CBC Makes Misleading Claim Re Danger of Supplements

The CBC posted a number of stories today that are critical of natural health. As part of the assault, CBC seems to have thrown every negative link it coud find onto its website. Amongst the links is one with the misleading and alarmist heading, Supplements send 23,000 to hospital each year in U.S: study. . . .

But the heading is misleading and alarmist. An analysis by natural health expert Michael Murray, ND puts the study into a perspective that reveals the safety of natural supplelments.

77.4% of hospitalizations were because of ingesting too much caffeine from supplements. The caffeine caused heart palpitations and increased heart rated, and the people were subsequently discharged.

Most other hospitalizations were either elderly people who simply had difficulty swallowing pills or children who got into unsupervised pill bottles and swalled multvitamins. The children were admitted simply as a precaution.

Not only does that leave very few admissions for problems that can actually be blamed on real natural health supplements, but the study found absolutely no serious adverse events or deaths. The CBC report did not find the space to report those last two important facts: the report found no serious adverse events or deaths from taking natural supplements.