Health supplements have become a staple part of a person's daily diet. They give you the extra nutrition one needs, and are necessary for regulating diseases and disorders for other people as well. Health supplements range from energy pills to weight diet pills and the pill market has become one of the biggest in the industry. But, in a recent study published last Wednesday, it revealed that almost 23,000 people are sent to emergency room dues to health supplement pills.
The study curated their data from years 2004 throughout 2013, basing their reports from 63 hospitals and using a surveillance system from the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Food and Drug Commission (FDA) and Consumer Product Safety Commission. Symptoms most commonly seen on the data gathered were chest pains and heart palpitations. Out of the 23,000 reported cases, 2,000 of these were serious enough for hospital admission.
25 percent of cases are said to be caused by weight-loss pill intake, while 10 percent was caused by energy pills. The most harrowing information of the data was the fact that 20 percent of people being sent to the ER are children who take dietary pills without supervision. The problem with pills is that most of them are not required to be packaged in child-resistant containers with the exception of iron supplements, which are deadly to children if taken in high doses.
Despite being packaged in a child-resistant container, iron supplement intake was still the second most common reason for ER admission amongst children. "Many Americans take dietary supplements in an effort to stay healthy, but these products can cause harm for some people," Andrew Geller, a medical officer in CDC's division of health care quality promotion, and co-author of the study said. On the other hand, 38 percent of cases are reported to be senior citizens being sent to the ER after pills become lodged on the throat, esophagus or windpipe.
The FDA does not limit the size of the pills and another problem is the lack of lists of side effects being put into warning bottles of the pills; this can leave the consumers unaware. Dietary supplements are taken by over 150 million Americans; it has become one of the biggest industries today.