Researching Dietary Supplement Ingredients

How do you find out about efficacy and safety of ingredients in dietary supplements?

Now that you have a brief supplement history and an understanding behind why Mrs. Nguyen is taking her supplements, it is time to use this information. Specifically, we will now incorporate your ability to systematically extract information from a bottle, identify the ingredients, and identify any risks, or benefits, they can have for your patient. Please continue on to the exercises below to gain an understanding about how to research dietary supplement ingredients. Please focus on just one of the two ingredients below.

Garlic

garlic

Panax Ginseng

panax ginseng

Follow the steps below and then answer the questions.

Researching dietary supplement ingredients

1. Click one of the three links below.
2. Using one of the websites, type "garlic" or "Panax ginseng" into the search box (search on one of the two products).

Link 1

NIH Dietary Supplements Labels Database: dietarysupplements.nlm.nih.gov/dietary/
(hint: after hitting "Search" look for the "active ingredients" section)

Pros and Cons:

Link 2

Medline Plus: www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/druginformation.html

Pros and Cons:

Link 3

Google: google.com

Pros and Cons:

Of these websites, which site is easiest to use for finding the manufacturer information?

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