Faced with health problems, some people run to the pharmacy for life-saving pills, others start taking supplements to strengthen their immunity.
Which option is more effective , MEDIKFORUM asked Dr. Gulnara Mazitova.
Disputes about what is more effective – dietary supplements or medicines have been going on for more than a dozen years. On the one hand, all vitamins and minerals can be obtained from food, then why take dietary supplements?
On the other hand, if you get sick and take medication, you read a huge list of contraindications and side effects along the way.
“There is no answer to the question of what is better – pharmacy medicines or dietary supplements. The right question is: what is more effective – treatment or prevention of diseases?”, – says the expert.
If you are treated with drugs, and they do not help you, most likely they were prescribed to eliminate the symptoms, and not the cause of the disease.
The second thing to understand is that it is impossible to get all the vitamins and minerals the body needs from food. Especially now, when the quality of many products leaves much to be desired.
If we talk about the main drawback of drugs, then this is primarily a chemical basis. Medicines are pure chemicals. These drugs are not for health, they are rather for death. The difference is obvious.
If we are talking about prevention, then competent intake of properly selected vitamins and minerals, timely replenishment of deficiencies in the body works for it.
Russians are “put” on dietary supplements
When they say that the effectiveness of dietary supplements has not been proven, then a counter question arises: how to prove the effectiveness of prevention? It's very simple: a person does not get sick, which means that prevention has an effect.
Food supplements: how to choose and how to take them correctly?
In what cases is prevention useless? When the disease has reached a critical point and entered the acute phase. There are only radical and urgent methods of treatment. Prevention is a preventive measure, treatment is an emergency. 
Gulnara Mazitova Healthy lifestyle Therapist, candidate of medical sciences