Sweden’s supplement restrictions show why mandatory registration for supplements in the US is such a disastrous idea. Action Alert!
For a while now, ANH-USA has been reporting on Senator Durbin’s (D-IL) efforts to limit access to dietary supplements. We’ve said that this legislation brings us closer to a European-style system in which high-dose supplements are effectively banned. This isn’t an exaggeration, as Sen. Durbin, the original architect of these supplement restrictions, and his allies may want you to believe. Just last month, Sweden moved to change its vitamin D and iodine limits; before that, Sweden started a process to adopt the supplement limits set by European Union (EU) regulators. The point is, once we start moving down this road, it will become more and more difficult to prevent similar restrictions in the US.
It may not seem all that scary that a country across the Atlantic Ocean is preparing to set limits on vitamin D and iodine. Maybe you don’t even use those supplements. But the point is that this is the blueprint for US regulators if Sen. Durbin’s mandatory product registration for supplements passes. Restrictions may start on supplements you don’t care about, but the ones you do care about will be next.
Last month, Swedish authorities released a proposal to limit vitamin D dosages to 4,000 IU (100 mcg) and iodine doses in supplements to 200 mcg. For vitamin D, a 4,000 IU limit may not seem all that bad, but the problem is that it limits the tools available to patients and integrative doctors unnecessarily. For example, for significant vitamin D deficiency, doctors may advise patients to take a mega-dose of 50,000 IU vitamin D once a week for six to eight weeks. Vitamin D deficiency and insufficiency is also more common than you might think. About 40 percent of the US population is vitamin D deficient; 95 percent of Americans don’t meet the government’s benchmarks for adequate vitamin D intake. Integrative medicine experts often recommend taking 5,000 to 8,000 IU vitamin D during the winter months.
Such restrictions will make it harder for Swedes to deal with vitamin D insufficiency and deficiency, which are linked to a host of negative health outcomes including: heart disease, diabetes, infections and immune disorders, cancer, multiple sclerosis, and more. Deficiency also means we are not reaping the health benefits of the sunshine vitamin, which include: maintaining bone health, supporting immune, brain, and nervous system health, regulating insulin levels, supporting lung and cardiovascular health, and more. It isn’t hard to see why so much evidence links poor vitamin D status to negative COVID outcomes.
A 200 microgram limit on iodine is also absurd. When iodine intake falls below a certain level, hypothyroidism occurs; about ten million Americans are hypothyroid, and about 10 percent of women have some degree of thyroid hormone deficiency. When a patient is low in iodine, integrative doctors will start them on 25 milligrams a day—which is 25,000 micrograms!—and potentially more if the patient has an endocrine disease. Higher doses of iodine have other clinical uses, such as for cyclic mastalgia (breast pain).
But the vitamin D and iodine limits are the just the tip of the iceberg in Sweden’s march toward supplement restrictions. In 2018, Sweden proposed using the “tolerable upper limits” (ULs) for vitamins and minerals created by the European Food Safety Authority (the EU equivalent of the FDA) as legally-binding maximum permitted levels. We’ve demonstrated some of the consequences of these absurd limits in recent coverage, such as restrictions on vitamin D, magnesium, and vitamin B6.
If you think that this can’t happen in the US, think again. The framework is already in place for US regulators to do exactly what Sweden is doing in restricting the amount of nutrients supplements can deliver to you based on ULs. US authorities developed ULs for a variety of vitamins and minerals years ago. In fact, a previous version of Sen. Durbin’s bill included an additional section calling on the Department of Health and the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) to create a list of supplement ingredients that could cause “potentially serious adverse events.” NASEM is the very body that created ULs for nutrients in the US. It seems obvious, then, that Sen. Durbin intends for his bill to be used to eliminate high-dose supplements; this second section was omitted in the current bill, but we believe his intent and long-term plan is the same. In fact, the new version of the bill specifically requires companies to submit the amount per serving of ingredients and the percent of the daily value of each ingredient.
All of the pieces are falling into place to eliminate the supplements that compete with drug companies. This isn’t just speculation. In 2018, at the request of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, NASEM convened a workshop to look at how to standardize supplement dosages across the world. The big players, like the pharmaceutical giants and the supplement companies they own, want global harmonization because it makes it easier to do business. These discussions are being had, hidden behind layer upon layer of bureaucracy. This is a very real threat.
We cannot let Sen. Durbin and his allies succeed.
Action Alert! Write to your representative and urge them to sign on to a Congressional letter opposing the inclusion of this terrible supplement proposal in the reauthorization of the Prescription Drug User Fee Act. Please send your message immediately.
This article states that 40% of Americans are deficient in vitamin D, and 95% don’t meet the government’s recommendations for intake. So, why is it that over half of that 95% is not deficient? I’ll tell you why, it’s the same reason I’m not deficient in vitamin D, and I take no supplements at all. I get enough sunlight, even in winter days, that my body produces enough D. Supplements, of limited dosages or not, should not be required for the great majority of Americans. The only reason people need them today is because our foods are so unhealthy. We have leached the vitamins and minerals out of our farmlands, and have replaced them with artificial fertilizers, usually made from natural gas, and chemical toxins already banned in Europe. If you want to make a positive difference in American health, tell Congress to force the FDA and EPA to ban all chemicals Europe has already banned, and to start taking steps to end the profit-only factory farms and go back to proper farming practices. Not only will that improve American health, it will also open markets to our farmers that our policies have kept closed for decades.
Sweden is controlled as is the rest of the globe by global elite bankers who are only concerned about making more money. They do not care about humanity other than having them as serve as minions or worse.
Looks like they want to make us sick by limiting one master hormone Vitamin D.
The authorities know all too well why newborn babies should have 400 IU ov vitamin D3. Without that amount too many childern will have rachitis before the age of one year
As an old pediatrician I would not dare to giva an adult’s dose of a drug to a newborn as the child may die. Nor would I give a dose of a newborn to an adult, dose is too small to work.
The authorities seems to be mathematical illiterate as they can not calculate the answer to the following simple equation
400 IU/3 kg*75 kg=
A newborn baby has a normal birthweight of about 3 kg (7 lb), an adult has a “normal” wight of 75 kg (165 lb)
All but the authorities will easily find the answer to be
10 000 IU per day
An intake of less than 5 000 IU per day gives vitamin D3 deficiency of less than 125 nM (<50 ng/mL) which is the physiological lower limit of D3 in the blood.
In Sweden there are more than 99 % of the population that are vitamin D3 deficient (below 125 nM/50ng/mL
The sun in Sweden is below 30º over the horizon during six months of the year and all days are not sunny, most days there are clouds preventing the UVB to reach the people that needs the vitamin D3
To have 10 000 IU via the sun I have to stay in the sun for at least 4 hours a day with 75 % naked skin