Critique: Side effects from dietary supplements send 23,000 people a year to ER
This article discussed the impact of dietary supplements on the general public. It claims that these mostly unregulated supplements are endangering the people and causing people to succumb to unforeseen health issues often sending these people to the hospital. While this article references what is perceived as a rather large number of dietary supplement victims, these numbers can be truly misleading. In fact, the data provided can lead to very little conclusions about the safety of such supplements. The research was conducted for this article on 63 different hospitals from the years 2004 to 2013. This data was collected by other organizations including the Center …show more content…
One of the first issues is the primary data point referenced. It is stated that there are about 23,000 supplement related emergency room visits yearly. Though this number appears to be large, it is but a very small percent of the supplement users, reflecting less than .02% of the estimated 150,000,000 users. While there may be many valid points about the dangers of these supplemental drugs, this nearly statistically irrelevant value of incidents involving dietary supplements offers little insight into the world of these unregulated drugs. It misleads readers to believe that a significant amount of supplement users are endangered by their choice to take these supplements when this this cannot be proven with the provided …show more content…
First, what is considered a dietary supplement must be defined. It should be narrowed down to vitamins, natural remedies, herbs, or home remedies. The study should have specific parameters specifying what supplement is in order to ensure a stable variable. Second, the study needs to define what issue they are investigating. Settling on overdoses, allergies, choking hazards, or some other condition related to a dietary supplement will ensure the data collected is more accurate. It would ensure that the study is not vulnerable to neglecting cases due to there being no restrictions in place. Third, in order to gather data on the subject of dietary supplements, health providers must specifically ask their patients to list any supplements they are taking. These doctors must specify what a supplement is to patient in order to collect appropriate data. Lastly, when reporting findings, it is important to provide more information than the number of cases involving dietary supplements. More analysis into what these numbers mean needs to be conducted in order to assess if the data is statistically relevant. Mean values, confidence intervals, and other important values must be reported in order to show that there is a statistical relationship between these supplements and hospital
This article discussed the impact of dietary supplements on the general public. It claims that these mostly unregulated supplements are endangering the people and causing people to succumb to unforeseen health issues often sending these people to the hospital. While this article references what is perceived as a rather large number of dietary supplement victims, these numbers can be truly misleading. In fact, the data provided can lead to very little conclusions about the safety of such supplements. The research was conducted for this article on 63 different hospitals from the years 2004 to 2013. This data was collected by other organizations including the Center …show more content…
One of the first issues is the primary data point referenced. It is stated that there are about 23,000 supplement related emergency room visits yearly. Though this number appears to be large, it is but a very small percent of the supplement users, reflecting less than .02% of the estimated 150,000,000 users. While there may be many valid points about the dangers of these supplemental drugs, this nearly statistically irrelevant value of incidents involving dietary supplements offers little insight into the world of these unregulated drugs. It misleads readers to believe that a significant amount of supplement users are endangered by their choice to take these supplements when this this cannot be proven with the provided …show more content…
First, what is considered a dietary supplement must be defined. It should be narrowed down to vitamins, natural remedies, herbs, or home remedies. The study should have specific parameters specifying what supplement is in order to ensure a stable variable. Second, the study needs to define what issue they are investigating. Settling on overdoses, allergies, choking hazards, or some other condition related to a dietary supplement will ensure the data collected is more accurate. It would ensure that the study is not vulnerable to neglecting cases due to there being no restrictions in place. Third, in order to gather data on the subject of dietary supplements, health providers must specifically ask their patients to list any supplements they are taking. These doctors must specify what a supplement is to patient in order to collect appropriate data. Lastly, when reporting findings, it is important to provide more information than the number of cases involving dietary supplements. More analysis into what these numbers mean needs to be conducted in order to assess if the data is statistically relevant. Mean values, confidence intervals, and other important values must be reported in order to show that there is a statistical relationship between these supplements and hospital