Bait And Switch From Amazon - Beware!

[Marg]

So I ordered aspirin in a quantity of 1,000 advertised on Amazon as 'Gericare' brand for $10.99 and I read the ingredients and it only had cornstarch (not that I like that either) figuring I would get a relatively purer product.

I had been using Bayer aspirin, but there are also troubling ingredients in that, and the fact that the Monsanto monster bought out Bayer, I thought I would try to get aspirin as pure as I could.

Amazon wasn't the original shipper; Amazon contracts out to 2nd party vendors and gets a commission on sales. The 2nd party vedor ships the item to you, and what I'm learning now is that they may not send you the original brand you ordered.

I opened my package and noticed the brand was 'Plus Pharma', not the Gericare that I originally ordered. It only has two ingredients:

Corn starch- I am thinking now that this is GMO

Povidone- powdered form of POLYVINYL PYRROLIDONE used as a dispersing and suspending agent in drugs.

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WTF is VINLYL crap doing in this aspirin? I am not going to use this and beware of buying cheap supplement products that must be coming from China because you wonder what is not being declared in the ingredient list too!

Don't think for one second that the FDA is concerned about this with any regulations that protect the consumer; instead their role is to protect corporate monopolies with full government backing by lobbying.

This whole thing is disgusting. No wonder RP is leery of excipients in supplements. I am going to have a talk with my pharmacist about having him direct me to a quality aspirin.

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Eta This stuff is water soluable so you can't decant it out as solid that would sink to the bottom with all the other undissolvable solids. And from what it says, it is in ionic suspension of very tiny particles, so I assume that this poison would get into the bloodstream. Scary!

https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/Povidone-iodine#section=Top

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I checked out my other supplements:

Thorne k2
Medium chain triglycerideoil, mixed tocopherols and k2

ThorneNiacinamide
Niacinamide 500mg
Capsule: hypromellose (bad stuff like polymer. I empty the capsule and throw the capsule out. If your product doesn't use a pure gelatin, don't consume it.)

Cyproheptadine: I get this from a drugstore. I can't find the package insert but I will get another one when I buy some more.
If anyone gets cypro online, please look into what ingredients are used.

Be aware and be careful!

 

[chrismeyers]

In general on Amazon (and I get Prime boxes every single day virtually), I find its best to find the products sold or fulfilled by Amazon. The third party listings like you say sometimes are semi shady. Most of the popular stuff is sold this way, just try to find them

 

[Marg]

Thanks Chris. You live and learn!!!

 

[Elysium]

Bayer has bought Monsanto, not the other way around.

What exactly was so troubling about Bayer ingredients - what were they?

Mine has starch and cellulose, which is possibly the bare minimum you can hope for if it is to have a pill form.

Big German name in case of pharmaceuticals, and especially nonregulated generics or supplements, is definitely the better way to go than various no name alternatives. As you correctly noted, the declared ingredients are completely not trustworthy, it is a gamble every time. There is no incentive to be truthful whatsoever. On the contrary it pays to lie.

 

[Marg]

Bayer has bought Monsanto, not the other way around.

Thanks for that. Bayer must have deep pockets. I just don't like any association with Monsanto.

Here are the ingredients in the Bayer 325 mg that I have been using (and I dissolve the aspirin in water and decant the solids that stay as undissolved solids on the glass bottom, as Dr. Peat suggested:

Inactive ingredients black iron oxide, brown iron oxide, carnauba wax, corn starch, D&C yellow #10 aluminum lake, FD&C yellow #6 aluminum lake, hypromellose, methacrylic acid copolymer type C, polysorbate 80, powdered cellulose, propylene glycol, shellac, sodium lauryl sulfate, triacetin, triethyl citrate

I will be making a trip to my pharmacy to talk with the pharmacist to see if I can get a simpler aspirin product with the least excipients.

I am also leery about the purity of bulk aspirin, but I need to look into this also.

 

[whodathunkit]

Bezos did something a few years back that allowed him to cut the middlemen and Amazon as the middleman and deal directly with vendors from other countries, primarily China. Quality of merchandise and service has gone WAY DOWN since. I don't understand precisely about the whole deal but the quality issues are a straight-up fact.

I used to buy from Amazon several times per week but it's been probably 3 weeks since I've gotten anything from them. It's just not worth the hassle of trying to suss out if I'm going to get ripped off or not. You never know what you're going to get or whether or not the return is going to turn into a cluster.

