Information about the Aspen Ideas Festival is here. I am scheduled for a session, The American Wellness Paradox, currently scheduled from 11:00-11:50 a.m., at the East Lawn Tent. This will be a discussion with senior HHS policy advisor, Calley Means. Here’s the blurb on it: “Americans are spending more than ever on healthcare, supplements, wellness trends, and “clean eating,” yet rates of chronic disease and metabolic illness continue to climb. As skepticism fuels the rise of movements like MAHA, debates over what Americans should eat have become deeply cultural, political, and economic. Two influential voices with sharply different perspectives on nutrition and food science explore how food systems, farming practices, consumer culture, and the wellness industry collided to create one of the defining public health debates of our time.”
No wonder athletes take supplements: testosterone!
I’m not usually an avid reader of the sports pages but a recent article in the New York Times caught my eye. A couple of over-the-counter dietary supplements adored by high school football players – Tren Xtreme and Mass Xtreme (manufactured by American Cellular Labs) – turn out to contain “designer” (translation: artificially synthesized) testosterone.
Why do high school athletes take this stuff? Obviously, because it works. Never mind the effects of excess testosterone on bone growth in adolescent boys (not good).
The article sheds considerable light on the murky business of selling such products, the use of illicit drugs in sports, the wink-wink attitudes of everyone involved, and the difficulties faced by federal regulators.
Add this to the reasons why we need Congress to allow real regulation of dietary supplements.
