Customer Reviews

Ephedra Fact and Fiction: How Politics, the Press and Special Interests are Targeting Your Rights to Vitamins, Minerals, and Herbs

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At first I was skeptical--what did I care about ephedra since I didn't use it. However, this book shows how ephedra is just the tip of the iceberg. If the pharmaceutical industry and their allies in Congress can crush ephedra with nothing more than anecdotal evidence is any supplement safe? Today ephedra--tomorrow Vitamin C!!!! This is a great book to read to understand the issue.

I have been taking Ephedra for three years now and have followed the label requirements with no ill effects. I really believe this is just a way for government and pharmacuetical companies to try to restrict the rights on those who take supplements. In the book the author points out what really happens behind the scene in Washington with using the media and press to drive the fear into people who want to take Ephedra. ANYONE who takes supplements, not just Ephedra should give this book a look since it shows that it could happen with any supplement.

I had never heard of Ephedra before reading this book.

What is Ephedra? It's a Chinese Herb (ma huang), an adrenaline-like stimulant, which has been used for thousands of years. Though in the case of this book, 'ephedra' specifically refers to the synthetic alkaloids ephedrine and pseudo-ephedrine (also used in widely available and legal over-the-counter cold remedies). The chemical cocktails referenced by the book were herb weight loss pills that combined Ephedra and caffeine, as sold by the Metabolife corporation and several other companies in the 1990's and early 2000's.

If you google 'Ephedra' and look at the Wikipedia article, you'll read the inflated claims this book successfully debunks.

The book asserts (with over 10 pages of bibliography articles in respected medical journals) that less people died from using Ephedra than from using Aspirin. That Steve Belcher died from heatstroke and pushing himself too hard (autopsy report cited), and that Korey's Stringer locker contained no Ephedra products when his family emptied it after his death (newspaper article cited). The book includes the passages of the deliberately misinterpreted RAND report (p102-9) and specifically shows how lies were told.

Further, the book explains exactly what AER or Adverse Effect Reports are. The 15,000 *unscreened* reports turned over by Metabolife in the hearings included things like consumer complaints about pricing, gunshot deaths, and cases which only mentioned the word 'ephedra' without establishing causation.

This book cites (p98) a prospective, two arm, six month, randomized, double-blind, placebo controlled clinical safety trial conducted at two sites which appeared in the 2002 edition of the Journal of Obesity. It involved about 200 people. One of the co-authors was once a professor at Harvard Medical School. The conclusion was Ephedra was safe and helped weight loss at 3 additional pounds per month when taken properly with exercise and a fat controlled diet. As a medical journalist the author calls this an unbiased study with 'a scientific gold standard'. He later states bigger studies like this are needed to conclusively show Ephedra is not dangerous (they have never been funded).

While the supplements industry did spend $4 million lobbying for their product, the big-pharma industry spent over seven times that, $30 million, getting the product banned (charts p158-161). Why? It is cheaper and perhaps better than (their) weight loss drugs also on the market. The supplement industry makes low billions of dollars, and pharma (worth hundred of billions) wants a piece of it. Chapter six explores industry PR techniques and chapter seven is about how pharma develops drugs at taxpayer expense. While interesting, they had little to do with Ephedra, other than highlight how powerful industry opposition is. Chapter eight shows how much of a farce the congressional hearing were, but is on the boring side. Supplements Under Siege: Inside the Conspiracy to Take Away Your Vitamins, Minerals, and Herbs by this same author examines Pharma's influence in detail.

Five stars because the premise of the book is spot on, and the arguments are well documented, well supported, and make sense. This book has convinced me Ephedra is not a dangerous product and was only banned because of industry lobbying. The reason for this lobbying was that Ephedra's results were equal to or surpassed more expensive diet drugs owned by big pharma. I currently have no desire to take Ephedra or other weight loss remedies.