Checking a Supplement's Contents Could Avoid Risk
SEP 09, 2001
By RYAN M. KLOCKNER [NYT]
Any product sold as a dietary supplement is safe.
That's what I used to think. That was before my five-day stay in a hospital. After you hear about my recent experience, you may
think twice before you buy your next supplement.
I was admitted to Condell Medical Center near my hometown of Mundelein, Ill., a suburb of Chicago. Doctors diagnosed atrial
fibrillation, a condition in which the upper chambers in the heart are beating irregularly, and not in sync with the lower chambers. As
a result, not all of the blood is removed from the heart, which can eventually lead to clotting. If a clot were to move to an artery of
the brain, it could cause a stroke.
The real question was why I — a young, healthy, athletic 21-year-old with no history of heart trouble — would be suffering from
atrial fibrillation.
To lose weight, I was taking a supplement containing ma huang, an herbal stimulant also known as ephedra. It is also found in
dietary supplements favored by many young athletes. After the Northwestern football player Rashidi Wheeler collapsed and died
during a team practice session on Aug. 3, reports surfaced that players had been taking supplements and school officials had turned
over samples of the supplements Ultimate Punch and Xenadrine to the Evanston police. While the Cook County coroner's office
said that the cause of Wheeler's death was exercise-induced bronchial asthma, the autopsy confirmed the presence in his system of
the active ingredient in ephedra, ephedrine.
It is still unknown if a supplement contributed to Wheeler's death, but dietary supplements containing ephedra have raised red flags.
(On Thursday, a consumer advocacy group and a prominent pharmacologist petitioned the Food and Drug Administration to ban
ephedra, citing reports that illnesses linked to supplements containing ephedra had nearly doubled in recent years. Yesterday, The
Times reported that the National Football League became the first major professional sports group to ban ephedra.)
My doctors told me they were pretty confident that the supplement I took led to my atrial fibrillation and gave me the scare of my
life.
What happened to me doesn't have to happen to anyone. And if you can recognize the signs, you could save your life.
I woke up on a Wednesday morning with my chest feeling tight, which made breathing a little difficult. As the day progressed, I had
similar attacks accompanied by dizzy spells, a rapid heartbeat and profuse sweating. I thought I might be a little dehydrated, so I
wanted to wait to see what happened. My mother wasn't so patient, so off to the hospital we went.
At the hospital, the doctors poked me with needles and bombarded me with tests. They wanted to know why I was suffering from
atrial fibrillation. As the testing and questioning continued, I mentioned casually that I was taking ephedra. It was then that they said
it was "highly clinically suggested" that ephedra caused my heart to go into atrial fibrillation. The scary part came after they made the
connection between the supplement and my condition. It was time to get my heart back to its natural rhythm.
The doctors did everything short of stopping my heart to get it beating right again. Finally, the last intravenous treatment they gave
me worked. Had it not been successful, they were going to use defibrillators to "jump-start" my heart and get it pumping again. My
heart started beating correctly on Saturday, four days after I was admitted. They kept me an additional night for observation, which
brought my total stay to five days.
I will be taking a beta blocker called sotalol to help maintain a normal heart rhythm for the next four months, and my condition will
be re-evaluated in December. If my heart is sound and everything checks out then, my doctors said, I will be able to go off the
medication. But nothing can erase the nightmare of the five days I lost because of the supplement I was taking, unaware of its
potential danger, unaware that I was risking my life.
My advice to those using supplements to gain energy, gain mass or lose weight is: Be careful to read the labels on the product; do a
little research on the ingredients/vitamins/extracts that are contained in each supplement. Do not take a health food/vitamin retailer's
word as gospel. Spending 10 minutes to look up the ingredients is little to ask, and it could save your life.
To parents: just as you are concerned about whether your children might be taking drugs, be concerned about whether they are
taking a supplement that could cause harm. Many articles in the muscle and fitness magazines leave out key details. The only way to
know what you are taking is to do your own research, and to do it well. |
