Draconian limits on vitamin dosage amounts could be coming if the feds get their way. Action alert!
That bottle of 50,000 IU, 5,000 IU, or even a measly 1,000 IU in your medicine cabinet could soon be contraband. Important entities are meeting to discuss how to restrict the kinds of supplements you can take under the guise of “harmonization” of supplement standards. If they’re allowed to move forward, it’s possible that the federal government could adopt restrictions on vitamin doses that can be legally sold, as Europe has already done.
At the request of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) recently convened a workshop to “assess methodological approaches that could be applied uniformly across countries in setting nutrient intake recommendations,” with particular attention on how standards could be set for population subgroups such as young children and women of reproductive age. “Nutrient intake recommendations” include upper levels of intake, which are used to restrict the vitamin dose that a supplement can contain.
This workshop is another in a series of meetings NAS is involved in with other entities, including the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations, who are both sponsors of Codex, to discuss limits on vitamin doses. As we reported previously, Codex is an intergovernmental body whose goal is to establish international standards regarding food safety and food ingredients, with the goal of promoting “fair trade practices” and consumer protections. Codex standards on supplements, however, are widely expected to follow Europe’s draconian restrictions, where selenium, for example, is limited in supplement form to that found in one-third of a Brazil nut.
It is extremely concerning that NAS is working to establish upper limits for supplements on multiple fronts. To be clear, NAS cannot create standards—they merely make recommendations. But government bodies listen closely to NAS, and as we discussed in our previous article, it isn’t clear whether the FDA can ban therapeutic supplements doses on its own, without public involvement. If the agency decides, following recommendations from NAS, that vitamin D, for example, over a certain amount “presents a significant or unreasonable risk of illness or injury”—the legal definition of an adulterated supplement—the FDA may be able to ban it. The agency recently placed restrictions on certain bulk caffeine products along similar lines, so the path seems open for similar actions against other products.
Of additional concern is that NAS has proven that it does not understand the science of supplements. Recall that their “experts” recommended that adults ingest 600 IU of vitamin D each day, and they established an upper level (the level above which supposedly poses a danger to adults) of 4,000 IU. Any real experts will tell you this is nonsense; the Vitamin D Council recommends 5,000 IU of vitamin D for adults, and it’s not uncommon for an integrative physician to recommend higher levels when needed. For this reason, we don’t want NAS anywhere near a discussion that could lead to supplement restrictions.
What the NAS, Codex, and European authorities don’t seem to understand is that, to gain the beneficial effects of certain vitamins, they must at times be taken in therapeutic doses. Consider vitamin C. Research has indicated that therapeutic doses of vitamin C impart many benefits. Students who supplemented with hourly doses of 1000mg vitamin C for six hours and then three times daily afterwards exhibited an 85% decrease in cold and flu symptoms compared to those who took decongestants. Therapeutic vitamin C regimens also have heart protective benefits, including reducing damage caused by heart attacks and lowering coronary heart disease risk. For comparison, the “safe” upper limit set by the NAS for vitamin C is 2,000mg. (Note that the upper levels currently set by the NAS are meant to serve merely as a guide, that is, they are non-binding.)
In the past, NAS has studied and published upper limits for a handful of vitamins and minerals, mostly for educational purposes. Our concern is that now, NAS is increasingly meeting and consulting with governmental bodies from other countries who have been responsible for setting upper limits and then banning supplements above those limits, as the European Union has done. Will the US head down the same road? It’s unclear as of yet, but these recent developments are not encouraging.
Compared to other parts of the world, the US enjoys relative freedom in our choices regarding therapeutic doses of supplements. We must act now, in the initial stages of the multiple processes underway at NAS, to make sure it stays that way.
Action Alert! Write to Congress and the FDA, the agency that would be responsible for any future bans on supplements, and tell them not to limit therapeutic doses of supplements in the US. Please send your message immediately.
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Remain perpetually sick and dependent upon prescription meds. It makes the most financial sense. To them.
The low amounts in vitamins is out of Codex alimentarius and is meant to decrease health. Do not allow the lowering of vitamin content unless you announce that you want people sick
No one actually “needs” artificial vitamins in order to remain healthy, so I really do not understand your post ?
Please explain exactly HOW and WHY a lower vitamin content would ever make ANYONE sick ???
That is pure nonsense!
Did I refer to “artificial”? All supplements are not artificial. But artificial or natural, this is not appropriate and they should not be controlled
The low amounts in vitamins is out of Codex alimentarius and is meant to decrease health. Do not allow the lowering of vitamin content unless you announce that you want people sick
It’s not as if people are overdosing on vitamins and poisoning themselves. The FDA needs to spend its time and money on more important things, like evaluating new food additives instead of just declaring them GRAS (Generally Recognized As Safe) despite no evidence they are safe.
