Good Points In Responses Regarding Airborne

Ack – I have been on vacation and on my return found I had some comments/responses to approve. There were some very good (and sane) points worth reading. Apologies for any delay as these should have been more timely.

One thing I have been accused of missing was that the original Airborne labeling (back in 2006) did not limit the dosage to three per day as I wrote. I took that information directly from the CPSI article “CSPI cautions that Airborne may provide too much vitamin A, since just two pills provide 10,000 IU—the maximum safe level for a day—and the package directs customers to take three per day.”

The comment I’ve approved from purple_kangaroo says ” Maybe some context is needed. I wrote that post in January 2006, back when there was only one version of Airborne formula and it was still pretty much a novelty. That Airborne Fomula had 5,000 IU of Vitamin A per dose, and no warnings or dosage limitations whatsoever. It said to take “every three hours, as necessary” with no limitations on dosage other than that. That would give up to 8 doses in a 24-hour period, as stated in my post.”

So for those following this story, there seems to be some discrepancy in what the original label might have said. I assumed (and perhaps improperly) that the CPSI article was dealing with the facts of the lawsuit. purple_kangaroo certainly has a very good point if there were no dosage limitations on the original product.

There is also concern that there is different types of Vitamin A (which in my defense I did note at the bottom of my post that there was differences and I did not know how those affected the findings) in what might be in vegetable juice vs provided in a tablet. This is interesting and should be noted for those following this story. Since I’m not a chemist I won’t go there and let others comment further on this. purple_kangaroo notes in his comment that there is a discussion of this following his blog article.

(I wonder if we can extrapolate then that all the enriched products we eat – where the “real” vitamins are processed out and then synthetic ones are pumped back in – are perhaps synthesized differently by our bodies after all, maybe being even inferior or harmful, despite advertisers claims to the contrary?)

I think my most grievous error, though, in reading the responses, was my overestimation of how people perceive and understand medicine. The very legitimate concern here – and I should not have negated it – was that people were popping this stuff like candy rather than medicine. They believed it was at the same time both very potent and completely harmless. And yes, I have to admit the packaging conveys that idea (which I’ve noticed still exists and is copied by all the knockoffs from Walgreens and other stores – guess legally that wasn’t offensive!)

But in the end it seems to me, and what I really have been wanting to say, is that some of this is about our own naivete – we believe that the story that is advertised and marketed to us is not only the same story as the back of the package but is also the same story that is inside the box.  We believe we are protected from anything harmful simply because the FDA exists.  This belief persists despite daily news of recalls of everything from formerly FDA approved medicines, to infant cough syrup, to pet food, to packaged fresh spinach.

And we are outraged when it is.

But start reading your labels and doing some research – there is actually very little out there that is honestly presented. I guess that’s why all this seemed a lot of brouhaha – because every day just going through the grocery store I see hundreds of products completely misrepresented.  And many supplements much more potent on the shelves than Airborne.

That was really my point in all this – not trying to take up the sword for Airborne although that’s what it became!  So I’m putting it down now and slowly backing away…leaving it for those that want to continue to battle it out

Is the “A” in Airborne Unsafe?

Another blogger who originally wrote one of the articles covering the Airborne concerns pointed out that a major issue is that “Airborne contained potentially harmful levels of Vitamin A.” Again, it seems to me some context is needed.

First, here’s the issue:

According to the article from CPSI, one Airborne tablet contains 5,000 IU and recommended 3 tablets daily. Whether this was in every formulation of Airborne, or just the original one is not made clear. The current formula we use, Airborne Nightime, has 3,000 IU and the recommended dosage is 1 tablet prior to going to bed.

At 3 per day a user would get 15,000 IU – current accepted recommendations here in the US have established that the UL (Upper Safe Limit as determined by the RDA) for Vitamin A for an adult 25 yr old male is 15,0000 IU. Wikipedia has a nice chart of RDAs in their dietary reference intake entry.

Now for women IT IS LESS (and this is quoted from an excellent article from the Journal of Nutrition if you want to really dive into Vitamin A toxicity) “For women of childbearing age the UL is based on concern about the risk of teratogenicity.” This means concerns about creating congenital birth defects.

