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Do you know what's in your herbal supplements?

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Flickr

When you buy herbal supplements, are you really getting what you pay for? Is the label accurate?

This week on “Take Care,” Dr. Arthur Grollman talks about herbal supplements. Grollman is a professor of pharmacological sciences, a professor of experimental medicine and director of the Zickler Laboratory of Chemical Biology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

The Food and Drug Administration considers new drugs unsafe until proven otherwise, requiring the drugs to undergo a series of clinical trials. The opposite holds true for herbal supplements, however, where they are deemed safe until proven to be unsafe.

According to Grollman, there are no differences in the eyes of the law between herbal dietary supplements and vitamins. The Dietary Supplemental Health and Education Act, which passed in 1994, classified these two together.

“The law would be much better if it limited itself to vitamins and minerals where we have far less problems,” Grollman says. “We really are focusing today on the troublemaker of the dietary supplements and that’s herbs or botanicals.”

The lack of regulation starts at the beginning of the process of manufacturing herbal supplements, Grollman says. If someone decides they want to manufacture a supplement and they believe it’s safe, they notify the FDA. If the FDA does not make an argument against the product within 30 days, then the company is able to go produce and sell the supplement.

“You are able to go ahead with the manufacturing,” Grollman says. “The burden of proof is on the FDA, not on you after that point, to be safe.”

But, according to Grollman, it is not a completely self-regulated industry. There was one test case when the FDA took an herb called ma huang, or ephedra off the market. But it took years.

“There is regulation but it really is not from a practical point,” Grollman says. “The FDA only takes the very worst cases such as ephedra and that’s the only one in which they’ve ever been successful.”

The issue of herbal supplements has received attention recently when one state’s attorney general decided to find out what’s really in some supplements.

New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman  recreated a Canadian study, which showed that certain bottles contained no trace of the plant or matching DNA that was being advertised to be in some supplements. And the study also found evidence of contaminating proteins and fillers in some supplements.  

Schneiderman recreated the study with a professor who found the same results. He demanded the companies, which included GNC, remove the mislabeled products from the shelf.

Many of the problems with herbal supplements, Grollman says, begin with that fact that most of the herbs being sold come from India or China, even when they're sold by U.S. manufacturers.

“All of them are legally responsible, but you can be sure that the farmer in China couldn’t care less about what happens to it after he gets paid,” Grollman says. “Moreover, there are severe problems with the lands in which these are grown in. So it’s been shown that these are deep in pesticides and contaminants in certain countries of the world.”

It is the responsibility of companies like Wal-Mart and Walgreens to check with the immediate provider and the other providers between the plant in China and the capsule on the shelf, according to Grollman.

If you want to continue using herbal supplements, Grollman has a small piece of advice.

­­­“If you have health problems or are taking prescription drugs, do not take herbal supplements,” Grollman says. “If you don’t have those, then certainly try to purchase those where some testing has been done on their composition. Not what the company says, but an independent third party.”