Stuff You Should Know - Do Dietary Supplements Work?

Episode Date: May 9, 2019

The world takes $40 billion of dietary supplements – from vitamin A to yohimbe bark – every year. Yet, the jury is still out on whether most of them work. In America, the FDA isn’t allowed to approve supplements, and no one can say what is in your pills. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart radios, How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant.

There's Jerry over there. This is Stuff You Should Know, the podcast. How are you? I'm good, man. Good. I'm good. Great. Let me search down on my soul.

Yes, I'm doing pretty good. How about you? Oh, well, you know, I'm tired. Yeah. Everyone, I'm back in my house after seven months of renovating. Yeah. And I had a, probably a week long move.

Easily. And that's with hiring movers. Right. You know, like they move the furniture, but like movers can't move everything. No, they really can't. I mean, I guess they can. But what's weird is the smaller and easier

the thing is to move, the less likely the mover is to move it. Maybe. And I found myself wondering at one point, like how do rich people move? I was like, they don't move like this. They just go to a new house and buy new stuff and leave the old stuff.

Maybe. That's how richies do it. Cause I thought when I hired a mover, I was like, ooh, I had the big time cause I'm not asking friends to help me move. Right. But then I was like, rich people still don't move like this. They're not packing things and movie things

and pick up truck 30 times. No, no, they're not. They probably haven't ever even seen a pickup truck in their life. Someone probably handles all of that. And it's probably really, really, really expensive. I think it's less expensive than you think. You may not have just been shown the correct pamphlet.

Is there a portal? Where you would see like the next echelon up was where they pack your stuff. I don't know that it's, I think it is definitely I'm sure more expensive than what you paid to not have them do that. Yeah, yeah. I don't think it's like prohibitively expensive

if you're already shelling out that much money for movers, you know what I mean? Yeah, so the two things, the two stereotypical moving things have happened to me which is toward the end of the boxing up when you're first all careful about labeling and everything. And then at the end, you're just shoving things into boxes.

Into like a garbage bag. Pretty much. And then on the flip side, now that we're in our house, it's that thing where, you know, I have the worst BO right now cause I can't find my deodorant. Jerry and I can attest to that.

I'm too tired to go to five minutes away to buy deodorant. So I'm just like choosing to stink. Yeah, thank you. Sure. For making that choice. Not just for yourself, but for me and Jerry too. Oh yeah. I'm too old to be moving, man.

I'm no more. Okay, so this is the last time, huh? I told Emily, I'm gonna die in this house. This is the vow. Just hopefully not soon. Or you could shell out for the one where they actually pack your stuff up. The rich guy.

They just pack me up, send me out to sea. There you go. Viking funeral. Okay. That'd be pretty cool. Yes. So obviously what we're talking about today is dietary supplements.

Yeah, might as well, huh? Which I can't believe we've never done this one. We have done one called, does the FDA protect Americans? Right. Which after researching this, I'm guessing we concluded no. Yeah, maybe.

I do remember talking about thalidomide in there. So I think we were like, yes, in some instances, they have protected people. They don't so much anymore. But I'm surprised we haven't done this, especially with my dad having been the herbal Elvis. That's right. For so many years.

Emily's all on that now. She's the herbal queen. What is she on? Well, she's not on anything, but she's not buying supplements. She's growing plants and distilling her own plants. That's really cool. Yeah, like we have a big copper,

whatever it's called distillery. Still. Yeah, yeah. You have a still in your house. We have a still. That your wife puts unspecified plants into. Well, you know, it's herb. She's growing them in the yard

and then putting them in the still and then we get liquid out. So, and then you guys are taking it like the extract, like as a botanical supplement. Yeah, yeah. That is fantastic. Yeah, it's cool. That is great.

So what kind of, like she's going to the trouble of like making sure the dirt that is growing in is like amazing and all that? Yeah. Okay. Trust me. Oh, that's great. I want a bottle of something.

Yeah, hook me up, bro. I'll get you a bottle of something. Okay. I don't even care what it is. You want some chickweed? I'll get you some chickweed. All right. I'll take some chickweed.

I'll hold that under my tongue for 30 straight seconds. So, okay. So your hip, you understand what a dietary supplement is? Well, on the herbal side, but I don't know, like I've never been good about vitamins and stuff like that. I'll get on a thing where I'll be like, I'm going to start taking a multivitamin.

Right. And then, you know, there's six bottles of 95% full multivitamins. This sounds awfully familiar. Yeah. I've tried to start taking B12 and D. Yeah? Yeah.

And I'm okay about it, but I forget frequently. It's never like, I don't feel like taking that. It's just, I forget. Well, you know what they say. Spoiler alert, they say just eat good food. You don't have to take this stuff. Yeah. Food first is what that's called.

Yeah, it's all in the food. So, most people, Chuck, do not actually go to the trouble of distilling their own extracts, their own botanical extracts for dietary supplements. Most people buy it, and then like you said, forget about it, but because so many people are buying it, whether they forget about it or not, it's something like a, I've seen anywhere

between a $4 billion industry and a $40 billion industry in the United States. Yeah, and growing like fast. Yes, which is, that's a pretty big spread actually, but it's significant that there is a lot of dietary supplements that are being taken, especially in America, and there's this old adage that Americans have the most expensive urine in the world.

