Food
Dietary supplements
Category: Food
Type
Involuntary
Introduction and description
If we exclude vitamin supplements and mineral supplements both of which have entries on this site under the heading of food, what is left are dietary supplements. What is a dietary supplement? It has no true definition - something which can be eaten to supplement the diet is about as far as we can go.
There is something bizarre about the existence of dietary supplements. In countries where the availability of fresh food – vegetables, fish, meat, fruit, and other natural food stuffs has never been better, dietary supplements seem to be prevalent. You don't find dietary supplements in sub-sahara Africa.
So it is a money thing, the chance for companies to make money from the instilled fear in individuals that somehow they are not getting enough vitamins and minerals or whatever else they have been told they need, from what they eat, or that their illnesses are somehow diet related.
Their illness may be diet related, but the solution is of course to adjust the diet, not take supplements.
There are more than 50,000 dietary supplements available in the USA alone. More than half of the U.S. adult population (53% - 55%) consume dietary supplements of one sort or another. The supplements are not regulated and with the number available cannot be regulated. The government simply lacks the funds or clout needed to do so. Even if it found a supplement to be dangerous, by the time the manufacturer had been taken through the courts they would have gone like the wind and opened up again with a new name and a new product.
In the USA again, the Dietary Supplement Health And Education Act of 1994 restricted the Food and Drug Administration from exerting authority over supplements, as long as manufacturers made no claims about preventing or treating disease. As a result, the FDA currently regulates dietary supplements as a category of food, and not pharmaceutical drugs.
In contrast with pharmaceutical manufacturers — who must go through a process of regulation before their product is released — supplement manufacturers do not have to do this. In theory, supplement manufacturers must, however, indicate a product is safe prior to introduction. The product cannot be marketed for 75 days following filing of information about it with the FDA, in theory to enable the FDA to check its safety. In practice, however, the FDA has said it has lacked funds to determine whether a given supplement should be considered "hazardous".
According to the U.S. National Institutes of Health quite a number of these products are dangerous.
There are literally thousands of studies on PubMed on the adverse effects of these products, but this website is about spiritual experiences, not the safety and efficacy of supplements, as such I have limited myself to a few of the many reports I found involving hallucinations and other 'interesting' experiences. Some of these were death experiences. Randomized clinical trials of certain supplements found 'increasing mortality rates'.
How it works
The one thing I cannot do is say how they work to give the experience, as generally speaking the true content of the supplements is unknown.
There are numerous instances where on testing supplements, it has been found that the stated foods in the packets have been supplemented with known drugs and pharmaceuticals, as such the cause of hallucinations could be anything. In the end, people are getting these experiences from poisoning.
Related observations
Hallucination
- 'Ginkgo biloba' supplements 019196
- Acetyl-L-carnitine 015633
- Acetylcysteine 015634
- Acute psychosis following ingestion of 'Rapture' 020727
- Acute psychosis requiring hospital treatment 002173
- Amino acid supplements 017991
- Bath salts analysis 005808
- Bath salts, plant foods and hallucinations 005791
- Beta carotene food colouring and supplements 018038
- Beta carotene supplements 018902
- Bitter orange, hallucinations and toxic effects 005799
- Carnitor and Carnitine 018171
- Chondroitin and Chondroitin sulphate 018204
- Coenzyme Q10 018217
- Coq10 018221
- Cysteine and Cysteine hydrochloride 018879
- Cysteine hydrochloride supplements 023978
- Effects and side effects associated with the non-nutritional use of tryptophan by humans 017320
- Fastin 016927
- Fish oil and other things 005795
- GHB in food supplements 006849
- Heavy metal poisoning from dietary supplements 012481
- Herbal supplements and ephedrine 005792
- Histamine Phosphate supplements 019105
- Hitler, Adolf - cocaine and strychnine 001448
- I EXPERIENCED A PANIC ATTACK THAT MADE ME WANT TO GET OUT OF MY BODY AND KILL MYSELF 020866
- Intralipid 10, 20 and 30 019223
- Iron dextran 020733
- Krill oil 019443
- Lipoic acid 024074
- Lovaza 019481
- Multivitamin supplements 019554
- nonono hordenine 020865
- Omacor 019802
- Panthenol 019830
- Procalamine 019864
- Pyridoxine Hcl 019984
- Q10 019987
- Se 020023
- Seven hours of Hallucinations from crazy freaking supplements 018916
- Striant 020050
- Thiamine, Thiamine Hydrochloride and Thiamine Mononitrate 020202
- Turmeric supplements 020289
- Ubidecarenone 020245
- Urocit-k 020334
- Zinc Sulfate 020404
In time
Other observations
- 'Geranium oil' 005809
- acute hepatitis and liver failure following the use of a dietary supplement intended for weight loss or muscle building 029310
- Aloe vera supplements 020992
- Bitter orange and hordenine 005798
- Case series of 226 γ-hydroxybutyrate-associated deaths: lethal toxicity and trauma 020868
- Cranberry pills 005404
- Dietary supplements and death 005793
- Drugs.com - Dietary supplement case reports 020867
- Human intake of arsenic and iodine from seaweed-based food supplements and health foods available in the UK 016980
- Took a preworkout and I'm wondering what is wrong 020872
- Ulcerative colitis associated with the herbal weight loss supplement Hydroxycut 029309