@chrismeyers is right about trying to buy only from Amazon but they don't offer everything I need via Prime.

Honestly thinking about cancelling my Prime membership.

These days Bezos seems more interested in fellating and tongue-bathing Hollywood douchebags so he can overpay them to churn out his under-watched "Prime content" than he is in keeping up the quality of the services that actually built the fortune that allowed him acceptance into the "rarefied" sphere of the people he's now bowing and scraping to.

I used to admire him but it now seems like he's just another nerd who's trying to overcompensate in adulthood for trauma endured during high school, by buying his way into the "kool kidz klikz" that he was denied access to until he made some money.

 

[Marg]

Thanks for your reply whodathunkit.

Never again to Amazon. So far iherb has delivered what I ordered so I will only do business with iherb.

 

[Elysium]

Inactive ingredients black iron oxide, brown iron oxide, carnauba wax, corn starch, D&C yellow #10 aluminum lake, FD&C yellow #6 aluminum lake, hypromellose, methacrylic acid copolymer type C, polysorbate 80, powdered cellulose, propylene glycol, shellac, sodium lauryl sulfate, triacetin, triethyl citrate.

You have got to be kidding. I wonder what the explanation is as to why in some countries all they have to add is cellulose and corn starch, while in others the list reads like a witch craft recipe.

 

[yerrag]

Bezos did something a few years back that allowed him to cut the middlemen and Amazon as the middleman and deal directly with vendors from other countries, primarily China. Quality of merchandise and service has gone WAY DOWN since. I don't understand precisely about the whole deal but the quality issues are a straight-up fact.

I used to buy from Amazon several times per week but it's been probably 3 weeks since I've gotten anything from them. It's just not worth the hassle of trying to suss out if I'm going to get ripped off or not. You never know what you're going to get or whether or not the return is going to turn into a cluster.

@chrismeyers is right about trying to buy only from Amazon but they don't offer everything I need via Prime.

Honestly thinking about cancelling my Prime membership.

These days Bezos seems more interested in fellating and tongue-bathing Hollywood douchebags so he can overpay them to churn out his under-watched "Prime content" than he is in keeping up the quality of the services that actually built the fortune that allowed him acceptance into the "rarefied" sphere of the people he's now bowing and scraping to.

I used to admire him but it now seems like he's just another nerd who's trying to overcompensate in adulthood for trauma endured during high school, by buying his way into the "kool kidz klikz" that he was denied access to until he made some money.

I haven't had any bad experience service-wise and product-wise with Amazon. The one time I complained about a product, they just let me keep the defective product and sent me another one. It is hard to compete with Amazon because it seems their success hasn't gotten into their head. While Bezos is alive and running the show, there's reason to be happy. Once he's gone, Amazon is naturally just going to turn into a faceless large corporation without a soul. And Bezos will be turning in his grave.

 

[Marg]

You have got to be kidding. I wonder what the explanation is as to why in some countries all they have to add is cellulose and corn starch, while in others the list reads like a witch craft recipe.

It is totally disgusting, isn't it! Why should Bayer, a leading aspirin brand, have all that junk? If aspirin used to be made with just some corn starch, or something else relatively safe, why can't they do it now?

I am going to research every one of those ingredients and then get back with some brief info on all those excipients, and most importantly if any of them are water soluable, which you don't want because all you want dissolved in the water is just the aspirin.

I am beginning to think that the corporate manufacturers are disposing their waste materials back into their products (similar to placing the neurotoxin, fluoride into the water supply claiming that it was beneficial to teeth) because corporatism is a worldwide, multinational consortium that supercedes any consumer safety law, because they economically control all government; the FDA is a useful idiot rather than a watchdog.

Another area of deep concern is that the corporate state wants to create law which will allow corporations to list partial or even none of the ingredients in their products. The consumer be damned!

 

[tara]

You have got to be kidding. I wonder what the explanation is as to why in some countries all they have to add is cellulose and corn starch, while in others the list reads like a witch craft recipe.

I find it hard to imagine self-respecting witches would deliberately use all those ingredients. :)

 

[chrismeyers]

Couple points. While I did mention that I do try and avoid third party sellers on Amazon listings, in full fairness I do have to say that I also love Amazon to death, so I am not being critical in that way. Amazon Prime since I got it for the first time in 2008 has changed how I bought everything and changed my life in general. Like I said virtually every day I have boxes waiting for me and its so easy to whim shop and buy really niche items. Like I bought the top of the top Japanese brand nail clipper the other day, perfect Japanese metal. I wouldn't be able to find such a unique thing without Amazon.

