EU to Ban Vitamin and Mineral Supplements...

static76 · Sep 14, 2002

You feel shivery, your back aches, the glands in your throat resemble golfballs; it's only a matter of time until your nose starts streaming. What do you do? You could visit your doctor's surgery and brave a waiting room full of people who are in as bad a state as you, or worse, and wait patiently for a five-minute consultation with your pressured GP - only to be told that it's probably viral and you should go home to bed, or be given antibiotics that you most likely don't need. Alternatively, you used to be able to head for your local healthfood shop where, at no cost to the creaking, over-burdened NHS, you could get free, and often lengthy, advice from a helpful member of staff who would recommend an affordable combination of vitamin C, echinacea and zinc, a safe, over-the-counter supplement found to be effective by millions of users.

If you're one of those who find such remedies useful, however, you'd better start stockpiling now. A raft of EU legislation looks set to nip the natural medicine market in the bud: soon, that popular vitamin C, echinacea and zinc combination may not be allowed on the shelves. A shadow looms large over the alternative health sector. Estimates of the impact of this new legislation vary, but hundreds of vitamin and mineral supplements could be banned outright, while an as yet incalculable number of common herbal remedies will disappear unless consumers challenge it. The National Association of Health Food Stores claims that as many as three-quarters of its members could go out of business. The writing is on the wall for small British supplement companies, which will be forced to reformulate entire ranges and invest massively in applying for new product licences.

It's a scenario that is hard to take in. In recent years, so many more consumers have been turning to the health store in preference to the doctor's surgery that it had begun to seem a permanent fixture in modern life. Though there may still be the odd simple soul who believes that eating a clove of garlic can cure cancer, all sorts of perfectly sensible people who want to take greater personal responsibility for their health are finding solutions, or partial ones, at least, in natural remedies. Arthritis sufferers tired of conventional anti-inflammatory drugs that upset the stomach are looking to alternatives such as glucosamine sulphate and chondroitin. People prone to anxiety are choosing kava kava over Valium. Those who feel depressed are going for St John's wort in preference to conventional anti-depressants such as Prozac. Menopausal women are seeing black cohosh as an attractive alternative to hormone replacement therapy. The hungover take high doses of vitamins B and C (eg, in the popular Berocca tablets). This surge is reflected in the media. Conventional "doctor knows best" columns have been eclipsed by alternative practitioners with a proactive attitude to health and a range of natural, nonpharmaceutical suggestions for the treatment of everything from cold sores to migraine.

All this interest is despite the fact that evidence of how - and, indeed, if - these remedies work is open to interpretation and incomplete. Some supplements are relatively well researched - two major epidemiological studies have shown that vitamin E supplements, for example, can reduce the incidence of heart disease by about 40%, while a substantial body of research suggests that antioxidant vitamins protect against certain diseases.

For other more obscure supplements, however, relatively little conventional medical research has been carried out, so evidence of efficacy relies more heavily on traditional usage. Much of the scientific work into rhodiola rosa, for example - a herb that is thought to make the body more resistant to stress - has been carried out in Russia, and a lot more research is needed to confirm the benefits that are claimed for it. Even so, it seems that growing sections of the public can live with this sort of uncertainty. More people are voting with their feet and concluding that alternative remedies work as well, or even better, than conventional drugs, with fewer, if any, side effects. But that option could be taken away altogether if the new EU legislation goes ahead unchecked.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,3605,790733,00.html

I guess the drug companies just can't stand people having options outside of the crap they offer. I feel bad for Europeans if this legislation goes through.

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EU to Ban Vitamin and Mineral Supplements...

static76 The Man, The Myth, The Legend Registered Senior Member

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EU to Ban Vitamin and Mineral Supplements...

static76 The Man, The Myth, The Legend Registered Senior Member

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