No certainty as to the therapeutic utility of the supplements

From "Libero quotidiano", Melania Rizzoli

Which of you has never swallowed a dietary supplement pill to overcome fatigue, reduce fatigue, tone muscles, for cellulite , for water retention, to compensate for a deficit, for cholesterol or for weight loss? In Italy there are 32 million supplement consumers, 65% of the adult population, and our nation, the largest market in Europe, has generated a value of around 3 billion euros, with reference only to The official chain of pharmacy, and registered This data was disseminated at the convention of Federsalus, the National Association of Producers and Distributors of Health Products, which involved the industry, doctors and pharmacists in an attempt to reduce consumption by 6%. affirm the utility of dietary supplements, and demonstrate the role that these products may have in primary prevention.

The certain fact is that in the past twenty years, there has never been any operational phase of guidelines, protocols, or any medical-scientific demonstration on the therapeutic usefulness supplements and their real effectiveness, because, we must emphasize and keep in mind that not being drugs, not cured anus, they do not solve pathological or difficult situations, they do not prevent not diseases, and so science does not treat them because they do not protect our health in any way

Who believes that they are magical or beneficial? is false, because the supplements are nothing other than concentrated foods, natural or synthetic derivatives, which can then provide a questionable help in situations of nutritional or physiological needs to be rebalanced, but it is important to understand that they have no therapeutic action or disease prevention. Moreover, with the arrival of summer, there is a dangerous drift "do-it-yourself", with thousands of packages sold, randomly selected or word of mouth, without any medical indication , and the typical consumer is a woman, lives in Central Italy North, and purchases of all types and for all needs, taking up to ten tablets a day, ignoring the absence any scientific evidence on their metabolic or physiological utility.

The countries of the European Union in the illusion of fighting the five most common pathologies, namely diabetes, dementia, stroke, cardiovascular disease and neoplastic diseases, absorb a total of one trillion euros, incredible figure increases dramatically from month to month.

But can integrators play a role in preventing the most common ailments? Certainly not, but the encounter between healthy longevity and the chronicity with which many citizens reconcile, pushes millions of people to add to their official care the consumption of such products to "strengthen" the immune system and therefore illusory

The supplements have become very popular over the years, there are 90 thousand different types for every conceivable condition, but the doubts of the experts on the efficiency and safety are very numerous.

To take the field recently, the SIF, the Italian Society of Pharmacology, which together with five other scientific societies reported the uncontrolled proliferation of these derivatives, and also took the position of the Journal of the American Medical Society ( Jama), because the problem is that these specialties are sold without any prescriptive obligation, and without any obligation to prove the validity or safety, such as the presence or absence of living contaminants, such as viruses, bacteria or bacteria. toxic substances such as heavy metals and chemical impurities

But do you really need to take dietary supplements? The notoriety of these preparations for self-medication raises questions about their use, the alleged benefits and the health risks of an exaggerated or inappropriate use, yet their consumption, in the thousands of variants for each situation, continues to increase.

In Italy, with Legislative Decree No. 169 of 21 May 2014, supplements are defined as "food products intended to integrate the common diet and which are a concentrated source of nutrients, such as vitamins and minerals, or other substances having a nutritional and physiological effect, in particular, but not exclusively, amino acids, essential fatty acids, fibers and extracts of plant origin, monocomponent and In this case, nutritionists agree that supplements are legitimately recommended in cases where the body has a real deficiency of certain elements or substances.

So I do not know about curative products, but they serve to integrate a diet, supplementing it in the event of increase in real needs, but by no means are these derivatives considered as substitutes for a varied diet. Typical is recruitment into sports by athletes and in a context of convalescence or strong debilitating stress, but among all the most popular types, such as carnitine, creatine, probiotics, prebiotics, omega-3, Royal jelly, ginseng or ginkgo biloba, none of them has a real therapeutic efficacy, to the point that the human body can not identify these substances as beneficial, it does not use them in metabolic processes, and most are eliminated and, because of the particular composition, the bioavailability of these supplements is very low, their effect has been minimized even in the presence of high doses of vitamins and all the best-known synthetic vitamin supplements . have no effect on the prevention of cancer, cardiovascular or metabolic diseases.

Every year in the United States, food supplements send about 20,000 people to emergencies, especially with abdominal problems, and last year, the largest producer of these products in the world, GNC Holdings Inc, agreed to pay $ 2.25 million to avoid federal lawsuits for the sale of pills and powders

The Food and Drug Administration ordered producers of certain supplements to withdraw their products after scientists have found traces of illegal and potentially dangerous molecules in their composition. Most supplements are considered by doctors as unnecessary or ineffective as homeopathic products, and The Lancet medical journal has badociated their presumed effectiveness with the placebo effect, and in addition many companies have been accused of correcting their powders with bad or harmful additives, that's why you should always avoid powdered products. Some studies claim that even antioxidants, when taken in excess, can actually be harmful and for this reason many extracts have been removed from the market.

In short, dietary supplements do not make you lose weight, do not burn fat improve skin tone or increase muscle volume, do not relieve fatigue, do not prevent dementia, do not not boost memory, do not lower lipemia, do not correct deficiencies, do not reduce the risk of cancer or cardiovascular events the law protects us from misleading advertising of many products pbaded as health elixirs, which grow Millions of people swallow basic minerals such as magnesium or potbadium, in the illusion of feeling better, while they make a bet for their health.