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Originally Posted by qwerty68
You also have to be very careful. There is lots of misinformation, much of it dangerous. They all have side-effects despite the hype and some can be deadly, just not normally as bad as psych meds.
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Deadly supplements… examples? Prescription drugs in general, not just psych meds, are a leading cause of death. Lets keep things in perspective.
Quote:
Originally Posted by qwerty68
It is also very true that up to 1/3 of all supplements contain exactly none of what it says on the bottle. Lack of regulation and oversight is a serious issue. People rip on big pharma and don't seem to realize that the supplement industry is at least as large and totally unregulated. Imagine what big pharma would do if it were untethered. Well, lots of supplement companies act like that. However, there are legitimately good brands and it takes a whole lot of research to sift through the scam artists. One in particular that seems really good is Life Extension(You can buy their stuff a little cheaper on Amazon compared to their website) and there others.
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Do you have a source for the 1/3 stat? There is no supplement industry per se. There are scores of various remedies, herbs, vitamins, minerals, food extracts, animal extracts, amino acids, etc etc, which are produced by companies large and small, having little to do with one another. The companies are not part of some unified whole. Big Med pushes this false dichotomy -- drugs vs supplements. No, it's drugs vs a huge range of other approaches and remedies.
Many supplement companies are quite small, and individually or collectively their power and political influence is trivial and meaningless compared to big pharma, which virtually runs the planet. It's a rigged game.
Agree that you have to do your research though, and cant just grab any fish oil off the shelf. There are definitely s**t products and companies.
Some good supplement companies publish 3rd party test results for things like purity, potency, etc.