Because a lot of people say, it doesn't really do anything. A lot of the pills that you're taking are just passing through you, and it's harmless because you're not absorbing the stuff, or there may not even be anything in there. You just paid a bunch of money for some pills that don't actually have what they supposedly have in it.

And if you think that, you know, that's hilarious and you laugh for a little while, and then you stop laughing and you go, well, wait a minute, why would that be the case? It turns out the FDA actually doesn't regulate dietary supplements. That entire four to $40 billion industry basically exists on the honor system.

Yeah, and as it turns out, and we'll get to the specifics later, there are things in actual plants that help absorb the good parts of the plant that the supplements do not have. So in some cases, maybe it is just coming out your pee. Right. So when people think about dietary supplements,

the first thing you think of is vitamins. Yeah, or I think of like, I have no idea why, because I don't ever have, I've never done this, but I think of like weight lifter guys that like make shakes and things. Creatine? Yeah. And then like a pig extract of some sort of like a gland,

I think. Is it really? Yeah. And I have no idea. That's why some bodybuilding supplements are glandular extracts, which sometimes you can end up with like a bacteria or hepatitis or something like that in your supplement.

Or a hoof growing out of your back. And again, because there's nobody watching the people who are making this stuff. That's right. So anyway, back to vitamins. Turns out, remember electro execution, electrocution? Yes. Vitamins is short for vital amines.

Did you know that? Is it really? Swear. What's an amine? An amine is a, it's a type of protein, I believe. What is vital? It means that you really need it, it's important. And it was coined back in 1912 by a Polish biochemist

named Kazmyr Pulaski. I thought you were gonna say Kazmyr Portmanteau. Kazmyr Funk. What? I'm not kidding, so. I'm about to walk out of here. Let's get the fact of the podcast out of the way. It's just April pools.

Vitamin is short, it's so hot in here. I know. Vitamin is short for vital amines, a term that was coined by Polish biochemist Kazmyr Funk. Back in 1912. All right, well now Josh is leaving, everyone. It's because of my smells, glandular smells. Right.

All right, so I did not know that. I did not know that was a Portmanteau or is that more an abbreviation? No, it's a Portmanteau. It sounds like it. Yeah, isn't that a combination of words? I believe so. I think so too.

But people have been doing this for many, many thousands of years, in fact, some of the first inscriptions in Sumeria on clay tablets talked about herbs. This is nothing new, and that's why it's very popular now because I think people are saying, hey, they've been doing it for 5,000 years, humans have been looking to plants to heal us. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of people who kind of say,

well, wait a minute, we were using botanicals, vitamins, minerals, long before medicine was around. I'm kind of suspicious of the medical establishment getting in between me and vitamins. A lot of people are very suspicious of that, and I think that's one of the reasons why the dietary supplement industry has boomed is because a lot of people, it appeals to the average person

the idea of just taking something natural and your body healing as a result. It feels good to treat yourself like that, you know? Yeah, and here in the States, what do you say you're on D and B12? Yeah. D is one of the most, after the multivitamin, the most popular of course, along with C and calcium.

And then as far as the specialty supplements, and this is a big one, Omega-3 fatty acids, I see those all over the place. Like good fatty fish, of course, this is the extract of that. They just squeeze them. Squeeze that salmon out. Ring it out of them, and then throw the salmon back. Good shot of salmon juice.

What else, probiotics, fiber, of course, that counts. You're right. Which just kind of surprised me, I guess, but dietary fiber, it makes sense. Basically, anything that grows from the ground or that you can get from animals is technically considered a dietary supplement. Yeah, everything.

It's not necessarily a vitamin, there's only 13 vitamins. Yeah, but like garlic and ginseng and things like that, they all fall into that banner, but they are not vitamins themselves. And like garlic and ginseng plants, those would be considered phyto-medicines or botanicals. And then you've got minerals like iron, zinc,

stuff like that. All of them, if you really wanna put them all under a banner, whether it's a dietary supplement or not, those are considered micronutrients because you need very small amounts of them for your body to function, as opposed to macronutrients, like fats, carbohydrates, and proteins,

which you needed a lot of, right? And some of the confusion comes in with the fact that there are many studies on both sides that say completely contradictory things about very specific vitamins. So it can be tough for a consumer to sort of weed through all that and know what the heck is going on,

especially because of the lack of regulation, which I guess we might as well go ahead and talk about what happened in 1994, huh? Yeah. Where were you? I was in Athens. Were you there yet? I was probably hanging out in Athens

on my way up there. I wasn't there quite yet, no. You're in the, what was that town, between? Yeah, I was in Winder. Yeah, everybody, there's a town between Athens and Atlanta called Between. Oh, is it really? Yeah.

I didn't know that. Yeah, and it's called that because it's between Athens and Atlanta. Sure, it's their big claim to fame, apparently. That and being a speed trap. Don't speed through between. I've never heard that before. Although half the town calls it betwixt.

No, they don't. I'm just kidding. Okay. Well, you got arcane with that, Joe. I know. So in 1994, a big change happened in Congress. They passed what's called the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act.

And previous to this, there was a lot of tightly controlled regulation by the FDA. And all of that changed in 1994. And was this because of just some sort of general deregulation up with consumerism push? No. Wasn't it? No.

