A Bit About Health Supplements

I have taken health supplements most of my life. When I was a child, my mother was into vitamins and some supplements like Lecithin and calcium. When we sat down to dinner, the Vitamin E and C and Lecithin tablets were always sitting next to the dinner plates.

I never tried herbs, though, until I had a spate of fatigue (some CFS/ME) a few years ago, when I discovered Ginseng, and it pulled me out of it.

Ginseng is one of the herbal supplements I use frequently. There are numerous brands, some work better than others. The liquid concentrates -- like the ones pictured here -- I have found to be pretty effective.

When I discovered that Ginseng really worked, I looked into other supplements. Over the years I've taken several. Ginseng, St. John's, Lecithin, numerous vitamins, Rhodiola, Eleuthero, Goat Weed, Valerian, and a few others. I also take a couple workout supplements that have amino acids, including arginine and citrulline, which help with working out.

Recently, there were a few media attacks on supplement makers and sellers by a major consumer's magazine and an attorney general's office in New York or another Eastern state.

They had found that some supplement bottles they grabbed and tested, which they got from several major drug chains, had very little of the supplements listed on the bottle's label.

For example, one store's brand of Ginseng had very little Ginseng in it: if I remember correctly, the capsules mostly had ground up leaves of some harmless, but non-beneficial Chinese decorative plant.

I have sometimes suspected that some bottles of supplements had too much filler... But most brands I've tried had a real effect to varying degrees.

There are a couple brands of Ginseng, for example, which I avoid because I can tell they just don't work for me. Other brands work much, much better. The brands that don't work may be watered down with fillers -- or maybe they just don't work with my metabolism for some reason. Sometimes it's hard to tell. You take the capsule apart and it still tastes like Ginseng, but weaker. But some brands have more Ginseng in them than others. They don't always cost more, either.

As for purity, often you can tell whether a supplement is genuine or not because herbs and some amino acids have a definite smell and taste to them. St. John's and Goat Weed, for example, have a pleasant earthy smell. Ginseng has a bittersweet smell when you open the bottle. It also -- like St. John's and Goat Weed -- has a distinctive flavor. Valerian has pungent, minty smell, and Saw Palmetto has a pungent sweet smell.

Some of the recent media articles against supplements also mentioned that they don't work. This is not true.

When my stepfather died a few years ago, I had a small bout of depression. St. John's seemed to help. This brand no longer seems to be available, but most brands with the extract are probably just as good.

Supplements can work -- but just like prescription drugs, not every supplement will work for every person. There are numerous types of prescription drugs for people with allergies, for example. The reason there are so many is not just because different drug manufacturers come up with their own formulas: it's also because one drug may not work, while another allergy drug actually will. When I had allergies in the late 1990's, every allergy drug was useless except one over-the-counter brand which did little more than make me tired.

It's the same with supplements. I always tell friends that if they are going to try a supplement, start out with very low amounts and pay attention to your body. Also, some supplements take time to 'kick in'. Always educate yourself about the supplement ahead of time. If you take prescription medicines, or over the counter medicines, look up the information on the supplement to make sure it won't interfere with the medicine, or talk to your doctor. Doctors today are much better informed about supplements than they were when I was a child.

Despite some negative press, there have been clinical trials done with many supplements proving that many of them do actually work, although not often in the fantastic way promoted on some supplement labels.

The US National Institutes of Health PubMed website has numerous studies listed, covering most of the supplements I mentioned above. The following is a list of studies including Ginseng:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=Ginseng

At the top of the website is a box you can use to enter the name of a supplement or herb if you want to find out what studies have shown.