There are two sides to every story. So why is it when the mainstream media reports on supplements, the supplement side inevitably gets glossed over, brushed off, or just plain made to look absurd — or even dangerous — at the hands of so-called “experts” who always have an agenda that has nothing to do with your health?

Last week, CBS Evening News ran a two-part series regarding supplements. To say the report was biased and hopelessly uninformed would be a kind assessment. In fact, I don’t think it would be stretching it at all to say that there was a much more sinister motive at work than simple ignorance. But let me back up a step.

The general gist of the report was to explore whether or not supplements are effective. First of all, determining the efficacy of supplements is hardly an all-or-nothing endeavor. That’s sort of like lumping all laws together and saying that those prohibiting wearing sleeveless shirts in public parks (a real law here in Baltimore) should be taken just as seriously as those prohibiting violent crime and murder: There are obviously some that just work better than others.

And, unfortunately, the report just got worse from there. The “experts” interviewed — on both sides — hardly had credentials that would instill confidence in the multitudes of fence sitters out there. The primary source was a science and medical writer named Dan Hurley. Not a doctor or scientist — a medical writer. With a new supplement-bashing book on the market to boot. And the sources representing the supplement side — two industry insiders — were just as financially self-interested.

But the difference was that Hurley had incredible tales of people who supposedly experienced horrific deformities after taking supplements and a list of studies “proving” his point that supplements don’t work. The bulk of the supplement-industry insiders’ rebuttal was simply to say that supplements DO work. But who’s going to take their word for it five minutes after seeing footage of a woman claiming that supplements burned her nose off?

My question is, where are the doctors in all this? The REAL experts — like Dr. Wright and his colleagues — who not only prescribe supplements to their patients and see their miraculous results on a daily basis, but who also take the very nutrients they recommend?

No one at CBS bothered to examine the actual evidence — the living, breathing examples of supplement effectiveness. Those people with nothing to gain from telling their side of the supplement story, but everything to gain from living it.

Reports like this one are a dime a dozen, and hardly worth the space I’ve devoted to it here today. But the fact of the matter is, CBS Evening News has a much bigger audience (even with Katie Couric at the helm) than these eTips or Dr. Wright’s Nutrition & Healing. That means it’s up to those of us who have experienced the benefits of natural medicine to show those fence-sitters I mentioned above just how effective supplements really are. After all, seeing is believing.

Source:

“A Look at Dietary Supplements,” CBS Evening News, air date 1/15/07 and 1/16/07