[TaylorSwift]

Most supplements are garbage. Since they don't actually work, most people would never know if you replaced their magnesium or calcium supplement with chalk. Some supplements do work, but since they're not regulated, they're drowned out by nonsense and noise. OK, so you don't want to be a rube?...you do your research and then piece of shit fitness influencers tell you "ohh...that vitamin you bought form Walgreens or Costco didn't work?...of course not, you need to buy mine...it's CHELATED!!!!! thus is more BIOAVAILBLE...or some other random scientific work which is either incorrectly used or outright fraudulent.

Half of my family spends a huge fortune on supplements, most of which are placebos. If you're young, you may not understand, but for us over 40, life starts to suck, physically. When you're young, your body is very fault-tolerant...have 6 beers and a cheeseburger for supper every day for a week?...nothing a few tums can't fix. Now that I'm over 40, I do everything right (daily exercise, eat healthy, get sleep, etc) and still feel like shit most of the day....same with most my age...thus we're desperate for anything that will make us feel better and not have any side effects that make things worse.

Supplements are the dream and an age-old scam. Maybe punishing big retailers who tolerate fraud will not only reduce false claims, but make the public more aware that so called health experts online are ignorant, scammers, or both.

[exegete]

>Now that I'm over 40, I do everything right (daily exercise, eat healthy, get sleep, etc) and still feel like shit most of the day....same with most my age...

I’m nearing 40. Are you sure it’s normal to feel terrible most of the day when eating right, exercising, and getting enough sleep? This doesn’t sound normal to me.

[laweijfmvo]

Could be genetics, could be low T, could be depression, could be some other uncovered issue. Should probably discuss this with their doctor.

[1920musicman]

It's not normal. None of my over 40 friends have the same experience. And in general, I doubt that turning 40 is a clear biological threshold regardless of one's lifestyle, diet, fitness level, etc.

[thechao]

I'm 45, walk, weight lift, eat well, sleep well, and feel better than I ever have. My dad says he didn't start to "feel" his age until 80: it may just be genetics?

[jml78]

I am an inactive, 45 year old software developer.

Can I overdo things and feel like shit? Yeah but mostly I feel great.

My knees are kind messed up but that is from running 500 miles every summer during middle school and high school.

So no, being in your 40s shouldn’t mean feeling like shit.

As to the topic at hand, I use two supplements in addition to prescription blood pressure medications. I take my blood pressure 3 times daily. I can see in the cold hard numbers if I forget to take them.

[libria]

GP might have an illness/disease and fully aware of their condition, none of us know. No need to lose the main point by flexing our superior health against them.

That point being: All of us deteriorate. We all reach an age/state where conventional medicine has reached its limit and snake oil begins to be look attractive. Not all of it is proven wrong, none of it is proven right.

[jordanpg]

I think OP was being a little hyperbolic, but I know what they mean. Little things add up. Certain minor issues become chronic. Waking up with minor aches and pains is somewhat frequent. Sleep issues are common.

It falls short of feeling like shit, but there is a kind of death by many cuts that changes the baseline for feeling normal in the wrong direction.

[sigmoid10]

Yeah, there's something else going on. If you don't have permanent damage from some injury or disease, you shouldn't feel like 60+ if you barely hit 40. Maybe it's related to low testosterone, but even for that 40 is early.

[wkjagt]

One of the things that really bother me being over 40 is that my body is no longer immune to injuries. I can now throw out my back just my sneezing too enthusiastically.

[ta988]

If you replace the Calcium with chalk you would still have a source of calcium so it wouldn't be that bad :D

[dehrmann]

It's better than that. According to Wikipedia

> Chalk is typically almost pure calcite, CaCO3, with just 2% to 4% of other minerals

The supplement I just looked up uses Calcium Carbonate. That could just be purified chalk and be in compliance with the FDA. In fact, it probably is just that.

[beambot]

Animals eat naturally-occurring chalk (and other substances) to regulate key minerals. It's called geophagia.

[dehrmann]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mineral_lick

[FredPret]

> geophagia

Animals are eating the world

[achanda358]

With different bioavailability

[Wowfunhappy]

> Most supplements are garbage. Since they don't actually work, most people would never know if you replaced their magnesium or calcium supplement with chalk.

Whether or not that's true, if you replaced someone's magnesium supplement with viagra, you could seriously hurt them.

>> FDA confirmed through laboratory analyses that the [...] products, purchased on www.amazon.com, contained [...] the active ingredients in the FDA-approved prescription drugs Viagra and Cialis, respectively, used to treat erectile dysfunction (ED). These undeclared ingredients may interact with nitrates found in some prescription drugs, such as nitroglycerin, and may lower blood pressure to dangerous levels.

[epmaybe]

holy crap, that’s insane. You don’t just accidentally add sildenafil or tadalafil to your supplements. Unless the FDA is misidentifying compounds present in the herbs in these supplements, which seems unlikely but I’m no pharmacology expert.

[tonyarkles]

Yeah, I don't think "accidentally" is something that happened here. What's the best way to make your "all-natural Viagra" actually work? Make it with real Viagra.

[Scoundreller]

I’d be surprised if the buyers were expecting any different.

With the amount of mislabelled product out there in circulation (and presumably a general lack of harm), does it still make sense to require a prescription?