What happened was Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah, which was home to a lot of supplement producers. The Hatch. And hence a lot of supplement producing donors. Orrin Hatch saw this thing through and said, no, we need to open up the supplement regulation or supplement industry. And the best way to do that

is to remove regulations on it. So it was a big deregulation push. But specifically to the supplement industry because of one senator. Oh, no, no, no. I didn't get that. Okay. But I just meant sort of that typical like,

hey, let's just let people run wild and make money. Right. Yes, yeah, exactly. And it was because of Orrin Hatch. Gotcha. And technically, Tom Harkin did too. He's from Iowa. And one of his biggest donors was Herbalife.

Oh, yeah. And so the two kind of joined together and got this historically bad bill push through. But remember, this was the Congress. Sorry, everybody, I realize this is like an anti-state trigger for some people. But this is the same Congress or virtually the same Congress

that prohibited the CDC from studying gun violence. Like this was the kind of mentality that was going on at the time. So what happened during that, the passing of that act is they kind of set up some agreements, which was looser regulation for sure. But if you make some of these supplements, you cannot make claims like,

hey, this will help cure a disease. You can't make medical claims like that. You also have to be very specific with your labeling. It had to be labeled a dietary supplement. And you can make a claim that, hey, it could have the positive effect on your body, but you can't say it cures anything. And then you also had to tag it with,

this statement has not been evaluated by the FDA. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Right. That was the big trade-off was that they were, but it almost sounds like they're saying, well, okay, they can't claim to be drugs, but there's also some semantic trickery there

because if they're not claiming to be drugs, the FDA can't regulate them like drugs, right? So basically Congress, it is what Congress says it is. It's not a drug, so it's not a drug as far as the United States goes. So in doing this, they basically said, FDA, you can't regulate this stuff anymore. Everything that you've used to get pharmaceuticals

out to market that have been proven safe and effective, we're gonna do the opposite. These things are presumed innocent until they start hurting people, and then you can intervene. And then even when they intervene, their go-to technique for a dietary supplement that was proving harmful

was to send a letter to the producer saying, maybe you should recall this, and the producer could either say, sure, let's do that, or here's the finger, FDA, you have zero power over me whatsoever. Right, let me look at my ledger sheet and see if I wanna shut down my company. Right, pretty much.

While I'm on my yacht. Yeah, and I found a study from, I think this past year that found something like 746 recalled, or adulterated dietary supplements in the U.S. Right, so these 746. Geez. So this means that they have been found to have anything from actual prescription drugs in them

that aren't on the label, or other things that aren't on the label like fillers, things that people might be allergic to, it might have some sort of chemical in it that's not supposed to be there, who knows. Or very little of what it says it has in there. Right, that's a different kind of adulterated. These are pharmaceutical adulterated.

They found 746 of them had been flagged as adulterated. Only 360 had been recalled. The other ones were just left on the market because the company said, no, we're not gonna do that. We're gonna keep selling them. And this journal of the American Medical Association study found even further that I think of the 360, something like 10 or 11%,

we're still on the market even after being recalled. Wow. So that's kind of the state of affairs with dietary supplements, which everybody takes. Should we take a break? I think we should. I think we've just lost about a third of our listeners, the conservative ones.

All right, well, I'll go find my deodorant and I'll be back right after this. Oh. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces.

We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster?

Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there

when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s, called on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new I Heart Podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you.

Oh, man. And so, my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy.

You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Oh, just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

OK, so we're back and I'm totally calm. I still smell. And people are still selling supplements that are tainted and otherwise misleading. Yeah, unregulated. That's where we are. So the FDA, for their part, supposedly has established some manufacturing practices.

But again, it's, I guess, just voluntary, whether or not you adhere to these. Absolutely. But there are, I guess, there's a page somewhere on their website or letters that go out that say, here's what you might want to do. Yeah, it's like manufacturing good guidelines, basically. Good practices for manufacturing.

And there are independent organizations that do test things. A couple of them are one called consumerlab.com, NSF, not NSFW, maybe weird. It's like, come on, one more lab. NSF International and then one called, and this, I mean, I'm sure this is great, but it just sounds so like something from a movie, US Pharmacopia.

Sounds like something like a future company from a movie or something that does not do what they say they do. But those three, I mean, they exist because they're fulfilling the role that the government should. Or, I mean, I guess if you believe in government oversight, the government should.

In a way, the fact that those businesses that make money off of this exist, it's an example of the invisible hand at work, like there was a need that came along, which is people need to know that what they're buying actually has this stuff in it and that it's safe. And these companies that make money off of it came along and fulfilled this need.

That's what an orange hatch might say. Like, look, not only are they booming, but we've created all these other companies that are doing what we used to do. Right. But from what I understand, US Pharmacopia, they have a really good website, I believe, where they basically say this has been tested.

It is pure. It has what it's supposed to have in it in the amounts it's supposed to have in it. It doesn't have any extra stuff in it. You guys can buy this. And they put a label on the bottles. So for sure, look for that. If this is something you're already

do or you're interested in trying out, definitely do some research. This is not the kind of hobby you want to just wait into by walking into a store and going, this sounds great. Right. A lot of people do that, though. So look for this stuff. And then bear in mind also, I don't know about US Pharmacopia,

but I know that Consumer Labs goes to stores and gets their samples that they test. Oh, and they don't say, hey, just send us some stuff. Right. Send us your absolutely purest batch for us to test and give you a seal on. They actually go to stores. And so their ratings and reviews are based on tests

that they've done independently. Right. Not the stuff they sweep off the floor and put in capsules. You know, that was supposedly when I worked at Golden Pantry College, they had the, and you probably know this is a former smoker, but the really, really, really cheap cigarettes. I've heard that before.

