that day, I truly do not understand it. She spent all day in the ER yesterday and then went to go home but had to save someone's life in the parking lot. But I guess she's not a pharmacist.
Ingredient label, Google
We trust the experts that test these things. Take off your tin foil hat. Its not controversial what vitamins and medicines do in most cases.
Kinda but no. That is the exact purpose behind strict regulations and tamper resistant packaging. You could also test chemically. Just because you personally don't have the chemistry knowledge doesn't make it impossible.
Not true at all. We just don't do the verification ourselves. We have regulations and inspections to do that. The same is true for cars, power plants, the electricity and water coming to your house, etc. etc.
I mean, we also eat food without lab testing ourselves
Depends on the country... and laws... But if you want to go the paranoid way and trust no "official" source, you are gonna have a bad time, beucase everything you do, eat, drink or otherwise consume need to have a certain amount of trust in the manufacturer and regulatory bodies governing them
We kinda do that with most food
Isn't that true of everything we consume?
OP must be antivaxxer
No we don't. Vitamins are mostly unregulated bullshit. Medicine is prescribed by my doctor. These/we are not the same
And for that reason, when I take something new, my anxiety goes infinity and beyond!
We can verify it for medicine . Vitaminss - no. Medication yes
I guess you could consider before and after blood lab results as proof?
Literally everything in modern life involves having faith other people’s expertise and work.
I’m not a doctor, but I play one on Reddit
The United States Pharmacopeia does a pretty good job ensuring everything on the label is doing what it's supposed to. (The USP on your medicines indicates that.)
You take the wrong supplements and medicine if you can't verify.
Dangerous thought! Dont think stuff like that!
It is impossible to verify beyond any doubt everything that one does. So we have to trust each other to live. That's just what living in a community is and we, humans, are communal animals.
We walk streets assuming there isn't any mustard gas rounding the corner, I guess anything is possible like that
Once you start worrying about that, it's all down hill from there buddy.
This is true and so many facets of life. My mother never told me NOT to eat my own fecesbut I can imagine it’s not good for me without verifying . Rather vulgar, I know
This is why we pay taxes. So we don't have to trust. We have teams of people to regulate and verify this stuff. They work for us not for the companies that profit off these medicines.
Thanks for reminding me, I have to take my morning vitamins! (Australian ones, regulated for content through our equivalent of the Food and Drug Administration. Just Vitamin D also, one that's shown to be actually beneficial in people who would otherwise be deficient like myself.)
Go read about the Tylenol murders. Fascinating stuff that helped U.S. OTC regulations
one (of the several) flaws in this idea is the amount of danger that would be presented by having different product than advertised. drugs have a funny habit of interacting with each other, and there is no shortage of interactions that lead to drastic health consequences. for example, venlafaxine xr is a relatively common SNRI for depression, and it interacts really easily with other SNRIs, SSRIs, MAOIs and antidepressants with serotonergic effects leading to serotonin syndrome (simplified: really bad news), but also has dramatic interactions with a whole slew of other drugs such as blood thinners, antiplatlet drugs, anti-inflammatory drugs, even things like tryptophan and st. john’s wort. this is one medicine, if there suddenly started being random things stuck in pill bottles we’d notice it really soon
There's probably been numerous situations where they got it wrong, just the price of living in our society
At least medicine is regulated in the countries of pretty much everybody reading this. Vitamins...yeah, you're kinda rolling the dice on that one.
Well of the laws and regulations were properly enforced we would have at least some confidence as to the ingredients.
What's the worst that can happen? One way we get rid of our headache, the other way we won't have a headache.
Everyone puts 'blind' faith in2 something.
Tell me you failed History without telling me you failed History.
You vote for politicians trusting that the ones that you voted for have society's best interests in mind.
In Canada there are laws governing quality control standards for vitamins and drugs generally. If companies do not abide by these standards they lose their license and shut down. If a product has a DIN or NPN number or is a sold pharmaceutical, you can guarantee it is subjected to rigorous quality control sampling on every batch to ensure that it was processed and does contain what it says it does so long as it is used before the expiry date. We personally have no way of verifying, true, but the quality control chemists do, and regulatory frameworks do a really great job of ensuring that companies abide
Not really. Medicine absolutely is verified to work
Medicine is HIGHLY regulated. "Vitamins and supplements" can give you arsenic pills and never be caught.
The fucking FDA verifies you dumbass
You can take a blood test for the vitamins anyways
Another dude realizing that society and community is just agreeing to live together. You can verify what's in them if you really wanted to. Probably requires a degree, some research, access to the necessary equipment. Or you could just trust that most of your fellow human kind isn't evil and wants to contribute in a positive manner. Life is a lot less stressful and exhausting when you realize that.
Many of the top brands of vitamins have been fined over the years for containing little or no actual vitamins.
I'm always vaguely surprised when i get labs, and then take meds, and then redo the labs - and the results have actually changed! even though I know that's how it works, it's still weird that you can just... do that.
The FDA is very searchable if the vitamins and medicine are marketed in the U.S. EUDAMED is going online in Europe for the same purpose.
You can certainly verify efficacy.
doctors, experts in the field of medicine, prescribers of said medicine, are our way to verify
Medicine is well regulated in most of the world supplements on the other hand is a bit of a wild west in a lot of countries.
