Dietary supplements fall into a sort of gray area. They often resemble medication —pill-shaped and sold in bottles with child-safe screw tops. Their labels might also suggest certain health benefits. However, unlike medication, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) considers supplements to be a food and doesn’t give them the same scrutiny it devotes to drugs.
“The FDA does not analyze the content of dietary supplements until consumers complain about it,” says Lina Begdache, a registered dietitian and associate professor of health and wellness studies at Binghamton University in New York.
That said, sometimes it can be hard to attribute side effects that you experience with the supplements you’re taking, Begdache adds. Often side effects will be gastrointestinal in nature — maybe a little nausea or diarrhea which consumers might attribute to other things.
However, supplements — which encompass a whole slew of things from vitamins, minerals, amino acids, botanicals and herbs, among other things — can also cause side effects that are a little more unusual.
