When we talk about treatment effects, we must talk about diseases, and most of them may be diseases that require medication or formal medical treatment. Health products, also called health foods. As a food, there is no therapeutic effect at all.

Therapeutic Effects of Drugs or Foods

The reason why they have therapeutic effects and can be called drugs is that they have gone through production process research, dosage exploration, pharmacology and toxicology research, and preparation technology research. , sufficient clinical research, clinical pharmacological research, etc., to determine the indications to be treated, as well as the administration method, dosage, pharmaceutical dosage form, etc., and finally use clinical efficacy as the end point of evaluation. For example, you can know how many times a day you should take a medicine, how many tablets you can take at a time to treat a disease, and that the side effects of the medicine are within a controllable range.

But health food is not. There is basically no above-mentioned research. It only tests for contaminants, bacteria and other hygienic indicators, and it can be put on the market after passing the test. Therefore, even if a certain disease is cured, it is still an accident. Moreover, any health food cannot claim to have therapeutic effects on certain diseases when promoting it. Such advertisements will be severely investigated and dealt with.

In order to authoritatively distinguish between health foods and drugs, the distinction has been clearly made on the website of the Food and Drug Administration:

(1) Different purposes of use:

Health food is used to regulate body functions, improve the body's ability to resist diseases, improve sub-health status, and reduce the risk of disease. It is not intended to prevent or treat diseases.

Drugs refer to substances that are used to prevent, treat, and diagnose human diseases, purposefully regulate human physiological functions, and have prescribed indications or functions, usage, and dosage.

(2) Health food should be consumed according to the prescribed consumption amount and should not cause any acute, subacute or chronic harm to the human body. Medicines can have toxic side effects.

(3) Different usage methods: health food is only used orally. Medicines can be injected, applied, etc.

(4) The types of raw materials that can be used are different: toxic and harmful substances are not allowed to be used as health food raw materials.

As for the production conditions of health products and drugs, I will not go into details here. The technical conditions and production quality control of drugs are of course more stringent. People often ask the editor, and some people promote health products, saying that they are for health prevention. Health care products are more effective than medicines. Take vitamin C as an example. Vitamin C is indeed found in health products and OTC drugs. How to choose?

In fact, after the above analysis, it is easy to answer this question:

Vitamin C as a health product is only used as a nutritional supplement for people who want to maintain health or prevent diseases. use.

The packaging will state health functions and vitamin C supplementation, but it has no therapeutic effect.

Generally, it will be stated on the package: This product cannot replace medicine and should not exceed the recommended amount or be consumed at the same time as similar nutrient supplements.

Vitamin C as a medicine has been studied in the above-mentioned studies, and has data support for dosage, etc., and also has clear indications. It is generally labeled as vitamin C deficiency, which has become a disease. Only needs treatment. Of course, for health care, it is not impossible to take some OTC vitamin C.

The production standards of pharmaceutical grade vitamin C are higher than those of health food grade vitamin C. From this point of view, it is safer and more controllable. Introduction to Dr. Bu Yao

Ph.D., chief pharmacist, senior nutritionist, has 10 years of experience in medication guidance, nutritional consultation and health management. No medicine, no medicine, live a healthy life, don’t get sick, don’t take medicine!