Food Stamps & Vitamins

Food stamp recipients can use their benefits to purchase “any food or food product intended for human consumption,” regardless of nutritional value, yet USDA policy prohibits the use of food stamps to purchase vitamin and mineral supplements whose specific function is to improve nutritional status.

Does anyone else but me object to a government policy that allows our food stamp tax dollars to be spent on sodas, potato chips, Twinkies and Oreos, but not on a basic multiple vitamin that can help prevent disease?

Airborne settles lawsuit for $23.3 million

It took 6 years for them to stop claiming their product cures the common cold, but who cared, sales of the product soared after the product was featured on the Oprah Winfrey show.

Even after the company stopped making such a claim, sales rose in the last 4 years to over $100 million a year. Yesterday Airborne agreed to compensate duped consumers $23 million.

The Moral: It's not wise for teachers to make outrageous health claims for micronutrients they know little about and to blantly ignore FDA label laws. This sort of nonsense gives the entire supplement industry an undeserved bad reputation.

Defending DSHEA

The editorial below is by Robert Watson, the President of the industry-esteemed company, Vitamin Research Products. VRP manufactures the formulations Biosyntrx designs.

" I was dismayed that baseball officials are blaming the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA) for the alleged steroid abuse by athletes. Donald Fehr, Major League Baseball’s union chief, recently testified to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform that Congress has played a role in the steroid abuse scandal by passing DSHEA in 1994.

In an interview with The New York Daily News, UCLA professor Don Catlin, who runs the Olympic lab in Los Angeles, jumped on the anti-DSHEA bandwagon, saying, “It was very clear to me that DSHEA was created in order to give the supplement manufacturers a huge shield so they could distribute steroids.”

As the President/CEO of a company that prides itself on producing well-researched, high-quality nutritional supplements that contain exactly what is listed on the label, I’m appalled at these ridiculous statements.

First, DSHEA was passed to protect the rights of consumers. Prior to DSHEA, FDA was arbitrarily treating supplements as either unapproved food additives or drugs, which they are not, restricting consumers’ access to nutritional supplements.

Second, the anabolic steroid drugs athletes are abusing cannot scientifically or ethically be compared to nutritional supplements. Hormones such as DHEA, pregnenolone and progesterone are all found naturally in the human body, do not produce the same potent effects associated with prescription anabolic steroid drugs and have been shown to enhance many aspects of health.

Fehr’s testimony has unearthed the first stirrings of DSHEA unrest in Congress. House Oversight Committee’s chairman, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), agrees with Fehr that DSHEA is ripe for review.

Fehr and the baseball industry clearly are trying to find a scapegoat to distract Congress and pull attention away from the true problem. This misguided approach is endangering DSHEA, one of the most important and beneficial laws Congress has passed. I urge you to contact your representatives and senators and ask them to continue to support DSHEA and your right to have access to nutritional supplements."

Heath Ledger, RIP

Heath Ledger was a talented young actor with a bright future. We extend our sincere sympathy to his family and friends.

If toxicology reports prove that he died from a combination of FDA approved anti-depressants and sleeping pills, we can only hope society will wake up and start to take precautions to protect our innocent children and ourselves from similar fates in the future.

The media-driven mass-medication of our population needs more controls. However, patients and parents need to take more responsibility for the drugs they put in their bodies and their children's bodies by carefully reading the drug inserts, as well as the information most pharmacists provide when they fill scripts.

An obvious question: why isn't every filled FDA prescription logged into a national data base (patient SS number, date of birth, and address, plus prescribing doctor)? Fairly simple programing of this data base could instantly alert all pharmacists to question the prescribing doctor when filling scripts that adversely react with drugs the patients is already taking, as well as expose over-prescribing physicians, and most of those patients who go from doctor to doctor for scripts for physically addicting drugs.

The Cost of Drugs

A 2007 article in Medical Economics estimated there to be 90,000 to 100,000 drug reps nationwide; each is supposed to call on eight to 10 physician offices a day.

Some practices may get only two to four visits a week, but primary care physicians deemed as "heavy prescribers" were called on by an average of 29 reps a week, according to 2005-2006 data gathered by Health Strategies Group, a research firm that tracks the pharmaceutical industry.

The cost of the drug samples being handed out daily, by almost 100,000 drug reps, is passed right on to the consumer in the price of drugs.

Once again we learn: there is no free lunch.

Fish & Fat Loss

The fact is, fish oil has a number of important health benefits. But, the idea that fish oil is some kind of magic bullet for weight loss is nothing more than a myth. You can't just pop a lot of fish oil capsules and expect your fat to melt away without making changes to your diet and exercise program first.

A study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition suggests that daily consumption of fish or fish oil is only effective for weight loss, if it is combined with moderate exercise like walking for 45 minutes three days a week.

This study looked at 75 overweight subjects for a period of six weeks who took fish oil and exercised: subjects who took fish oil and did not exercise, and subjects who took Omega-3 sunflower or flax seed oil and exercised for three days a week, vs those who took the vegetable oils and did not exercise.

The subjects who lost the most weight were in the group who ate moderate amounts of healthy foods, exercised three days a week, and took fish oil.

Are we really surprised?

Vitamin C & Stroke

A study published in the January 2008 issue of The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition suggests that persons with a mean age of 58 years with the highest levels of vitamin C had a 42% lower risk of having a stroke than did the study participants with the lowest level of plasma vitamin C.

Correlation does not always mean causation, so although data from this study cannot be used to infer a causal relation between intake or plasma concentration of vitamin C and risk of stroke, they can justifiably be used to suggest that low plasma vitamin C concentrations may serve as an excellent biological marker in identifying individuals at high risk of stroke.

It's important to note that data from this study and others suggests that smoking dramatically lowers plasma vitamin C. So, if you are still smoking - give it up!