Health Claims and Seniors

A guest post.

If you are a distributor of food supplements, especially those expensive kinds, please be careful about your claims. Food supplements are not BFAD approved because it’s called food, right? I know this because I used to be a distributor of many different brands. All there are are stories or testimonies from users. Stories of how it positively affected their health, right? That’s why, don’t claim that your client can stop their maintenance meds, don’t claim that they will get better with whatever illnesses that they have. Here is our story:

My mother is a believer of supplements. In fact, I am, too. But only to a point. I take my supplements and I take my meds. My mother was sold a very expensive supplement. One bottle cost P20,000. Seller who has no medical background advised my 80 year old mom not to take the supplement with her other meds. Seller claimed that the supplement will heal her illnesses. She took the supplement for 2 and a half days, did not take her Norvasc, and after that, I had to confine her in the hospital for 12 days! 12 days because she had many other illnesses! The first sign why I brought her to the hospital was her elevated blood pressure. After many tests, it was found out that she had pneumonia.

Here’s more. My mother was advised by another doctor (I don’t know if this is really a doctor) to go on the Keto Diet. She is 80 years old! Since January, she has followed the keto diet almost perfectly, eating so little. She lost a lot of weight, along with it her immune system was compromised.

That’s why she succumbed to pneumonia despite having had the pneumonia vaccine. After 12 days in the hospital, we finally took her home. In less than 48 hours, we had to take her back to the hospital again. This time it was because she was so weak, she can hardly get up by herself. Just taking one step up to the car was so difficult for her.

Reason: Low sodium still because of the little that she eats. It seems to me that she has been so used to eating so little that it’s now hard for her to eat normally. In the hospital, she was constantly dizzy and vomittling, a little movement of her head will trigger the dizziness and vomitting. We though at first that she had a stroke, but the CT scan showed normal brain activity, thank God. Her neurologist gave her meds, told her to stop the supplements and to eat normally.

Yun lang, pero katakot takot ang pinagdaanan niya at ng buong pamilya namin dahil sa food supplements, sa keto diet at sa claims na gagaling siya.

So please food supplement sellers, ingat sa mga claims when you’re selling. Isipin din ang kapakanan ng binebentahan. Buhay nila ang at risk, hindi sayo.

Maraming back story ito na hindi ko na kelangan ikwento, basta ingat na lang sa pagbebenta kung ang pinaguusapan ay ang health. Huwag basta-basta mag claim at lalo na kung senior citizen na, hindi na malalakas ang resistensya nila.