“High dose vitamin A supplements can cause teratogenic effects especially if consumed shortly before conception or during the first trimester of pregnancy. Both the Institute of Medicine and the American Teratology Society recommend a daily upper limit of 3 mg (10,000 IU) of preformed vitamin A for women of reproductive age (30 ). This is probably a rather conservative estimate.“

Now lets put this in context:

The International Food Information Council writes “A UL is the highest amount of a nutrient that can be safely eaten on a continual basis and will not cause an adverse effect for most healthy people. The adverse health effect used to determine a UL will vary from nutrient to nutrient. For instance, the adverse effect identified for niacin is flushing, or redness of the face, and niacin’s UL only applies to the form of niacin used in supplements and fortified foods. Many people can safely consume the UL amount, but should use discretion.

So Airborne was pushing against and slightly overstepping the limits of the RDA in its recommendations for taking their product however, it is important to note we are talking about a remedy for cold and flu – it is not meant to be taken long term. And “long term” is applicable, for example the UK Food Standards Agency, notes concerns about long term effects of high Vitamin A doses “Some research suggests that having more than an average of 1.5mg per day of vitamin A over many years may affect your bones and make them more likely to fracture when you’re older.”

So what about short-term? Well, again, lets talk about context. If you refer to the Office of Dietary Supplements (oh yes, we have one!) Fact Sheet on Vitamin A you’ll discover half a cup of canned carrot juice contains 22,567 IU of Vitamin A, and half a cup of frozen boiled spinach contains 11,458 IU. In other words a single serving of our recommended veggies easily puts us over the UL established by the scientific community. Quick – outlaw the carrot juice!

Additionally just to check – our current immune booster also provides 5,000 IU and suggests 6 capsules every 3 hours. Okay, so I think that’s overkill, and don’t follow their recommendations, but I suspect with a little walk down the grocery store aisles we’ll find plenty of other supplements out there that have erred more egregiously than Airborne.

What I’m saying is there is a little bit of the ‘tempest in the teapot’ about the product.  Airborne did some no-nos which I’m not defending, and if the users want their money back, feeling they were duped, I have nothing against it, but I’m definitely far from convinced that Airborne poses any actual danger or, as I posted earlier, is ineffective.

Well at least no more than the spinach I’m having tonight for dinner…

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Note there are two forms of Vitamin A – Retinyl Palmitate is the form used in Airborne. I didn’t find any online cited research on the difference between this and the other synthetic form of Vitamin A, acetate. Acetate is more commonly used in supplements while the former is used more often in foods because of its stability. If there are any concerns about the form of Vitamin A used, it would be interesting to know! Comments….?

What Airborne Did Wrong

The headline at Yahoo reads “Supplement company Airborne to settle $23.3M suit” and quotes CSPI (Center for Science in the Public Interest) Senior nutritionist David Schardt as saying “There’s no credible evidence that what’s in Airborne can prevent colds or protect you from a germy environment…Airborne is basically on overpriced, run-of-the-mill vitamin pill that’s been cleverly, but deceptively, marketed.”

Unfortunately Airborne, which is a personal favorite our household in cold and flu season, ran afoul of the watchdog agency for two very good reasons:

1. In the US, a product carrying claims to cure or prevent disease is consider an unapproved drugs until it meets the standards of blinded, placebo-controlled studies following submission of an Investigational New Drug Application (IND) to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). [1]

2. They claimed scientific studies to back up their claims, which when looked at closely are suspect – being carried out by laypeople and by a company specifically created to do this testing.

Let me start by addressing the first issue. The FDA was created in 1906 ostensibly to protect consumers from quackery, snake oil salesmen and from spending their hard-earned money on cures and medicines that might not only be ineffective, but worse, dangerous. What is important to understand is that the FDA does not consider any herbal or vitamin product medicine, per se, able to cure or prevent disease, but as a food product. They are mostly interested in making sure of food safety in the instance of supplements such as Airborne. Had Airborne followed what the rest of the vitamin and herbal supplement market is doing and said from the beginning that it was intended as an immune booster, they could have stayed out of hot water (no fizz intended) and let consumers decide whether it was effective or not. As the rapidly growing natural health industry will attest, consumers are becoming more savvy and no longer dismiss the value, power, and effectiveness of traditional and wisdom herbs and natural therapies. We just have to be careful how we say it (wink).

However Airborne did capture a huge market share by insisting on being shown by traditional cold and flu medicines rather than in the vitamin supplements. Of course they were successful – look at all the knockoffs – AirShield, Walborne, etc. Who didn’t want to get on the bandwagon?

