The dangers of unregulated nutrition supplements
Is the Seller to Blame?
By NATASHA SINGER and PETER LATTMAN, NYT
EVERY morning as she gets dressed for her accounting job, Leanne Sparling hangs her son’s military dog tags and a photograph of him in uniform around her neck. She wears the tags on the outside of her clothes, hoping to prompt strangers to ask about him. “When I do tell them what happened,” she says, “they are in total disbelief.”
Her son, Michael Lee Sparling, was a 22-year-old Army private when he died. But he wasn’t killed by a roadside bomb or an ambush in Afghanistan. He collapsed while running in formation for about 10 minutes with his unit at Fort Bliss, Tex., went into cardiac arrest and died later that day, on June 1, 2011.
Private Sparling had recently graduated from basic training and was in excellent physical condition. Before the exercise, he had taken the recommended dose of a workout supplement called Jack3d, bought at a GNC store on the base, according to legal filings.
Pronounced “jacked,” as in “jacked up,” Jack3d contains a powerful stimulant called dimethylamylamine, or DMAA for short, which some medical experts and health regulators say has similar effects on the body as amphetamines. Among bodybuilders and in the fitness-obsessed culture of the military, Jack3d has acquired a reputation for bolstering workout energy and stamina. The product description on the GNC Web site promises as much: “ultra-intense muscle-gorging strength, energy, power and endurance.”
(More here.)
EVERY morning as she gets dressed for her accounting job, Leanne Sparling hangs her son’s military dog tags and a photograph of him in uniform around her neck. She wears the tags on the outside of her clothes, hoping to prompt strangers to ask about him. “When I do tell them what happened,” she says, “they are in total disbelief.”
Her son, Michael Lee Sparling, was a 22-year-old Army private when he died. But he wasn’t killed by a roadside bomb or an ambush in Afghanistan. He collapsed while running in formation for about 10 minutes with his unit at Fort Bliss, Tex., went into cardiac arrest and died later that day, on June 1, 2011.
Private Sparling had recently graduated from basic training and was in excellent physical condition. Before the exercise, he had taken the recommended dose of a workout supplement called Jack3d, bought at a GNC store on the base, according to legal filings.
Pronounced “jacked,” as in “jacked up,” Jack3d contains a powerful stimulant called dimethylamylamine, or DMAA for short, which some medical experts and health regulators say has similar effects on the body as amphetamines. Among bodybuilders and in the fitness-obsessed culture of the military, Jack3d has acquired a reputation for bolstering workout energy and stamina. The product description on the GNC Web site promises as much: “ultra-intense muscle-gorging strength, energy, power and endurance.”
(More here.)
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