“Brain Supplements: Do They Work ?”
New studies are increasingly showing that some supplements result in liver damage and death. Shockingly, dietary supplements do not undergo adequate safety testing or quality control of their ingredients and it has grown into a $32 billion annual business. About half of Americans use one or more of the 55,000 available dietary supplements. Senator Claire McCaskill is currently probing retailers and online companies about sales of dubious dietary supplements, especially those promising seniors protection from memory loss, dementia and other age-related problems. Products such as “Brain Awake,” ”Dementia Drops” and “Food for the Brain,” which claim to ease “forms of dementia such as Alzheimer’s disease” are being investigated. McCaskill sent inquiries to 15 companies this week, which included Wal-Mart, Target Corp., Amazon, Google and Walgreen’s. McCaskill is the ranking member on the Senate Aging Committee, which frequently investigates health scams targeting older Americans and she said, “Frankly, I think there’s a special place in hell for someone who markets a product and says it will cure Alzheimer’s. And that’s essentially what these scammers are doing and they’ve had assistance in that.”
