Probiotic Use Up

Did you know that the National Institutes of Health had an Office of Dietary Supplements? Neither did I. But it's full of useful info.

And it even does studies of supplement use among Americans.

At least I think it does. Somebody must have done the study that Gloria Payne of the Murfreesboro Daily News reported on in her article Exploring trends, demographics, safety issues with herbs. Amazingly, she never actually says. Maybe it's because she doesn't want to mention that the study dates back to 2004. The proper citation is S Gunther, R Patterson, A Kristal, et al. "Demographic and health-related correlates of herbal and specialty supplement use." Journal of the American Dietetic Association 104:27-34 (January 2004).

Anyway, the breaking news - taken from self-reporting diaries all the way back in 2000-2002 - is that people with lactose intolerance take acidophilus pills to help with their symptoms. This is good news, although there's no hint of how many people do this. All I can glean from her article is that women are more likely to take supplements overall (36% of women vs 29% of men).

Ah well, at least I got a good reference web site out of it.