So-called "dietary supplements" get a bad rap for (among other things) not working. If you'd like to get an expert opinion on supplements that don't work, we recommend (if you have a strong stomach) regular viewing of the Dr. OZ show.
To be fair, sometimes supplements actually do work. With a minor caveat: real drugs legal or otherwise are added to whatever stupid weed is in the bottle, and the next thing you know... Voila! You are losing weight, sometimes at great risk.
This is hardly new. "Herbal Viagra" worked quite well when real Viagra was added to whatever useless garbage was in the bottle. OxyElite Pro was a great weight loss supplement, with the minor downside of having illegal and dangerous amphetamine-like drugs added to the stuff. A "natural" cure for psoriasis was extremely effective but only when anti inflammatory steroid creams, exactly what the users were trying to avoid were added.
So, it should be no surprise that yet another dietary supplement (aka, unregulated drug) has popped up, this time in a "botanical," a subset of supplements that sound even cooler than the regular kind. And, how could a botanical, a term that conjures up visions of golden-haired virgins luxuriating in a warm bath of rose petals while being fed grapes, possibly harm anyone?
Well, they can.
Dr. Pieter Cohen, one of the leaders in the anti-fraud/supplement resistance movement, just published a short communication in Drug Testing and Analysis about supplements that have nasty things in them. In this case, the nasty thing is yohimbine, a member of the indole alkaloid family of chemicals and drugs.
Representative Indole Alkaloids
| Chemical | Use | Source |
| Yohimbine | Veterinary | Yohimbe tree |
| Vincristine | Cancer chemotherapy | Madagascan Periwinkle |
| Physostigmine | Alzheimer's, antidote for nerve gas, glaucoma | Calabar bean |
| Serotonin | Ubiquitous neurotransmitter | -- |
| Tryptophan | Amino acid | Protein |
| LSD | Hallucinogenic drug | Synthetic analog of lysergic acid (from ergot fungus) |
| Strychnine | Rat poison | Strychnos nux-vomica tree |
| Reserpine | Antipsychotic, depression (little used-multiple. severe side effects) | Indian snakeroot |
Yohimbine, for reasons that I cannot fathom, is permitted to be sold as a dietary supplement, when in fact it's a drug, and a rather dangerous one at that, or what we call a "dirty drug." What that mans is that it hits multiple receptors, thus causing multiple pharmacological effects. Yohimbine, which primarily affects the central nervous system, does this with style. It will not only hit just about every receptor in your brain, but also the guy sitting next to you on the subway:
Source: Wikipedia
Dr. Cohen and colleagues tested 49 brands of supplements that were labeled as containing yohimbine. Not surprisingly, the label had little to do with what was in the bottle. The amount of yohimbine in the bottle ranged from zero to 12 milligrams.
Of the 49 bottles, only 11 listed the amount of drug present, but this mattered little since the amount in the bottle ranged from 23-to-147 percent of the amount on the label. Perhaps worse, only two bottles provided accurate information about the dose and adverse effects.
The adverse effects, according to Drugs.com, from yohimbine are not trivial:
- Elevation in blood pressure
- Increase in heart rate
- Nausea
- Vomiting
- Irritability
- Anxiety
- Headache
- Sweating
- Skin flushing
- Allergic reactions (difficulty breathing; closing of the throat; swelling the lips, tongue, face, hives
- Confusion
- Tremors
So, once again, we have a drug being sold as a dietary supplement simply because it comes from a tree. And it's a really lousy drug. It treats just about nothing, and comes with an encyclopedia of side effects. And it is fair to ask: exactly what is it supplementing? Like you don't get enough Yohimbe tree bark in your normal diet?
And people are worried about touching cash register receipts for fear of getting traces of BPA on their hands, while others are gulping this stuff down. Or not. It may or may not even be in the bottle.
Anyone else see a few problems here?
