warning about " supplements " targets important herbs

Is there anyone here who would like to add their comments / experience of how they have had their vital organs, including heart, liver, or kidney, done wrong by the likes of Lobelia, Chaparral, Comfrey? Okay, other supplements, including Colloidal Silver , are also on this targeted hit list. While the pure natural-health advocate shuns supplements like silver because it is not among the classic natural ingredients found in the human body, how many people here know from personal experience that Colloidal Silver will blow out your vital organs the way the media is trumpeting Consumer Reports report?


One reason for posting this is to get a comparison of notes with some other of you people from different parts of the globe. In other words, has your neck of the woods also been receiving the same hyped media reports on supplements? For the past two weeks and running here in the greater Pittsburgh Pennsylvania area the local tv stations (namely CBS and NBC ) have been airing the same hyped warnings about certain supplements. When I first caught some glimpses of this on tv two weeks ago it was easier to shrug off as just more run of the mill hyped news propaganda... ya know? Like a lot of bum news, I expected that story to air once or twice over a day or two and then it would be quickly forgotten....... but now that the same story has been re-aired several times, it is not so easy to shrug off. Instead, I'm wondering what this is about, particularly, why now? Why now is this kind of a story being given Britney-like news treatment?

This hype appears to be based on Consumer Reports, an entity that in the past I have at times given some credance. That credibility has shrunken some with this recent report. A version of it can be found here.

http://kdka.com/consumer/consumer.reports.supplements.2.1862459.html


Some key points to deconstructing this hype:

- a seemingly regular person, named Jareem Gunter, claims he bought an over the counter supplement " to improve my athletic performance " but ended up with a damaged liver because this product contained a synthetic hormone. The TV version of this news report included dramatized video bytes of Jareem.

- what legit connection is there between OTC supplements containing synthetic performance-enhancing hormones and the various natural substances on the hit list, substances that are derived from green things that grow out of God's green earth?

- note that the FDA in combo with an alleged " independent research group " chimes in via this CR report to say that their warnings about the items (12) on the hit list are "... supplement ingredients linked by clinical research or case reports to serious side effects, including heart, liver, or kidney problems," Metcalf said."