And they always told us that's just like literally stuff they sweep off the factory floor at like Winston Salem or whatever, Camel or whoever makes the cigarettes. That seems like one of those urban legends that is probably true, you know what I mean? I think, yeah. Like not all urban legends are wrong. That sounds totally true.

Yeah. It's like, why are they so cheap? Right. Basics, remember those? I don't remember basics, but I sold a lot of bucks. They had a big, they had a big deer on the front of it. Sure. Like a big deer buck.

And they were, I mean, this is when cigarettes were, I don't know, let's say $2. And these were like 75 cents a pack or something. Yeah. How much are cigarettes now? They're super expensive, aren't they? I think they're anywhere between $5 and $12, depending on where you are.

That's crazy. Maybe $5 and $15, something like that. I know New York has like, like, they had $12 packs of cigarettes, $5, $10. I can't believe people will pay that much money for a pack of cigarettes. It's sad, man. Yeah.

All right, so. That's why we need government to prevent us from smoking cigarettes. So regardless of the fact that, let's say you find a supplement, it's got the seal of approval, you still should like, do some research, talk to your doctor. It doesn't mean everyone's body is not the same. You shouldn't just be downing supplements

because you think, oh, well, this sounds like it's good for me. Right. Everybody needs different things. There is a list here of supplements that are more likely or most likely to be safe for you and might be effective. Yeah, based on overall science and research and studies that have been done on these things.

Yeah, so we'll just tick through those. Calcium, cranberry, fish oil, glucosamine sulfate, which I give my dogs. Lactase, lactobacillicus, that's the probiotic, right? Cillium, how do you pronounce that? Pygium, maybe? Yeah, I think that's right, pygium. Good old Sammy.

That's S. adenosyl l-methionine. Yeah, St. John's wort and then vitamin D. Which by the way, get this about vitamin D. So if you're a vegan, very frequently people are like, you should take some extra dietary supplements. And they're like, I take vitamin V. The problem is is not all supplements are vegan, right? Especially vitamin D.

The reason vitamin D is very rarely vegan. Oh boy. This is where most vitamin D, unless it specifically says vegan vitamin D. Oh no. It is extracted lanolin from lamb's wool. Oh. That is sent.

What did you think it was gonna be? I don't know, some sort of testicle. Oh no, no. You gotta pay extra for the testicle. Yeah. So they extract lanolin from lamb's wool, send it to China where it's exposed to UV light to mimic sunlight.

Wow. Because that's where we get a lot of our vitamin D is exposure to sunlight and then it's put into pills and there you go. So if you're a vegan, you wouldn't wanna eat an animal product lanolin. So you really have to look out for that kind of thing. Wow.

And also one more thing about vegans and vitamins. One of the big controversies that proved to some people that you're not supposed to be a vegan is that we need B12 quite badly. We need it for, I believe bone health. I can't keep up, but I've seen so many like different things at vitamin C over the last couple of days,

but we need B12. How about that? Okay. B12 is only gained as far as we know from animal sources. Episofacto, we need to eat animals to get B12. And the way animals get B12 is the gut bacteria in their guts produce B12. And then we eat the animals

that have the B12 built up in their tissues, right? So that's how people who eat meat don't have B12 deficiencies. But vegans say, where are the animals that cows getting that B12 from their bacteria? Where's the bacteria coming from? They say it's from the soil. So there's this big controversy.

Is the B12 producing bacteria actually in the soil? And if so, are the factory farming methods like washing produce that we use, actually washing off the B12 that you would get enough of as a vegan? Yeah, man. It's fascinating. Waiting into these waters is so perilous.

We've got to do a plant-based diet episode sometime. Yeah, you know, who is it? Coach Seattle Seahawks coach, Pete Carroll. One of the older coaches in the NFL, but one of the more vital old guys. He switched his diet to completely plant-based, like raw foods diet, I think within the past couple of years.

And now he's dead. Yeah, he dropped dead on the spot. Now he said it's just, and you know, he's not the only person obviously in the news talking about this stuff. But I just read something recently where he was just like, you would not believe the change in my life and body.

And I was like, yeah, I imagine if you just eat raw vegetables, that would be a great thing for your body. Sure. We'll find out. And I'm not saying that with a sneer, it's just that would be hard for me. Yeah.

You know? Yeah. It's probably something I should do. I should just eat raw vegetables for the rest of my life. You know, Chuck, I don't know that it's healthy to deal in shoulds. So there are also some supplements that they say should be avoided

because there are links to side effects that can be pretty serious. Yeah, that list you just read like a half hour ago about ones that are probably okay for you and probably actually are beneficial. They came up with the opposite list of that too. That's right. Right.

I mean, it was the same like study that came up with the double-edged sword. Bitter orange is one and that one can be especially problematic because from what I read, that can just sort of ramp up your sort of like speed in some ways. Yeah, especially when you mix with caffeine.

