Question

1. Identify two concerns and/or complications about mega-dosing (>120%RDA) supplements or vitamins and minerals?

2. What are two arguments for and two against taking a vitamin/ mineral supplement?

Answer 1

vitamins are no longer nutrients but drugs. Few if any drugs are free of adverse effects when taken into the body in large amounts for prolonged periods.

1. severe nervous-system dysfunction after daily megadoses of vitamin B6, or pyridoxine.severe nervous-system dysfunction after daily megadoses of vitamin B6, or pyridoxine.

Hypervitaminosis D is a state of vitamin D toxicity. The normal range for blood concentration is 30.0 to 74.0 nanograms per milliliter

An excess of vitamin D causes abnormally high blood concentrations of calcium, which can cause overcalcification of the bones, soft tissues, heart and kidneys. In addition, hypertension can result.[2] Symptoms of vitamin D toxicity may include the following:

• Dehydration
• Vomiting
• Diarrhea
• Decreased appetite
• Irritability
• Constipation
• Fatigue
• Muscle weakness
• Metastatic calcification of the soft tissues

2. he Dietary Supplement and Health Education Act of 1994 (DSHEA) was intended to meet the concerns of consumers and manufacturers to help ensure that safe and appropriately labeled products, including dietary supplements, remain available to those who want to use them. The assumption behind the Act is that there may be a "positive relationship between sound dietary practice and good health."

The reality is that dietary supplements have not lived up to the promise of the DSHEA.

· Supplement products affect the way the body works in the same way that prescription drugs do. Doesn't it make sense to use the same set of rules and regulations governing prescription drugs to approve the marketing of dietary supplements?

· Unlike all other drugs, the manufacturers of these products don't have to show that there is evidence that their products actually work. Manufacturers are required to put this warning on their labels: "These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease." If the product is not intended to treat, cure or prevent any disease, what is it to be used for?

· If supplements actually worked , they must have risks as well as benefits. No medicinal product is without side effects. No drug is entirely safe even if taken as directed. Yet, supplement manufacturers don't have to show that their products, which they call supplements instead of drugs, are safe or effective. Unlike the drugs regulated by the FDA, it is up to the regulators to show the product is unsafe. That may not sound bad, except for the fact that, unlike producers of drugs, the manufacturers of supplements don't have to tell the FDA about problems they discover with their products.