But please be clear on this –traditional cold and flu medicines do not prevent or cure colds and flus either (although studies do support zinc may shorten the duration of a cold). Medicines like NyQuil, Theraflu, etc. work by providing symptom relief –not curing or preventing. The reason that consumers interested in better health practices avoid these medicines is because they work (in general) by suppressing the body’s natural defense system. Herbalists, Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) Practitioners and other natural health specialists advocate instead strengthening the body’s natural immune system to fend off disease – hence “immune boosters” are not vague ideas as suggested in the blog article cited above.[1]  It is a legitimate and well-respected health practice.

So, while Airborne may be guilty of false advertising, it does not follow the product is ineffective.

Their second mistake was to cite scientific evidence that really couldn’t stand up to close scrutiny. The public wants scientists to perform scientific testing. It set Airborne up for what it got:

“Basically, it was a non-scientific study where 2 dudes ran some tests. No scientists or doctors helped out. Turns out if you tout medical cures you need proof somewhere that isn’t your cousin and his friend in the shed fixing the numbers.”[2]

You have to use scientists.  Otherwise it just isn’t going to stand up to scrutiny. Of course what the blog writer above didn’t mention is that pharmaceutical companies basically do the same thing, funding their own scientific studies and then pumping out drugs, with the FDA’s nod of approval, into public consumption, which later often turn out to be dangerous after all (Vioxx, Zelnorm, etc.). And it is the consumer that pays the price. No wonder they’ve had enough and the FDA’s stamp of approval doesn’t quite have the same clout it once did among the educated health conscious.

To sum up -of course Airborne should pay up – what they did was deceptive. Is it such a big deal? Not really. It’s still a good product and I’ll recommend it unless the FDA tells me it’s being made in the barn with rats running through it, or they’re adding in things not on the ingredient list, or those ingredients are tainted with pesticides (although wait – that’s perfectly okay, isn’t it?). Those things I’m happy to be protected from.

Of course, I’ll be recommending Airborne for what it’s really good for!

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[1] Terra Sigillata : $23.3 Million Airborne False Advertising Settlement: “Created by a Schoolteacher!”
Blog Article

[2] Airborne Lawsuit Settlement: 23.3 Million for False Advertising
Blog Article

Sign Up for HerbMentor.com for free access to Rosemary Gladstar Teleseminar

Learning Herbs, one of the resources I recommend, is launching a new site and service called Herb Mentor.  If you go through the free  sign-up process you’ll get some free information (cooking with stinging nettles!) and get to join a March 20th Teleseminar with Rosemary Gladstar.  She’s one of the herbal gurus of our time and worth seeing.  Don’t know what the topic will be, but I assume more than a marketing pitch.  The sign-up process offers audio to help you through it.  If you are not comfortable with the internet this can be reassuring.  If you are then you’ll just find it extremely annoying.  It’s fluff, though – they don’t say anything you can’t read.  Just turn your sound down

In addition to access to the teleseminar you’ll get some free video, written and mp3 audio herbal lessons and interviews as well as an opportunity to join HerbMentor.com the first week at a discount.  Launch is set for March 21st.  This looks to be a good site that will be offering solid information -and it looks like another guru Susun Weed will be associated with the project contributing articles.

If you’re seriously interested in herbalism you might find this to be a subscription service worth having.

Setting up ‘Shoppe’

Recently a client pointed out that while she loves my custom essence service, she gets horribly frustrated when she goes to buy individual essences online. She spends hours first tracking down which essence she might need and then trying to find the best price. There are so many choices she often ends up doubting her purchase. Sometimes she ends up just not getting anything! In thinking this over I thought I might be able to help by setting up an Amazon affiliate store that was more in keeping with her needs. I am researching all the time and this is what I’m trained for – couldn’t I organize choices more intelligently?

I think I can, so today I set up The FlowerWitch Shoppe. It will be a work in progress, as there are so many products to sift through (over 1500), but to start I created a featured page where I can highlight product choices which might be overlooked, but are a great deal (like this month – trial sizes – I didn’t even know those were available!) and a category for the most common remedy, Bach’s Rescue Remedy and it’s FES counterpart, Five Flower Essence. I ordered it by size so you can see on one page what your best options are at a glance. And if I dedicate a day each month to reviewing the prices and featuring the best ones, then I can ensure my visitors are getting a good deal.

As I move forward, though, the MOST USEFUL thing I can do is to group essences by the issues that visitors are looking to address…anxiety, depression, forgetfulness, etc. So if you are having trouble concentrating, you can click on that category and see all the essences, from the different creators, that address that specific issue, with additional commentary as to their nuances. And that I think is going to save my clients a lot of time and aggravation.

