I don’t see how this is legal, but people on Tik Tok peddling miracle “medicine” are becoming more common every day. No FDA approval, no research. Just their marketing hype and false promises. This one, lady is showing some sort of probiotic and claiming it can help people suffering from severe acid reflux and gastrointestinal reflux disease or GERD, replacing medicine that has been tested for decades.
Not new. There will always be idiots, therefore, there will always be people selling snake oil.
This was all made legal in the Dietary Supplement and Health Education Act of 1994.
Before that, everythimg required FDA approval, but now if it says “natural” or “not intended to treat any condition” on the side, you can bottle and sell your own piss if you’ve got a good enough sales pitch
The important takeaway from this is that “supplements” have 0 oversight. The CBD, probiotics, vitamin d, etc that you buy could just be capsules of vegetable oil that does nothing at all. Or they could be asbestos and cyanide for all you know (that probably would lead to an investigation though). There’s also no safety regarding packing and handling, so it might literally be a guy with unwashed hands who just picked his butt loading your gelcaps in a dirty bathroom that someone just took a massive shit in. No one checks and verifies any of this and that’s why shills and hucksters jump onto this shit, it’s a completely unregulated market where can cut corners everywhere and say whatever you want as long as you include *not intended to treat any diseases and not evaluated by the fda
A $1200 thing you buy on instagram that sends “good waves” to your brain? Supplement. The cbd you buy at the gas station? Supplement. Doterra oils? Supplement. No regulation, no oversight, just robbing people based on their desperation to fix chronic pain and mental illness
William Murderface has entered the chat
You can actually find small bottles of water on Amazon marketed as a miracle cure.
You can even find radioactive shit sold on Amazon as health products. So radioactive, that it can incur the wrath of federal agencies.
Just stay away from nearly anything that uses “healing ions” in its marketing material. If it’s not a straight-up fake product, it’ll likely kill you in due time. (Ozone generators are an exception unless you get a beefy one like mine, and then it can actually kill you.)
Edit: lol! I have seen that video and made my comment about ions before I clicked it. Good video, btw. 5 stars.
What I don’t get about these products, is the use of radioactive material intentional? Do the people making this shit do it with the intention of giving people rings covered in thorium? If not, then why does it happen? Is the manufacturing process just so sketchy that it somehow gets cross contamination with actual fucking nuclear reactor fuel?
When we were first learning about it, there were some misconceptions about radioactivity and health. There were even business minded individuals who widely sold it as a miracle cure. This public belief was reinforced by the fact that around that time we discovered hot springs have radioactive elements, (and people have always believed hot springs heal your ailments) which lead to a mass conception radioactivity was actually a miracle cure. A large part of that down fall was when the “Radium Girls” started literally dying because they were told it was totally safe to work with radioactive material, began falling apart and then worked for legal pushback.
I’m not an expert on the matter, so I might be a little off but that is a good overview on why some people have that belief still. As always it’s shitty people looking to make money off of hype. The Radium Girls had a tragic but ultimately fascinating life/story. They would even rub the material on their teeth to glow. Check it out if you’re interested.
Wow. You’d think “natural” would be more heavily regulated since a lot of people consider it to be a synonym for “harmless” (I am not one of them)
That probiotic is nice and all, but it’ll never beat apple cider vinegar. That stuff cures everything. Especially if you take it with silver.
Seriously though, this is just the latest venue for this kind of bullshit.
Excuse me putting an onion in my grandfather’s sock overnight cured him of death twice
I hope you don’t take the onion from his belt.
it was too yellow
Personally I’m a fan of Smurf Juice brand colloidial silver.
I blued myself.
For nothing
Should I take this with my nightly mercury eye drops?
You’re supposed to put a link to where we can buy your miracle vinegar/silver mix in your post. Have you learned nothing from these marketing geniuses?
My bad.
https://127.0.0.1/C$/%userprofile%/Documents/EXCEL.ppt
If that doesn’t work give Derek a call.
It was weird that it needed my social security number, bank account, mother’s maiden name, and the name of my first pet to make the order but I guess it was worth it to stay healthy. Thanks bud!
O, and tell Derek I said hey.
Influencer = Sales person
Ehh more like marketing. But clearly pushing snakeoil in this case.
Marketing is ensuring your product offering matches what people want.
I don’t see how an influencer pushing a particular probiotic product fits this
We’re getting dangerously close to social media apps where you scroll through ads and only ads. Maybe we’re already there…
My Facebook and Instagram are now >3/4 stuff that I didn’t follow. Not all are explicitly advertisements, but they aren’t things I wanted to see. That’s why I’m moving to federated services. Just wish I could convince more of my friends and family to move over. I use Lemmy as a replacement for Reddit so it’s more widely social, but the other stuff I only really used for friends, family, or special interest groups.
