Medicines and food supplements

All the studies and analyses required to bring a drug to market are extremely costly. However, manufacturers can more or less get away with selling their products without having to prove either their efficacy or their absence of toxicity. Under Belgian law, these virtually unregulated products cannot be called medicines, but rather food supplements. They look like medicines, have packaging similar to that of medicines, are sometimes sold in pharmacies as medicines, but they are not medicines ! In some cases, they are even a source of doubt for doctors and pharmacists ! Some food supplements are plant-based, but this is not the general rule. They can be purchased in pharmacies, but is not compulsory.

Toxicity

Often, these products are not excessively dangerous, but sometimes this is not the case. We all remember the case of Chinese herbal tablets offered as appetite suppressants, which caused the death or disability of many women. This is not an isolated case, but undoubtedly one of the most serious. 

Efficiency

Don't be fooled by misleading advertising, and pay close attention to the concentration of active ingredients. For example, a tincture is diluted (lower concentration) compared to the starting plant, while a dry extract is more concentrated... so a tincture is not equivalent to a dry extract in terms of the effect it produces.

Unlike a medicine, the packaging of a dietary supplement cannot mention therapeutic indications, but some unscrupulous manufacturers play with words, thus circumventing the law (they won't say "this product fights such and such ailments" but "improves well-being...") and don't hesitate to attribute deceptive properties to their products!

Consumer information

It's limited, since dietary supplements often have no instructions. So how can a consumer know, for example, that she shouldn't combine St. John's Wort (for mild depression) with certain types of contraceptive pill?