On the supplement front, for supplements without other ingredients, I generally use 'Pure Encapsulations' brand. The best brand for all supps with just a celulose pill.

 

[800mRepeats]

Here are the ingredients in the Bayer 325 mg that I have been using (and I dissolve the aspirin in water and decant the solids that stay as undissolved solids on the glass bottom, as Dr. Peat suggested:

Inactive ingredients black iron oxide, brown iron oxide, carnauba wax, corn starch, D&C yellow #10 aluminum lake, FD&C yellow #6 aluminum lake, hypromellose, methacrylic acid copolymer type C, polysorbate 80, powdered cellulose, propylene glycol, shellac, sodium lauryl sulfate, triacetin, triethyl citrate

You have got to be kidding. I wonder what the explanation is as to why in some countries all they have to add is cellulose and corn starch, while in others the list reads like a witch craft recipe.

Those ingredients are from the "safety coated" version which HAS to have more junk in it than a non-coated variety.

Plain old Genuine Bayer Aspirin Tablets contain the following non-aspirin ingredients:
carnauba wax*, corn starch, hypromellose, powdered cellulose, triacetin

Not perfect, but better.

 

[Elysium]

The german version that's also sold in my country only has cellulose and corn starch. No other ingredients.

Here is the one I take now, includes 50 grams of caffeine.

https://www.aspirin.de/static/documents/Beipackzettel_Aspirin_Coffein.pdf

 

[Marg]

Thanks for your replies.

This one from CVS drugstore in US looks good as is just contains aspirin and starch:

https://www.drugs.com/otc/107494/cvs-44-249-1.jpg

 

[Bobby]

I use the Certified Brand from the 99 Cent Only store, which someone had mentioned before. It also, only has corn starch as an inactive ingredient. You get 175 tablets of 325 mg aspirin per bottle. Not all 99 Cent Only stores carry the same stuff, so one might have to look around at a few before finding it. Its quite the steal....and I also get my epsom salts from there, dirt cheap!

 

[Diokine]

Wal-mart used to have very generic aspirin for $.88, only aspirin and corn starch. It's gone now

Aspirin for horses seems to work really well.

This one from CVS drugstore in US looks good as is just contains aspirin and starch

I have never seen these in CVS, I wonder if they are still around?

 

[Marg]

Wal-mart used to have very generic aspirin for $.88, only aspirin and corn starch. It's gone now

Aspirin for horses seems to work really well.

I have never seen these in CVS, I wonder if they are still around?

Great observation Diokine, because this is going to be my next rant.

Finding uncoated aspirin is getting more difficult; most on the shelves are coated. I think the reason why is that there has been a lot of hysterical "medical" media portraying some unsubstantiated myth that aspirin is dangerous that will cause massive stomach hemorrhaging. So the manufacturers placed these toxic coatings on the aspirin to control the rate of breakdown into the system with the assumption that this prevents stomach upset. Because of this, I think the manufacturing trend is now favoring coated aspirin, unfortunately.

Whether or not coating is scientifically valid or not I don't know, but I was reading a blog in which a woman was taking aspirin, and her cardiologist became hysterical because she told him she was taking uncoated, and he told her to take coated because he said uncoated were "dangerous." But this doctor doesn't seem concerned about the toxic excipients at all.

I called my pharmacist yesterday, and he told me that percentage wise, aspirin composes a very small portion of the individual tablet, so the vast majority of the tablet is composed of excipients.

I think Dr. Peat has covered aspirin safety in his essays, cautioning people to use k2. If there are a small segment who have trouble with aspirin, then they must find something else.

I am having trouble even finding the uncoated aspirin in my local drugstore as they just don't carry it.. I will inquire tomorrow by phone to a larger pharmacy that I will have to travel to get to, to make sure if they carry a decent uncoated aspirin before I make the trip out there.

If anyone has had any experience with the vet aspirin I would really like to hear your opinion.

 

[Queequeg]

It's actually an open question as to whether or not Bayer is better or less evil than Monsanto since Bayer was part of Zyclon B making IG Farben which provided much of the money to put Hitler into power. I imagine that they are all part of the Rockefeller Krupp Thiessen Pharma-whore cartel and the company names are no more than different brands of the same company.

I would return the knock off brand and try to find a vendor that sells Gericare. I bought mine through Amazon with no issues.

 

[mayweatherking]

There's one at Wal-Mart u can buy that is legit, look on toxinless