Supplements vs. Pharmaceuticals
“Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.” –Hippocrates (Father of Western Medicine)
Like food, dietary supplements are one of the safest things we put in our bodies. Products like multivitamins, omega-3/fish oil, vitamin D, vitamin C, and calcium can be used to fortify your health or treat ailments and they are part of the regular health routine of millions of Americans.
According to the most recent report of the American Association of Poison Control Centers ’ National Poison Data System (NPDS), dietary supplements caused ZERO deaths, in stark comparison to 125,000 deaths per year caused by pharmaceutical drugs that are taken correctly. In fact, you are far more likely to die from a lightening strike or plane crash than by taking a dietary supplement.
Since passage of the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA) more than 20 years ago, regulators have rightly treated dietary supplements as a category of food, presumed to be safe for consumption just like food.
With dietary supplements’ strong record of safe usage, especially compared to pharmaceuticals which go through years of pre-market safety testing and still cause hundreds of thousands of deaths each year, it is clear where any efforts at increased safety regulation should be focused. However, misinformed politicians and self-interested pharmaceutical companies continue to push for a pre-market approval system for dietary supplements which runs contrary to logic and more than 20 years of successful dietary supplement regulation.