That is not true! Some people are INDEED experiencing health problems from taking far too many artificial vitamins that your body simply DOES NOT NEED! If your body truly “needs” an artificial vitamin, then you are not eating a healthy diet! Eat more vegetables and fruits! THAT is where you get USEFUL vitamins that your body will properly metabolize! Artificial vitamins do little to nothing for health!
What makes you think that all supplemets are artificial? Many are artificial and come from China. If you’re not aware that our food doesn’t have the nutrients it once had, there are plenty of sites where you can learn. This concerns all supplements….natural or artificial. Are you aware of codex alimentarius? you might want to learn this also.
There are also natural forms of most vitamins. Natural Vitamin D is D3, artificial is D2. Physicians give single doses of 50,000 IU of D2 q week and it is a prescription item only. Haven’t heard much about toxicity. I take 10,000 IU/day of D3 and tested q 4 months for a year and a half to determine this amount. as the one that kept my levels at 57. I live under great physical stress and without that, even with 5,000 IU/day my level is 29, which is deficient even by the pathetic standards of the medical monopoly. That is one example that can be repeated in different people for every vitamin.
Vitamins are NOT drugs. They are essential nutrients that everyone needs in small amounts but most people across the spectrum have some variation of my stress problem with at least one vitamin. Many have deficient metabolism or special needs of one or another nutrient and need much more than RDA. Almost no one has gotten sick from excess intake. Reports of adverse effects of “supplements” include and are dominated by weight loss, weight training type “supplements”. The vitamin d “scare story” was based on erroneous data from decades ago. It took about a million units to create problems. Some of the so-called problems with high vitamin d intake are due to deficiencies in vitamin K2, calcium or magnesium.
Your perspective is overly simplistic, I hope you will re-evaluate. Find websites of dr mercola, dr hyman, dr brownstein for introduction. Try mercola’s search engine.
PS the in-home test is available through the vitamindcouncil.org for about $60 and the council gets about $5 of that. A doctor ordered lab test goes $200-250 plus the cost of seeing the md to get a prescription.
Research does not support your contention that “artificial vitamins do little to nothing for health.”
You can see an example right here above where ANH cites research on therapeutic levels of vitamin C.
You may somehow be unaware that nutrient levels in our foods, which are grown in depleted soils, have dropped.
You may also be unaware that some people, because of their individual genetics, a health condition, pregnancy, etc. may need higher amounts of a given nutrient.
It is possible to drown from drinking too much water, too. Would you make water illegal as well? This is about people being able to take care of themselves. As long as vitamins and other supplements are properly labeled, people should be able to choose which work for them in the dosages they want to buy.
What makes you think that all supplemets are artificial? Many are artificial and come from China. If you’re not aware that our food doesn’t have the nutrients it once had, there are plenty of sites where you can learn. This concerns all supplements….natural or artificial. Are you aware of codex alimentarius? you might want to learn this also.
That’s not the supplement’s fault that is an ignorant person not doing their research. Don’t blame carrots when your skin turns orange.
Why should we face any problem if the SMART FELLOWS in the GOVERNMENT of any country RESTRICT the quantity of any VITAMIN in pills to keep it at a low level? We can OUTSMART the CRAZY FELLOWS, who decide the rules on VITAMIN content of pills, by taking MORE PILLS on the basis of our individual needs!
Yes, you could (take more) but that would be very expensive. With a chronic lung condition, supplements have kept me relatively healthy for many years. I do a lot of research to educate myself and know what I am doing.
Soils have become more and more depleted since we started using synthetic fertilisers. And as ca-ssandra said above, much of the bad news on supplements referred to weight loss products.
Benjamin Franklin once said: “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” That liberty is safety because many actively use pharmaceutically inconvenient quantities of nutrients to avoid drug use because we believe that nutrients are safer than drugs.
DSHEA, 1994, placed the burden of proof of danger on the government to protect our right of consumption. Only fools allow governments to take away rights veiled by “safety”. The safety argument is a ruse to trick fools into giving up rights. Think of it like this…
Let’s call alcohol and tobacco nutrients – would the government then attempt to restrict dosage? Of course not. This is not about safety – it’s about profit.
DSHEA compels supplement labels to disclose the RDA, and actual dosage to enable informed consumption. This is enough. This freedom is the cornerstone of the united States. Defend your right to choose what you put into your body. It’s already in the constitution as the 9th Amendment: The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
The choice of consumption is a retained right. We have to defend it or we will lose it. The regulators are perpetually manipulated by the drug companies to create policy to maximize drug revenues. Removing our ability to NOT use drugs by reducing supplement access to tiny doses serves the drug companies – and they know it.