Look at you, all smug as you scarf down a fistful of dietary supplements every day. You’re just like 75 percent of adults who take some kind of supplement daily, according to a 2024 poll from the Council of Responsible Nutrition. Well, I bet you’re not gonna be so smug when you find out that all of those supplements might be damaging your liver.
A study published back in 2022 found that supplement-related drug-induced liver failure had increased eightfold from 1995 to 2020. According to that one study, all of our multivitamins and whatnot are polluting our livers—some more damaging than others.
According to a different study from the University of Michigan, this one from 2023, there are six supplements that millions of Americans take every single day that cause an outsized amount of damage to our livers. They’re all botanical-based supplements: turmeric, green tea, Ashwagandha, Garcinia cambogia, Black cohosh, and red yeast rice.
How can these things be so damaging to your body if they claim to be health supplements? According to Fortune, a lot of health supplements are filled with toxic heavy metals, kind of like the chocolate-flavored protein shakes you chug down after a workout (which you probably don’t need to be drinking anyway).
On top of that, 50 percent of supplements tested are found to not contain the ingredients that they claim to contain.
Some Diet Supplements Could Be Harmful to Your Liver
A lot of this is because dietary supplements are often not approved by the FDA. The regulatory agency usually reserves its testing process for the safety, effectiveness, and quality, of our most suitable drugs. They’re going to rigorously test the latest boner pill to hit the market but that B-complex pill you picked up at Target is a game of Russian Roulette.
When it comes to supplements, it’s the Wild West, and you can only rely on whatever independent testing there is out there. This leaves the world of dietary supplements open to a lot of bullshit scam artistry as they load up their pills with fillers that damage your precious liver that’s struggling to filter out all that nonsense.
Absolutely none of this is to say that you should stop taking dietary supplements. Take your time and do a little research to find out which companies produce the highest-quality supplements—while keeping in mind that the higher-quality ones might be the most expensive.
But more than anything, don’t go overboard. Don’t megadose with multiple doses of a supplement a day when all you need is one. Your liver will thank you.
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