Man am I glad I killed my FB back In 2012 when it was mostly pictures of peoples babies and people acting like hating Obama was a personality trait
i stopped using Instagram not long after realizing every 3rd post was an ad, and most of the actual content were not from people i followed. i don’t miss it.
Congress needs to give the FDA the power to regulate supplements goddamn yesterday.
They had it and it was taken away in the 90s
Thanks, Sen. Tom Harkin.
And Mel Gibson. When they were lobbying to get rid of the regulations, the supplement industry did commercials that had Mel’s home getting raided by SWAT-looking guys for having supplements.
I don’t think I ever saw that!
https://youtu.be/J6bv92W4YnE?feature=shared
Found it, enjoy!
Best we can do is ignore everything while random judges give themselves power to override the FDA whenever it causes inconvenience to corporations.
— Congress
Yeah. The peddlers of homeopathic crap are the first ones that need to burn.
So many laws would have to change, and the FDA would need about 1,000x the people and money. I’m all for it, but it’s an unsolvable problem. If it is something taken orally, including food, it can basically only ever be a reactive response to people dying.
I used to know sooo many people that would justify this, a cryptoscam, shilling literally any outright fraud or vastly overpriced bs on their social media.
‘They’re just getting their bag, you’re hating cuz you broke!’
This is the cyberpunk dystopia.
Why are you using TikTok?
Because i want to use TikTok.
Cool. Then you get what you want, because this is exactly what tiktok is.
Then u get the scams and infuriating content. Maybe complain on TikTok about it
I get that on Lemmy too.
Might be a you issue then.
Cool
I’m sure China is going to get right on it!
That kind of content is harmful regardless of whether OP is using TikTok or not. TikTok is just another medium.
I think Ticktok is harmful in its own set of ways
Disagree. TikTok is very ok to serve its users scams and spam. Not to mention all the data harvesting
Side note, for me, steamed kale is doing wonders.
Kale has a naturally high pH, so it’s basically just an antacid. If it works consistently for you, keep it up. No point in taking industrial strength meds for something simple, after all.
The class of drugs for my kind of heartburn are proton-pump inhibitors and help limit acid production across the board. It’s good these are over the counter now as I am on a 2x dose, but have been as high as 4x before.
I switched from standard antacids to just water and baking soda my stomach was so bad. Kale wouldn’t have put a dent in my stomach acid, TBH. I drink a ton of water these days, and even if the pH of the water was off by a hair, it would be a bad time.
I probably might be able to cut my dosage back or even stop soon hopefully. It’s one of the few drugs that are actually supposed to provide a long term solution.
Kale has a naturally high pH, so it’s basically just an antacid.
I have mild reflux, but know what triggers it after what time of day and can make easy diet adjustments to avoid those triggers too late before bed. For whatever reason, I never considered looking at the alkaline level of the foods I eat. In just doing so now, I see a whole bunch of my regular diet. Have I been unconscious choosing these to mitigate my reflux? I mean, I seek out these foods (that I now know are alkaline) because I like them, but do I like them more than just for their taste?
That is probably some good theory crafting, but I have no idea as that is a level of psychology that is beyond me. (That sentence looks a little smart-ass, but it absolutely isn’t, btw. 100% curious.)
Personally, I can say is that I tend avoid foods that cause pain and may even subconsciously steer away from them too. I don’t actively seek out things like tomato sauce, but wouldn’t likely turn down a free spaghetti meal either.
I do also tend to prefer cereal and milk, generally heavy fiber types. Antacids are great, but sometimes, just giving my stomach something harder to break down works fine too.
I just slam a shot glass of baking soda and water when it gets bad.
Disclaimer: Not sound medical advice. Probably not good advice at all. But nothing works faster.
Turning yourself into a science fair volcano
But has steamed kale been approved by the FDA for acid reflux?
Perhaps what you’re doing should be made illegal, for safety reasons.
Obviously and issue but on par with actual product advertising on TV that has 0 approval and more often that not lists death as a side effect.
Probiotics hype in pill form but why is nobody shilling various yogurt type products?
I guess it easier and more PROFITABLE to sell avg tiktok consoomer some capsules then it is to educate them to eat “spoiled” milk product… Eww
An interesting system we go though. Solid incentives and well educated citizens.
Yogurt isn’t very suitable for sales through the mail
This and random plugs for that fucking bovine colostrum shit. 3 slides of well known advice then slide 4 BAM “I don’t know how I ever lived with [insert condition here] until I tried this colostrum!!!”
