People on Tik Tok peddling these scams
People on Tik Tok peddling these scams
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.
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
So the CBD thing really bugs me, in particular.
One of my medications has one of those warnings about how you can't have grapefruit while taking this medication. That's because grapefruit is metabolized on a certain enzyme pathway that gets interrupted. That enzyme pathway is CYP3A4.
You know what else takes that enzyme pathway? Fucking CBD. It also blocks the enzyme pathway, making any drugs administered less effective because they can't bind to where they need to because the CBD molecule is already there, taking up space.
So like, for me, these are life saving medications so fucking around with this is really stupid but literally no doctor told me this. I accidentally figured this out while doing research on CBD. It seems like its becoming more publicized now, but the bottom line is this:
If you have medication that warns you that you should not eat grapefruit with this medication (about 60% of medications, I believe), that medication needs the same warning about CBD.
https://www.pharmacytimes.com/view/cannabidiol-presents-conundrums
Upon further evaluation, it was shown that CYP3A4 and CYP2C19 are the 2 major enzymes responsible for the metabolism of CBD; they are also responsible for the metabolism of many different drugs.
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.
William Murderface has entered the chat
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.
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.
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.
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.
For some folks, like myself, it was admitting to myself that I needed to change my diet and eating habits, and I haven't had issues with acid reflux for years.
On the other hand, lots of folks have issues with this stuff no matter their eating habits and it is horrific to live with. As OP pointed out, things like GERD affect a lot of people.
That these people would take advantage of people in that situation is so infuriating.
My ex was not noticeably sad about it, but I felt awful for him because of his GERD. He had to stop eating for the day at around 17:00, he couldn’t have caffeine, alcohol, carbonation, anything acidic, capsaicin, or much fat. His mother was from southern Italy and he hadn’t eaten a tomato in more than a decade, and the only fruit he ate was bananas. He was not big on medication, though, so he considered all that to be a good trade off for not taking meds. I can’t imagine making the same choice if a medicine could allow me to have oranges and tomatoes and coffee, but different strokes I guess
I was hoping that my heartburn would go away after I quit drinking a couple of years ago, but instead, it got worse. Honestly, that it's probably because I started to form an actual diet and my stomach didn't know what the fuck to do.
Sigh. I am hoping this current mega-cycle of proton-pump inhibitors helps. It's been a fairly high dose for about quadruple the normal length of time, so it might actually stick this time.
Here's hoping they stick this time. I'm so sorry to hear, long ago one of my now ex-girlfriends was dealing with it. She would have to go to the hospital and get GI cocktails and I would stay awake with her and try to help her not panic because the GI cocktail numbed everything in your throat and she wouldn't be able to feel herself breathing. As someone who has lots of panic about breathing issues, I totally understood why it would be panic inducing to not be able to feel yourself breathe, and this seemed like the only thing anyone was able to do for her when it got really bad. Just a shitty choice, take the GI cocktail and get relief but also panic, or don't take it and feel like you're choking on your own vomit. So , fuck it just sucks so much. I really hope for the best for you.
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.
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?
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.
Why are you using TikTok?
That kind of content is harmful regardless of whether OP is using TikTok or not. TikTok is just another medium.
Disagree. TikTok is very ok to serve its users scams and spam. Not to mention all the data harvesting
I think Ticktok is harmful in its own set of ways
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.
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!!!!!??!”
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
Not new. There will always be idiots, therefore, there will always be people selling snake oil.
dude i hate tiktok so much
that bottle could conceivably say "snake oil" on it
