Nutraceuticals and nootropics for anti-aging

Skirmishes in the War Against Supplements

Governments with a totalitarian bent continue to gear up for a War Against Supplements. Apparently the tremendous success of their War Against Drugs has motivated these drug warriors to expand their efforts into new territory. If they have their way, we can look forward to a continued flourishing of the Law Enforcement Industry — more police, more federal agents, more smugglers, more gangs, more raids, more trials, more lawyers, more prisons ... and fewer resources available for productive or enjoyable activities, and less freedom for all of us.

The totalitarians preparing this War Against Supplements have a motley assortment of allies:

• Law enforcement zealots, who crave control over people;
• The medical cartel, that aims to make people pay physicians for access to any effective life-enhancement technique;
• Naive or unscrupulous journalists, for whom a dramatic-sounding story is better than an honest story;
• Lazy, witless parents, who don’t want to think for themselves, don’t want to learn anything new, don’t want to give their children guidance, and imagine that the government can “protect” their kids by banning anything that has received bad press;
• Nutrition-oriented neo-Luddites, who focus obsessively on the “naturalness” of products rather than on their effectiveness.

The following links are to news stories that illustrate some of these points.

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The Times Union, a newspaper in Albany, New York, appears to be an eager participant in the War Against Supplements. Here are three links to three anti-supplement stories that appeared recently in this newspaper’s pages.

The first article illustrates how two high school coaches indoctrinated their students with irrational ideas about health, food, and athletics:

Eat right, exercise, forget the pills

The second article uses a supplement success story as an introduction to a diatribe against supplements:

Pumping up in the danger zone

A third article gives good press to a U.S. senator who hopes to be a leader in the War Against Supplements:

Crusade on to ban ‘andro’

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Athletic enhancers are a natural target of the War Against Supplements, since it is easy to get thoughtless people riled up over sports issues. Athletic enhancers include not only anabolic prohormones like androstenedione, but also energy boosters like creatine. The demonization of creatine is already underway in France. Here is a link to a short article containing a passing remark about creatine that illustrates some of the psychology involved — the implied association between creatine use and being unclean:

France plan full World Cup trial

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Not all sports journalists are irrational or lazy. Dayn Perry is one who thinks and writes thoughtfully instead of parroting whatever is currently ideologically fashionable. His discussion of steroids in professional baseball is worth reading, even if you don’t care a whit about the sport itself.

Pumped-Up Hysteria

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A Reuters article about the supplement “kava” reports that Britain is about to ban it. Why? Because “research found it can cause liver failure in rare cases,” according to the British government. In fact, it has been linked (not necessarily convincingly) to four deaths worldwide.

A rational person might wonder whether there is a hidden agenda behind this move. After all, the same claim was made back in the 1980s about anabolic steroids and was used as a reason to make them illegal — yet a later investigation showed that none of the claimed liver problems could be convincingly traced to steroid use.

It is interesting to compare the purported dangers of kava with the much better data available for almost any commonly used drug — for example, acetaminophen (a.k.a. Tylenol or paracetamol). Acetaminophen overdoses cause about 70,000 poisoning cases per year and 200 deaths from liver failure in Britain alone. About 25% of these poisonings are accidental, rather than suicide attempts. Yet the British government isn’t considering banning acetaminophen. Why not? Because acetaminophen has big money and physician support behind it. Politicians and bureaucrats prefer easier targets and lower risks of embarrassing defeats. So they focus instead upon kava, demonize it and ban it. They don’t really care that the case against kava is pathetically weak, because they are motivated by the desire for publicity and power, not effective government. And the U.S. may not be far behind.

Link to Reuters story about kava:

Britain to Ban Kava Herbal Medicines

Links to studies of acetaminophen poisoning:

Deaths from low dose paracetamol poisoning

Paracetamol self-poisoning

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To end this article on a positive note, here is a Reuters article about the labelling of food. New FDA rules will now allow food manufacturers to make health claims on food labels as long as the “weight of scientific evidence” supports the claim. Until now, such claims were allowed only if manufacturers could show that they were supported by complete agreement among scientists — a situation that rarely occurs.

FDA Cracks Down on Supplements, Eases Up on Food

What the Reuters story fails to mention is that the FDA was motivated not by a desire for truth in labelling, but rather was being forced to comply with Supreme Court decisions that had gone against the agency. In 1999 the FDA lost a major court battle over supplement labelling. It was clear that the FDA had been acting in violation of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The FDA changed its rules regarding supplement labelling, but continued its First Amendment violations against the food industry. Finally the food industry made it clear that unless the FDA changed its policies immediately, the industry would simply ignore FDA labeling rules. The following link to a grocery industry press release provides some background information:

FDA Should Immediately Withdraw, Revise Unconstitutional Disease Claims Rules