Red flag over unsafe supplements
POPULAR weight loss and workout supplements on sale in health shops contain a chemical nearly identical to amphetamine and pose dangers to the health of those who take them‚ according to a new study.
The Canadian health authorities in December called the chemical BMPEA “a serious health risk”‚ and pulled supplements that contain it from shop shelves.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the US documented two years ago that nine such supplements contained the same chemical‚ but never made public the names of the products or the companies that made them.
Neither has it recalled the products nor issued a health alert to consumers‚ as it has done with other tainted supplements.
Public health experts con- tend the agency is not effectively policing the lucrative supplements industry‚ in part because top FDA regulators themselves come from the industry and have conflicts of interest. “To have former officials in the supplement industry become the chief regulators of that industry at the FDA is like the fox guarding the hen house‚” Michael Jacobson‚ executive director of the Centre for Science in the Public Interest‚ a consumer advocacy group, says.
The FDA was the first to begin investigating products that turned out to contain BMPEA. As early as 2013‚ scientists at the agency said in an article published last year they noticed many popular supplements listed among their ingredients a littleknown plant called acacia rigidula‚ a shrub native to Mexico and southern Texas.
The plant’s presence in so many supplements was a red flag‚ says Dr Pieter Cohen‚ an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School and the lead author of the new study published this month in the journal Drug Testing and Analysis.
He says it is not uncommon for companies to spike weight-loss and exercise supplements with amphetaminelike chemicals‚ then hide them on their labels under the names of obscure plants to give the impression that they are natural botanical extracts.
In December‚ the Canadian health authorities said they forced a recall of a supplement that lists acacia rigidula as an ingredient – JetFuel Superburn – after the product was found to contain BMPEA and another amphetamine-like stimulant.
The Canadian government issued a public health alert about BMPEA to consumers: “Amphetamine stimulants can increase blood pressure‚ heart rate and body temperature; lead to serious cardiovascular complications (including stroke) at high doses; suppress sleep and appetite; and be addictive.”
In the US‚ three of the supplements – JetFuel Super- burn‚ JetFuel T-300 and MX-LS7 – found in the study to contain BMPEA were for sale at Vitamin Shoppe‚ one of the US’s largest retailers of supplements‚ with hundreds of locations. None lists BMPEA as an ingredient.
The other supplements the study listed were Aro Black Series Burn‚ Black Widow‚ Dexaprine XR‚ Fastin-XR‚ Lipodrene Hardcore‚ Lipodrene Xtreme‚ Stimerex-ES and Yellow Scorpion.
Bastiaan Venhuis‚ a scientist who studies tainted supplements at the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment in the Netherlands‚ says that the physiological effects of BMPEA are most likely very similar to those of DMAA‚ an amphetamine-like stimulant that can cause heart attacks and strokes. Supplements containing DMAA are banned in Australia‚ Britain‚ Canada and Sweden. – NYTimes.com