Are nutritional supplements acting like drugs in higher doses?
A. Supplements and Drugs have very different properties in the body. Supplements are almost always substances found in our diet naturally. Therefore our bodies have evolved for hundreds of thousands of years with these compounds, and have created the proper metabolic pathways for their use, recycling and excretion. In higher doses, supplements can exert ‘drug-like’ effects on the body, by enhancing natural processes and functions in the body. Yet they rarely demonstrate a burden or toxicity on the body. At higher doses used to treat specific diseases like cancer for example, they can at times have side-effects. But these are usually mild. Drugs are very interesting – they are often derived from natural substances. The difference here is that, to make money off them, companies have to alter them, so they can patent them, yet still enable them to effect the body in a desired manner. Altering a natural compound into a drug makes the compound foreign to the body. The body has not evolved t
