Down the Hatch: Swallowing the Supplement Story

Maybe you’ve heard that pregnant women should take an iron supplement, that men over 50 need fish oil for heart heath, or that postmenopausal women should take vitamin D to ward off osteoporosis. Maybe you take a multivitamin every day. With our busy lives of fast-food meals, corporate meetings, and carpool lanes, we could all use a little extra health boost, right? And supplements are safe—you can pick them up at any pharmacy, and they’re totally natural—so even if it turns out that vitamin C doesn’t really prevent you from catching colds or melatonin doesn’t really help you sleep any better, the worst they can do is nothing, right?

Maybe not.

Let’s look at some of the most common vitamin and mineral supplements we’ve all heard about. When you were a child and you got sick, you may have been told to drink lots of orange juice because vitamin C can help cure colds. As it turns out, getting enough vitamin C is important for several reasons. It’s needed to make collagen, an important part of the connective tissues in your body; it’s an antioxidant that may help reduce your risk of heart disease and cancer; and it helps your body to make the white blood cells that fight off infections (Blake, 2012).

Another vitamin you’ve likely heard about is vitamin D. “Drink your milk, it will make you grow big and strong!” Does that ring a bell? Good—there’s a ring of truth to that old mantra. Vitamin D helps absorb the calcium in your body and works to build and maintain your bones; it may also help prevent certain types of cancers and type 2 diabetes, and may even play a role in your immune system and help reduce high blood pressure (Blake, 2012).

If you hear the word potassium, you likely think of bananas—this is the fruit everyone seems to know we should eat to get plenty of this mineral. Potassium plays a role in contracting your muscles, including the most important muscle—your heart. It can also help lower high blood pressure, aid in bone health, and even reduce your risk of developing kidney stones (Blake, 2012).

What about iron? It’s a key component of your blood. Iron helps transport oxygen to all the tissues in your body, stores oxygen in your muscles, and brings carbon dioxide waste to your lungs so it can leave your body. Iron also aids in developing neurotransmitters in your brain that send messages to the rest of your body. Because of this, children who don’t get enough iron can end up with a reduced ability to learn and have decreased cognitive abilities later in life (Blake, 2012).

Clearly, these nutrients are crucial to keep us functioning. So why not run to the store and pick them up in supplement form, to keep your body functioning its best?

Despite the benefits, there is danger in too much of a good thing—especially in supplement form. Taking more than 3,000 milligrams of vitamin C per day can cause nausea, stomach cramps, and diarrhea; too much can also lead to the formation of kidney stones in people with a history of kidney disease. Too much vitamin D from supplements can lead to nausea, vomiting, and constipation. Extremely high amounts can lead to too much calcium in the blood, which can cause damaging calcium deposits in your kidneys, lungs, blood vessels, and heart. Too much potassium in the blood can cause irregular heartbeats, damaging the heart, and can be life-threatening. And consuming too much iron from supplements can cause constipation, nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea; in the United States, the accidental consumption of supplements containing iron is a leading cause of poisoning deaths in children under age 6. Curiously, the dangers from these vitamins and minerals are found only when taking them in supplement form—frequently, consuming larger amounts of these nutrients from natural food sources poses little or no threat (Blake, 2012).

Why are essential nutrients so potentially dangerous when taken as supplement pills instead of absorbed from natural food sources? Part of the problem could be a lack of clinical trials, safety testing, and government regulation. Unlike prescription medications, which undergo clinical trials to test for safety, efficacy, and potential side effects and interactions—all of which must be reported to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)—supplements have no such regulations in place. Instead, it’s left up to the manufacturers—who want you to buy their supplements so they can turn a profit—to decide if the product is safe enough for you to use. Also unlike with prescription drugs, it’s the manufacturer, not the FDA, who makes sure the labels on supplements are truthful and not misleading. This means that supplement manufacturers aren’t legally obligated to tell you about any possible dangers of taking their product. It’s only required that products marketed as supplements say on the label, “This statement has not been evaluated by the FDA. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease”

(“Dietary Supplements — Q&A,” 2012).

Now that you know more about some of the dangers of supplements, and the lack of regulation, you may be asking yourself two questions: If they’re not intended to treat, prevent, or cure any disease, why am I taking them? And if they’re so dangerous, what can I do instead to get these essential nutrients without all the risks?

The good news is, nature has provided all the nutrients, vitamins, and minerals you need, oftentimes grown from the ground and occurring naturally in the environment; not synthesized in a laboratory or factory; not kept in a plastic bottle with a childproof lid. If you eat a healthy, balanced diet consisting mainly of whole, unprocessed foods, you can give your body everything it needs.

For example, vitamin C can be found in oranges, grapefruit, tomatoes, peppers, potatoes, broccoli, and cantaloupe. You can get vitamin D from fortified milk, breakfast cereals, and juices, as well as fatty fish like salmon and sardines. Leafy greens, dairy, bananas, and legumes are excellent sources of potassium, while iron comes from meat, fish, poultry, grains, and iron-enriched bread. And in most cases, the average person can meet their required intake of these nutrients through a balanced diet, with no supplements necessary. (Blake, 2012).

The important thing to remember when it comes to nutrients is that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts—in other words, eating whole fruits and vegetables and a balanced, varied diet will give you more bang for your buck. Whole foods contain more than just the vitamins found in pills on pharmacy shelves—they offer elements like disease-fighting chemicals, antioxidants, and fiber, and the substances in food all work together to keep you healthy. Supplements can be just that—a way to supplement your healthy, balanced diet if you aren’t meeting all your needs; but they should never take the place of healthy, natural food sources (Blake, 2012).

Strawberries; poultry; cereal; milk; cheese; broccoli; potatoes; shrimp. Doesn’t a day, a week, and a lifetime of delicious foods with a variety of flavors and textures sound more appetizing than popping another pill?

Dig in!

Blake, J.S. (2012). Nutrition and You: Myplate Edition. San Fransisco, CA: Pearson

Education.

FDA (2012). Dietary Supplements — Q&A. Retrieved from             http://www.fda.gov/Food/DietarySupplements/ConsumerInformation/ucm191930.htm#what_info