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Supplements are not safe

 •  • by Paul Ingraham
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Weekly nuggets of pain science news and insight, usually 100-300 words, with the occasional longer post. The blog is the “director’s commentary” on the core content of PainScience.com: a library of major articles and books about common painful problems and popular treatments. See the blog archives or updates for the whole site.

Ars Technica reporting on Rao et al:

“Between 2005 and 2012, the rate of supplement-related calls to poison centers increased 49.3 percent, researchers reported Monday in the Journal of Medical Toxicology. In the final year of data, the centers were getting calls at a rate of nearly 10 adverse exposures per 100,000 people.”

Grim. I wonder how many thought they were detoxifying.

And why is this happening? Contamination. A huge and totally unregulated industry selling to legions of credulous people who are knee-jerk cynical about Big Pharma but never question the scruples of supplement sellers. What could possibly go wrong?

The most contaminated product category? Homeopathy.

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