So I went to the doctor recently because I was diagnosed with a genetic condition. He listed several prescribed medications I could take. However online, many other people with the same condition as me recommended taking supplements/vitamins to help balance out my hormones.
So it got me thinking- if supplements and pills are both manmade edible things- why are medications prescribed but supplements are available anywhere? Don’t they try to serve the same purpose? What am I missing here
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>taking supplements/vitamins to help balance out my hormones.
Here’s the thing, though — *how* are these supplements going to do that? What do the substances in them accomplish?
Most vitamins do little to nothing extra for you when taking them at higher doses. If you have too little of them you’ll get various malnutrition symptoms, but otherwise enough is simply enough. Overdosing on them is pretty hard unless you down an entire jar of vitamin gummies in one sitting.
Medications, on the other hand, are substances that *modify* specific bits of your biochemistry. Paracetamol AKA acetominophen AKA tylenol, for instance, shuts down an enzyme that generates a particular hormone, whose signaling ultimately causes headaches. Because such modifications can sometimes have serious effects, medications are prescribed by doctors who have an idea of how a disease is affecting you and exactly which levers can be pulled to help improve things.
Additionally, anyone can sell supplements as long as there’s nothing harmful in there or it specifically promises to cure some condition (because at that point the FDA starts treating it as a medication!). Medications are investigated with far greater scrutiny to establish exactly what they do, at which dose, with which side effects.
The pill form is just a delivery method, easy for manufacturers to put stuff in and easy for you to take. What matters is the active ingredient(s) inside.
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