Supplements can’t help people to more maintain their bodily health than the people expect. Nutritional supplement industry thinks that nutrients that food contains are more important than food itself. In fact, some supplement takers think that they can maintain their health only if they take nutrients. Therefore, they take supplements instead of eating real food. However, in the article,
Moreover, in the book, In Defense Of Food, the author, Michal Pollan, supposes that most supplement takers are highly educated and rich people who are concerned about their health and know how to manage their body. They tend to eat fresh vegetables and go to a gym. Those factors help the supplements takers to maintain their bodily health. Supplements provide people with additional nutrients, which the people can’t get from daily diets, or those, who do exercise, can enhance the exercise effect with intake of supplement. However, supplement takers are convinced that supplements are directory related to their health.
Secondly, I think some supplements don’t make our health better; on the contrary, they make our health worse. According to POSSIBLE LINK FOUND BETWEEN SUPPLEMENTS AND SERIOUS ILLNESS by NCRHI Newsletter, Mayo Clinic researched that FDA recognized impurities in certain nutritional supplements like 5-hydroxy-L-tryptophan (5HTP) that might be related to the illness eosinophilia-myalgia syndrome (EMS). Those days, People took 5HTP to cure some disorders such as insomnia, depression, and so on. In 1991, the FDA admitted that 5HTP contained impurities, which are called Peak X. It was identified in one cause of EMS, which raised certain white blood cells and caused severe muscle pain. Some researchers identified more than 1,500 cases of EMS, including 38 deaths, associated with L-tryptophan supplement. Nutritional scientists try to isolate whole nutrients in food if they can precisely recognize qualitative differences between nutrients and separate one nutrient from others. I think their contributions engineered with nutritional supplements. However, a human even a nutritional scientist is not perfect, which means everyone makes mistakes. I think it is too complicated for people to manage nutrients. We have to know that supplements sometimes make our health worse.
In addition, some supplement takers firmly believe that supplements, but their thoughts mislead them to wrong use. In the article, “ARE YOUR SUPPLEMENTS SAFE?” written by Schardt David, Jennifer Rosenthal, who was 28 years old, purchased some dietary supplements to lose weight easily in 2002. However, she slipped into a coma three weeks later. Doctors were able to save Rosenthal's