What are the ten taboos about dietary supplements?

Do not take supplements as a substitute for your daily diet, do not exceed the recommended dosage, do not combine supplements with the same effect, do not mix supplements with conventional medicines, do not blindly buy supplements based on the propaganda of "all natural and without side effects", do not give adult supplements to children, do not buy supplements by yourself during pregnancy and lactation, do not buy off-brand supplements without the official blue hat/national food health approval batch number, do not take supplements that are irritating to the digestive tract on an empty stomach, and do not use supplements to replace regular disease treatment. These 10 items are the consensus of the global nutrition community. If you follow any of them, you may put a burden on your body.

I just received a consultation from a 22-year-old fitness enthusiast a while ago. In order to build muscle, he took protein powder, branched chain amino acids, creatine, and testicle-stimulating herbal supplements all day long. He was afraid that it was not enough, so he doubled the amount every time. Within 20 days of eating, it was found that the creatinine was three times higher than the normal value, and protein appeared in the urine. The doctor said If you arrive half a month later, there is a high chance of acute kidney injury. This means overdosing and superimposing the same effect at the same time. Many people think that supplements with different names have different effects. In fact, the core active ingredients of many fitness supplements have a high degree of overlap. When overdosing is superimposed, the pressure on kidney metabolism will directly increase several times.

When talking about this, some people may say, then I take purely natural supplements, so there will be no problem, right? Really not. Last month, Aunt Zhang in the community came to me with a bunch of "pure natural deep-sea fish oil" and "wild soy lecithin" that she grabbed from the live broadcast room and asked me if I could eat it. I looked through the ingredients list and found that the Omega3 purity of that fish oil was only 28%, and the remaining 70% was mostly saturated fatty acids and additives. After Aunt Zhang took it for three months, her blood lipids, which were originally well controlled, soared, and she always felt dizzy. The so-called "purely natural" is just a marketing rhetoric. The purity of the active ingredients and ingredient list of supplements are the key. Even if they are real plant-derived ingredients, excessive consumption will still have side effects. For example, excessive intake of ginkgo leaf extract will increase the risk of bleeding, and excessive intake of aloe vera extract will damage the intestines.

There has always been a lot of controversy about supplements. Some studies believe that healthy people do not need to take supplements as long as they eat a balanced diet. Others believe that for special groups such as vegetarians, the elderly, and women during pregnancy and childbirth, appropriate supplementation of ingredients such as B12, calcium, and folic acid can indeed reduce the risk of nutritional deficiencies. However, no matter what kind of views scholars hold, they will not accept the statement that "supplements can replace drugs to treat diseases." Previously, There is an old man with type 2 diabetes. He stopped taking anti-diabetic medicines and took dietary supplements called "plant-based anti-diabetics" based on the advice of WeChat merchants. Within a week of taking these, his blood sugar soared to 22mmol/L, and he was admitted to the ICU due to ketoacidosis. In essence, he had stepped on the red line of using supplements for alternative treatment. You must know that dietary supplements are positioned as "supplements" and do not even have the qualifications of drugs, so they cannot have any therapeutic effect.

There are also many office workers who are in a hurry. They go out in the morning and grab a handful of multivitamins, iron supplements, and iron supplement capsules and stuff them on an empty stomach. They suffer from stomachache and acid reflux before noon. In fact, this is a typical pitfall of taking irritating supplements on an empty stomach. Ingredients such as iron supplements, niacin, and fat-soluble vitamins themselves have certain irritation to the gastric mucosa. Taking them on an empty stomach is equivalent to spreading irritating powder directly on the fragile stomach wall. People with chronic gastritis or gastric ulcers may even induce gastric bleeding.

What is easily overlooked is the use of supplements for children and during pregnancy and childbirth. My relative used to feed one piece of orange-flavored vitamin C to his 3-year-old daughter every day for convenience. After taking it for more than a month, the child kept complaining of leg pain. After going to the hospital for a checkup, he found out that excessive vitamin C increased the child's metabolic burden and affected the absorption of calcium. The dosage of adult supplements is designed according to the adult's weight and metabolic capacity. Giving a child a dose that is several times the equivalent of direct feeding is very risky. Women during pregnancy and childbirth should pay more attention. There was a pregnant mother who felt that the dose of ordinary folic acid was not enough, so she bought 5mg of therapeutic folic acid and took it every day. After two months of taking it, she found abnormal zinc metabolism during a prenatal checkup. This is because the high dose of folic acid interferes with the absorption of zinc, which in turn affects fetal development. This special group of people must ask a doctor or nutritionist for advice before taking supplements.

In fact, to put it bluntly, supplements are dietary patches. If your clothes are torn, it’s okay to mend them. You can’t wear patches as clothes. As long as you keep these red lines, supplements can really fill the gap, instead of making yourself suffer.