It was a nasty head cold that sent Kerry Parham to Cinagro's, a
health food store in suburban Cleveland, for an $8 bottle of herbal
supplements.
"If I had a job with health insurance, I probably would have gone
to see a doctor by now," said Ms. Parham, 39, who lost her clerical
job at American Greetings, the greeting-card company, a while back.
"But instead, I'm here buying echinacea. I hope it works."
In flusher times, Ms. Parham said, she spent $50 a month on
prescriptions for her asthma, allergies and other chronic problems.
Now, she pays $6 a month for over-the-counter protein supplements
and oregano oil capsules. "That's an important savings for me," she
said. "It means I can rent a movie or make the kids food that they
actually like."
A lot of American consumers seem to be doing the same math. Sales
of vitamins and nutritional supplements, which have grown
consistently for years, have surged in recent months, rising as the
stock market has fallen. People are clearly cutting back on many
items, from bread and milk to designer jeans and flat-screen
televisions, but they are stocking up on pills that they think can
spare them expensive doctor visits.
"When you go to the formal health system, you very quickly lose
control over what this costs you," said Uwe E. Reinhardt, a
professor of economics at Princeton whose specialty is health care
policy. Instead of turning immediately to a doctor, "people try to
initially tough it out," he said.
Professor Reinhardt sees the growing interest in vitamins and
herbs as a logical extension of the concept of "consumer-directed
health care" - the idea that people will take more preventative
measures if their insurance deductibles are set higher - which has
been working its way from conservative policy circles toward the
mainstream over the past 20 years. Critics say this approach leads
to predicaments like Ms. Parham's, with people staying sicker longer
and avoiding much-needed medical treatment.
At the Vitamin Shoppe, a chain with 414 stores in the United
States, customers have been expressing alarm about health care
costs and the high unemployment rate, said Tom Tolworthy, the
company chairman. "The reduction of benefits associated with
prescription drugs is sending people to prevention and alternative
health care," he said.
The Vitamin Shoppe has tracked a rise in new customers of about
20 percent over the past six months, Mr. Tolworthy said. That
increase is at least 25 percent higher than the rise in new
customers that it saw in the recession of 2001.
Across the United States, the numbers tell a similar story. For
the three months ending Dec. 28, sales of vitamins rose nearly 8
percent compared with sales in the same period in 2007, according to
Information Resources, a market research company in Chicago. At the
same time, sales of other health-related products - like cough and
cold remedies, first-aid products and pain relievers - have been
dipping, according to the Nielsen Co., the information and media
conglomerate.
The strong sales of vitamins and supplements have continued into
this year. "Our best January and February in history are the ones
that just happened," said Tom Newmark, chief executive of New
Chapter, a 26-year-old supplements manufacturer in Brattleboro,
Vermont.
Direct evidence linking the rise in sales to the recession is
more anecdotal than scientific, though industry analysts said they
saw the same correlation - though less pronounced - in previous
downturns.
Certainly, America's interest in supplements did not begin with
the current recession. The industry has accounted for as much as $23
billion in sales annually in the United States in recent years.
Even so, the jump in sales last autumn amid such widespread
financial distress caught some people by surprise. "We didn't expect
that," said Patrick Rea, publisher and editorial director of
Nutrition Business Journal, a trade paper based in Boulder,
Colorado. "We were like, 'What's going on here?' "
Doctors caution against putting too much faith in supplements,
and recent studies have cast doubt on the long-term effectiveness of
products like multivitamins and vitamin E for certain cancers and
heart disease. Dr. Edward L. Langston, a former chairman of the
board of the American Medical Association, said he counseled his
patients to take limited doses of vitamin C, but said supplements
were no "panacea," nor a substitute for traditional health care.
"A little common sense here goes a long way," Dr. Langston said.
*
Rebecca Cathcart and Christopher Maag contributed reporting.
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