Or speed. Oh yeah. Or like meth. Yeah, you're like, wow, this meth has given me a real nutritional deficiency. I should probably start taking vitamins. That's what most meth addicts do. Well, bitter orange though,

is something people do use to lose weight. And it can lead to heart attack and stroke if you take enough of it. And usually, and we'll talk about this more, but this stuff combining with other things is kind of where you can get into problems. Right. I saw a lady one time at a restaurant

where I was working pass out on the middle of the floor. And it's because she had just, we learned from her friends after the ambulance came. She had just come off of a week long like I'm doing nothing but eating... Cayenne, pepper and lemonade. No, but just like water and vitamins or something. And then to celebrate the end of the week,

she was like drinking and eating steak. Oh, good. And she just hit the deck. That's how it's done. That's a real problem, refeeding. We're gonna do an episode once on this man who didn't eat for a year. We're gonna do that?

Yeah, and they were smart enough to figure out that like he couldn't just start eating it and just slowly like work food back in. But you can die from that after a long and a fast. If you don't refeed, go through the process correctly. You can just drop that. Like you have a heart attack basically from eating food. Yeah, this lady was fine.

Or I'm assuming she was fine because as they were wheeling her out, she did the thing that all pro athletes do. She just gave the thumbs up on the girl. She's all right, everybody. She's okay. So what else is on there? Chaperol, colloidal silver, that's a big one.

The silver one that turns you blue. Wouldn't it a senator or somebody? No, it's like an old-timey guy with a beard, the blue man. I think there was a congressman or a senator that turned blue from that. It's like permanent. Is it? Yes.

I saw that it tends to be permanent. Oh boy. Yeah. Once you turn blue, you don't go back is the old saying. Coltsfoot, which I had never heard of before. Supposedly good for asthma. Also linked to liver damage and cancer. Right.

Geranium, country mallow. That has a fedron in it. Yeah, city mallow is great. Country mallow, no good. Cava. That was so dumb. It was so dumb. And what else?

Yohembe? Yohembe, sure. Which is frequently used for erectile dysfunction, but unfortunately, it's an MAOI, which means that if you drink orange juice on this thing, you can drop dead. Wow. And this list is obviously, it's not comprehensive.

And also I wanted to just say one more thing real quick. So I am not attacking supplements. I take supplements myself and the idea of taking something even synthesized, but that's based on scientific investigation into nature and nutrition and all that. I find that endlessly appealing. I love that.

And anything that can help you be a healthier person I'm in favor of. So I don't want to give the impression that I'm just like gleefully shooting holes in the idea of people taking supplements. Cause I take them myself. Yeah, I don't think that's coming across that way. Okay, good.

You seem like you're in a good mood is all. Cause I gleefully shoot holes in a lot of stuff. Oh, sure. I'm just not doing this now. So here's the thing too, which this article points out, these are having a good list and a bad list is all well and good. And it can be helpful if you don't know what's going on.

What's going on? You know, and you like want to start at like zero and learn a couple of things. A list like that is good. But it's again, you have to know your body and talk to your doctor about stuff and like what other medications are you taking and what's your end goal?

Yes. So you want a doctor who is not opposed to supplements and who's knowledgeable with supplements. Cause any good doctor with assault, especially one that came around post nineties should be all about supplements and should know what supplements work. What to recommend to you to also know what you're on

and what you can't have, what interacts poorly. Yeah, I think finding that doctor in the middle ground though can be tough these days. Cause on one end of the spectrum, you have what Emily calls the hokey pokeys, which are like, oh no, no, don't take any pharmaceutical medicines ever. Only take these plant things.

And then at the other end, you have doctors who are like, I believe in science. So only take prescription drugs. Don't mess around with any plant-based thing cause you're just going to pee it out. And I find that it's hard to find someone in between. I think also, even if you do find one that is in between in spirit,

they might not have all the information. Because you touched on it earlier, there is a lot of conflicting and competing studies. Like this article from how stuff works says that back in 2013, after years of being told that they should take vitamin D and calcium for bone health, that post menopausal women were told, stop taking those things.

Not only do they not help you, but the additional calcium may lead to everything from a heart attack to kidney stones. Because kidney stones are typically made of calcium deposits, right? And then another study, I think came out that same year and said, no, no, keep taking those things. Not only do they help you,

they probably actually don't produce kidney stones. And you know that if you go on to like CNN or NBC or Fox News or whatever in their websites, they have both articles screaming, both headlines, the opposite. Nobody ever goes and follows up, right? And everybody just kind of shouts whatever the new study is finding.

So it's really confusing, even if you're trying to pay attention to this. And if you dig into trustworthy sites, like say an FDA site or the National Institutes of Health site or something like that, there's plenty of links, but they say a very minimal amount because there's so little substantial science

that conclusively says this actually helps or this doesn't help. And that's the thing too. There's nothing, or there's very few things that say this does not help. You are totally wasting your money. Yeah, totally. So they can't really say one way or the other.

It's all just really middle ground right now. So we actually need science more than ever to really study this stuff. But I mean, it is, they are studying it. They're just coming up with differing results. Somebody just needs to, God needs to come down and be like, take this.

And just point at the Bible. Yeah, the vitamin church, like not planned. The answers are within. Didn't Ned say vitamin church? Yeah, and a healthy dose of vitamin church. That's great. One thing we do know is that, and this is across the board,

everything I researched said this. If you see anything that says, this is totally safe. This has no side effects. This will give you an erection for sure. This will make you lose weight. Like those are the big, or, you know. This is gonna transfer all your weight to your erection?