I’m really excited about what this can offer!  And I get to play shopkeeper, too

Cooking With Flower Essences? Now That’s A New Ingredient…

I came across the following from an article about raw food in the NY Times Magazine section:

When the restaurant opens for the evening, Roxanne takes her post in front of a collection of small cobalt medicine bottles. Some contain original herb-infused oils, which she drizzles on dishes as they leave the kitchen. Others are more exotic. Parsnips may be Roxanne’s ”magic thing,” but they are positively mundane compared with her flower essences. The highly diluted amounts of magnolias and roses are flavorless, but no matter. ”The flower essences just bring in some senses that haven’t been defined,” Roxanne explains. ”They’re more . . . vibrational.”

Now this is new to me! Hmmm. The idea of using flower essences to bring a new ’sense’ to the table and enhance the dining experience is positively intriguing. Now admittedly I’m a bit of a traditionalist: I prefer the original standards of Dr. Bach and supplement that with local ‘homemade’ essences where warranted. The latter being based on the concept that we are very much connected to the energy of our local geography and do best when we take advantage of local foods and therapies. But back to the subject at hand. Breaking out of the box and using flower essence vibrations to enhance an experience –like music or lighting might work in the same restaurant to create atmosphere and thereby expanding the stimulus beyond the palette into a comprehensive whole– perked my ears right up.

First I was curious, why these two essences? Magnolia and Rose? I assume that ultimately she uses them based on her own impressions and experience. But why try them in the first place? Why not something like Aspen, intended on a secondary level to open us up to the higher realms? So I did a little research.

Rose Essence

Flower Essence Magazine has a good writeup on Rose Flower Essence. What caught my eye was rose’s traditional use as a mood enhancer and the hips high content of Vitamin C. It is the signature of the flower that holds the key to how it will affect us vibrationally. A scent that ‘elevates’ and a chemistry that ‘binds’ would take on a new meaning when integrated with a dining experience. Additionally Bach’s Wild Rose Flower Essence is for resignation and apathy, lingering illness, lack of ability to embrace life, lethargy. It fortifies the will to live and commitment to life despite trials or pain. Seems to me that would be a good pairing as eating is the epitome of embracing life. To nourish the body is to embrace both life and health.

Magnolia Essence

New Millennium Flower Essences, which are highly regarded, has a White Magnolia Essence. It is considered a linking essence, helping in blending different essences together. Pacific Essences Purple Magnolia echoes this as it is for promoting intimacy and non-separateness, and this is interesting, also enhances all the senses. Flora Corona’s Magnolia Essence, which I gather is not a pure essence as it suggests it has a scent, again demonstrates a now reoccurring theme “when you need to open to the sensual beauty of the world around you”. So ‘blending’ and ‘enhancing’ seem to be the operative elements that would certainly be applicable to food.

Essences To Experiment With

The above two in mind, I turned my mind to what I might try with my standards, not to use to restore balance but to enhance a meal. An herbalist might use garlic or ginger just as a cook, but they have two very different intentions in mind! Here are a few I am going to try at our next dinner party:

Olive – might enhance the rejuvenating power of a dish and its relaxing properties

Crab Apple – as a cleanser and purifier, especially if I couldn’t use all organics

Honeysuckle – to connect and bring the whole tradition and history of a dish to the present

Rock Water – to bring out the spirit of a recipe (even if I don’t follow it exactly – handy if I make a mistake to late to correct it!)

I encourage you to try using flower essences with cooking – with whatever you have on hand in your essence kit and inspires you – and let me know your results! I’ll post mine here as well. This is really an interesting concept…

Drug Interactions with Common Herbal Supplements

Lest we forget how powerful herbs are! And that they are medicine, too. Even the humble ginger we find in our kitchen spice rack can seriously compromise our safety if we have to undergo the surgeon’s knife. Be your foremost expert on you. I’ll post more information as I find it.

What You Should Know About Herbal & Dietary Supplement Use and Anesthesia – A two-page anesthesiologist brochure, provided by the American Society of Anesthesiologists, regarding common herbal and dietary supplements and their possible side effects and drug interactions. Useful list on 2nd page. Found here.

A New Home, A New Look & A New Focus

Welcome to my new blog home. Over the next couple of weeks I’ll be organizing and posting here as I close down my old blog. Some of the subject matter I’ll rewrite and post (as is appropriate to my new more narrowed focus which will be less of a journal and more article-oriented).

My new focus is reflected in the tagline above. I welcome all comments, feedback and suggestions!

So it is my hope that in the future this will become a comfortable, insightful and USEFUL and place for you to visit!