Ask me how
Herbalife does not offer
Alexey Vodovozov, XX2 century
For links, see the original article.
Biologically active food additives received a rebirth with the advent of social networks, mobile Internet and giant aggregators for sale like a website, which begins with "ai" and ends with "herb" (the solution to the secret: this ru.iherb.com – VM). But there are more and more questions about this group of products from year to year.
Dietary supplements are food, with all the ensuing consequences. This is stated even on the website of Rospotrebnadzor, which in general is more than loyal to dietary supplements, unlike its American (FDA) or European (EMA) counterparts. To be treated or to carry out the prevention of anything with food is at least a strange occupation, but nowadays any business is honorable, even if it benefits the consumer like A2 – milk goat. It does not harm – and that's good.
But with "no harm" there are regular problems all over the world. Firstly, dietary supplements are carefully disguised as medicines, to the point of confusion making similar packages, names, using blisters, vials, everything that medicines are packaged in. In August 2019, the FAS reported that 355 such chameleons were identified on the domestic market, and 539 more of the same beauties were registered in the EAEU. The FAS, of course, promised to put things in order, but not earlier than by November 2021, and somehow you have to live now, since the advertising of miracle drugs is carried from every iron, especially they like to appoint various instagurus, including with millions of subscribers. It is not necessary to go far for an example, remember at least Natalia Zubareva, who was elected a full academician of the Lying Academy of Pseudoscience (LIED).
Secondly, since the permitted ingredients of dietary supplements do not really work (this is food, I remind you), they are mixed with what works, pharmacological substances, which I described in detail in one of the previous columns. Another option is the use of prohibited, unauthorized or even unclear components of plant origin. And here, somewhere, fans of a certain brand come in. They say, well, Solgar are definitely sinless, they also have the most vitamin-rich vitamins, you will not find such vitamins anywhere else, because they are made of their most fortified vitamins. Or Herbalife is a brand with such a history, they will not save on quality, because everyone has lost weight, who decided to ask how.
And it's our turn to check the facts. According to Solgar, everything is far from ambiguous, the same Attorney General of the state of New York, along with the other three manufacturers, requested detailed information about production and quality control practices from them. The reason for this appeal was a sudden check in four stores in the state, where "natural, herbal, not chemical additives" were sold. The results, as noted in the document, "were shocking to many consumers and raised troubling legal questions." The analysis showed the following: it was not possible to find plants declared on the label in the additive, but others were found, including from the list of prohibited ones and, of course, not declared on the label. For example, one of the "herbs", which was supposed to relieve women from the symptoms of menopause, in reality turned out to be a brutally hepatotoxic relative. In addition, mercury, lead, arsenic and other heavy metals were found. This is an unexpected bonus for the liver from the manufacturer. Well, in addition, Solgar products have at least one more proven fatal outcome in a premature newborn in October 2014.
Russians encountered Herbalife in the 1990s, when people with distinctive badges appeared on public transport and just on the streets. For many, this was their first experience in MLM, and many remained in multi-level marketing for many years. So, the director of the company, where I came in the early 2000s to announce a new computer diagnosis of diseases, started with Herbalife. As a result, the company turned out to be a charlatan, deceiving gullible customers with the help of bioresonance – this is how non-existent diseases were found, but American dietary supplements were offered to treat them.
Are there any complaints about Herbalife? Actually, there is. The US Federal Trade Commission has accumulated a bundle of complaints, after which regulators staged a full-scale investigation and published an interesting document in 2016. It says that Herbalife deceived consumers, promising them mountains of gold for the sale of food additives and personal care products and involving them in another pyramid. The company was ordered to pay $200 million in damages and restructure its business in the United States. Almost 350 thousand former distributors have already received checks, payments continue. Similar lawsuits have appeared in Belgium, Israel, and many other countries. And now guess when the second coming of Herbalife to our country began? A coincidence? I don't think.
Well, are the products of high quality-natural-useful? Just one fact: in LiverTox, the section of the National Center for Biotechnology Information of the USA, where information about hepatotoxic substances, products and medicines is collected, there is a separate tag under "Herbalife", and there is already enough information for a chapter in the book. Medical journals have described at least 53 cases of clinically confirmed liver damage in Spain, Israel, Switzerland, Iceland, the USA, and Argentina after consuming various dietary supplements from this manufacturer. It was not possible to establish clear cause-and-effect relationships, no one will allow interventional studies of this kind to be conducted, but there is more than enough indirect evidence.
On average, the development of toxic hepatitis took from 1 to 12 months, the onset was not particularly noticeable: fatigue, nausea, abdominal discomfort, then darkening of urine and eventually jaundice. Liver biopsy showed signs of cholestasis, that is, bile turnover block. At the same time, it is noted that due to the large number of components in Herbalife dietary supplements, it is difficult to identify a specific plant or substance that caused problems.
In 2019, a review of India appeared and it turned out that there were plenty of victims of popular miracle dietary supplements there. What was found in the Herbalife product samples? Barium, chromium, lead, thallium, vanadium, cadmium, hydrazine, cyclopropene, butyrolactone, glycolic acid, that is, heavy metals and toxic substances that are not intended for oral use at all. And this is not counting cases of microbial contamination, the absence of declared plants and the presence of unidentified replacements. Naturally, there was not a word about it on the labels.
In general, for 100 thousand consumers of Herbalife products, 25-30 will get liver problems. The manufacturer usually disowns the products that have failed, they say, in fact, the quality control system is systematic and high-quality, these are all fakes or the machinations of competitors. Or lying and corrupt journalists, as it may well turn out with this column, for example. However, facts are a stubborn thing, there are many of them, from different parts of the planet, and they all agree on the same thing: we cannot call these supplements at least safe, let alone some utility or effectiveness. However, like any dietary supplements, it's stupid to expect miracles from food.
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