Or gentlemen, like, would you like to last longer? Like anything related to sexual performance and like weight loss is just super hinky. Well, it's not only that the claims are frequently hinky. A lot of times the claims are correct. Like this crazy botanical for erectile dysfunction works really well. But don't drink orange juice.

No, it's because they use Viagra. Right. Like one of the ways that bodybuilding, weight loss, and sexual enhancement supplements become adulterated is they have actual pharmaceutical drugs in them that aren't on the label. Some companies have figured out that the FDA is totally powerless and a really good way

to sell cheap pharmaceuticals, generic pharmaceuticals to Americans is to put it in a supplement, not put it on the label and go basically around the FDA by going through the FDA. So are these sold by the actual pharmaceutical companies under sort of like a sub business title? No, and I think it's largely fly by night companies. Well, and do they partner with them

or do they just buy a ton of Viagra? No, they know a guy in China who can get pounds of like cheap generic Viagra or Prozac is another one that pops up, especially in weight loss ones. Yeah, yeah. Steroids, some drugs that were up for FDA approval as pharmaceuticals and FDA said, no, too dangerous. They turn up in dietary supplements.

And it's one thing to waste your money and just pee out expensive urine. It's an entirely different thing to take prescription drugs unknowingly. And without any sort of medical supervision because the government agency that's supposed to be keeping an eye on this stuff is expressly forbade from doing that.

Yeah, there also, you need to like when we were talking about the high fructose corn syrup, the fact that that's in everything, you don't even know it. And sort of the same thing here, like the foods you're already eating may be good enough if you know, chances are if you're eating really good like whole foods and things like that,

you're probably not diving headlong into the supplement thing. But if you're already getting like a ton of vitamin D in various foods that you don't even realize and then you take it on top of that, or God forbid if you think, I'll just quit taking my medication because I think this will help.

Like none of that is a good idea. No. And then we should probably just talk about ephedra really quick because that was a very big deal in the 90s. You could buy it at gas stations. Yeah, and it was marketed as a weight loss thing. And I'm sure it probably worked in that capacity.

Gives you a real good buzz it said on the package. Did it really? Probably, there were probably some. It said it in like a bolt of lightning or something. Well, 15 deaths were attributed to it by 1996. And then I do remember in 2004, the FDA finally banned it. And it wasn't necessarily because of this, but a very high profile death in Major League Baseball

happened. Do you remember who it was? Yeah, he was a pitcher I think is Steve Beckler, I think. And he died, I think during spring training, if I'm not mistaken, and they linked it to ephedra. And they finally were like, maybe we should step in and do something here. Cause America's pastime is at stake.

It'd be like if an apple pie just dropped dead from ephedra. Get rid of the apples. Oh, no, no, no. Sorry, the other way around. So let's take our second break Chuck. Yes. Come back and talk some more food. Okay.

Yeah, let's do. Okay. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh.

Oh. Oh. Oh. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces.

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Hey, Chuck. Hi. Before, so we're back. Yes. Before we talk about food, let's go further back. OK. Hundreds of millions of years ago. Oh, goodness.

OK, yeah, that's a big surprise. So we're not even the way back machine. We can just teleport. Yes. Mentally. We become interdimensional beings. Yes. So we have figured out that vitamins

were around in the early Earth. I don't know if we said originally, I think we said your body needs these things, or micronutrients, but your body needs them for all sorts of things. They help in all manner of chemical processes, from helping your cells divide to your bones to grow really important stuff, which is why we need them.

And your body makes some vitamins, but we have to get them from outside sources a lot. Yes. 13 vitamins are essential to humans. And what we need, other animals don't necessarily need. Like dogs don't need vitamin C, because their bodies produce enough. Right.

Our bodies don't produce enough, so we need vitamin C from other sources. But what they figured out is that in the ancient Earth, bacteria and other life made vitamins on their own. Yeah. And then over time, as we evolved into higher and higher forms, we apparently lost a lot of that ability. Not all of it, because we can still make some,

but to the point where we need to get it from other sources. So more sophisticated animals started eating more primitive animals to get that source of vitamin. Right. And that's where the whole process began, where we started to evolve, co-evolve, with other life on Earth.

And our bodies realized, well, we can get this vitamin from this plant, or we can get this vitamin from this animal. And that's how this kind of food web developed, was basically for a reliance on vitamins and other things like fats and proteins and other nutrients. But this nutrient exchange, that that is when one life started to eat other life.

And that's kind of where vitamins came from. And it wasn't until the beginning of the 20th century that we figured out how to synthesize vitamins. Yeah, that was a game changer in the 20s and 30s. And that thing you said about cereal was just mind blowing. Yes, yes. So if you keep going, the fact that we synthesized vitamins allowed the processed food industry to boom.

Yeah, because it's like here, now we can put things back into food that we synthesized. And in the case of cereal, like what I was saying, there are some vitamins that are sprayed on to the end product. Yeah, so if you see something that says fortified or enriched. Sure, that's what that means. That means that they dump some vitamins into the dough or sprayed it on the outside of your cornflakes or something.

Imagine that just spraying cereal with like, give me a can of vitamin D and just spray it on. Well, the hypothesis is that without enriched foods, we would all be dead from rickets and other sorts of horrible malnourishment disease blind from lack of vitamin A. All the things that can happen to you if you don't get enough vitamins, what happened to the average American because of what we eat?

