One Significant Difference between Pharmaceuticals and Alternative Remedies [View all]

[MineralMan]

Here's an interesting exercise anyone can do:

Go to websites for pharmaceutical companies and also to purveyors of alternative supplements and medications. Read the product information on both.

On the pharmaceutical company website, you'll find copies of patient inserts for all of the medications they sell. In that insert, you can read about the conditions the medication is prescribed for, along with a description of how the medication functions in your body. You'll also find contraindications for that medication, a list of conditions under which it should not be taken. You'll find a long, sometimes frightening list of possible side effects of the medication, with some indication of how common those are, and instructions for what to do should you experience those side effects. If regular blood tests or other monitoring is needed for the medication, you'll see those described as well. Those patient inserts are long, complicated, and use actual medical terminology. You may have to go look up some of the words that are used, even though they attempt to make them as understandable as possible.

On the supplement or alternative medication website, you'll find something different. You'll find a sales pitch, with claims that the supplement or whatever does nebulous things like "supports something" or other weasel-worded claims for the product. You won't find a list of diseases that the product is designed to treat or cure, because that's illegal. It's illegal because there's no evidence that it is effective in treating or curing anything. You won't find a detailed list of reasons not to take the product or contraindications. You won't find a list of all of the possible side effects of using the product. You won't find details about how the product actually functions, either. You will find a lot of nice words that mean almost nothing, but that are glowing about the "benefits" of consuming the product.

The difference is the FDA. The FDA requires those detailed patient inserts, with all of the information they contain. The FDA does not regulate supplements and alternative remedies, except that it makes it illegal to make claims that those products actually treat anything or cure anything. The supplement industry has learned to walk the line very carefully in the words they use. Often, they have to change the wording after receiving a stern letter from the FDA, but no matter. They'll just come up with some other words. The pharmaceutical companies can't do that. They have to provide complete information on their products to consumers, and that's what they do.

Everyone needs to do their own homework about the medications or other products they use with regard to their health. If the information isn't there for a product, that's for a reason. If you can't find out that information from the company selling the product, then that product may not work, may have risks you don't learn, and may just be a waste of your money.

Everyone owes it to himself or herself to do the homework required to understand what they are taking for an illness or other medical reason. If that homework isn't done, the results may not be as expected or you may be wasting money on useless products. If you can't find the information you should have, then there's probably a reason for that.