A Patient with Natural Supplements 1

Late last week, I met a new patient.  A delightful teenager, she was interesting and engaging.  She was insightful and open, and I agreed with part of the diagnosis she came in with.  I would be prescribing some medication for her.

I asked some typical new-prescription questions.  Was she taking any medications?  Did she have any allergies?  No, and no.

It was the first time I met her, so I asked about her stuffy nose that she kept rubbing.  Well, she did have those kind of allergies.  As we went through some of her medical issues, she revealed some typical teenage-girl symptoms.  I asked if she has tried to do anything about these, does she take ibuprofen, and so on.  She said that her mom took her to the chiropractor, and she takes some supplements that were recommended.

Which supplement?  She didn’t know.  She said it was 8. 

“Eight ingredients?” I asked.

“No,” she said.  “Eight separate bottles.”

“What do they do?”

“I don’t know,” she said, earnestly.  At my request, a parent emailed me the list.

Don’t expect a complete horror story—this isn’t one.  Most of the products were basically vitamins.  Calcium from seashells, and B-vitamins from Blue-green algae.  There were a couple of surprises, and some insight from my research.

Funny thing about algae:  it concentrates what is in the water it lives in.  So it is a concentrated form of protein and vitamins.  But it is often found with high levels of heavy metals.  And sometimes it gets contaminated with microorganisms you probably don’t want.

There were a number of products with names that didn’t give a clue about what they were for.  So I looked up the manufacturers, got their list of products, then found the ingredients. 

As an aside, I have to imagine that the target market for many of these products has its bulls-eye right here in Berkeley, where the vegans look upon vegetarians as insincere poseurs, ersatz Dr. Strangelove apologists for global thermonuclear annihilation.

So imagine my amusement and the gleeful profundity of my schadenfreude when I found that the product called Okra Pepsin (sounds vegetable-y, right?) contains what the manufacturer claims to be a ‘proprietary blend’ (they don’t need to worry about me stealing the secret formula) containing bovine orchic extract.  Perhaps they use an extract of orchids that look like cows.

Not exactly.  The go to slaughterhouses, ask if there are some testicles lying around, and then, you know, extract.

Why did this teenage girl need this?  I couldn’t guess.  She was also taking products using ground thymus glans from slaughtered animals including cows and sheep and maybe other species.  And another product with adrenal glands.

Hey, in some places they consider organ meats a delicacy.