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Natural medications vs pharmaceutical remedies

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    Natural medications vs pharmaceutical remedies

    Hello Everyone. Many people often want to take a more natural way to good mental health and I'm all for that. What I can't seem to get people to believe is that we have to be very careful when buying items like St John's Wort(a naturally occurring anti depressant). A number of yrs ago, a very large company got caught selling St John's wort without any St John's Wort in it to both small health food stores and to large box stores. I cannot name that company as I cannot find the article(s) that I read about. They paid a fine and went on their way. It seems that rather than curbing the problem, the fine was just a license to do business.

    Please read the following exerts : If you’re picking up your ginseng or St. John’s Wort at Walmart, you may not be getting what you pay for. A recent investigation by the New York attorney general’s office found that many of the store-brand herbal supplements sold at Walmart, Target, Walgreen’s, and GNC didn’t contain any DNA from the plants listed on the label. Walmart was the worst offender of the bunch, with only 4% of products testing positive for the labeled ingredients. Its ginkgo biloba supplements were actually powdered radish, houseplants, and wheat, the New York Times reported. source http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/0...etailers/?_r=2 Cease and desist orders have been issued to the above companies.

    Worse still some of the fillers were known to cause alergies. (wheat, legumes)

    According to the Washington Post : In the past five years, tainted supplements have been associated with kidney failure, hepatitis and other problems.

    Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...-fake-herbals/ That article also contains a link to a Canadian study done in 2013 that showed :

    "Of 44 herbal supplements tested, one-third showed outright substitution, meaning there was no trace of the plant advertised on the bottle — only another plant in its place."

    From what I have read over the yrs it is the lack if regulation and of course greed that has lead to problems like this in this industry. Are small health food stores any better? I don't know. I know that when I ran a small retail store(not a health food store) The same salesman called on me that called on Wal Mart as there are only so many suppliers of certain items. These salesman would often even offer to have a well known box store product packaged and sold under the name of my store if I agreed to buy a certain minimum.

    Just so you know I do take some supplements and vitamins. I'm not sure how I'm going to do it, but I'm going to be asking some pointed questions the next time I pick those items up. Take Care. paul m



    "Alone we can do so little;
    Together we can do so much"
    Helen Keller

    #2
    There has been attempt by the Health Canada to regulate this industry by requiring product information, such as safety and efficacy, to be submitted to Health Canada. The product is then assigned an NPN (Natural Health Product number). It is by far a system that needs much fine tuning, but it's a start, I'll give them that.



    Enforcing regulations when companies don't meet the standards is where things get derailed.


    The other problem is not only may it not have what is stated on the bottle, products coming from some countries have ingredients and or contaminants, sometimes prescription ingredients, that aren't listed on the bottle. There are products that find their way onto store shelves that shouldn't be there.

    Aside from setting up a home lab to test products you buy from the store, there are unfortunately no guarantees.





    AJ

    Humans punish themselves endlessly
    for not being what they believe they should be.
    -Don Miguel Ruiz-

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      #3
      Good info. So there's more work to be done in this area than I had hoped....
      uni

      ~ it's always worth it ~

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