[tonyarkles]

I'm personally pretty torn on that. On the one hand I agree with you, especially from a harm-reduction perspective (e.g. people who are on blood pressure medication ordering "natural" Viagra because Viagra's contra-indicated with the medication they're on, not realizing that they're getting something that could cause a very bad situation). On the other hand, requiring a prescription does mean that a physician can ask that question ("are you on blood pressure medication?") and counsel the patient to look at different options instead.

I mean, even though 50% of these are intentional overdoses... the other 50% probably didn't know they were doing something that was going to destroy their liver: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK441917/

[Scoundreller]

It’s pretty much just an interaction with “nitrates” which are typically taken by people with pretty serious cardiac issues, and usually educated re: the side effects if taken with viagra or similar compounds (cuz you never know if someone has Viagra in their drawer from another pharmacy or years ago or “natural” Viagra from another source).

The interaction with other blood pressure meds appears additive rather than synergistic and Viagra alone only minimally reduced blood pressure. The cough and cold aisle or a cafe presents more dangers.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10078539/

At least over the counter Viagra would be properly labelled about these things.

[1920musicman]

Adding restricted ingredients to generally available supplements is a known tactic that supplement producers utilize extensively. In the past, this has been a well-known "secret" that bodybuilders basically relied on: buying tainted pre- and post-workout supplements that contain illegal steroids and such.

It's a better regulated industry now, but with the explosion in supplement popularity over the last decade I doubt there is an easy way to test and punish all manufacturers. If you look at the list of supplements included in that warning letter, they have classic nonsensical names that Chinese companies are known for (WeFun, Genergy, etc). None are on www.amazon.com anymore, but hundreds of other supplements show up with absolutely no way of telling whether any of them are clean (e.g. "Endurance 2Nite").

[dullcrisp]

Are you saying there could be Viagra in my Endurance 2Nite?

[bumby]

Although they are most associated with ED, those supplements are also performance enhancers. For decades, unscrupulous supplement companies have put illicit or prescription drugs in their products. Many of those drugs (not the supplements) do, in fact, work. The rumor was the gameplan was to start with that until you get enough market hype and then remove them, but I've also heard some of the illicit drugs are cheap enough that they could still continue tainting them and make a profit. So even if they work, people deserve to know what they're putting in their bodies.

[justinator]

same with most my age...thus we're desperate for anything that will make us feel better and not have any side effects that make things worse.

The issue is that a chronic mistreatment of your body (similar to what you describe). The solution is a chronic loving of your body. Best time to start was 20 years ago. Second best time is today. I wish you luck and I can tell you: it doesn't have to be the way you describe, but it WILL take patience and a life-long commitment.

And yeah: forget supplements. Focus on good food.

[malfist]

It's funny you mention chelation. The most common method (cheapest) of chelating some metal is with EDTA, which is such a strong bond that it makes it completely bio-unavailable. In fact, if your body was somehow able to break the bond and absorb the metal ion, EDTA would happily go along and find some other metal in your body to bind to. You literally take EDTA for lead poisoning, but it'll happily take calcium, copper and iron out of your body while doing it, it doesn't give a damn.

[hammock]

> most people would never know if you replaced their magnesium or calcium supplement with chalk.

Minerals and vitamins come from USP, which is tested and regulated and everyone in the industry gets the same quality (regardless of what they claim). It is what they say it is, if it’s USP.

Where is gets sketchy quickly is all the other stuff, like plant extracts etc

[nick__m]

USP is an old compendium, it is not an organization! it means United States Pharmacopeia, there is an organization that manages the trademark but they do not produce pharmaceutical, nor do they enforce quality, the enforcement is delegated to the FDA.

[dec0dedab0de]

Have you considered that your expectations of supplements not working have caused a reverse placebo effect?

I don’t take many supplements but they all work for their intended purpose.

creatine for muscle recovery and making me a tiny bit stronger

ZMA (zinc, magnesium, b6). for deeper sleep and overcoming multiday hangovers

melatonin for vivid dreams and waking up feeling more refreshed.

b12/d3 for energy

i don’t take them all every day, but they have consistently noticeable effects and have improved my quality of life.

i also just use the store brands from major retailers, and have low expectations.

More importantly when I was in my late thirties I also thought feeling shitty was just part of getting older, but it turned out I had cancer. talk to a doctor.

[hammock]

> Most supplements are garbage…

> My family spends a huge fortune on supplements, most of which are placebos

Unless you are just using “most” as a weasel word to hedge the chance that you might be wrong, using “most” would imply that you are aware of some supplements that aren’t frauds. Can you share them?

[phkahler]

I cured my asthma with magnesium and iodine ssupplements. While I agree with you that there are false claims out there, I have data to show stuff worked for me. YMMV of course.

[MarCylinder]

Chelated supplements are, generally, more bioavailable than their oxidized counterparts because they are bound to nutrients for which you have transporters. Like amino acids, for instance.

Supplements are absolutely regulated. To say otherwise is just ignorant of the law. Those regulations are not well enforced. That is the fault of the US justice department and Congress. The FDA is under-equipped in the way of funding to enforce regulations. And they're dependent on the justice department to actually follow through on enforcement. The justice department is only really interested in enforcement action where harm has occurred.

Amazon can do better, but why are we exclusively placing the onus on them to enforce federal law? Why is the FDA not going after the brands making and selling this shit?