Supplement Use or Supplement Abuse?
- 2 days ago
- 5 min read
How a Pill Mentality Distracts from Addressing the Causes of Disease
Paul A. Goldberg, MPH, DC, DACBN, DCBCN
Founder and Consultant
The Goldberg Tener Clinic
Over the fifty years I have been in health care, I’ve observed the public become increasingly aware of the hazards in taking pharmaceuticals due to their toxic side effects and not addressing the causes of their disease.
The pill mentality, i.e. the impulse of people to take pills, indoctrinated into our psyche through the media and medical profession, however, has changed very little. What has changed is the skyrocketing use of “supplements”, another form of pills, by the public, in large quantities, often in addition to the drugs they are taking.
The term “Supplements” covers a wide variety of pills, potions, vitamins, minerals, amino acids, homeopathics, probiotics, oils, and a plethora of other materials. Like the pharmaceutical companies, the supplement industry has become an enormous industry with many similarities to the drug industry. It is a forty-five-billion-dollar per year giant enterprise, comprised of over 1,500 companies, marketing more than 100,000 different supplements as listed in the dietary supplement label database.
Americans have a passion for taking pills whether they are drugs or supplements… and the difference between drugs and supplements is less than what you might think. Like drugs, supplements are sold for many different disease symptoms. Like pharmaceuticals, they are part of the “got a problem take a pill mentality”.
The Supplement Industry Has Become Big Business
Supplements in the past were largely obtained through health food stores and through a few alternative health care practitioners. Today, they are big business and aggressively marketed through the internet and by so called “Functional Medicine” Practitioners who utilize both drugs and push supplements. This gives the public the impression that they are in some sense “naturally oriented”. This is not generally the case for the motivation is often that they have found an additional source of revenue for their practices and a way to market their drug-based practices in a format attractive to the consumer. It is of interest to note that any physician can call themselves a Functional Medical Practitioner without any added training, experience or certification in clinical nutrition and this is often the case.
In addition to having taught clinical nutrition as a Professor of Clinical Nutrition to undergraduate, graduate and professional students for over forty years as well as decades in clinical practice, I also was the Senior Director of Research and Physician Education from 2003 to 2008 for a major supplement company based in West Palm Beach, Florida. Here I obtained additional insights into the Supplement Industry.
The Supplement Industry has many similarities with the pharmaceutical industry in terms of marketing, sales, promotional tools and connections with Medical, Osteopathic, Chiropractic and Naturopathic Schools where health care professionals are trained and often indoctrinated into the pill mentality. I observed this during the forty years I was a professor at a Chiropractic College where a major supplement company donated massive amounts of money to the college and was thereby given significant opportunities to convince students to utilize their products. Like pharmaceutical companies, their marketing skills are finely honed and aggressively employed.
We should ask ourselves… are our top health issues e.g. cancer, heart disease, autoimmune disease, digestive issues, obesity, rheumatoid issues, etc., related to nutrient deficiencies? The answer is that they are far more related to excesses than deficiencies such as excess food, excess stress, excess toxin exposure, etc. more so than they are related to nutrient deficiencies.
Classical nutrient deficiencies such as pellagra, scurvy and kwashiorkor are very rare in the U.S. Diseases of excess such as the ones mentioned above are exceedingly common.
Over the past fifty years of practice, I commonly encounter new patients who enter our clinic taking massive amounts of a wide variety of supplements. It is not uncommon to meet new patients who are ingesting as many as ten to thirty different supplement types on a daily basis and have been doing so for years while their health has continued to decline. See examples below.
One of our first steps with some patients is to reduce or eliminate the massive amounts of supplements they are taking and advise them to talk to their medical/functional medical physicians about eliminating or decreasing the amounts of pharmaceuticals they are taking. Reducing drugs and supplements alone often results in significant improvements in their health.
The combined burden of large amounts of supplements as well as pharmaceuticals can have a highly detrimental effect on a patient particularly those with chronic health issues and prevent them from regaining the good health they desperately desire to obtain.
Should supplements ever be employed? Yes, but they should not be the primary focus in any practice as is often true in many alternative and functional medical practices. To make them the primary focus, with patients taking dozens of supplements daily, overburdens the body’s physiology, empties our wallets un-necessarily and diverts our attention away from the causes of our health problems.
Our focus at the Goldberg Tener Clinic for Chronic Disease Reversal is on identification of causes, addressing those causes and working with the patient to provide the right conditions to allow good health to emerge. Supplements in moderation can be helpful, but the right ones need to be chosen, their use limited and over-reliance on them avoided.
When the causes of disease are clearly identified and addressed, including making appropriate dietary reforms and taking the steps needed to produce an efficiently functioning gastrointestinal tract capable of extracting nutrients from the diet, we have taken steps that pills alone cannot provide. In addition, the elimination of toxins, fostering a well-functioning endocrine, nervous and immune system and the provision of the essentials of health such as sunlight, rest, sleep, etc., are all needed to make our health renewal journey successful. Important also is that after regaining our health we understand how to maintain it without reliance on pills.
Health care then becomes self-care and we become empowered to become masters of our own wellbeing.
Below is a video interview with one of our patients who, prior to seeing us, had been given a multitude of supplements in addition to drugs and hormones. She regained her health under our care without dependency on pills / treatments. Click here to see more success stories.
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If you are struggling with chronic health issues, contact our clinic to schedule a complimentary phone consultation with Dr. Tener to learn how we can help guide you through the recovery process. Click here to learn more about becoming a new patient at the Goldberg Tener Clinic.
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