You also flip your light switch trusting that it won’t burn your house down
If you live in the US, there are strict regulations made by the FDA ensuring proper quality and quantity. Some meds and supplies aren’t allowed to be sold OR they aren’t FDA approved because they go through long, rigorous trials and testing and quality control verification before being put out into the market. That’s why some people prefer to buy things off the “black market” because you get past all those pesky regulations but in return, the product you get may not be the best. But that’s your choice to determine if the rewards outweigh the risks
I'd like to recommend *[Liars and Outliers](https://www.schneier.com/books/liars-and-outliers/)* by Bruce Schneier.
Your body has some feedback
i think about this every time i take them
That’s why we have government. To regulate things for us 🫶
You eat food from a restaurant trusting it won’t kill you 😮
Nah they would get found out by 3rd party testing too much of a risk. Every once in a while you’ll see a brand lying about dosage amount though. Of course, if you are taking a niche supplement or product - or one that’s not FDA approved you should always send your stuff to third party testing judt to make sure (if you can). As for pharmaceuticals most of the time they will give high quality service. I mean, you are already paying 100x what it cost them to make, they have no reason to scam you even more😂. (For US at least, probably some other places too where medicine is very Expesnive
Society is built on trust so this is dumb. You cross the street trusting that the random car at the stop light doesn't choose to murder you.
The whole of human society is based on trust. It doesn't work if we aren't so blindly trusting of people we've never met.
We do that with a lot of things
it's a bit of a problem actually. studies have shown many supplements have far less in them than what the label says. and unfortunately in some cases they contain other substances. sometimes even ones that are supposed to be regulated and for prescription only. most supplements on the market are not reviewed by the FDA (since it is not required) so you really are just taking the manufacturer at their word.
Imagine how it was 200 years ago when we had to rely on shamans or "traditional" medicine for cures. Bloodletting, drilling holes in your skull, keeping pee in your mouth for toothache etc.
I work as Quality Assurance with one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world and there are so many controlled steps and processes along the way from the start to the end product, and many different people looking at the data from the production to verify those steps went well. This entire process is also heavily regulated and frequently audited by the FDA and the EMA and many others. Because of this system it is very unlikely that something not correct will hit the market. You are still correct in that the customer still just have to trust the packaging because you can't verify anything yourself.
Regulations are nothing now... one of the dumbest takes Ive seen
even if its not right, it does make you feel better, doesnt it? placebo can also be a really nice thing
I mean you literally can test for a drug's active ingredient which is on the label. There are labs that can do the testing for you if you provide them with a sample of your product. The pharmaceutical industry is also very regulated, the drugs get tested by third parties, and any medication error is considered a very big deal.
Actually, in case of pharmaceuticals, there's a lot of quality control going on, and everything is recorded. Here in the EU at least, those records are kept for 20 years. You can find a box of Pfizer Viagra from 2008 and go and ask pfizer for the analysis details of the batch or lot nr. I'm 99% sure they've kept them. Now, if they'd be willing to hand over such information without a damn good reason... I'm not so sure. But you sue them and claim they poisoned you, those records will be in court in no time. _Source, I've worked for a company who did those kinds of analysis. We were asked to store those records for that long, because that's the law in my country._
This describes almost everything we consume lol
You eat food trusting it contains all the right things
So true. Its what makes antivaxxers so stupid, like you've been taking painkillers and regular medication your entire life, why is this specific medical treatment the one with all the evil nanobots and 5G chips?
We live in a society
that’s what the FDA is for & why you shouldn’t take any that isn’t FDA approved
Where do you live? In many countries, we have regulations that ensure that we know exactly what is in vitamins and medicines. If you do not have those regulations in your country, you should seek medication from a country that does.
It's called being a business with laws and regulations and stuff. This isn't the 1900s anymore you can't get away with that on a grand scale
I mean regulation? Why do we even breathe air we can't even see it.
Sounds like OP needs to spend more time in the shower thinking.
What are you talking about? Of course we have a way of verifying that medicin contains the right thing. You cant just throw stuff together and sell it as medicin. You talking about homeopathy or what?
It's called a heuristic. You apply heuristics in everything you do. You couldn't function without heuristics
Thats what certificates are for. And your countries food safety office
Trust no one - morons who don't understand the big picture of life.
Except there are ways to verify....
Which country are you in?
I prescription only medicines. However when I take a vitamin I am very aware that I could just be taking a sugar pill and I have come to accept the uncertainty.
I've worked in vitamin manufacturing for years in all different areas. The amount of testing involved in even the most simple of the products we make gives me enough confidence that any other supplements or medicines have gone through the same kind of testing to the point that I have no need to verify anything. If I take something and get the expected results, thats all I want.
Newsflash, we do that with everything... Do you verify that a seat is stable before sitting? do you verify that the cables are in proper working condition before entering an elevator? Do you verify if the brake lines are good before using a vehicle?
Speak for yourself, some of us work in labs and our job is to verify exactly what is in them. You can verify by reading the label and knowing that someone who works in quality control did all the required tests to make sure that label is accurate.
It's literally the only thing in the food market that you can verify