what is the danger of uncontrolled reception – Picture of the day – Kommersant
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What are dietary supplements, how do they differ from drugs and when taking them can be dangerous – in the material “Kommersant”.
What are dietary supplements and when to take them
By data Rospotrebnadzor, only 10% of Russians receive all the necessary vitamins and substances from food. Our diet most often lacks proteins, polyunsaturated fatty acids, vitamins and micronutrients. Many compensate for the deficiency of nutrients with the help of tablets, capsules, powders or mixtures.
Preparations containing substances that a person does not receive with his usual food are called biologically active food supplements (BAA). By data Rospotrebnadzor, dietary supplements are taken by 8–20% of Russians.
Before buying them, you should definitely take tests and consult a doctor. They may not be required or simply be harmful, for example, if the complex contains calcium, and its concentration in the blood serum is already increased. Doctors call this condition hypercalcemia. Iodine is prohibited in certain thyroid diseases. Vitamin D, now popular in dosages of 10,000 units, is used only for serious medical reasons. It should be sold strictly according to prescriptions, but this is not always the case. According to SRO “Union of manufacturers of dietary supplements for food”, experts fix 100-150 drugs per week with prohibitive dosages of vitamins – an overabundance is just as dangerous as a deficiency.
In network laboratories, a comprehensive analysis for vitamins costs about 10–20 thousand rubles. The most important vitamins, such as D and B12, can be taken at the city clinic under the CHI program – you won’t have to pay for these tests. If the tests show a deficiency of some vitamin, the doctor himself will select the drugs and the correct dosages.
If the diet is balanced, nutritional supplements are most often not needed. The main thing is that the menu constantly includes dairy products, vegetable oils and nuts, vegetables and fruits, different varieties of fish and liver. Athletes do not need dietary supplements recommended at all.
How are they different from drugs?
Dietary supplements are not considered medicines. They are used only for the prevention of diseases or as auxiliary substances to the main drugs.
All medicines are tested. Researchers are testing not only how safe they are, but also how effective they are for various diseases. Studies on the effectiveness of dietary supplements are often not conducted or show negative results.
What is the danger of uncontrolled intake of dietary supplements
Often, dietary supplements contain substances that are not declared in the composition of the drug, which means that the effect may be unpredictable, figured out researchers from the California Department of Public Health. According to their calculations, 23,000 Americans a year go to the emergency room because of the use of dietary supplements. Of these, about 2 thousand are hospitalized.
Pavel Vorobyov, Chairman of the Moscow City Scientific Society of Therapists:
– Unfortunately, in medical practice there are cases when doctors recommend certain dietary supplements or dietary supplements to patients, which, from my point of view, is completely unacceptable. In most countries of the world, a doctor does not have the right to prescribe dietary supplements to a patient. These are not medicines, but dietary supplements, and their medicinal value is highly questionable. In addition, such ersatz medicines are often not investigated by anyone, and no one really knows what they contain.
Drugs go through a long stage of research on the chemical composition, their toxicity, gene and oncogenic tests are carried out on animals, only then on humans. Dietary supplements do not go through any of this, the seller simply registers them at the Institute of Nutrition and distributes them on the market as a food additive, and sometimes he himself does not know what he “drilled” there. Whether there is any therapeutic effect from them – only God knows. There would be no objection if these were really food-enhancing additives, but they are widely advertised and used as medicines. And this is unacceptable. We know many cases when the massive intake of dietary supplements led to sad consequences.
At one time, “pseudo-craftsmen” put drugs like “Viagra” into the medicinal shell, told everyone how this “innocent weed” helps, but everything was the other way around. There was a whole epidemic of deaths from taking certain Thai dietary supplements. This exotic is full of narcotic, potent substances, everything is not as harmless as it seems. Let me remind you that half of the medicines are also made from herbs and plants: for example, vinblastine for the treatment of tumors, digoxin for the treatment of heart failure – these are not harmless things, and before doctors began to use them, they underwent lengthy studies and tests.
How to control the intake of dietary supplements
Before buying, you need to check the composition of dietary supplements: are there any contraindications or allergies to its components; if you buy a drug on a foreign site, does the composition meet the requirements of Russian doctors and authorities. Three technical regulations of the Customs Union “On Food Safety”, about 300 plants and substances are prohibited from being included in dietary supplements. Buyers with diabetes need to separately check the amount of glucose – often it turns out to be high.
If the full composition and dosage of the components are not indicated on the preparation, it is better to look for an analogue or completely refuse to buy.
By estimated players in the pharmaceutical industry, about 1% of dietary supplements are fakes. Therefore, buyers should study the manufacturer (does the company conduct medical research, is it invited to professional conferences, is it published positive reviews outside the corporate website) and the origin of the drug. On a pack of dietary supplements, a QR code is most often glued. With it, you can track the path of the product from the manufacturer to the counter. It is best to buy dietary supplements in offline pharmacies – they do not have the right to sell unregistered drugs.
In addition, you can find out the international generic name of the drug and check if the drug is approved by foreign regulators FDA or EMA. Try to drive it on the sites:
https://www.accessdata.fda.gov
If the patient has already bought a dietary supplement and is preparing to take it, you need to study the instructions. In it you can find what dosages are recommended (taken once or twice a day, a whole tablet or half), the optimal time to take it (before or after a meal), the timing of the intake (for example, no more than a month), the required amount of water (a sip or a glass ), compatibility with other drugs and food – dietary supplements may not be combined with important medications that the patient takes for serious chronic diseases (for example, weaken or increase the effect of heart drugs). Active additives themselves are not recommended to be taken with coffee or oatmeal – they reduce the effect.
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