Well, because of processed foods. Right, but the reason it doesn't is because they put vitamins back in. Some people say, you know, you might not even need supplements, forget eating whole food, but they put so many vitamins in processed food that you could conceivably live OK except for the added sugar and the added salt, you could live vitamin-wise fine.

Well, sure, that's a sugar and the salt thing is a big caveat. It is a big caveat because that leads to other problems like cardiac diseases. I see what you're saying, though, like you could maybe get all the vitamins you need from processed foods. Right. But that's not what we're recommending, because we're not doctors.

But doctors say, are we to food now, like food food? Sure. Also, oh yeah, one more thing. I want to shout out Carl Zimmer who wrote Vitamins Old Old Edge in, I think, the New York Times. Yeah. Yeah, he did a great job about the history of vitamins. Is that a friend of yours?

No, he's like a great science writer. Do you remember our blood type episode? Sure, that was live in Atlanta, right? Yes, it was based a lot on his article on blood types. Didn't we take a, didn't we do a blood type test on stage? Yeah, I turned out to be A positive, right, Jerry? Aren't you A positive? That's right.

Me and Jerry have the same blood type. So if one of us gets a leg amputated, the other one has to cough up some blood. I know, and I'll be right there to manage the whole process. Good, good. But you two would just be arguing the whole time that someone would bleed out before you settled on an arrangement. We'd be saying the same thing, though,

but it just sound like an argument. And I would just, as you both drifted off into the great beyond, I'd say, that's so you guys. All right, that would not be good, though, because then I would have no career. And I'd miss my friends. There you go. Secondly.

So eating foods that Mother Earth gives us that contain these things is clearly the best thing to do. Allegedly. Some studies have shown that we absorb synthetic vitamins better than the stuff in food, depending. Really? I saw that. But again, science is all over the place.

Well, yeah. Well, since you brought that up, and like I mentioned earlier in the episode, there are a lot of studies that say that you actually don't absorb those as well. I guess there are counter studies. What, from vitamins? Yeah. Yeah.

That I'm sure they're probably where does the funding come from? I don't know, you know? For the counter studies. I don't know. That's a really good question. But phytochemicals, they are plant chemicals that have properties that can help really

help protect you from disease. Those aren't in the supplements, though. No. The phytochemicals are what you get when you eat the raw broccoli. Right. And I think you can get supplements, very high end supplements that have phytochemicals and other stuff in them.

Oh, rich people supplements. So like you know, in the future, where they're like, here's a meal and a pill. What they're kind of hinting at is a fully fortified pill. And like in the vitamins we take now, if you take vitamin D, you're getting vitamin D. Sure. Whereas if you drink some milk, you're

getting a whole bunch of other stuff along with that vitamin D. Sure, lactose and calcium. Right. And those things work together in your body. And so you're giving your body a shot of all these things that work really well together. And that's the argument for eating the food.

Oh, for sure. Phytochemicals, they think, enhance what's called bioavailability. And that's what we've been talking about, which is how much you're actually absorbing. And I guess just pick a study because one might say, you pee it right out and another might say a supplement and another might say you don't.

That's where it's just maddening, you know? It is. One of the things that I think US pharmacopia, one of those groups, they test to make sure that the pill or the vitamin or the supplement actually dissolves in the stomach so that you actually are, you do have a fighting chance of absorbing the nutrients in there.

Or does it say on the bottle, don't pee for three hours after taking this? Just pinch it. Oh, my God. Here's another study from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. It showed that omega-3s in fatty fish like a salmon, let's say, they were better able to maintain proper blood

pressure, people were, I'm sorry, mice were, than with that same omega-3 supplement, the fish oil pill that you will take. Yeah. And that's a big deal. There's no substitute, I don't think, for the real thing. Well, they found on the actual level of your blood vessels that the naturally occurring DHA holds open your blood

vessels, whereas the synthetic version doesn't. And it actually fights the natural DHA. The natural version in your bloodstream, too. But I mean, that's just DHA. That doesn't necessarily extrapolate to vitamin D, your vitamin B12 or anything like that. Well, that's why you got to really dig in if you want to start taking supplements.

Do your research. But I think the idea that there are such things as phytochemicals that we don't necessarily need to live. Like resveratrol and grapes or lutein and spinach, or lycopene's a big one that you find in tomatoes. Things that give it a plant its flavor, its odor, and its color. Those things, those are phytochemicals,

and those are the things that act as antioxidants. They regulate hormones. They do all the stuff that we don't have to have to function. But that actually take like, that you go from surviving to thriving, it seems like when you incorporate phytochemicals into your diet. Yeah, you want a shiny coat and glowing skin.

Exactly. You don't need that stuff. No. Here's another thing, the RDA. And I think the RDA, it's not just with the recommended daily allowance. That doesn't just cover supplements. I mean, that's kind of for calories.

Yeah, I mean, that's a whole range of things. But amazingly, that has not been updated since 1968. Yeah, which was, it was a different country back then, too. There were a lot more farmers. Yeah, and it's recommended for, I mean, they're trying to cover all of America. So it's not like the RDA for each person,

they liken it to a sweater in this article that you sent. It's like trying to create a sweater that would fit 97 out of 100 Americans. Americans? Americans, yeah. And that's just not possible. No, I mean, this author, Catherine Price, who wrote Vitamania, she's putting it like 95 Americans

will find it too large. It'll fit one. It won't fit four of them, but it'll fit kind of some. Or it'll fit over some people, but it'll be wrong for them. That was her point. Yeah, and supposedly they're going to update the RDA from 1968 when in a couple of years, 2020, next year.

