“All natural” – the phrase casts a soft-focus, warm, rosy glow over everything it’s applied to, doesn’t it?\u00a0 After all, this is “Mother Nature” we’re talking about here!\u00a0 If you can’t trust your mother, who can you trust?<\/p>\n
This\u00a0equation of\u00a0“natural” with “wholesome”\u00a0contrasts rather sharply\u00a0with some of the things I learned in graduate school.\u00a0 I vividly recall one class in particular, “Foodborne Infections and Intoxications<\/a>,” which was a crash course\u00a0on how to investigate disease\u00a0outbreaks\u00a0associated with\u00a0the consumption of food and water.\u00a0 I always felt a bit\u00a0queasy after class, although I guess this was a pretty\u00a0“natural” reaction to the course material.\u00a0\u00a0How would you feel if you had to\u00a0talk about\u00a0vomit, diarrhea, neurotoxicity, liver damage and\u00a0cardiopulmonary arrest for an hour each day?<\/p>\n In other classes, I learned about\u00a0the many\u00a0naturally-occurring anti-nutritional factors, carcinogens, goitrogens and allergens often present in\u00a0ordinary foods, and how to deal with them, where possible.\u00a0 Potatoes are a perfect example.\u00a0 As\u00a0healthy\u00a0as they are, potatoes are also quite capable of producing toxic glycoalkaloids under certain conditions.\u00a0 This is why\u00a0specific cultivars and recommendations for\u00a0storage\/handling conditions have been developed<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n There’s also\u00a0aflatoxin in peanut butter<\/a> and patulin in apple juice<\/a> – and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.\u00a0 Don’t get me started…<\/p>\n One of the saddest stories I’ve ever heard\u00a0about overconfidence in nature involved a family living the organic, simple life, which included raising free-range goats for their milk.\u00a0 The goats, unfortunately, were grazing on lupins, the seeds of which\u00a0contain anagyrine, a teratogen<\/a>.\u00a0 Not only did the goats give birth to kids with limb deformities, the\u00a0woman’s baby\u00a0and\u00a0a litter of puppies were also affected, since the mothers drank the goats’ milk during pregnancy.\u00a0<\/p>\n Sorry to belabor the point, but it’s important to understand that nature is NOT benign.\u00a0 You can’t assume that something\u00a0is perfectly safe to consume, just because it’s “natural.”<\/p>\n What does this have to do with dietary supplements?\u00a0 Rather a lot, actually.<\/p>\n There isn’t a very\u00a0sharp line between herbal\u00a0“nutraceuticals” and pharmaceuticals.\u00a0 In fact, a number of pharmaceuticals\u00a0were originally\u00a0derived from the active compounds in plants. Some\u00a0obvious examples are\u00a0the drugstore staples\u00a0ephedrine (e.g., Bronkaid), caffeine (e.g., NoDoz)\u00a0and aspirin (e.g., Bayer).\u00a0 Do these look familar?\u00a0 They should: they’re\u00a0also components of the classic “ECA Stack” used by bodybuilders to lean out, and were the active compounds in now defunct diet supplement formulas, such as the original “Ripped Fuel,” “Dymetradine Xtreme” and “Xenadrine RFA-1.”\u00a0<\/p>\n As\u00a0many people know,\u00a0the ECA stack\u00a0works pretty darned well\u00a0for fat loss.\u00a0\u00a0It can also cause\u00a0side effects, however, such as increased heart rate and blood pressure, nausea, headache, anxiety, insomnia, etc.\u00a0Most of these\u00a0are minor and relatively short-lived for\u00a0healthy people who take the stack as directed.\u00a0 Bigger problems, however, were inevitable due to the\u00a0emphasis placed on the “all natural” sources used as ingredients in the above supplements:\u00a0guarana (caffeine),\u00a0Ma Huang (ephedra) and white willow bark (salicin – similar to aspirin in structure and effects).\u00a0<\/p>\n