That's what I saw. We'll see. I'm interested. I can't sleep. I'm sure it's behind schedule. I can't wait. Oh, the other thing to be that you got to wonder about sometimes is what the long term

effect of something like this might be. It's like taking vitamin D for a year or something is different than taking vitamin D for 25, 30, 40 years about your life. Yeah, so there's something called hypervitaminosis, I believe, which is basically ODing on vitamins. And some vitamins, it's really hard to do others. It's a little easier.

But this author, Catherine Price, is kind of putting out this hypothesis that we may be existing in some kind of sub-toxic state, where it's not acutely toxic. We're not feigning and vomiting, and our liver isn't shutting down. But we're suffering from diseases we might not otherwise suffer from that we haven't linked to the fact

that we're taking too many vitamins. Yeah, that's like this low level sort of poisoning. Yeah, that's interesting. That's enough like you could survive, but you might die of something you wouldn't have died from if you hadn't taken vitamin A that you didn't need for 30 years. And that's a hypothesis. It's not proven, but I've seen other people suggest it, too.

Yeah, and poison control, too. Oh, yeah, that's a big one. That's a huge one. Every 24 minutes, poison control centers in the US get a call about a supplement reaction. It happens a lot. Yeah, there's about 23,000 ER trips from supplements in the US each year.

Yeah, I mean, you think poison control is just like I swallowed something with a skull and crossbones on the label. But that's really not the case. No. And this is especially true with kids. You should treat these things like, you know, it sounds harsh to say like it's poison.

But if you've got a toddler in the house, don't leave your supplements down where they can get them just because it says all natural. Right, yeah, and that's part of the problem is they have this kind of veneer of wholesomeness because they are natural. And this is stuff that's reported to poison control. You supposedly can report something to the FDA,

but how many people are doing that? No, a lot of people, if they do suffer an adverse reaction, will contact the company, the manufacturer, and the manufacturer on paper is supposed to report the incident to the FDA, but again, it's on the honor system. Right, or you just go to the doctor and they say, maybe you should lay off the whatever you're taking.

The wacky tobacco. Yeah, vitamin W. Yeah, maybe lay off that and then you never report it. So the long and short of it is, I think they said something like 90% never get reported to the FDA at all. Right, so I mean, I don't really know how to wrap this one up

because the jury's just so out on so many things. I mean, for the most part, it does seem like you're going to do little more than waste your money on something you don't need, but I think that the movement today is to say, no, just before you really start a supplement regimen, before you go all Ray Kurzweil, because you know, he takes like 250 pills a day.

Really? A day, every day. He's a futurist, he's like Google's chief imagineer or something like that. No, no, that's a Disney term. He takes like 250 pills a day. Before you do anything like that, the kind of the recommendation du jour is try eating more of a Whole Foods diet.

Like go spend all of your money at Whole Foods, I think, Jeff Bezos is driving that one. Yeah, I agree. This is a tough one to wrap up and I believe we will get equal parts emails saying from people who swear by it, it almost takes on a religious quality to people that think it's complete bunk.

And a couple of people saying like, leave Warren Hatch alone. Well, since I said leave Warren Hatch alone, I think that means it's time for Listener Man. It is, and I'm gonna call this Josh and Chuck are feminists. Hey guys, I'm consistently impressed by how clued up you are on feminism. And by feminism, I mean equality in general,

because you always point out times in which men struggle in society too. From my point of view, you also regularly look through a race lens, disabled lens and gay lens, although I cannot speak for how well you are doing there. To me, it seems incredibly inclusive and sympathetic. Thanks.

You're welcome. Oh, you mean, gotcha. I think you too may be the only two adult men I've ever heard speak the way you do. And I massively respect you for that. It's so important to have influential men speak in these ways. I don't think that you ever really push those arguments

down people's throats, but instead, matter of fact, you're really stating these issues during an informative podcast in a man's voice. Let's have an influence and it is having an effect somewhere. I've even heard you criticize some second wave feminist ideas and trump them with third wave feminist ideas. I think it was in the makeup episode,

you guys were discussing feminists of the 70s, shunning women who wear makeup. And Chuck said, I think they may have got that one wrong. And then you two proceeded to have the most progressive chat ever about how women aren't just wearing makeup for the purpose of pleasing men. Makes my head explode with excitement, guys, to each their own.

Keep doing what you're doing. That is from Alice Chibnall, Kiwi living in Edinburgh. Thanks a lot. Great, great city. Agreed. Great country too, New Zealand. Yeah, I mean, she's winning on both fronts. That's where a lot of the sheep landling

and vitamin D comes from, New Zealand. Thanks a lot, Alice. We appreciate that. It was very nice to hear. If you want to give us compliments, man, send them in. You can find us all over social media. Go to our website, StuffYshouldKnow.com.

And as always, you can send us an email to StuffPodcast at iHeartRadio.com. StuffYshouldKnow is a production of iHeartRadio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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Live on the merry express Live on my favorite morality live it. Listen to Hey, dude, the 90s called on the I heart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass host of the new I heart podcast frosted tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because

I'm here to help and a different hot sexy teen crush boy band or each week to guide you through life tell everybody you everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye bye bye listen to frosted tips with Lance Bass on the I heart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.